Advertising is a cancer on society. Any limited good it does is far outweighed by the bad.
In a parallel timeline the smartest minds in the world are fixing climate and medical problems, further the limits of human knowledge and exploration, or even just making fun things to play with.
In this world they are trying to outdo each other in brainwashing people to improve the profits of companies larger than most countries.
These technologies are already using green energy.
Let me guess, it's not green enough for you?
Imagine if climate change advocates understood the fate of the Earth's climate is determined overwhelmingly by poor people in countries that don't care to be lectured by wealthy Western elites because they're poor. This hardware has a real possibility of enabling breakthroughs across all sectors of the world economy, and those poor people benefit the most from those advances. And since the activists refuse to grapple with this problem, I'm starting to be convinced they're just sociopathic maniacs or deeply racist lunatics.
The thought of seeing anyone they deem below them rising to their status makes them seethe.
I might think to suggest that unchecked capitalist exploitation of our natural world has an awful lot to do with the inequities you brought into the discussion. And, if you grant me that this is possibly true (even if unconvincing or unprovable), surely you would agree that someone who believes such a thing would be prosocial and certainly not racist to scoff at the notion that somehow ever-more-unchecked-exploitation is the path to absolution.
I don’t know how absolution figures into this or how providing an API for simulations of earths weather systems is some escalation of unchecked exploitation. In fact there was a HN headline article recently that extreme weather hurts the poorest nations because they lack the infrastructure to predict the weather well. Wouldn’t having such an API be of assistance? Is it possible that technology that’s three orders of magnitude more efficient (as they claim) be a boon to the poorest countries that are roughly three orders of magnitude less capable of affording advanced infrastructure like this? Or is grinding political ideology axes more important than actually making important things possible for the poorest countries?
I wish I could agree, but the hard truth is that decisions that imply heavy amounts of energy consumption have to be able to sustain active critique.
Simply waving the upsides around and shaming anyone who questions the cost is an age-old posture that has helped bring our society to the brink of disaster.
Consuming energy in itself isn’t problematic, what’s problematic is certain types of energy production are destructive. The question isn’t whether the use of energy itself is moral, it’s are they making moral choices with how they source their energy. That’s why clean and renewable energies are so important - there’s no reason to reduce energy consumption, there’s just reason to stop being destructive when producing energy.
I partially agree. It's actually both questions, because...
- We don't have a 100% renewable energy regime (and we are very far from it)
- Even if we did it would be possible (and likely) for bad actors to arbitrage cheap energy for yet-more-harmful use cases
- As we grow the portion of grid demand that is served by green, renewable energy, the price of coal and natural gas is being driven down
- Until we have 100% deployment, one company's "green" energy consumption will simply drive the less-well-capitalized to cheaper, not-green energy sources
Cheaper, more pervasive energy will be used efficiently in the ways that are enabled by our legal framework. If we aren't critical of those usages, there is nothing to say that abuses won't become exponentially more conspicuous even as we adopt more and more "clean" energy. And in fact, that's what we see happening in the world today. Look no further than:
- Bitcoin mines exploiting cheap spot power and demand response policies, and burning natural gas directly from the well because the speculative price of crypto is more appealing than selling the same gas on the market
- Generative AI in general, but especially when you see hundreds of thousands of GPUs deployed without so much as a business case (Stability AI, Inflection, probably many others surfacing in the weeks to come)
2: Are the people using it for things that it suits, vs things that it doesn't?
For example, if it turns out to be decently accurate at predicting weather (say) "3 days from now" while being seriously wrong at timescales of 6 months, then only using for weather forecasts for the next few days seems good.
But some people tend to believe anything an "AI" computer says regardless, so we'd need to make sure those kinds of people aren't getting it adopted where its harmful.
If this is a good faith argument, it doesn’t feel like one, then it’s predicated on the idea that if the majority of the world used the same resources as the wealthy then we’re done. It also ignores that the wealthy have the resources to address their living standards being ecologically sound and therefore those improving their lives will have access to clean solutions. Or you can blame liberals blaming the poor.
> If this is a good faith argument, it doesn’t feel like one
The argument is based on evidence and reason, not emotions.
> then it’s predicated on ...
This isn't a hypothetical scenario -- these people overwhelmingly use fossil fuels rather than green energy.
> It also ignores that the wealthy have the resources ...
Nobody knows whether an astroid, nuclear war, or a super volcano eruption poses as much, if not more of an existential risk than climate change. And given multiple existential risks to the Earth with finite resources, we cannot fall to silly appeals to emotion when allocating these resources. If climate change activists were honest, they would be arguing for why climate change is more of an existential risk than the other existential risks to the planet. Instead, they prognosticate the end of the world rely entirely on sophistry to get their message across.
We have much more control and certainty over the disaster we are in the process of creating than an extremely unlikely asteroid incident, over the same time frame.
We can 100% ensure a climate disaster, or nearly 100% mitigate the worst case.
The cost benefit analysis is clear. It costs less to mitigate climate change, and there are huge political and economic gains from removing our dependence on oil, rather than suffer unmitigated climate change.
The hard part is coordination. We have the resources and economic incentives as a whole to take the best path. But our political and economic systems are not as sophisticated, in terms of translating the benefits of change to individual actors, as the problem requires.
Externalized damage is profitable to powerful corporations, and even customers, in the short run. But we need political systems to more reliably set limits, AND provide the incentives, that would result in CFO’s at the most relevant corporations welcoming the change too.
To a first approximation, the transition from fossil fuels by fossil fuel companies will be set by those companies’ CFOs. Make it less profitable to stay with fossil fuels, and make it so profitable for energy companies to supply other forms of energy, that those CFO’s get on board and things will change very fast.
Share the economic value of a change with the most important players, as apposed to fighting them, and it will happen. Pragmatism wins.
I really enjoyed that show. I was 14 though. My tastes weren't particularly refined. Tim Curry, Terry O'Quinn, Clancy Brown - they didn't do so bad on some casting choices.
“I have a map of the United States... Actual size. It says, 'Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile.' I spent last summer folding it. I hardly ever unroll it. People ask me where I live, and I say, 'E6.”
― Steven Wright
Probably not what you are thinking of, but on a side note, I know there was a visual novel by the Steins;Gate people called Anonymous;Code about the evolution of Earth Simulators.
For those that remember the James Burke show "Connections", he also did a program called "After the Warming" that's staged like a documentary that takes place in the future after humanity has solved the global warming crisis.
In that show, policy makers use a computer simulation of the world to quantify the limits that they set on emissions, and all of the nations in the world come together to make it happen and look back on this age as an important lesson.
I believe there's a low-res VHS rip of it available somewhere if you search, which gives the whole thing an eerie feeling of discovering an alternate-reality documentary.
Nvidia is really embracing the hype train I see...
I'm assuming this model is in the same vein as ECMWF, GFS, ICON, CMC, and NAVGEM.
Imagine if the NOAA or an academic lab released such a model called it "Earth 2.0" or "Earth's digital twin". It would just feel... like hubris? Not sure why (or how) Nvidia gets away with such messaging.
Exactly. Different tech and different buzzwords over the decades but the idea of building a global GIS or a spatial model of the world is not at all revolutionary. Not by half a century. "Digital Twin" is just the latest buzzword, and it's falling short of expectaations per usual. I was hoping the AI buzz would kill the digital twin. But now it looks like we're getting "AI-enabled digital twin". Hype trains a rollin'.
Nvidia has dabbled before in similar undertaking, Keyhole in 2001 raised first round funding from NVIDIA and Sony Digital Media Ventures, making official its existence as a standalone company. Keyhole’s first product, EarthViewer 1.0, was the true precursor to Google Earth.
The big problem with precise weather simulations is that we don't have the sensors in 3D. They are all pretty much sitting on the surface, apart from some weather balloons. So we don't have precise data for wind, temperature, pressure apart from the surface. And all of these factors change A LOT with altitude.
No, over a million meteorological observations are collected each day by commercial airplanes, and these are a principle source of data for weather models. Weather balloons and other sounding instruments (satellites are capable of this) also make significant contributions, of course.
It's been proven for decades, the big problem with weather simulation is that the dynamics are chaotic. They continue to be, even as we collect more data from the surface and above. Our forecasts improve, slowly (by a day per decade or so, historically), but simulation cannot be accurate and precise in the same sense.
A good introduction is "Weather Prediction: What everyone needs to know"
I see this pretty often here unfortunately. Very confidently wrong statements from people who aren’t actual experts. For historical reasons there’s a sort of guise of expert on HN that can be abused.
I see room for distinguishing between a particular model + simulation protocol, vs. a model designed for flexibly running qualitatively different simulations designed by different researchers.
For the latter, emphasis on the model as a platform vs just a simulation, makes sense. I.e. a “digital twin’ meaning a rich flexible model capable of being the basis of many different simulation scenarios, not limited to a designed in class of simulations.
73 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 86.0 ms ] threadIn a parallel timeline the smartest minds in the world are fixing climate and medical problems, further the limits of human knowledge and exploration, or even just making fun things to play with.
In this world they are trying to outdo each other in brainwashing people to improve the profits of companies larger than most countries.
Let me guess, it's not green enough for you?
Imagine if climate change advocates understood the fate of the Earth's climate is determined overwhelmingly by poor people in countries that don't care to be lectured by wealthy Western elites because they're poor. This hardware has a real possibility of enabling breakthroughs across all sectors of the world economy, and those poor people benefit the most from those advances. And since the activists refuse to grapple with this problem, I'm starting to be convinced they're just sociopathic maniacs or deeply racist lunatics. The thought of seeing anyone they deem below them rising to their status makes them seethe.
Simply waving the upsides around and shaming anyone who questions the cost is an age-old posture that has helped bring our society to the brink of disaster.
- We don't have a 100% renewable energy regime (and we are very far from it)
- Even if we did it would be possible (and likely) for bad actors to arbitrage cheap energy for yet-more-harmful use cases
- As we grow the portion of grid demand that is served by green, renewable energy, the price of coal and natural gas is being driven down
- Until we have 100% deployment, one company's "green" energy consumption will simply drive the less-well-capitalized to cheaper, not-green energy sources
Cheaper, more pervasive energy will be used efficiently in the ways that are enabled by our legal framework. If we aren't critical of those usages, there is nothing to say that abuses won't become exponentially more conspicuous even as we adopt more and more "clean" energy. And in fact, that's what we see happening in the world today. Look no further than:
- Bitcoin mines exploiting cheap spot power and demand response policies, and burning natural gas directly from the well because the speculative price of crypto is more appealing than selling the same gas on the market
- Generative AI in general, but especially when you see hundreds of thousands of GPUs deployed without so much as a business case (Stability AI, Inflection, probably many others surfacing in the weeks to come)
It's probably going to come down to:
1. How accurate is it?
and:
2: Are the people using it for things that it suits, vs things that it doesn't?
For example, if it turns out to be decently accurate at predicting weather (say) "3 days from now" while being seriously wrong at timescales of 6 months, then only using for weather forecasts for the next few days seems good.
But some people tend to believe anything an "AI" computer says regardless, so we'd need to make sure those kinds of people aren't getting it adopted where its harmful.
Ah ok
Sounds worse than sociopathy.
High minded platitudes not physical evidence is the preference?
May as well go back to religion.
https://youtu.be/Ox_sWiorAB8
Will go with my current living experience, steeped in modern physics and math, over a long dead philosopher who had never encountered a light bulb
The past was wrong as much as right, and generally less civil than now. I don’t really see the necessity in relying on it.
Nobody knows whether an astroid, nuclear war, or a super volcano eruption poses as much, if not more of an existential risk than climate change.
The argument is based on evidence and reason, not emotions.
> then it’s predicated on ...
This isn't a hypothetical scenario -- these people overwhelmingly use fossil fuels rather than green energy.
> It also ignores that the wealthy have the resources ...
Nobody knows whether an astroid, nuclear war, or a super volcano eruption poses as much, if not more of an existential risk than climate change. And given multiple existential risks to the Earth with finite resources, we cannot fall to silly appeals to emotion when allocating these resources. If climate change activists were honest, they would be arguing for why climate change is more of an existential risk than the other existential risks to the planet. Instead, they prognosticate the end of the world rely entirely on sophistry to get their message across.
We can 100% ensure a climate disaster, or nearly 100% mitigate the worst case.
The cost benefit analysis is clear. It costs less to mitigate climate change, and there are huge political and economic gains from removing our dependence on oil, rather than suffer unmitigated climate change.
The hard part is coordination. We have the resources and economic incentives as a whole to take the best path. But our political and economic systems are not as sophisticated, in terms of translating the benefits of change to individual actors, as the problem requires.
Externalized damage is profitable to powerful corporations, and even customers, in the short run. But we need political systems to more reliably set limits, AND provide the incentives, that would result in CFO’s at the most relevant corporations welcoming the change too.
To a first approximation, the transition from fossil fuels by fossil fuel companies will be set by those companies’ CFOs. Make it less profitable to stay with fossil fuels, and make it so profitable for energy companies to supply other forms of energy, that those CFO’s get on board and things will change very fast.
Share the economic value of a change with the most important players, as apposed to fighting them, and it will happen. Pragmatism wins.
If it's not perfect in every way, it's bad.
https://earth2.io/
> coming soon
> coming soon
Answered my questions, thanks
In that show, policy makers use a computer simulation of the world to quantify the limits that they set on emissions, and all of the nations in the world come together to make it happen and look back on this age as an important lesson.
I believe there's a low-res VHS rip of it available somewhere if you search, which gives the whole thing an eerie feeling of discovering an alternate-reality documentary.
https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_394-65h9wd4r
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=451xJqNGFqU
I'm assuming this model is in the same vein as ECMWF, GFS, ICON, CMC, and NAVGEM.
Imagine if the NOAA or an academic lab released such a model called it "Earth 2.0" or "Earth's digital twin". It would just feel... like hubris? Not sure why (or how) Nvidia gets away with such messaging.
It's been proven for decades, the big problem with weather simulation is that the dynamics are chaotic. They continue to be, even as we collect more data from the surface and above. Our forecasts improve, slowly (by a day per decade or so, historically), but simulation cannot be accurate and precise in the same sense.
A good introduction is "Weather Prediction: What everyone needs to know"
Because we do have weather balloons and weather satellites and weather stations in variant heights and situations.
Countries the size of Poland go without for at least a decent chunk of the 8760 hours in a year.
Weather balloons are extremely sparce.
> The Aeolus mission objectives were to provide accurate global measurements of winds from the surface up to 30 km
For the latter, emphasis on the model as a platform vs just a simulation, makes sense. I.e. a “digital twin’ meaning a rich flexible model capable of being the basis of many different simulation scenarios, not limited to a designed in class of simulations.
Whereas if they said "Nvidia is creating a highly detailed climate simulation", very few people would read it.
Most prominently reminds me of the EU’s Destination Earth
https://www.ecmwf.int/en/about/what-we-do/environmental-serv... - another digital twin of Earth climate
NASA has another project https://esto.nasa.gov/earth-system-digital-twin/