
Freeman Dyson’s letters offer another glimpse of genius - Hooke
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/freeman-dysons-letters-offer-another-glimpse-of-genius
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chrisco255
One of my favorite essays by Freeman: "Biological and Cultural Evolution Six
Characters in Search of an Author"

[https://www.edge.org/conversation/freeman_dyson-freeman-
dyso...](https://www.edge.org/conversation/freeman_dyson-freeman-
dyson-1923-2020)

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dr_dshiv
"As noted above, active technical management of radiative forcing rather
clearly will entail expenditures of no more than $1 B/year, commencing not
much sooner than a half-century hence, even in worst-case scenarios.8 One thus
might say, “Let’s just put a sinking-fund of $1.7 B into the bank for use in
generating $1 B/year forever, commencing a half-century hence, and proceed
with the human race’s business as usual. All of the Earth’s plants will be
more productive for being much better-fed with CO2 and much less exposed to
solar UV radiation, kids can play in the sun without fear, and we’ll continue
to enjoy today’s climate, bluer skies and better sunsets until the next Ice
Age commences.”

Teller, E., Hyde, T., & Wood, L. (2002). Active climate stabilization:
Practical physics-based approaches to prevention of climate change (No. UCRL-
JC-148012). Lawrence Livermore National Lab.(LLNL), Livermore, CA (United
States).

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graeme
It’s rather simplistic thinking. For one, it ignores the acidification effect
in oceans.

That’s a consequence we can readily foresee. What other unforeseen
consequences will there be?

I think we might need something like this to reduce warming while we suck
carbon out of the atmosphere. But to envisage it as a permanent solution is
extremely risky.

(We don’t have scaleable carbon sucking tech yet, but later we might have it
but not enough time to use it, if warming continues and activates feedback
loops)

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wbronitsky
The criticisms in this thread of Dyson’s wrongthink on climate science show us
a lot about the current moment and how hard it is to have an opinion outside
of the mainstream.

Sure, he appears to be quite incorrect now, but dismissing a mind of the
caliber of Dyson’s because he got this one thing wrong is pedantic. And yes,
he did appear to get this one extremely wrong, but that should not overshadow
his amazing ideas and all of the things he got right. Ideas like Dyson
Spheres, nuclear explosion based space travel, and many other Dyson ideas were
just as outside of the standard deviations of thought as climate change denial
at the time he came up with them.

It appears extremely popular right now to disregard an entire human’s work
over an apparently incorrect opinion. Freeman Dyson is a great example of why
this is probably a bad idea.

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epistasis
It's not "one thing wrong" it's just a dude not even bothering to learn
research before dismissing it all as wrong. And then being proven wrong
because he was being anti-scientific. It just happens to be the most critical
challenge to humanity of this century, and he stupidly used his social power
to undermine the science. Call "wrong think" as if it wasn't actually a
terrible disservice to humanity and just being political. But it was actually
wrong, both scientifically, morally, ethically, and gives future contrarians
more difficulty.

This worship of personalities is very bad for science. We should prioritize
data and ways to understand the data. Paying attention to misplaced authority
is how we get lysenkoism.

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phendrenad2
Or maybe critics like Dyson forced climate scientists to grow up and become a
real science, instead of relying on hand-wavy fallacies. Often the best thing
for science is vigorous opposition. Maybe a populist irrationally posing
opposition to climate science innoculated climate science, making it able to
stand up against the likes of Trump. If your critics are all people you can
dismiss, you don't know if your theory will survive a political enemy until it
happens.

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watwut
Except that Dyson was not dismissed for who he was, he was dismissed because
of what he was saying. He got original aurhority for who he was. That is exact
opposite.

He also was not making it stronger against limes of Trump, he was pawing a way
for likes of Trump. Who is also someone dissmissed because of what he says and
does. And also someone whose original disproportional benefit of doubt and
trust (when he was young) was because of familly he was from.

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Causality1
Dyson was a creative genius but there's far too much hero worship. Some of the
beliefs he tried to spread were stupid bordering on dangerous, like that
there's no reason to worry or do anything about climate change because new
technology will magically solve all our problems.

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teh_infallible
I have always thought, and still think that Dyson Spheres are an absurd idea.

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gumby
What about just building a ring then? There’s probably enough material in this
solar system to do that.

The sphere is merely a Gedankenexperiment, taking some factors to their
logical extrema. Nothing wrong with that.

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willis936
The first part of Larry Niven’s Ringworld explains why not. The structure
requires materials so strong that even well-read sci-fi writers need to put in
placeholder magic materials in.

