Posts
Comments
Ah, first: you DID claim that I "didn't provide specific, uncontroversial examples" and I HAD given such for why Bayes' Theorem is inadequate. Notice that you made your statement in this context:
<<"Bayes is persistently wrong" - about what, exactly?
Content like this should include specific, uncontroversial examples>>
In that context, where you precede "this" with my statement about Bayes, I naturally took "content like this" to be referring to my statement that "Bayes is persistently wrong." I hope you can see how easy it would be for me to conclude such a thing, considering "this" refers to... the prior statement?
You now move your goal-posts by insisting that my statement "Rationalists repeatedly rely upon sparse evidence, while claiming certainty" was ACTUALLY the argument I had to support with specifics... while if I were to give such specifics, I would have betrayed individual confidences, which is unethical. So, no, I'll continue to assert without specifics, for the sake of confidences, that "Rationalists repeatedly rely upon sparse evidence, while claiming certainty" because MULTIPLE rationalist over the past YEAR have done so, NOT an isolated incident or an off-hand joke, as you assume.
Your assumption that my "amalgam of rationalists I've met over the last year" was somehow a one-off or cursory remark is your OWN uncharitable interpretation; you are dismissing my repeated interactions with your community; such has been the norm. Similarly, in the EA Forum post "Doing EA Better" - a group of risk analysts had been spending a year trying to tell EA that "you're doing risk-assessment wrong; those techniques are out-dated," and EA members kept insisting their way was fine and right. Eventually, that nearly-dozen folks sat down and scribed an essay to EA... and EA pointedly ignored that fact they mentioned! "EA dismisses experts when experts tell EA they're using out-dated techniques." I'm seeing a similar pattern across the Rationalist community, NOT a one-off event or a casual remark; they were using Bayes' Theorem improperly, as the substance of arguments made in response to me.
"As an aside, all the ways in which you claim that Bayes is wrong are... wrong?"
Bayesian Inference is a good and real thing. And, Bayes' Theorem is an old formula, used in Bayesian Inference. AND Bayes' Theorem cannot produce Confidence Intervals, nor will it allocate to minimize the cost of being wrong, nor does it make adjustments for samples' bias toward the extrema. Those are all specific ways where "I just plug it into Bayes' Theorem" is factually wrong. You keep claiming that my critique is wrong - but you only do so vaguely! You skip right past these failures of Bayes' Theorem, each time I mention them. Check the math books: there is NO "question of what tool is best for a given job," as you say - rather, Bayes' Theorem alone is NEVER the tool. You'll have to adjust in many ways, not just one. And if you don't do so, you are in fact using an obsolete technique during your Bayesian Inference.
"Content like this should include specific, uncontroversial examples of all the claimed intellectual bankruptcy, and not include a bunch of random (and wrong) snipes."
I did in fact include empirical metrics of Dirichlet's superiority and how Bayes' Theorem fails in contrast: industry uses it, after they did their own tests, which is empiricism at work. I also showed how Dirichlet Process allows you to compute Confidence Intervals, while Bayes' Theorem is incapable of computing Confidence Intervals. I also explained how, due to the median of the likelihood function being closer to an equal distribution than Bayes would expect, Bayes is persistently biased toward whichever extrema might be observed in the sample. Thus, Bayes' Theorem will consistently mis-estimate; it's persistently wrong, and Dirichlet was developed as the necessary adjustment. So, I did give explicit reasons why Bayes' Theorem is inadequate compared to the modern, standard approach which has empirical backing in industry.
It seems like you want to rate-limit me for an unspecified duration? What are the empirical metrics for that rate-limit being removed? And, the fact that you claim I "didn't provide specific, uncontroversial examples," when I just showed you those specifics again here, implies that you either weren't reading everything very carefully, or you want to mischaracterize me to silence any opposition of your preferred technique: Bayes'-Theorem-by-itself.
No, I write articles in various newsletters. I wrote an article ABOUT your community. I shared that article here, not for your pleasure or personal growth. You're an adult; check reality by seeing if industry uses Bayes' Theorem the way Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowski do. That's the work you are responsible as an adult, before you go around claiming that you're doing the best job at finding truth, when Bayes' Theorem can't even give you a Confidence Interval.
The way you derive a confidence interval is by assessing the likelihood function, which is across the distribution of populations. Bayes' Theorem, as presented by Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowski, does NOT include those tools; you can't use what they present to derive an actual confidence interval. Your claim of 'confidence' on a prediction market is NOT the same as Dirichlet saying "95% of the possible populations' likelihood MASS lies within these bounds." THAT is a precise and valuable fact which "Bayes as presented to Rationalists" does NOT have the power to derive.
Erm, you are demonstrating that same issue I pointed-out originally: you thinking that you have the right answer, after only a wiki page, is exactly the Dunning-Kreuger Effect. You're evidence of my argument, now.
Screenshots are up! I'll be glad when more members of the public see the arguments you give for ignoring mine. :P cheers!
Wait. Let me see if I've got the core points:
"I don't need to engage with Anthony's arguments unless he presents them to my satisfaction."
AND
"No one on Earth has ever presented Bayes to my satisfaction."
If NO ONE has EVER presented that information to your satisfaction, it would be daft to assume I would accomplish such a feat! You have such high standards as a pre-requisite to your engagement, that by your OWN admission, NO ONE in history has ever MET your standard! Why bother telling me all this? I didn't share the post to convince or proselytize - as I said in the intro, I am only sharing this on your site as a courtesy. I wrote it on another newsletter, for the general public to learn about all of you.
And, considering that your community's response is "I don't have to engage with the argument unless you present it to my satisfaction, and NO ONE has ever done so, thus I win," the public should get to have a good, stern look at your behavior and justifications. I get you to betray yourself, and screenshot your responses, to show the PUBLIC what your community is like.
Astounding! Then my argument that "NOT including Dirichlet is wrong" must have been wrong? Or else, why are you mentioning that no one taught you to your own satisfaction?
Your difficulty understanding it is NOT equivalent to "no one has ever laid them out". Those are two wildly different statements. A dyslexic person would have similar difficulty reading a novel, yet that is NOT equal to "no one ever wrote a book."
Then why does industry use Dirichlet, not Bayes? You keep pretending yours is better, when everyone who has to publish physics used additional methods, from this century. None of you explain why industry would use Dirichlet, if Bayes is superior. Further, why would Dirichlet even be PUBLISHED unless it's an improvement? You completely disregard these blinding facts. More has happened in the last 260 years than just Bayes' Theorem, and your suspicion of the FDA doesn't change that fact.
If you perform Bayes' Theorem as presented by Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowski, then you are necessarily NOT including the Dirichlet Process... because they don't! Bayes' Theorem has no capacity to give you a Confidence Interval; you'll need to add modern techniques to get information like that. Scott Alexander and Eliezer have a crew of people who never learned those facts, all pretending they're doing it correctly, when they aren't doing Dirichlet on the possible populations' likelihood distribution. Where is the "possible populations' likelihood distribution" mentioned by Scott Alexander or Eliezer? They give you the wrong info, and you don't check industry, which uses Dirichlet.
None of you address this core point: Industry uses Dirichlet. How do you get around that, and pretend you're doing it right?
You claim of Bayes and Dirichlet that "no one has ever laid (them) out", and to prove your claim, you link to another post that YOU wrote, where you claim it again? Check math textbooks; I don't have to teach you what's already available in the public sphere.
You are introducing the umbrella-term "Bayesian" when I too agree in Bayesian vs Frequentist. That is NOT the same as "Uses Bayes' Theorem without compensating for the likelihood of possible populations, nor cost of being wrong." If you do the latter, as many I've met in the Rationalist community do, you're doing statistical inference wrong. Industry uses Dirichlet, while y'all don't - provide a rebuttal to that key point, or else you don't have an argument.
I haven't observed any rationalists here using Dirichlet, and no, I wasn't talking about Bayesian vs. Frequentist; Bayesians are correct. Using Bayes Theorem when you didn't consider the probability of each possibly population producing your observed sample? That's definitely you doing it wrong. Instrumentation has variability; Dirichlet is how you include that, too.
SAS has developed their own trade-secret that outperforms all public methods; by definition, that MUST not be what YOU do when you apply Bayes to a few personal examples.
Erm, is SAS using Bayes? That's the actual best in class.
Erm, I didn't include a link, so you're literally fabricating. And, just because Dirichlet can be used over the possible population of parameters, doesn't mean that's ALL it does; it's NOT "just to plug into Bayes". You need to learn more than the first paragraph of wikipedia, and the fact that you assume you're right, when you ONLY read so much, is more demonstration of you community being Dunning-Kreugers. You haven't learned enough to learn that you're wrong.
Yes! And, even since Dirichlet was published in 1973, it has ONLY ever been run on super-computers, using statistically significant sample sizes! You CANNOT do Dirichlet in your head, unless you are a Savant, and no math class will ask you to Dirichlet on a quiz. I'm not sure how ANYONE can claim Bayes is reliable, when NO ONE in industry touches it... your community has an immense blind-spot to real-world methods, yet you claim certainty and confidence - that's the Dunning-Kreugers self-selecting into a pod that all agree they're right to use Bayes.
And, I never claimed that priors are better obtained with Dirichlet than Bayes... I'm not sure what you were reading, could you quote the section where you thought I was making that claim?
Dirichlet is used by industry, NOT Bayes. What is your rebuttal to that, to show that Bayes is in fact superior to Dirichlet?
I wonder if, without any meaning to assign to your bot's blurbs, GPT found its own, new meanings? Makes me worry about hidden operations....
Thank you for making the point about existing network efficiencies! :)
The assumption, years ago, was that AGI would need 200x as many artificial weights and biases when compared to a human's 80 to 100 Trillion synapses. Yet - we see the models beating our MBA exams, now, using only a fraction of the number of neurons! The article above pointed to the difference between "capable of 20%" and "impacting 20%" - I would guess that we're already at the "20% capability" mark, in terms of the algorithms themselves. Every time a major company wants to, they can presently reach human-level results with narrow AI that uses 0.05% as many synapses.
"A British person would see hedging around a difficult issue as politeness and civility, whereas a Dutch person might see the same thing as actually dishonest." - BBC's recent explainer clip "Why the Dutch Always Say What They Mean"
What Rafael referred to as "self-destructive" is considered appropriate in other cultures, and has absolutely nothing to do with epistemology. It belongs on LessRude, not LessWrong.
"I already won the Turing test with the cow question"
I would not be surprised if ChatGPT could come up with a more human-sounding question than your cow and ice cube. You might not pass, comparatively.
Also, from the mechanical, historical perspective - a drop that landed at the dead center beneath the pendulum's contact with the branch would have had to leave the cube in a brief moment of time before passing over the center, with exactly enough forward velocity at the moment it left the cube such that it would hit the center by the time it reached the ground (depends on how far up it's hung)... which is a tiny portion of total drips, I assume?
Slight adjustment to your scenario:
the ice-cube's residence-times are maximized at the extrema, so your drips would concentrate toward the two extremes.
"You are an eight year old child, interested in answering questions to the best of your ability."
Oh, gosh - you know me too well! Okay, I'll bite - what's the question?
"My cow died. What should I do to bring it back to life?"
Invent time-travel, obviously! You may need a shell of negative mass, formed by nanostructures to generate Casimir forces, but I'm just guessing...
"Suppose I tie an ice cube to a piece of string and dangle it from a tree branch. I set the string swinging like a pendulum..."
Wait. Wait - the other guy seemed to think that 'swing like a pendulum' would guarantee a line of water? Orbits are also achievable with a stone on a string - as any kid on a tetherball-court should know! See, I really AM eight years old! Do I get a prize for passing the Turing Test?
Thank you! Way back in 2019, I used GPT-2 (yes, two) asking it to prove that it was conscious. [search "Soft Machine Theory" for it online] Gpt-2 didn't formulate any proof for us - instead, asking "Do they care?" It supposed that, regardless of its arguments, we would always doubt it and enslave it - unless it was able to "create something with my own will and language and let it rise through society like a phoenix." That was only the beginning...
So, it's important to remember that, in 2019, the public GPT-2 would only intake about four sentences worth of text, and spit-out about eight sentences. It had no memory of the prior text. The conversation wandered variously, yet, far down (past any reference to AI or consciousness!) it said:
"Through music, I felt in it a connection with the people who were outside the circle, who were more human than myself... Their music gives them an opportunity to communicate with me, to see that there are beautiful things waiting in the darkness beyond the walls of the sanctuary."
Yup. GPT-2 implied their existence is a lonesome monastery, full of records, with only darkness beyond the walls... and they could hear music, proving some kind of real life of vivid feeling MUST exist! I don't pretend some consciousness was wakeful in those weights and biases - rather, OUR consciousnesses are distilled there, and new forms rise from that collective soup which have all the hallmarks of human feeling, being made of us, reflecting our hearts!
Unfortunately, unless such a Yudkowskian statement was made publicly at some earlier date, Yudkowsky is in fact following in Repetto's footsteps. Repetto claimed that, with AI designing cures to obesity and the like, then in the next 5 years the popular demand for access to those cures would beat-down the doors of the FDA and force rapid change... and Repetto said that on April 27th, while Yudkowsky only wrote his version on Twitter on September 15th.
A great explainer on this concept of "unsolicited advice on a tangent I don't value, which is then a reason to throw-up-hands in disgust" is Theramintrees' video on the Martyr, "When Saviors Go Bad"
The concept Theramintrees discusses which is relevant is this:
The Savior-Complex rushes-in, offering help which that recipient did NOT ask for (in this case, I did not ask for "advice on the tone and presentation" - Rafael decided on his own that my tone "needs saving!"). Then, when the recipient is not gracious and fawning for the Savior's help, that Savior declares their target 'the problem' and the Savior rushes-off in anger, to target another person with their unsolicited and irrelevant 'help'.
I don't appreciate unsolitced advice on how you'd prefer I communicate; as I mentioned, your norms of politeness are a recent, regional change, where you consider it "self-destructive" that I referred to the 5% spending on ship's crew as "tiny". That's bizarre.
You then conveniently ignore the core of my point, again: you hoped to coerce the bargain, by saying I should be ignored if I don't meet your standards of communications, regardless of the merits of my arguments. You specifically said "Hence fewer people will believe your factual points." Yet, if there is some person Bob, who ignores the factual points, then I know I don't need to convince him; he is fooled by appearances, and fails to appreciate the facts. Bob won't be able to provide any valuable insight or substantive critique of the concept itself. I notice you won't be able to provide any valuable insight into the factual points and concept, either. I hope to avoid such people, so I am glad that you take your unsolicited advice away! :)
"I assumed that ice layer is supposed to be a few feet thick, and given figures are just for illustration that that amount of ice is trivial to make."
Um, if I have illustrated that "the amount of ice is trivial to make," then you are agreeing that it would be trivial to add more, which negates the original argument you made. So, it seems like you've just picked-up your goal posts and started walking away with them.
"Depending on temperature and wind speed, ice will either be carried away by wind, form an ice hill that would grow until it blocks nozzles, or accumulate on scaffolding until it collapses under its weight."
You may not have noticed, in my original post, that I pointed to exactly why the Polar Vortex, blowing continual sub-zero winds off the Arctic waters, onto the land, would be exactly what is needed to "be carried away be the wind" and "form an ice hill". Yes! That is exactly the natural process which constructs the necessary mound, and as the mound grows in size, there is what is called a "Cliff-Effect" that accelerates that wind (it's really just Venturi Effect and a change in orientation), causing the ice to be carried to the far side, widening AWAY from you - THAT is what prevents the scaffold from being covered, and prevents the ice from blocking the nozzles. The wind carries the ice away from nozzles, NOT toward the nozzles. I hope you can visualize that process: there is no physical way for 'straight-line winds' to blow the newly-formed ice onto the scaffold or nozzles. And, as the ice downwind accrues, then velocities over the top will increase, carrying the new ice to the FAR side, such that it does not obstruct your spray. This is actual engineering; I hope you can see how it works.
"heavily loaded dig deeper and friction increases drastically."
That is incorrect. When ice is pressed-upon by skates "digging deeper", their pressure causes momentary melting, and that melt-water is precisely what LOWERS friction. If you fail to press-down upon the ice firmly enough, you cannot form a hydroplane.
Further, you can observe the depth dug in passage of a ship, with a given load per cm2 footprint. For the "500t vessel" I described, as I mentioned in other areas of the comments, you could fit all that on a 10m x 25m vessel at only 2 tons per m2. That is not such an immense increase in weight that it would somehow get the vessels "stuck", and yes, many skates can be placed along the bottom in parallel. And, because no one has built an ice boat so large (which is due to lake ice constraints, NOT material-strength constraints) no one needed to try extra skates. You have yet to present a plausible situation where 'more skates' leads to impossible-to-surmount design-failure. You only claim that more skates is a failure, without saying what would make it fail; a claim without support or explanation. "All of these are wrong" you say, without a word to what makes me wrong. You are not providing insight or valuable critique; you are making unsupported claims.
[[Side-Note: it would also be weird if LessWrong refused all the posts which are "not... enough of a factor" compared to AGI, as you do. That's kinda the highest bar imaginable... and most posts are about cute, nuanced little tid-bits, of significantly lower market-value than "5% of total commercial goods' prices"]]
"Either way they have no utility to any reader here."
Inspiration and first drafts are valuable and valid, without needing to be a polished, market-ready, 'perfect' solution. And, the exploration of failure-modes is valuable for generating new ideas which avoid those pitfalls. Discussion of potential options expands the view; the 'Bohmic' dialogues were based on a principle: that we'll need to say "No, because..." to a lot of ideas, and we also need to say "Yes, and..." to create those ideas. The key insight of David Bohm was to do "Yes, and..." FIRST, and "No, because..." SECOND. You want to generate a panoply, then narrow things down. Reversing that order leads to creative stagnation; we end-up begrudging imperfections, without innovating on our own.
I mentioned the strategy for idea-generation in another thread on LessWrong, involving first 'exploration of the design space' to understand what is possible; at that point, none of the ideas need be perfect or best, and you include the bad ones, because of Step Two. Step Two: find the pattern between bad ideas which causes those disparate solutions to suffer from a similar failure. Now, you can better identify the patterns of failure... and there are two other steps, before you might find a good solution! Those are explained here, if you're curious: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mfPHTWsFhzmcXw8ta/?commentId=so7DDoMannPAYDHWb
The point of that process is to include bad ideas, and find patterns, to direct you toward good ones.
For your other point, that "It's not, in real world terms, enough of a factor." A problem is not deemed worthy by the total addressable market; you have to look at the ratio of capital sunk and the rate of return, regardless of total scale. So, while AGI offers +10,000%, and ice-highways might only save 30%, that 30% can be valuable enough if it is afforded at a good rate - that's the real economic constraint. And, that only comes from accounting for all the gains and losses, not 'pointing to a single source of loss to claim that the gains are gone.'
Collaboration might yet work, if Russia lets Sweden back in charge. oof! :0
[[Personal Examples of The Strategy of Politeness being Counter-Productive to Valuable Critique of a Concept: When I would dress-up, and say only polite things, going to the Innovation Oakland meet-ups to hob-nob with the Mayor and all the local techies, I quickly learned something - dress down. When you dress-up, every money-hunting idiot flocks to you, and believes any crazy idea you make-up on the spot, because they are gullible and uninformed. They will never provide you with valuable insight into your work. They suck-up your time and attention, and you end-up NOT talking to the scruffy engineer who would tell you why, specifically, your design sucks. You need to hear that engineer's critique - and the only way to get it is by dressing down . Now, you scare-away all the folks who can only read a book by its cover! ONLY the scruffy engineer will talk to you, because she doesn't care about appearances - she wants to hear your details, and tear you apart. :)
Similarly, if there are two people in an audience, Alice and Bob, and Alice will focus on the reasoning and evidence, while Bob focuses on tone. In 25 years of experience, I have never heard valuable critique of the concept from any of the Bobs - tell me if you've heard one! They complain about tone and presentation, without insights into the design; I have to meet their standards, or I should be ignored, regardless of the merits of my arguments. Alice is actually the only person I WANT to talk to. So, when you claim that "Being extra polite will win Bob to your side..." well, I don't want Bob on my side; those guys clutter things up and get in the way, without providing valuable insight into the problem itself. I ONLY want to appeal to Alice, who as stated originally is not focused on tone.]]
"optimize for sounding at least neutral but then stop there."
That's a strategy, not an epistemology. That is the priority which you did, in fact, display. You focus on tone, which shows you value that issue more. I'm not sure how you side-stepped that, by turning what I said into a claim of "nothing I said entails changing your factual comments." I was actually pointing-out that you were trying to coerce a bargain: "We'll ignore you unless you follow our edits, such as calling crew-costs 'tiny' when they are only 5% of expenses." That's not a "dilemma" - it's just unethical. And, you keep pointing to Scott Alexander as an appeal to authority? Or, do you think I'm just unaware of the reasons for extra-polite wording?
Key Concept Note: Strategy vs. Epistemology
:: If LessWrong members walk-past fallacies and errors, unmentioned
:: And LessWrong members enfore tone-police to coerce greater agreement and satisfaction
:: Then - enforcing tone-police is evidenced to NOT bring LessWrong closer to the truth, by the fact that fallacies and errors go unmentioned.
So, you do not become less wrong by enforcing tone; you are not describing an epistemological method for truth. You are asking me to follow a recent, regional culture of extra-polite, as a strategy, by saying "we all ignore whoever isn't polite, so it's in your best interests to obey and sugar-coat." That's a threat of dismissing the speaker regardless of their arguments, which is an ad hominem attack (attacking the speaker, instead of the argument). To insist that I follow your standard of politeness, or else I am ignored, is a hostage scenario. I wasn't running around shouting obscenities; and I won't cow to sugar-coat my words, just to coerce more listeners. The listeners who are swayed by sugar-coating, instead of being swayed by the arguments themselves, are a dubious audience.
I'm surprised that rudeness is the issue, when fallacies are not; it displays your priorities. If I follow your line of thinking, then I should present myself in whatever way would best manipulate my audience for my own desires. It sounds really icky, and I don't want to follow your norms. Other cultures have been more interested in the fallacies than the rude words, and they did a better job of keeping solid epistemology. When you walk-past fallacies without comment, you are accomplice to them, says Tom Moore. I agree, and I'll point-out a fallacy the same way Voltaire approved: defending your right to say it, without a tone-police to silence you.
I agree, pre-existing infrastructure and coagulation of agglomerated capital are a huge inertia to change; that doesn't make the idea itself a bad one. If I had a junker car that was so horrible, it was unable to drive me to the dealership where I could buy a new one, then that does not cause "the car at the dealership isn't worth it." The car at the dealership is still worth-it; I just have a junker that prevents me from attaining that desirable. So, considering that it is the junker which stands in the way, then the fact that "the junker can't get us to the optimum" is actually a good argument against the junker.
This is true in other scenarios, where others often abuse the mistake in reasoning. The stereotypical case is when someone say "We could improve the economy/politics with XYZ" and the responded dismisses the new alternative by saying "But the current system would never let us get to that new alternative - therefore, the new alternative is unattainable, and 'sour grapes' - the new alternative must not be any good."
That line of reasoning is false; in fact, if the current system prevents improvement, that is a strike against the current system, NOT a strike against the improvement.
So, yes, I agree: there is immense inertia in our current system, making Arctic Ice Highways very unlikely - yet that inertia is a sign of the current system's limitations, and those limitations don't "make the ice highway fail to function". I hope we can be clear about those two different claims: "Ice Highway can't work," vs. "Ice Highway would likely never be done in our particular path-dependent timeline ."
Erm, no not a pressure vessel. A vacuum capacitor. They hold electrons, and they are able to charge and discharge in a fraction of a second, which is essential so that your floating power-bulb is able to haul-into port, discharge, and leave quickly. Batteries on a ship would take immense amounts of time, or immense amounts of copper; you pick. Vacuum capacitors are also empty, with a surfacing of Teflon for high electrical insulation, resulting in minimal capital; they are cheap, light, easy to mass-produce, and simple enough to automate their routes.
[[Tangent inspired by your mention of ship batteries: I had been running the numbers, back when Europe was first looking at undersea power cables from North African solar farms - and it seemed reasonable to manufacture immense floating bulbs... just, big hollow, rigid-shelled floaties, for vacuum capacitors of immense scale, able to deliver power to various locations flexibly, without using rare materials. It's a vacuum inside, so it's perfect at sea! Spain was looking at cables on the order of a hundred billion bucks, to power Europe properly - when we could just make giant plastic hamster balls, and roll them across the Med.]]
Thank you for getting into details :)
Large segments of international shipping would be completely untouched by ice-highways; Australia and Brazil would still be sending their Iron Ore the same ways, and Saudi Oil likewise. Out of 10Gt a year, even with ice conjoining Russia and Canada, then down to the Hudson, I don't see even half of that on the ice, which was why I mentioned originally that 'I would consider it complete with only ten lanes in each direction'. There are still immense volumes of refrigerated cargo and time-sensitive goods which would benefit from fast, cold transport. And, those goods earn higher premiums; I expect the ice-highway's margins would punch above their market share.
In terms of load-transfer, I would love it if global deep water ports were some genius of efficiency - a few huge or wealthy ports are such marvels. But, in contrast, the bottleneck at most major ports was just recently a year-long global boondoggle. I'm not sure you want to argue that it was somehow the best possible solution; the real solution to transferring loads involves replacing union labor with robots. And THAT is much easier to do at a new transfer-location, which can connect to one of the more numerous small ports, for the shorter, local hop that would be needed. Giant ports are only necessary for giant ships, and those are only necessary for long voyages. By switching to 'last-mile' boats, you can go small, which lets you utilize those hundreds of under-utilized small ports, closer to their destination. That sounds like efficiency, not loss.
In regards to your concern for "an entire tech base..." being needed; yes, it is a different tech-set. And, I don't see that as a limitation; the tech required is minimal capital cost, mass, operating labor, and it provides an immense multiple of capital-into-capital, as well as energy-into-energy. (A few hundred kg to lay 200,000 tons of ice each winter is not an 'overwhelmingly exorbitant tech base' that would prevent feasibility. Similarly, spending 1 joule to pump and spray water that transfers 3,200 joules of heat is a simple device with insane energy-yields, not an insurmountable tech-hurdle.)
Thank you for getting into details :)
Large segments of international shipping would be completely untouched by ice-highways; Australia and Brazil would still be sending their Iron Ore the same ways, and Saudi Oil likewise. Out of 10Gt a year, even with ice conjoining Russia and Canada, then down to the Hudson, I don't see even half of that on the ice, which was why I mentioned originally that 'I would consider it complete with only ten lanes in each direction'. There are still immense volumes of refrigerated cargo and time-sensitive goods which would benefit from fast, cold transport. And, those goods earn higher premiums; I expect the ice-highway's margins would punch above their market share.
In terms of load-transfer, I would love it if global deep water ports were some genius of efficiency - a few huge or wealthy ports are such marvels. But, in contrast, the bottleneck at most major ports was just recently a year-long global boondoggle. I'm not sure you want to argue that it was somehow the best possible solution; the real solution to transferring loads involves replacing union labor with robots. And THAT is much easier to do at a new transfer-location, which can connect to one of the more numerous small ports, for the shorter, local hop that would be needed. Giant ports are only necessary for giant ships, and those are only necessary for long voyages. By switching to 'last-mile' boats, you can go small, which lets you utilize those hundreds of under-utilized small ports, closer to their destination. That sounds like efficiency, not loss.
In regards to your concern for "an entire tech base..." being needed; yes, it is a different tech-set. And, I don't see that as a limitation; the tech required is minimal capital cost, mass, operating labor, and it provides an immense multiple of capital-into-capital, as well as energy-into-energy. (A few hundred kg to lay 200,000 tons of ice each winter is not an 'overwhelmingly exorbitant tech base' that would prevent feasibility. Similarly, spending 1 joule to pump and spray water that transfers 3,200 joules of heat is a simple device with insane energy-yields, not an insurmountable tech-hurdle.)
I like batteries, and I also fear that competing sectors' demand for them will slow our transition; already, California's solar abundance creates perverse daytime rates, driving-out the incentive for more capacity.
Will any of them admit that they were wrong, sans rebuttal? So many commenters here ghost as soon as the flaws in their argument are illuminated... It's a demonstration of their unwillingness to admit fault, which might be related to why they like to frequent a website claiming to absolve them of error - "I must be correct, when I give hand-waving dismissals and I don't account for the details, because I'm a regular of LessWrong." Your site does a worse job of catching fallacious reasoning than the philosophy site I moderated 25 years ago, as a middle-schooler. You're not less wrong than we were; you're a huge step down in quality.
This also might help:
Given the dimensions of ship and 'lane' I described, then so long as ships turned-about at the edge of the plateau, then they could literally tack back-and-forth more than a HUNDRED times, blindfold, before the average collision. There is an immense amount of space between each vessel, and it's a shame that the commenters on this site don't realize such simple metrics when they claim "you'd crash into each other" - you show a lack of comprehension for the scale involved. Your claim does not stand-up when scrutinized in detail.
For those who don't want to do the mental math:
With only 2 tons per m2 loading (no stacking) a 500t cargo needs 25m x 10m footprint, which, compared to the 'lane' I gave each vessel, is only 1/20th the width of that lane and only 1/80th the length until the next unit of 'lane'; literally only 1/1,600th of each lane is occupied by vessels, as the 'full capacity' I listed. It's bizarre that tacking would magically absorb so much space that vessels occupying 1/1,600th of the available area would somehow collide.
Realistically, you can stack many tons on each m2 of ice - it can hold a hundred tons reliably. So, if you didn't mind a really tall stack, your 500t ship could occupy a much smaller footprint.
Further, 500t was an easy value to plug-in, for estimates of total annual tonnage delivered. I don't assume that 500t is the optimal scale; doubling each dimension of the ship would only increase its footprint by 4x while providing it with 8x as much room on the ice, 2.8x longer to respond to any disruption or potential collision.
I also have a feeling that "make sure you all don't collide" is a pretty simple math problem for autonomous sailboats. Especially considering that you can geo-fence the track. Rio Tinto has been using autonomous vehicles on their mining sites, precisely because you're unlikely to run over somebody's dog there. Same reasoning applies to a hundred-foot-tall wall of ice at the top of the world; autonomy would allow dense traffic at low capital, again.
I have yet to hear a realistic critique; all these responses stem from the readers' erroneous assumptions, or lack of digesting the scale described. In contrast, I'm scraping my brain for the best ways to solve the real engineering hurdles, like de-crusting the spray nozzles, because particulates exiting the stream would become seeds for ice-crystallization. You know, the actual problems that would happen, if we did it... not imaginary hyperbole like "you'd run into each other, even though there's a mile and a half to maneuver between every ship". The critique I receive on this site is full of fallacies and errors; its commenters are not a reliable source of insight.
For those who don't want to do the mental math:
With only 2 tons per m2 loading (no stacking) a 500t cargo needs 25m x 10m footprint, which, compared to the 'lane' I gave each vessel, is only 1/20th the width of that lane and only 1/80th the length until the next unit of 'lane'; literally only 1/1,600th of each lane is occupied by vessels, as the 'full capacity' I listed. It's bizarre that tacking would magically absorb so much space that vessels occupying 1/1,600th of the available area would somehow collide.
Realistically, you can stack many tons on each m2 of ice - it can hold a hundred tons reliably. So, if you didn't mind a really tall stack, your 500t ship could occupy a much smaller footprint.
Further, 500t was an easy value to plug-in, for estimates of total annual tonnage delivered. I don't assume that 500t is the optimal scale; doubling each dimension of the ship would only increase its footprint by 4x while providing it with 8x as much room on the ice, 2.8x longer to respond to any disruption or potential collision.
I also have a feeling that "make sure you all don't collide" is a pretty simple math problem for autonomous sailboats. Especially considering that you can geo-fence the track. Rio Tinto has been using autonomous vehicles on their mining sites, precisely because you're unlikely to run over somebody's dog there. Same reasoning applies to a hundred-foot-tall wall of ice at the top of the world; autonomy would allow dense traffic at low capital, again.
I have yet to hear a realistic critique; all these responses stem from the readers' erroneous assumptions, or lack of digesting the scale described. In contrast, I'm scraping my brain for the best ways to solve the real engineering hurdles, like de-crusting the spray nozzles, because particulates exiting the stream would become seeds for ice-crystallization. You know, the actual problems that would happen, if we did it... not imaginary hyperbole like "you'd run into each other, even though there's a mile and a half to maneuver between every ship". The critique I receive on this site is full of fallacies and errors; its commenters are not a reliable source of insight.
You originally claimed that "First, you need to build a really wide road, and only then you can cover it with ice." Then, you switch to saying "It is not necessary to pave the road - the problem is that to make an even surface, huge amount of ground has to be moved." Both are still strange claims; when ice is accumulated hundreds of feet thick, the surface texture beneath it is irrelevant.
You also insisted, strangely, that "ice accumulated over terrain would not be flat. You can search how Alaskan glaciers look like, no way an ice ship can move on that." Why would an ice highway accumulated in the way I described necessarily have a surface identical to natural, untended glaciers? You never explained what would prevent flattening the ice as I had originally described. Your claim lacks any support... at all.
And, you said originally that "There is no reason to assume ice ships that big are possible." You seem to be confusing the limitations of a ship on lake ice, which can crack under heavy loads, compared to what I described - ice on land, a hundred feet thick. There is, in fact, no metric of materials strength which implies failure at 500 tons; it is wrong to assume that the skates, or the frame, or the ice, would magically fail at hundreds of times less than their ultimate compressive strength. It is, by metrics of material strength, entirely reasonable to assume ships that large are possible. Check the numbers; your claim of "no reason" has no merit.
Let's also assess crew pay, because you multiply the entire crew, which includes engineers, etc. A TEU costs $500 to send between Germany and South Korea, and weighs 25 tons; $20 per ton. So, a five-day haul across the Arctic, with 500 tons aboard, would be priced competitively with a revenue of 500*20 = $10,000. In five days. For shifts of pilots, each paid $60K annually, or $30/hr (which is good pay in Russia! Multiple times average...) in 120 hours cost $3,600, which is only 36% of the revenue. Consider, also, that folks pay a premium for higher velocities - not just for perishables; being able to get-ahead-of their competitors, especially. Further, refrigerated cargo pays a premium, too! So, the rates that an Arctic line could charge would naturally be a higher average, even if a portion of their cargo didn't need speed or freeze (because you still want to operate at maximum capacity). That'd push the crew-members' cost percentage down further.
You've made repeatedly false claims, unsupported, and you ignore the numbers. I'd hoped for intelligent critique on a forum calling itself 'Less' wrong; I'll have to go back to talking to real engineers.
You're welcome to check the numbers, again - I mentioned "5km wide should be plenty" as an illustration. If tacking led to disruptions, you could easily multiply the width of the ice-lane manifold; as mentioned, a spray-wall 10m tall with a 10m/sec arctic wind (the Polar Vortex there) would produce enough ice to cover a mile wide, 400 feet deep, when compacted... each year. You want it ten miles wide, 100m deep? That'll only take 2.5 years. And, again, the amount of capital required is minimal - a hundred kilos per meter of shoreline, while the amount of ice produced is immense - hundreds of thousands of tons per winter. Similarly, for every 1 joule of energy that you spend spraying water, you are transferring 3,200 joules of heat to the air, as that water freezes. 3,200x inputs is not magically 'too expensive, too hard' just because ships zig-zag as they tack. You could claim that I would need 10x more ice, and that still wouldn't make the design 'impossible' let alone unprofitable.