September Links

Astronomy Now: Corrected sunspot history suggests climate change not due to natural solar trends.

Is the US economy more egalitarian than Tinder?

Asteroid 3122 Florence, which passed safely by Terra this month, has two small moons. This makes it the third known triple NEO.

Katja Grace on coordination problems.

Put A Number On It reviews the Premium Mediocre.

Scott Alexander on institutional review boards, and his commenters on the post.

As expected, the Cassini mission ended on the 15th. Here's my retrospective.

OSIRIS-REx flies by Earth en route to Bennu.

Massive solar flare happens just in time for my space weather class. It's always fun to see the practical applications of what you're learning about.

August Links

Creating fnords with technology.

Kuiper-Belt Object 2014 MU₆₉, New Horizon's next target, may be two objects in close proximity.

The Hubble Space Telescope discovers an exoplanet with a warm stratosphere. A zone of where atmospheric temperature increases with altitude—a stratosphere—is common for planets in the solar system, but this is the first positive detection in another system. The detection involved oxidane gas, but the planet in question is undoubtedly too hot to have liquid water on the surface.

A federal excise tax on ammunition pays for state wildlife conservation, which garnered a lot more money during the Obama years due to gun control concerns.

Cephalopods evolve faster by RNA editing than DNA mutation. This is basically unheard-of in animal species, which poses some interesting questions for biologists.

U.S. Army team discovers a new technique for manufacturing hydrogen from water and aluminum alloys. If it scales up economically, it might finally be viable to switch away from polluting hydrogen fuels. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long to find out.

Asteroid 3122 Florence will pass Terra at 7 million kilometers distance on September 1. This will be its closest approach for the next several hundred years, and should be a good target for amateur astronomers.

Solar flares don't leave an impact on polar nitrate records. This is interesting because dozens of other chemicals do leave an ice-core trace after solar flares, but some of the biggest flares don't show any evidence.

Our World In Data crunched the numbers, and nuclear power plants are still the safest energy source. If anything, their analysis is pessimistic; I might do a follow-up post at a later date. Related: IAEA on nuclear storage accidents.

Senior Design

Yesterday, I was camping to watch the solar eclipse. Today, I'm back at school, diving into the material for senior year. My space-focused classes haven't met yet (updates on that front possibly tomorrow), but already the workload shaping up to be just as tough as last year's graduates warned us it would be.

The aerospace senior design classes focus on the AIAA Design Competitions. This year, the undergraduate individual aircraft request is to propose a Close Air Support (CAS) vehicle to replace the A-10. It's a shame Alex had to push back 521 a year, because this sounds right up his alley.

Our first assignment is Block 1 of a combined report, which will be due on Monday, September 11. By that point in time, we will have needed to have derived a mission profile from the specifications, reviewed the history of similar aircraft, and extrapolated from that data to perform the weight, wing, and powerplant sizing. All of it will naturally need to be summarized, formatted, and referenced.

On the subject of formatting, we've been given a few options for producing our reports. The standard approach is to use Microsoft Word, which has an unfortunate tendency to completely obliterate carefully-tweaked documents. Alternatively, we can use Adobe InDesign, which few of us know but allows for more meticulous curation. Because the design curve on InDesign is so steep, Dr. Barrett is offering some extra-credit for its use. LaTeX is also permitted, but will not garner any extra credit. I specifically taught myself LaTeX this summer to avoid the hassle of using MS Word this fall, so LaTeX it will probably be.

What we don't have a choice about is submitting our designs to competition. Knowing that these proposals will actually be judged may provide additional motivation to produce something decent. Or maybe adding pressure will only cause more problems. We'll just have to wait and see!

In either case, I should probably start reading. There's an awful lot to learn.

July Links

Hamilton parody arguing against the repugnant conclusion.

Derailing as a conflict of authority.

Paul Graham on The Refragmentation paints a frightening picture of America's future. The good news is that we don't have enough teenagers for a political revolution. The bad news is that adults are still behaving terribly.

Twitter updated their design last month, and once again we must remind platforms that the problem isn't change, the problem is terrible decision-making. Wodtke argues there's roughly an order of magnitude difference between what developers offer and what users will accept.

Scott Alexander on types of typologies.

Tom Scott argues against backdoor encryption.

Researchers detected acrylonitrile in Titan's atmosphere, which likely forms cell-membrane-like structures in the moon's conditions. This adds to the evidence that Titan may be an abode of life in the solar system.

NASA has a Venus surface simulator, being used to study materials that might be useful on future space probes.

The first wedding in the British Antarctic Territory happened this month. I don't think they're planning to stay there, but it still brings humanity one small step closer to colonizing the southern continent.

Falcon Heavy launch date pushed back to November.

Wordpress supports LaTeX, so I was able to show off some differential equations in my Chaos review. Expect a lot more mathy posts over there in the coming months.

Missing Positions

Related To: The Missing Moods

Here's a rough distribution of the American electorate's political positions:

Voter Study Group

You'll notice that the overall bias is heavily against the combination of social liberalism and economic conservatism¹. In other words, genuine libertarians are pretty rare. It's nice to see data confirming what you already knew.

The two main clusters in US politics (and, I suspect, in most modernized countries) are socially conservative & economically centrist, and socially liberal & economically authoritarian. This misses a whole quadrant of possibility-space and, I think, overlooks most of the good solutions for our problems.

But this isn't a post about why there should be more libertarians, because I don't fit in with libertarians.

Many people will argue that 'right' and 'left' are natural categories, more natural than Nolanesque formulations acknowledge. There may be good reason to believe that. But it's downright weird how many people, in this age of political compass memes, still can't really seem to break outside the box and consider more sensible combinations.

Today's particular question is why there doesn't seem to be a significant mass of people who embody both pro-market economics, anti-interventionist policies, and a scientific worldview. The best example I'm coming up with is a certain subset of the rationalist movement, but that subset can't be more than a few thousand people at the absolute maximum and most of them lean towards left-libertarianism², besides.

This isn't really a new problem; I never felt at home among the libertarian movement. My Objectivist background is probably a big part of that—back in the day Ron Paul seemed too conservative for my tastes. Despite my tolerance for high-reactionary arguments, I'm not really a traditionalist. There's stuff worth preserving from the past—like, we shouldn't torch it wholesale—but generally speaking modernity is better. Corrective optics, antihistamines, air conditioning....you can see where I'm going here. Nerds like me don't make good yeoman farmers.

Since I started reading The Virtue of Selfishness a few days ago, I've been thinking about that again. The Objectivist peg doesn't fit into the conservative hole very well (though it fits into the liberal hole slightly worse). Objectivist reject religion, embrace technological progress, are fine with women in the workplace, are generally okay with abortion, and prefer modern architecture.

This doesn't sound like a group that would vote predominantly Republican! And yet, they do, on vaguely economic grounds. As we see above, the GOP's electorate isn't exactly hypercapitalist³. But the other reason Objectivists end up closer to conservatives is that the philosophy demands an individual standard of conduct. Egoism is not hedonism, in other words. Stand up straight, look problems in the eye, and expect the best from yourself and others.

Okay, that sounds a little more like ur-conservatism. But again, the standards are different. Egoism is not Protestantism, either. Objectivists don't fit in anywhere. Then consider the fact that I don't even fit in with the Objectivists!

I've got to write that post on epistemic distance.

---

¹I contend that the "conservative" position should rightfully be called liberalism, but that's not really the point here.

²For full disclosure, most people would probably consider me somewhat left-libertarian at this point. This is accurate insofar as I'm sympathetic to arguments for a guaranteed basic income and such, but the term carries an affect that doesn't really apply.

³This wouldn't be a problem if the party's elected representatives werehypercapitalist, but they really aren't. In my experience, new libertarians give up on the "work through the Republican Party" approach in less than three years.

May/June Links

California wants to tax rocket launches. The article portrays this as something aerospace companies want, because it would clarify their tax status, but one is reminded of President Reagan's famous epigram.

Scott Alexander on the bail system.

Bloomberg: Americans Are Paying $38 to Collect $1 of Student Debt

A short game to illustrate the issues of gerrymandering and proportional representation.

Old blog post from Taymon Beal discussing the morality of benefiting from net-negative events.

Even older editorial from Ross Douthat arguing that we don't have enough cults these days. I wonder if he still feels that way.

The European Space Agency experiments with using Lunar materials for additive manufacturing.

Stratolaunch Systems, which I'd honestly forgotten about, rolled out its aircraft for test flights.

In typical fashion, it turns out regulations were the biggest hurdle in building a luxurious $20,000 house, though the designers aren't doing themselves any favors by insisting their methods create more jobs at a living wage.

Xenon gas concentrations measured by Rosetta provide further evidence than comets contributed to Earth's early atmosphere.

Noah Smith gives us a visceral rationality lesson in the Shouting Class.

Some arguments against fallacy-ology. I agree with the general position here (there might be a draft lurking around on the same topic) though think it could be stated better.

Science fiction glossary for your writing needs.

Sarah C on survival mindsets versus status mindsets.

A quasi-utilitarian argument for small government. By no means airtight, but worth a read.

A Clearer Example

A friend misunderstood my post on bike-shedding and bottomless pits. This is my fault, I should have realized anything so short and seemingly concise would be inadequate to communicate what I really meant. Remind me to write on epistemic distance sometime.

Allow me to present a clearer example of the difference: environmentalism.

Bike-shedding, for the environmentalist, would be the sort of things most of us were subjected to in kindergarten, about recycling small scraps of paper, turning off the faucet, and walking instead of driving short distances.

To be clear, these are generally of direct self-interest or useful for signalling that you're a good neighbor, but have little impact on the environment as a whole. Your individually not recycling will have a negligible impact on the global biosphere, even compounded over the course of your entire life. 

(In fact, it might actually make things worse, considering the energy costs to melt down and reuse certain materials. Metals are generally a good bargain, plastics and glass, less so. A good heuristic to use is whether manufacturers would pay for the materials, even before the government started subsidizing recycling out the wazoo.)

The environmentalist bottomless pit looks more like this:

This was the sort of thing I had in mind when writing about "increasingly impractical demands". These sorts of requests can not be met, except through extreme privation or, more plausibly, voluntary human extinction. Neither of those are realistic nor desirable goals.

When I read such things, my take away is that the speaker has no actionable agenda short of completely solving the problem permanently. As someone who knows a thing or two about interminable projects and the depression they introduce, let me assure you that that is not the approach you want to take.

Or rather, it's the approach you don't want to take assuming that your goal is to solve the problem. As I said before, for many movements, it really isn't. And I can't help but wonder if that's true for deep ecology folks as well.

If your goal is to see legitimate improvements in the world, then avoiding these twin failure modes is very important. In many ways they are not dichotomies: many movements play one off the other. The feminist movement, for instance, will often fight for trivial changes, barely even symbolic ones, in the name of "dismantling the patriarchy". Don't even get me started on the libertarians again.

This is an area where the effective altruist movement deserves some praise for trying to find the best ways to improve a given situation and then doing it. I would like to see some expansion into long term issues, but as we know there's reason to be wary of that.

Giving the Monkey What He Wants

[Please understand that this is a practical metaphor, not a scientific model of human psychology.]

One of my favorite pieces of motivational psychology is the idea of self-loyalty, which suggests that it is much easier to overcome willpower sinks, genuinely difficult tasks, and generalized akrasia if you can convincingly say to yourself, "yes, this currently sucks, but I'll have fun later". In other words, if you take consistent good care of your body and mind, it will deliver when you need it to.

My spin on this idea is putting your desire for sleep, entertainment, relaxation, and so on into a box called the monkey. This is a similar notion to the ape-brain, but that phrase often comes off slightly antagonistic. That's not what I'm going for here.

It may shock you to learn that he's not your enemy.

The monkey is you. It's the part of you that wants both physical and intellectual pleasures. The part that wants to sleep in, the part that wants to read books and watch movies, that part that wants to eat delicious meals. The part that wants hugs and camaraderie and an endless supply of kitten gifs.

Generally, the monkey will make very reasonable requests. Give him eight hours of sleep a night, enough food of sufficient quality, and a decent amount of entertainment and he will go along with whatever work you need to get done. Many times, that work will even benefit the monkey down the road (provided you pay up), but the monkey is not particularly smart.

More importantly, the monkey's trust is easily damaged. Willpower varies between individuals, so certain people can power through longer than others, but on the whole the monkey will eventually throw and fit and refuse to go along until some or all of his needs are met.

When this happens regularly, his demands will increase, just like a creditor will raise the interest rate on debts they're worried won't be paid back. Just like with creditors, this does not necessarily increase the odds of getting what's wanted, but is a rational response in the short term. Convincing the bank agent to keep your rates low requires evidence that you will be able to pay. Similarly, convincing the monkey to back down will require that you demonstrate that you do, in fact, have his best interests at heart.

If you consistently give the monkey what he wants, an occasional privation will not require a huge leap of intellectual faith. If, however, you don't pay your debts reliably, you can bet the monkey will be very unlikely to trust you in the future.

Promising the monkey a fortnight of rest and relaxation, of time to work on recreation and projects strictly selfish in purpose, is how I got through the last month of school projects and exams. The monkey did not want to do it, but he's sufficiently perceptive to realize that I was serious. Now it's time to pay up.

C'mon, give him what he wants.

This fall I will be taking senior design, along with three other technical classes. This will not be an easy undertaking, and I've been greatly concerned about my ability to meet those challenges. Another school break spent suffering and I won't be. Only if I lay down enough principal during May and August will I make graduation on time.

So, for the next few weeks, I'll be giving the monkey what he wants. Then it's back to work, but with a mind towards keeping that part of me not subdued but satisfied.

Impulse Control

During times of stress, like exam season, I can frequently be found reading about esoterica on the internet or cleaning up messes that have been awaiting attention for months. One could easily pin this behavior on procrastination, and that's certainly been a part of it, but such phenomena can also be attributed to low-impulse control.

It's harder to avoid temptations and distractions when you're tired. Think about how many times you've ended up reading or checking social media before bed when you know that you're better off going to sleep and doing that sort of thing in the morning (or not at all). Being tired makes it harder to ignore the appeal of one more click, page, or scroll.

Stress increases fatigue [citation needed]. Stress can reduce your impulse control, but stress also heightens your awareness of all the little issues in your surroundings. Evolutionarily this is great, because it's good to notice the snake when you're running from the tiger. In the modern world, not so much. Suddenly it's desperately important to look up who that actor was in a film you saw and didn't care for eight years ago, or scrub down the bathroom, or whatever. You're going to notice problems that weren't quite able to cross the threshold of perception before.

Another way in which our history comes back to bite us.

The take-away here is to plan your time wisely in times of lower stress. Keep your space clean and up to snuff. Deal with all those pressing issues like bills or groceries in a regular fashion. Don't pollute your mindspace with all sorts of nonsense. Make life easier for future selves.

Why yes, I am talking about you, Mom and Dad.

April Links

April Fool's File: Humanoid History posts Apollo 19 command Fred Haise on the moon, CERN announces that an ancient particle accelerator has been discovered on Mars, and Scott Alexander publishes a previously unseen essay by G. K. Chesterton on AI risk. Speaking of AI, Elon Musk's research company deploys a robot that can detect spam. As in physical spam. And finally, there's my German Researcher Discovers Most Efficient Path to Mars.

But on a more serious note, some argue that OpenAI is actually an impediment to AI safety work.

New political humor: Hey Girl Neil Gorsuch.

That one time Western civilization forgot how to prevent scurvy. An interesting study of science history, nutrition, and just plain history.

Apparently, 1984 movie adaptation of Dune produced a coloring book. For children.

Election hot-takes are a touch passé, but this article in The Atlantic summarizes my feelings about liberals' role in producing President Trump.

Speaking of Trump, recent remarks indicate he wants to massively accelerate NASA's schedule for getting astronauts to Mars. As an aerospace engineer, I question the feasibility of this project, but as an undergrad looking for jobs in spacecraft design, can't complain too much.

The Imperial March in Major Key.