[HN Gopher] Group effort to study the mathematical sciences for ...
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Group effort to study the mathematical sciences for "saving the
planet."
Author : agumonkey
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-10-12 18:25 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.azimuthproject.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.azimuthproject.org)
| andyxor wrote:
| Arguably, time is better spent studying nuclear engineering.
|
| That's the only thing that can save the planet (besides enabling
| space exploration and colonization of Moon and Mars)
| ghostly_s wrote:
| How exactly is fucking up some other celestial bodies going to
| help save this one?
| andyxor wrote:
| Some believe humans should strive to become multi-planetary
| species, e.g. to avoid a possible extinction event.
| tejtm wrote:
| gives us time and space to continue evolving without the
| impending disruptive setback. there is also enough free
| floating stuff out there it could become not worth it to
| disrupt the top few inches of land on this planet which is
| where all the irreplaceable magic happens
| agumonkey wrote:
| Not necessarily. Nuclear energy gives GHG-free power, but 1)
| doesn't deal with the priced-in impact on the biosphere that
| will require us to change a lot of things 2) doesn't reprogram
| societies to become less impactful.
| sega_sai wrote:
| I'm sorry, but studying category theory to save the planet sounds
| like something straight from 'the Onion'. For sure there are
| topics that (IMO) are worth studying to save the planet, i.e.
| physics, physics of the atmosphere, geology, material science,
| chemistry, etc, etc, but category theory would be pretty low on
| the list. (it's certainly worth studying on its own, but putting
| a 'saving the planet' badge on it sounds disingenuous to me)
| Zababa wrote:
| All engineers have a strong math foundation in their cursus.
| It's easier to recycle a mathematician into a physicist than an
| historian or a psychologist.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Well it can't hurt. I remember reading an article about how
| Germany -- a water rich nation -- has a society of extreme
| water-masochism in order to "save the planet". People turn off
| the shower as they lather their hair, they save bathtub water
| for other uses. All despite being a wet country that sends most
| of the water into the ocean every year.
|
| It's gotten so bad that utilities are fighting the problem of
| drying out pipes and have to spend money unplugging clogged
| sewer lines that don't have enough water in them. But no amount
| of reasoning helps, the people see stories of thirsty children
| in Africa and decide the best thing they can do is to take
| shorter showers, and re-use water from cooking to gardening.
| Meanwhile Germany only uses 2.7 percent of its available
| drinking water. When asked why they do this, answers range from
| "It's for the environment. And the children." to "I feel sorry
| for the water."[1]
|
| So on the long list of crazy things that people do to "save the
| planet", studying math is quite beneficial.
|
| [1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/theres-too-much-water-in-
| german...
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| I think it's more that category theory could be used as a way
| to accurately model the complex systems in our world, which may
| help "save the planet."
|
| https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2016/10/02/complex-adap...
| angelzen wrote:
| None of these groups has the strength to put their money where
| their mouth is and go Amish.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| The research areas listed on the homepage don't really give me
| the impression of people seriously interested in contributing to
| "saving the planet" in an applied and topical fashion...
| comnetxr wrote:
| My understanding is that this project is more of a way for
| established researchers in a very theoretical field to start
| thinking about climate while using their existing skill sets to
| contribute.
| agumonkey wrote:
| if you know any better place, feel free to share, i'm
| proactively looking
| Jensson wrote:
| > Programming with category theory. Category theory has a deep
| application in the study of functional programming languages. We
| hosted discussions for an MIT course on this topic, and encourage
| their continuation in the present.
|
| What does this have to do with "saving the planet"?
| kevinventullo wrote:
| The beauty of Category Theory draws brilliant mathematicians
| away from hedge funds and other industries which promote the
| excess carbon-producing status-quo. Spending all day proving
| theorems on a chalkboard is essentially carbon-neutral.
|
| I'm like 95% joking.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I wondered the same, I guess the wiki is just empty, and
| they're open for more ideas.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Nothing,
|
| Also, from the people at MIT:
| https://forum.azimuthproject.org/categories/mit-2020%3A-lect...
|
| From my experience in the field,
|
| Milewski is fine, but Fong/Spivak are the kind of people that
| usually overpromise/underdeliver, so this seems to me like
| someone's effort to attract grant money and not much more.
| mistermann wrote:
| Even if some physical/scientific solution was discovered, still
| remaining is the issue of politician and public (voting,
| lifestyle) support, much like we see with vaccines. Running a
| study of that _in parallel_ with scientific studies seems like
| the logical thing to do, yet another lesson we didn 't learn from
| covid I guess.
| agumonkey wrote:
| What about engineering social attractors so that people just
| move away from their habits and start doing things differently
| ? availability, social mirroring can be leveraged to migrate
| people from one lifestyle to another, without relying on
| policies.
|
| After all marketing is all about making the masses move a
| certain way..
| mistermann wrote:
| That sounds like an excellent start to me, what other
| techniques might be out there though? If we never look (as
| advertisers have done with marketing products in order to
| accomplish _their_ goal: make people buy their products), we
| may never know.
| psiconaut wrote:
| Sounds good. Sadly, there's this thing called "hyper-
| stimulus" - someone mentioned recently "Infinite Jest" and
| the desire to watch a particular video over and over again. I
| do think the fear of this thought played a deep role in DFW's
| desperation.
|
| All this to say: some social attractors are way more
| attractive than others (that's why they are "dark" patterns).
| Only physical constrains will do the trick, I'm afraid.
| agumonkey wrote:
| The idea is that society is most assured to go into a wall,
| so constraints are about to pop up more and more, so
| starting to place items / buffers here and there, ready to
| receive newly "convinced" people could prove beneficial.
|
| People are followers, I firmly believe that the minute
| another model of society pops up, population will flip
| "overnight".
|
| Also about your stimulus issue.. I also firmly believe that
| non modern life creates a stronger deeper and stabler set
| of stimuli. We just forgot.
| anfelor wrote:
| If you want to study category theory with people online, I
| recommend the Zulip Channel:
| https://categorytheory.zulipchat.com/ (you can DM me for an
| invite). Still, I don't understand how this is in anyway related
| to "saving the planet". It seems chemistry, material science or
| mechanical engineering would be much more promising directions..
| guscost wrote:
| The math helps you write new models that only a small
| priesthood will even understand, much less scrutinize.
|
| Then you can predict a crisis with your esoteric model, use
| that to justify forcing your political choices on others, and
| shame anyone who disagrees!
| gene-h wrote:
| Better math and even computation doesn't necessarily help in some
| cases. Take for instance the problem of making better solar cells
| and batteries.
|
| We can't necessarily make a mathematical model useful for
| understanding the processes that happen during the manufacturing
| and operation of solar cells/batteries. In fact in many cases
| determining just what processes are happening is a problem in and
| of itself. We don't necessarily understand how batteries degrade
| or why adding a certain component or using a certain process
| makes batteries degrade less. Determining this often can only be
| done with real world experimentation.
|
| One problem relevant to making organic solar cells is determining
| how organic constituents crystallize. A talk I saw looked into
| doing this computationally, but claimed it to be intractable. The
| problem was that the same compound, but with a different isotopic
| composition crystallized completely differently. This meant that
| nuclear motion mattered and that the already computationally
| expensive crystallization sim being done needed to be made orders
| of magnitude more computationally expensive to get useful
| results.
|
| This isn't to say that math isn't useful, it's just that math
| isn't necessarily as useful when real world experimentation is
| necessary. That being said, math can still be quite effective in
| the natural sciences.
| feoren wrote:
| > Better math and even computation doesn't necessarily help in
| some cases.
|
| > We don't necessarily understand how batteries degrade or why
| adding a certain component or using a certain process makes
| batteries degrade less.
|
| It sounds like you're saying that better mathematical models
| can't possibly help because our current mathematical models
| aren't good enough. Huh? Isn't better theory exactly the answer
| to "how" and "why" questions? Why would you not want to improve
| the theory because the theory isn't good enough? Better theory
| is how you explain and guide real-world experimentation. Plenty
| of completely intractable problems have suddenly become quite
| tractable with better math.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| No, they are saying is we currently don't know _what_ is
| going on good enough to be able to tell which model actually
| predicts reality.
| psiconaut wrote:
| > Better math and even computation doesn't necessarily help in
| some cases
|
| It is my impression that, at least on the topic of climate
| modelling, climate change denialism (which, frankly, is less
| and less common among educated population) was sustained by the
| rhetoric about models not being certain about linking anthropic
| change and its effects.
|
| So at least here I see that better understanding
| (accuracy/reliability) about the climate system (which the
| azimuth group claims to have contributed to, if I remember
| correctly) might have a direct effect on, at least, social
| perception of the uncertainty surrounding science...
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| I think we do have models to understand battery degradation.
| Like...
|
| https://www.dal.ca/diff/dahn/research/adv_diagnostics.html
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(page generated 2021-10-12 23:01 UTC)