The "Does This Exist?" Thread

[Monsterzuma]

This thread is for requesting things that you think might exist and that if so you would like to know more about, but you don't know whether they do and how to find out about them. I'll kick this thread off with two requests of my own:

1. a philosopher that views money and capital accumulation as an answer to the question of what the purpose of life is and belabors with unabashed conviction how people who say money doesn't matter are dead wrong. I'm not looking for people who were like this in some practical way but people who really made a philosophical creed out of it and wrote at length about it.

2. a futurist or other type of analyst that explores the question of how man will explore and exploit the vast depths of earth's oceans, preferably one that shares my intuition that this process might become one of the defining trends of the coming two centuries.

Do they exist? Who should I look into?

 

[NickyJ]

Do radioactive monkeys exist?

 

[azzaman333]

Reverse mermaids?

 

[History_Buff]

2. a futurist or other type of analyst that explores the question of how man will explore and exploit the vast depths of earth's oceans, preferably one that shares my intuition that this process might become one of the defining trends of the coming two centuries.

I don't know that you'll find this. Aside from oil, I don't know what we're really going to plumb out of the depths of the oceans. Too hard to get at. Much harder than outer space really.

 

[Tecknojock]

I don't know that you'll find this. Aside from oil, I don't know what we're really going to plumb out of the depths of the oceans. Too hard to get at. Much harder than outer space really.

Brazil is commissioning the first underwater mine. Its going to be gold mine, but that means they'll help develop technologies to make the mining of other underwater veins of less valuable resources more cost effective.

 

[Samez]

Do radioactive monkeys exist?

I don't know if they ever finished this project but yes radioactive monkey exist.

 

[classical_hero]

Does Loch Ness Monster exist?

 

[Monsterzuma]

I don't know that you'll find this. Aside from oil, I don't know what we're really going to plumb out of the depths of the oceans. Too hard to get at. Much harder than outer space really.

Harder than outer space..? I don't see that at all. If widespread space flight is in the cards, ocean exploitation is a no brainer.

 

[Antilogic]

Does Loch Ness Monster exist?

No, and neither do whales. They are both lies invented by the librul media to make children care about the environment.

 

[El_Machinae]

Cool thread. I think it could work!

2. a futurist or other type of analyst that explores the question of how man will explore and exploit the vast depths of earth's oceans, preferably one that shares my intuition that this process might become one of the defining trends of the coming two centuries.

Robert Ballard gives a detailed TED talk about how we don't know enough about the ocean, but that there're tantalizing reasons to think there's a lot of wealth down there.
http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_ballard_on_exploring_the_oceans.html

Does Loch Ness Monster exist?

The parsimonious answer is "no"

 

[Gary Childress]

1. a philosopher that views money and capital accumulation as an answer to the question of what the purpose of life is and belabors with unabashed conviction how people who say money doesn't matter are dead wrong. I'm not looking for people who were like this in some practical way but people who really made a philosophical creed out of it and wrote at length about it.

Try Ayn Rand. She seems to come pretty close.

 

[Crezth]

Try Ayn Rand. She seems to come pretty close.

Not quite. She preached that man was an end in himself, and while she often defended greed correspondingly, never quite said that money was the meaning of life.

 

[peter grimes]

Harder than outer space..? I don't see that at all. If widespread space flight is in the cards, ocean exploitation is a no brainer.

The engineering challenges associated with deep ocean operations are more of a technical challenge than those of space.

The pressures of the bathysphere are immense. Vacuum pressure is 0atm, roughly no more of a challenge than 10m depth.

Data transfer is another challenge - deepwater drills actually use pressure pulses in the mud column to relay data to the surface, and that's still only at shelf depths.

Of course, the more we go deeper, the better we'll become at it. But until then, money and will are the restricting factors, just like with space.

 

[Algeroth]

1. a philosopher that views money and capital accumulation as an answer to the question of what the purpose of life is and belabors with unabashed conviction how people who say money doesn't matter are dead wrong. I'm not looking for people who were like this in some practical way but people who really made a philosophical creed out of it and wrote at length about it.

2. a futurist or other type of analyst that explores the question of how man will explore and exploit the vast depths of earth's oceans, preferably one that shares my intuition that this process might become one of the defining trends of the coming two centuries.

Do they exist? Who should I look into?

1. I had a similar impression from Mises Human Action.

2. I think you are out of luck, underwater cities kinda disappeared from collective conciousness and futurist analyses in the '70 with the Space age.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The engineering challenges associated with deep ocean operations are more of a technical challenge than those of space.

The pressures of the bathysphere are immense. Vacuum pressure is 0atm, roughly no more of a challenge than 10m depth.

Data transfer is another challenge - deepwater drills actually use pressure pulses in the mud column to relay data to the surface, and that's still only at shelf depths.

Of course, the more we go deeper, the better we'll become at it. But until then, money and will are the restricting factors, just like with space.

As an aerospace engineer, I concur with these statements. The major cost involved in the economic exploitation of space is fighting earth's gravity well. There are resources in outer space and we know how to get at them, costs aside. I don't think we know of resources on the sea bed at the same scale.

And for those who say 'well we haven't looked for them, we don't know what's down there' - well actually that says it all. Sea exploration is hard - finding and exploiting resources that can't be sucked out of a pipe is even harder.

The reason that major space resources haven't been exploited at all is because up till Obama, space exploration was strictly a government enterprise not intended to make a profit. That is changing.

 

[Integral]

1. a philosopher that views money and capital accumulation as an answer to the question of what the purpose of life is and belabors with unabashed conviction how people who say money doesn't matter are dead wrong. I'm not looking for people who were like this in some practical way but people who really made a philosophical creed out of it and wrote at length about it.

I don't have a reference for you, but I'd also be fascinated by someone who argued that "owning lots of the medium of exchange" is the telos of life.

--

Does anyone have anything similar to this? Big-picture, extremely long view stuff on either extraterrestrial life or the distant future of humanity. From a literary side, I know Asimov's Last Question and I'm looking for things in that vein as well.

 

[Cutlass]

I don't have a reference for you, but I'd also be fascinated by someone who argued that "owning lots of the medium of exchange" is the telos of life.

Donald Trump

 

[El_Machinae]

Does anyone have anything similar to this? Big-picture, extremely long view stuff on either extraterrestrial life or the distant future of humanity. From a literary side, I know Asimov's Last Question and I'm looking for things in that vein as well.

You're looking for Nick Bostrom's writings. As well, the Long Now Foundation thinks along these lines.

 

[holy king]

Reverse mermaids?

yes. yes, they do.

 

[SouthernKing]

Harder than outer space..? I don't see that at all. If widespread space flight is in the cards, ocean exploitation is a no brainer.

Like has been said, other than oil (which I truly hope people will stop trying to drill within 50 years) there's absolutely nothing worth going after down there (That I know of). And yeah, it's about as easy to build stuff in the deep ocean as it is on the surface of Venus.