ghostofcarnot

The Titan submersible is a cautionary tale for those that believe human ingenuity can overcome nature's limits, now or anytime in the future

Space is really spread out, and we will forever lack the means to get around it fast. Space also happens to be highly inhospitable to human life. For these reasons, I submit that no human will ever go farther than Mars.

Three big, basic facts about Mars will render it forever out of reach for permanent human settlement. Read more about them on Substack.

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

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.

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.