Newsletter 77

Printing drones, Haber and psychedelic consciousness

Oct 02, 2022

Hi, I’m Gavin. This is my experimental newsletter that explores thinking - how we might think better and learn together as we do so.

I explore several key topics through the lens of several core themes: systems thinking, scenario planning, trends, and cross-disciplinary innovation. These often relate to key issues: climate change, pandemics, astronomy, physics, health, history, philosophy, culture, rocketry, conflict, the impact of technology on society and more (lol!). With a larger question behind it all: how do we progress and how do we progress better?

I hope you like where we go. (~~1,027~~ - 1,040 - welcome all new arrivals)

Gavin

PS: if you like the newsletter please share it! (And I always appreciate tweets about it too!) 🙏

Share Gav's Newsletter

If you support this newsletter and really like it you can also become a paid subscriber - you get nothing different except the satisfaction of knowing that you’re supporting this current weekly missive!

Reading list - the best stuff to read

(The best reads I’ve come across, with excerpts, links, authors and how long it will take to read. Climate change, COVID and China are consistently the stories at the top so are semi-permanent)

🌏 Climate change & biodiversity destruction

An explanation of wave energy and some work ongoing in the area.

It’s also worth looking at the recent test that ended in Australia.

We’ve looked at the Haber-Bosch process several times in the past, and here’s another very good explanation of it, and of Haber: (22 mins)

It’s also worth looking at how Australia is exploring how to make greener processes for creating ammonia that could also be used as carbon-free fuel. (from 2018).

Charles P Pierce on the only story that ultimately matters.

It will be maddening to see all the news stories about the damage done by these storms, and about the people left homeless and without electricity or clean drinking water, which will not put these facts in the context of the climate crisis. This is the only way any of the other stories make sense. The storms are bigger, stronger, and they maintain their strength for longer—and all of that is a consequence of the changes that we have wrought to the climate. At this point, to cover these massive weather events without mentioning the underlying dynamic that drives them is like covering a war without mentioning explosives.

🇨🇳 China / Taiwan

Charles Parton says the West should remind China of the likely consequences of invading Taiwan, including domestically.

Nevertheless, ever since the Delphic oracle warned Croesus that, if he invaded Persia, an empire would fall, leaders have succumbed to the blindness of hubris. It therefore makes sense to advocate for military deterrence, as William Hague did in May and to entertain a willingness to supply Taiwan with the sorts of nimble weapon systems that would help rebuff Beijing’s advances.

It also makes sense for the US to remind China that, in the event of an invasion, it could block the Malacca and Sunda straits through which China’s oil arrives from the Middle East. Even the threat of interdiction would be sufficient to discourage ship owners.
But military deterrence is the smaller part of the story. There are good economic reasons why the Chinese Communist party will not invade. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company produces the majority of the world’s advanced semiconductors. Its CEO has declared that it would not be allowed to fall into Chinese hands. This could be achieved with a well-aimed US missile, but that might not be necessary: banning the sale of the materials, machinery and parts needed to keep TSMC’s plants going would be sufficient. Chinese dependency on foreign semiconductors looks to continue for a decade, perhaps longer.

Binkov analyses the increased production of Chinese J-20/J-16 jets:

🇺🇦 Ukraine / Russia

It’s worth looking at a piece from back in May on potential responses if or when Russia uses tactical nuclear missiles. (13 mins by Jeffrey Edmonds)

Regardless of reason, let us assume Russia has used a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. How do the West and the United States in particular react? The emotional noise following the use of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine would be deafening, both in terms of calls for restraint and of demands for retaliation. In many ways, the policy community is divided between those wanting an aggressive approach to the war that seeks to force a strategic defeat on Russia and those who want a more constrained approach to avoid a possible escalation of the conflict and the nuclear implications that go with it. Despite this divide, we can attempt to broadly break down the potential policy areas that cover the gamut of positions open to the United States and NATO, their implications, and their possible consequences.

…

There are several employment options to consider. The first would be conventional strikes against Russian military targets in Ukraine. These could go after Russian units themselves, logistic hubs, or any number of platforms Russia is using to persecute the war. If the Russian use of nuclear weapons targeted Ukraine’s ability to fight, one targeting criteria to consider would be those targets that negate any Russian advantage gained by its use of nuclear weapons. A second option would be to target the platform used by Russia to carry out the strike—a platform that would almost certainly be based inside Russia itself.

…

I argue that the two extremes, responding in kind and pushing for a settlement, are unwise given the escalatory risks or potential for establishing destructive and unstable patterns of behavior. The two other options—escalating conventionally against Russia or staying the course—each have their own risks and levels of uncertainty. Except for bending to nuclear coercion, it is difficult to see how Russia’s use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine does not significantly raise the possibility of a conflict between Russia and NATO.

Here’s another piece on the same topic. (15 mins by Eric Schlosser)

If the United States gets intelligence that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon, Perry believes that the information should be publicized immediately. And if Russia uses one, the United States should call for international condemnation, create as big a ruckus as possible—stressing the word nuclear—and take military action, with or without NATO allies. The reprisal should be strong and focused and conventional, not nuclear. It should be confined to Ukraine, ideally with targets linked to the nuclear attack. “You want to go as little up the escalation ladder as you can get away with doing and still have a profound and relevant effect,” Perry says. But if Putin responds by using another nuclear weapon, “you take off the gloves the second time around” and perhaps destroy Russia’s military forces in Ukraine, which the United States could readily do with conventional weapons. Perry realizes that these escalations would be approaching the kind of Dr. Strangelove scenarios that Herman Kahn wrote about. But if we end up fighting a war with Russia, that would be Putin’s choice, not ours.
Perry has been warning for many years that the nuclear danger is growing. The invasion of Ukraine has unfortunately confirmed his prediction. He believes that the odds of a full-scale nuclear war were much higher during the Cuban missile crisis, but that the odds of a nuclear weapon being used are higher now. Perry doesn’t expect that Russia will destroy a Ukrainian air base with a tactical weapon. But he wouldn’t be surprised. And he hopes the United States will not be self-deterred by nuclear blackmail. That would encourage other countries to get nuclear weapons and threaten their neighbors.

A good detailed look at the Russian mobilisation. It’s worth noting the figure is unlikely to be the reported 300,00 - it’s closer likely to 1.2 million. (73 mins)

🐝 Drones

3D printing with a drone, cool. (3 mins)

🧠 Consciousness

In a recent study, volunteers were given psychedelic drugs and had their brains scanned in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine. The scientists conducting the research wanted to gain a better understanding of consciousness and find out what the brain is actually doing when it experiences consciousness. By disrupting the way the brain perceives and models the world while we’re awake with psychedelic drugs such as DMT, researchers can try to understand how the conscious brain works. Studying the effects of psychedelics might be key not only to understand how consciousness works, but also to treat some of the problems that can affect our waking lives, with psychedelics being proposed as treatments for depression, anxiety and addiction.

(11 mins)

Philosophy Corner (a journey through thinking about thinking every week)

(A serialised section that started with Greek Tragedy and moved to philosophy. Something to spark ideas. Feel free to go backwards!).

Shklar on Hypocrisy (46 mins)

Judith Shklar’s Ordinary Vices (1984) made the case that the worst of all the vices is cruelty. But that meant we needed to be more tolerant of some other common human failings, including snobbery, betrayal and hypocrisy. David explores what she had to say about some of the other authors in this series – including Bentham and Nietzsche – and asks what price we should be willing to pay for putting cruelty first among the vices.

Documentary

(A good thing to watch - also serialised - so feel free to go back through past editions!)

Next in the series is Bernard Williams.

In this program, world-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and Bernard Williams of Cambridge University discuss linguistic philosophy—an offshoot of logical positivism—which argues that sentences can have no meaning beyond that which humans give them because language is a human invention.

Podcast(s)

(The best stuff I’ve listened to, or been recommended by subscribers)

Ezra had a long conversation with Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison about how humanity progresses, a long-running theme of this newsletter. It’s worth the listen. (91 mins)
I listened to the first two of eight episodes of the new Economist series on the Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Excellent background.
As always, a key listen on the war in Ukraine. (35 mins)