I had to look up the solar-system-enclosing Dyson sphere thing that Altman said to see if it was real, and it is. And like 80 seconds later they’re talking about selling tickets to hypothetical nuclear fusion reactors because people would want to watch the atoms hit each other.
Dyson Sphere is one of those scifi ideas that is so comically impractical, like you'll need much more material than the entire mass of planet earth to build something like that and it's also won't be stable. But somehow it has a reputation of "serious thought" with "futurists"
im so glad i have no fucking idea who Theo Von is
Adam Becker needs to be on all the shows right now www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-...
He’s an unserious fantasist. There isn’t enough matter in the solar system to build a Dyson Sphere. www.youtube.com/shorts/k2JPt...
Most intelligent people listening to these idiots riffing on what are, ultimately, nothing more than hairbrained branding/marketing schemes:
What do you mean its real?
Um, calling a Dyson sphere 'real' is, er, kinda missing the point here.
I find generally that when "geniuses" make every societal advancement a capitalist venture, they are nearly always idiots.
This guy is a professional bullshitter like Elizabeth Holmes but without the blonde hair.
We have atoms colliding at home.
Cloud chambers are cheap!
If you know how to rebuild a two-stage vacuum pump,
Same.
I thought a Dyson sphere was a gigantic vacuum cleaner ball that sucked up orbiting space junk. I guess that’s why I am not trusted with billions in capital.
“Mountainhead” was barely fictional in its portrayal of tech wealth gone mad
Have to admit I’m way more surprised that people don’t know about Dyson spheres than I am that Altman is dumb enough to think they’re a practical answer to the problems he’s creating.
This is just shit college nerds verbally jerk off about when they get high in their dorm room late on a Wednesday night
this guy is the young version of that awful older techbro character from don’t look up and it fucking pains me on like ten levels.
Year that was in the Scotty episode of Star Trek Next Generation like 30 years ago.
I am willing to sell him tickets to stare at the Sun if he wants to look at a fusion reactor right now.
Also worth noting, this wasn’t a one off slip of the tongue, he seems to genuinely believe that a Dyson sphere encompassing the solar system is a totally practical thing worth talking about.
The sound you hear is Angela Collier's head exploding.
wai
This guy has been trusted with nearly $60 billion in capital by purportedly serious investors
Clammy Sammy h/t @edzitron.com
stop talking, just stop talking, you're gonna blow it all up
I’ve met more than I care too, and I just cannot stress enough How much the wealthy and ultra wealthy are almost to a person dumb as hell.
All it takes to rake in the funding is prior connections, mid-tier intelligence, and the ability to ramble on like a coked-up greek thinking they’ve discovered something for the first time. And since their funders also exhibit those same traits, it’s a match made in heaven. Homophily in action.
Love to center my whole economy around a guy who thinks it’s possible to build a thing from that one TNG episode that was only a MacGuffin for “Hey, it’s Scotty from the old show!”
this is another perfect example of how a monopoly-friendly legal system is bad for investment. Because genuine startups with real products and services are IMMEDIATELY consumed, anticompeted, or sued into oblivion, the only projects LEFT to invest in are scams run by scammers like Altman.
like: obvsl the damage to the people is far worse and more costly, but it isn't even good for the capitalists! A scam-heavy economy, monopolies, and economic bubbles are all directly connected.
Same people who thought SBF was a super genius because he played video games during Zoom meetings.
lol the US is one big Ponzi scheme. Was SBF sentenced yet? Did he get more time than that other ponzi scheme guy?
25 years? and they gave madoff 150? That’s bullshit because madoff was only scamming locally and sbf was scamming the whole world. That’s not enough years someone needs to shank him.
The investor class hates workers and will throw all the money at anything that promises to reduce or eliminate us.
I must be misunderstanding. Wouldn't a Dyson sphere that enclosed *the entire solar system* a) have to be built in the Kuiper belt and 2) require more than the mass of everything in the solar system to build? (yes counting the Kuiper Belt, the Oort Cloud, and Earth. Possibly the sun too.)
Yes and yes. Normally discussions about Dyson spheres talk about a relatively tight enclosure around a star, and that would still take pretty much all the mass in the solar system. But that thought experiment handwaves the fact that most of that matter wouldn’t be useful as construction materials.
Altman might as well say that we’ll pay the elves and pixies to host our data centres in the Land of Faerie. He frankly deserves a slap in the face for saying we’ll cover the Earth in data centres, as if that’s a rational possibility.
I'm thinking about Hewlett and Packard, Noyce, Grove, Perry, and many other SV pioneers who were technically proficient, and am again reminded just how nauseatingly the SV elite has degenerated.
even as far along as Microsoft, Gates was clearly technically proficient (he made actual research contributions to CS). somewhere around Zuck and Musk it turns in to just hype men
(a lot of people would pick Jobs for that, but I think he's more complicated. he wasn't technical himself, but he was able to understand what projects were at the right intersection of technical feasibility and market value pretty well, basically very good at whatever skill you think PMs have)
That is correct. He had unparalleled judgement about when specific instantiations of technology were ready for consumer markets.
Jobs's killing of the Apple Newton was objectively flawlessly correct judgement that SV's current crop of mediocre imitators flagrantly lack.
The Apple III was his only genuinely huge product error.
Jobs had remarkable ability to resist sunk costs fallacy, which currently rules SV. Possibly a result of his detour through NeXT.
Also, people forget that Jobs did not make most of his fortune at Apple or Next. He made it at Pixar.
I remember him (1) killing the floppy (2) killing the optical drive (3) moving the entire install base over to OSX (4) moving the entire install base over to x86 and everyone complained bitterly each time but these were all correct calls
I'm not sure the headphone jack was the right call or I would have put it on here lol
I usually use wireless earphones but miss the 3.5 jack for a variety of reasons.
I was a 3.5mm stereo maximalist for a long time and even I now hail our USB-C overlords. Basically I think it was the correct call but only because of the grace of European regulators
getting everything on USB-C is a massive quality of life win
It's annoying how much mini and micro USB stuff I still have.
Who are these "serious investors"?
surely investors are among the most stupid ppl on the planet. To be scammed out of billions by Elizabeth Holmes and this mashed potato faced techbro, and all the techbros…suggests as much…
On the other hand, selling PSLs to CERN could be rather lucrative...
How much better could that money have made life for millions of actual, near term humans, rather than funneling it into theoretical benefits to post-singularity human simulations. It’s just mind blowing. If only these bros had grown out of their adolescent fascination with sci-fi.
vibes based economy baybeeeee
"But like we're stumbling through this" is fake it til you make it on crack.
Smart investors are largely a myth in my experience
(Picture of a casino)
Like Leslie Wexner and other Epstein "investors"? I remember when Reagan's SEC was banging on about "sophisticated investors" in tax shelters. I also remember how many of those sophisticated investors bought garbage RMBSs from Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs.
bsky.app/profile/fuzz...
I never really bought in to the sophisticated investor nonsense, but any chance they had of convincing me that tech investors are serious died with Juicero.
Every sci fi nerd knows a Dyson Sphere isn’t possible. We have moved on to Dyson Swarms.
the last dyson we bought had the sphere. totally over rated
Fools and their money...
It's certainly a panacea for my imposter syndrome!
Just wait until they hear about Project Orion, another one of Dyson's thought experiments. Travel the stars by exploding nuclear bombs as propulsion!
Project Pluto was a real thing in this vein.
That would, at least, probably work.
They may be serious investors - they do reportedly have $60 billion - but it doesn’t appear they are competent.
At this point, they're too deep in to admit that he's clearly got no plan except spend more money on it. And a total ejiit who makes other ejiits look good by comparison.
"The markets are rational," they tell us in class
He’s just the new version of the WeWork guy.
Most of those guys are not that bright. I have repeatedly said this.
I have worked with people like this, and I’ve met some of the big names and I was left underwhelmed
Jeezus. This dude, and the whack job who's going to colonize Mars any day now. How is it that psychotics amassed such wealth and power?
He will have to build a shield to block out the sun like on The Simpsons, otherwise people will cheat him by watching fusion for free.
What if the Dyson sphere is smaller than Earth's orbit? 2 birds with one stone! SUPERGENIUS
AND we'd stop global warming!
HYPERGENIUS
And then they base their entire world view on stuff like that being possible. They need the Dyson sphere to harvest the energy to make the SuperAGI that creates the quintillions of simulated humans that have equal utility value to the actual humans that they’re refusing to help now in real life🙄
Finally we can build the Utility Monster from the classic ethical thought experiment "Don't Build the Utility Monster"
As soon as someone mentions something that was a thought experiment as if it’s actually achievable, you know they’re not a serious person.
Well, in the 50s, people went out to watch nuclear tests! Why not?
Man-made fusion happens inside equipment like a Tokamak. So you're just going to be starting at a big bit if equipment. Or you could stare at the Sun for a natural fusion reactor.
There isn’t enough matter in the entire solar system to create a Dyson sphere around the sun (what a Dyson sphere ACTUALLY is), let alone the entire solar system. But hey, I wouldn’t expect his AI to know that, so how could he?
There's not one form of Dyson sphere though? There's definitely enough matter in the solar system to create many forms of Dyson spheres, since you don't actually capture 100% of the star's energy with most of them.
I mean, sure. A Dyson swarm is technically possible. That’s probably the only “Dyson sphere” that’s possible within our system, but would still only involve the Sun. The idea of building ANY “sphere” around the entire system is beyond silly and shows this man shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Personally, wouldn't take anything he says literally, but I would take it seriously because he's one of the most powerful people in the world atm!
Eh, he’ll be nothing in a few years after Disney and Comcast benchslap OpenAI after they are done with Midjourney.
But even still, regarding a swarm, we still don’t have enough matter in our entire system for anything meaningful. Our focus is much better off just expanding on solar panels here on earth.
I did a quick back-of-napkin calculation and if you wanted a Dyson sphere merely 1" thick in steel (on average) at Jupiter's orbit, that would actually be the mass of Jupiter itself. Everything else is a rounding error after that. It's a breathtaking example of not knowing the 1st thing about it.
It's basically got to be made of strong force matter too (I think unless you have some specific off-center positioning around one member of a binary system)
we’ll just mine some interstellar asteroids, easy peasy
It's kind of like saying we should build a space elevator from the earth to the moon. Yes, a space elevator is a thing, no, that's not really how you do it.
There's plenty of matter, it's all just in the Sun, and hydrogen (which has poor qualities as a construction material). Maybe if we can fuse hydrogen into carbon at scale... but then what would we need the sphere for?
Holy crap but the kind of money they have must buy them some very very good weed.
The general consensus now days is that a Dyson ARRAY of orbital facilities could happen but the strength needed to HOLD THEM ALL TOGETHER would be like the space elevator cable problem - material strength does not actually come in that range and will never let that happen. And would induce current!
Don't underestimate the mesmerization potential of Cherenkov blue.
Elizabeth Holmes was done dirty.
Truly. Elizabeth Holmes is a symptom of VCs being credulous fools with no sense and too much money.
This isn't an intellectual or a visionary, this is a guy's first day in some Star Trek spinoff's writers room...
There's a Next Gen episode about a Dyson sphere, featuring the return of Scotty. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relics_...
Best guess: He doesn't mean Dyson Sphere but instead just means a floating solar powered space station data center. If true it means he's awful at communicating his ideas and just wants to sound cool by using sci-fi futuristic terms.
we tested computing in space, it sucks. cooling in a vacuum is a massive issue + radiation means redundancy needed on all components. if you are into sci fi theory crafting, prob some ici giovian moon could work for large scale computing. but this is fantasy. no solution to todays problems there.
you do not need to contort yourself trying to find meaning in the entrails of a goat
Jesus this man doesn't understand anything at all, huh
God forbid anyone from that realm talk glowingly about ways to get rid of plastic or green energy or saving endangered wildlife.
... .... ... This isnt even like good sci-fi, yeah people are gonna pay to see something that they can't see sure thing. I mean some nerds and curious folk will do it but how many people are going out to see nuclear silos?
I’m no physicist…but I feel pretty safe saying that’s not how atoms work.
Any serious person would be talking about a Niven-style ringworld rather than a Dyson sphere!
The Ringworld is unstable! The Ringworld is unstable! The [gets tasped]
"Drugs are bad, m'kay?"
"They are sometimes used as the type of plot device known as a Big Dumb Object.[32]" "Stableford himself observed that Dyson spheres are usually MacGuffins" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_s...
These idiots are just taking fringe concepts sci fi kids readers and space nerds talk about and filtering it through ketamine brah brains.
Off topic, but every time I see a picture of Altman I think it is Bryan Kohberger. I take that as a sign. people.com/thmb/53fL4Ae...
Sam Altman is the kinda guy where I think it would be okay if Pol Pot came back for one last job.
These guys are banking on AI ramping up fast enough to sort out the quibbling details of, say, construction of a solar system-encompassing Dyson sphere, or, for example, how to make their AI companies profitable
It's real, but putting it outside the solar system is the stupidest way to use it. The whole point is to absorb the sun's energy!
You can tell how much people want to see atoms hit each other from the sheer size of the lines at CERN.
Well, yes. The Swiss are not exactly great marketers. If they'd built that supercollider in Texas, they'd be holding proton/anti-proton demolition derby nights. They'd sing the national anthem before firing it up. Individual particles would be sponsors by the local muffler place.
"real" in that it's something that has been theorised and determined to be well outside our technological abilities anytime soon.
The discussion is real. The Dyson sphere thing sounds impossible.
Utterly, and 100 percent the reverse of the solution if it were. Dyson spheres (from a theory standpoint; as they need several solar systems worth of mass to make even a “small” one) are ways to trap energy, not disperse it.
Nah. Not nearly that much. We'd only need a Mercury sized planet. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP44...
Not if it’s “the solar system” as he says. Even at very thin thickness it’s a few solar masses.
someone else did the math bsky.app/profile/nome...
Dyson spheres are more of a thought experiment about orders of magnitude, & Khardashev Scale civilizations. Were Jupiter a super earth, it still wouldn’t be enough matter to build one. You’d need more than one solar system to build something more substantial than a millimeter thick.
These people are deeply weird
Dyson sphere is overkill: Ringworld
Brilliant novel.
I assume the related "Phish" poster was just out of camera view?
Dyson spheres are an interesting thought experiment/speculative far-future thing, but as a response to real-world concerns about data centers eating our actual planetary resources, really expose him as the unserious childish fraud he so obviously is
At the point where you have technologically advanced enough to construct a Dyson Sphere you have passed the point where you need to construct one as there would be far more efficient/safer/easier options.
Yeah but maybe you just want to make one because it looks cool, Iain M Banks' The Culture -style
Banks' "Orbitals" were giant rings millions of miles across that orbited just like planets, with the radius of the ring perpendicular to the orbit. Banks wrote lots on how massive these things were, and how most of them were mostly empty because it took so long to fill them. not even dyson rings.
I don't remember there being a DS anywhere in the The Culture series. To the contrary, didn't they have much more realistic absurd scale structures like the shell world and ring of water tubes in Surface Detail? The mind boggling mass was discussed and both were a minuscule fraction of a Dsphere.
True enough, but I just appreciate the philosophy of "they built them cause they thought it would be neat", rather than due to any social necessity
Well, since you mention Mr Banks, if we did have the technology then doing it just because he said we should is probably reason enough :)
how does that dude take anabolic steroids and still look like he'd lose a fight to a 12 year old?
OK, I see these words you typed here and they appear to be in my primary language but suspect I must be having a stroke.
His schtick is old, all of his blubbering is just "cool scifi" playground chat.
The human brain runs on 20 watts. Why are we talking about Dyson spheres to power intelligence? I’d be suspicious of the guy constantly saying ‘it will work if you just give me 10x resources’ when it didn’t work when he scaled it by 100x.
We're farther away from being able to build a Dyson Sphere than we are from the invention of fire and the spear. Venture capitalists are insane.
hey now - every popular form of entertainment is just atoms hitting each other in various ways.
when you think about it we are all just dyson spheres
Because of this stupid thing I had to go try to find one of my favorite posts on here (not mine, someone else's) and it was sadly deleted. It was a guy freaking out like "bro you seriously didn't just enclose the sun in a Dyson sphere bro, people can see that bro, I'm serious, take it down"
Lucretius doesn't get enough reading by these lads.
They got a whole lotta void going on, those dudes.
ever the case!
Yeah I can see gifs of atoms colliding thanks
At this point they might as well suggest inventing a time machine.
