Futurology

Try as we might, we will never escape the limits imposed by Carnot’s logic. The same is true for Newton’s and Einstein’s and that of many others who have worked to describe the universe as it is and not as they want it to be. In that regard, Carnot haunts us. They all haunt us. As our imaginations run wild on fantastical technologies and fantastical futures, the laws of physics will be there to keep us in check.

The sooner we shed our biases about the future, the sooner we face Carnot’s ghost head on, the smarter and sounder our decisions about the future will be. Read more on Substack.

Space looms large in our futurist thinking. It's important to address what we misjudge to be possible in that realm in order to bring our expectations back down to Earth. Read more on Substack

The paradox of Europe's space efforts is that it has the money and technical expertise to be number 1, but is always playing runner-up, and is now third behind the US and China. ESA - Europe's equivalent of NASA & China's CNSA, has 23 member states - most of which have their own national space agencies too.

This fragmentation and diffusion has always been a huge problem, now ESA has another. NASA is abandoning it's biggest joint NASA/ESA project. The ill-fated SLS/Gateway/Artemis Moon landing program is up for the axe in the latest NASA budget. Taking its place (and money) will be plans to pivot to Mars, led by - you guessed it - a certain South African's space company.

Will ESA do something decisive as it readjusts? If past performance is any guide, don't hold your breath. Then again, maybe this time might be different.

This article gives details on the many shortcomings that make the 'golden dome' idea unworkable. These objections have been around since Ronald Reagan proposed the idea in the 1980's, and they are even more true today. The 'golden dome' proposal deals with ICBM-type missiles, but they are already out of date. The 'golden dome' proposal has even less chance against hypersonic missiles that travel at Mach 20.

Ask yourself a question - The $175 billion 'golden dome' idea requires 36,000 satellites. Is there a certain South African at the center of the US government who might be pushing this idea, because he's the man who'll get a lot of that $175 billion to supply & launch them?

Most people have the vague sense that we’ll all be flying around on starships in a hundred years, colonizing the planets and the stars. Or… Or… even if they’re not sure what we’ll be doing, they’re certain that technology will have advanced so much that life will be very different for human beings.

I don’t believe so. And yet, I seem to be one of a very few.

I want to create a discourse about realistic futurism. I think it’s important. That’s why I’m launching Ghost of Carnot, a platform for sharing thoughts and exchanging ideas on realistic futurism.

Read more on Substack.

"The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that China’s emissions were down 1.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and by 1% in the latest 12 months."

It's possible that this is a blip, and a rise could continue. China is still using plenty of fossil fuels and recently deployed a fleet of autonomous electric mining trucks at the Yimin open-pit coal mine in Inner Mongolia. Also, China is still behind on the 2030 C02 emissions targets it pledged under the Paris Agreement.

Still, renewables growth keeps making massive gains in China. In the first quarter of 2025, China installed a total of 74.33 GW of new wind and solar capacity, bringing the cumulative installed capacity for these two sources to 1,482 GW. That is greater than the total US electricity capacity from all sources, which is at 1,324 GW.

When we start talking about the future, our minds move quickly into the fictional and fantastical, or, oddly, along a different axis, towards “dystopian” or “utopian”.

Never do we consider “futuristic” to just mean in the future without any big change. Life in the future that’s kind of like life now. And — dare I say it — with each passing year, life just like in the past.

All of this is to say we clearly have biases about the future. And before we can engage in a meaningful discussion about realistic futurism, we need to address them.

Read more here on the Ghost of Carnot Substack.

Guess what AI workers never need? High wages, health care, pension contributions, breaks or vacations.

Once corporations start seeing AI and humans as interchangeable workers - no surprises for which type they'll be trying to get rid of as soon as possible.

I hope we're going to see massive deflation in drug prices from all the cost savings, and bumper profits this will give them.

Why Moderna Merged Its Tech and HR Departments

archive.ph version of WSJ article

"According to the New York Federal Reserve, labor conditions for recent college graduates have “deteriorated noticeably” in the past few months, and the unemployment rate now stands at an unusually high 5.8 percent. Even newly minted M.B.A.s from elite programs are struggling to find work."

The NYFR says it doesn't know what is causing the decline, but many wonder if it's AI. In particular as AI is so good at doing the entry-level tasks college grads would be employed to do.

Humans are terrible about dealing with disaster, until the very last minute (Covid in March 2020 was a good illustration of this). However, they are often surprisingly good at 'keeping calm, and carrying on' when they are forced to act. March 2020 also illustrates this.

So far AI/robotics and job replacement is a topic our political class (and their inept economic advisors) have ignored - but for how much longer?