Sleep On It

I found an interesting fact about decision making in an article on the determinates of poverty.

Researchers have found that exerting self-control on an initial task impaired self-control on subsequent tasks: Consumers became more susceptible to tempting products; chronic dieters overate; people were more likely to lie for monetary gain; and so on. As Baumeister told Teaching of Psychology in 2008, “After you exert self-control in any sphere at all, like resisting dessert, you have less self-control at the next task.”

Put off important decisions until "tomorrow" and when you wake up make that decision the first of the day. Even before any other insignificant decisions (orange or grapefruit?).

Camel Dating Advice

Althouse has a video up (under a minute) of some Daley Show folks abusing a camel. A commenter said:

...whoever did it apparently did not know enough about the animals to understand how they should be handled.

Foreplay is the key. Dry humping can chafe you and the camel. You will never get a date with that camel again.

H/T Instapundit

Why Didn't You Stop Him?

Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech denouncing Stalin’s atrocities to an audience of the Soviet Communist Party, and someone in the audience shouted:

“You were right there next to Stalin. Why didn’t you stop him?”

Khrushchev immediately shouted back:

“Who said that??”

The place went deathly quiet. After several heartbeats, Khrushchev said quietly:

“Now you know why”

H/T Commenter John A at Watts Up With That

The Next Big Thing

In Secular Decline I looked at where we are in the business cycle. What I said basically was that semiconductors and the microprocessor advance were no longer providing excess profits. To a pretty fair extent the world has been computerized. Profit opportunities are declining.

So then comes the question: What will be the next big thing? The The Online Investing AI Blog linked has a nice graph of the business cycle. But let me cut to the chase.

Solar power. Fusion power. Mind-Machine interfaces. Nano-technology. Personalized medicine. Rapid prototyping.

They also mention "Smart AI-powered investing for the masses". Now I don't see how that can work. If they can identify above average opportunities reliably, the masses will all invest and there goes your above average opportunity.

As to the others. There are lots of opportunities in nano-technology. Which one? And yes, solar is probably one or ten breakthroughs away from being low cost enough to start capturing a lot of the electrical energy market. Except wind is currently lower cost and the cost reduction curve is more reliable. I can tell you, almost certain, that wind will become lower cost than coal fired electrical plants when wind turbines reach the 8 to 12 MW (peak) size. Right now the 5 MW (peak) size is just going into series production. That means that at the best wind sites the cost is below coal and at the worst it is above coal.

There are two problems with wind. All the best sites are in places (like North Dakota) where grid connections are sparse. And wind is intermittent. Which means that without storage its contribution is limited to about 10% of grid power.

Which points to two investment opportunities. The first company (GE? Westinghouse? Siemens?) to come out with 2 MV DC transmission equipment and 2 MV DC to AC conversion equipment (AC to DC is easy) will help bring wind from the upper Mid-West to the loads in the more populous states. It also gives rise to the possibility of wind going above 10% to perhaps 20% of grid power because of both wider generation averaging and load averaging.

So what is the second opportunity? Low cost very high power energy storage. Will it be batteries? Fuel cells? Flywheels? No one knows. What we know is that the technology will have low turn around losses (generation - storage - generation), very high energy capacity, reasonably long life (5 to 20 years), low losses over 24 to 72 hours of storage, and low cost per KWh stored (below 2¢ per KWh with the possibility of getting below .5¢ per KWh). A pretty tall order.

As for solar - because it is better matched to grid demands (high in the day low at night), and because of its greater predictability (when the sun shines) it can probably go to 20% to 30% of grid power before storage is a necessity.

In addition wind peaks during the low demand season of winter and sun peaks during the high demand season of summer. So the two forms of production are to a certain extent complimentary. However, solar peaks at noon and the load (air conditioning mostly) peaks at 3 PM. So economical 4 to 6 hour storage would be good. However, that storage would be mostly idle in the winter except for load leveling.

So what else will be needed? Smart grid equipment which can turn on and off loads like electric water heaters, refrigerators, and air conditioners to match supply and demand better over short intervals (say 15 to 30 minutes). If plug in hybrids become big they could be used for load leveling over short intervals as well allowing motor fuels (cellulostic ethanol?) to be used to arbitrage the high cost of day time electricity with the low cost of night time electricity. Everybody will become demand metered. And that is another opportunity.

Fusion power? There is no working prototype yet. Personalized medicine? Another 100 to 500 breakthroughs are needed. One of which is much lower cost genetic sequencing and the ability to produce required molecules in mass quantities (1 to 5 grams - which is a lot if you are making them a molecule at a time). Rapid prototyping? I saw a machine for sale a month or two ago that fits on a desktop that costs $5,000. A little pricey for a home that might only need 5 to 50 custom parts a month. And only good for small plastic parts in any case. To make such a system work you also need to be able to make metal parts too. Which means a small milling machine and a small lathe. Each of those is going to run another $5,000 or so with current technology and auxiliary equipment like clamps measuring tools etc.

Mind machine interfaces? Another 1,000 to 5,000 breakthroughs required.

Now what can we say about all these things? Progress is being made and some day in the next 5 to 20 years each will cross the 2% penetration threshold where they take off rapidly. OTOH there is danger too. If you can make your own molecules in a well stocked home lab, virus making is just a few computer codes away.

How will man, with his hunter gatherer brain, with all his passions, survive such access to power? That is the $640 trillion dollar question.

Genocide, The Jews, And The Six Million

I was having a discussion of a post at Classical Values My People with Brett. Let me reprise the gist of the short post:

If Hitler put them in camps they are my people. Count me with the Jews, the gays, the mental defectives, and the drug users.

Brett then asks:

What I don't understand is why so few see something so obvious.

As infected by New Deal collectivism as they were, the G.I. generation were born close enough to the Republic to admonish their children to "mind your own business!"

This folk phrase sums up the ideals of the American Revolution, enjoining us at once to take care of ourselves and to leave others alone, that they may do so.

For some reason, the postwar generations have not been able to stomach this concept.

My answer to Brett is as follows:

I've been trying to figure out where we went wrong. I blame it on the Jews (I'm Jewish myself so hang on a minute).

The genocides of WW2 were emphasized as against the Jews and solely promoted by the evil mad man Hitler. "Never again" was only about the Jews. The Jews made the mistake of only talking about the six million and not the twelve. I always thought it was a mistake to elevate Jewish suffering over the suffering of all of Hitlers victims. Jews in general still do it and it is wrong.

Instead of studying genocide as a process we have conceived of it as merely a historical event. Instead of seeing the roots in human nature, it was seen as particular to that time in history.

It all comes from the Jewish conception of man as inherently good. Such a view lets them forgive their enemies as misled. However, it opens the door for the next time.

I think the Catholic view of man as "fallen" comes closer to the truth. The tendency to genocide is in all of us and must be monitored in order to prevent its expression. We must stop looking for devils. Demon rum, demon drugs, demon people. Every instance of good and evil must be dealt with on its own merits.

We are hard wired to ascribe to the group the behaviors of individuals. To be civilized we must watch ourselves as much as we watch others. In a way we must all be Zen Masters if we wish to be and remain civilized.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Rationality

An off topic discussion at Climate Audit was considering Fenton/Soros and their relationship to the AGW (man made global warming) movement and how Soros intended to profit from his rent-a-mobs:

If I was a savvy investor with inside connections I wouldn’t place my bets until my objective was nearly a sure thing.

First generate a “popular” demand. Await political developments. Invest.

The job of Fenton is to create political rent-a-mobs.

It has to do with human nature - (how far off topic can you get?). It seems humans want a belief structure that gives order to knowledge. Living with uncertainty is not satisfying for the vast majority. For most folks rationality is hard. Very hard. People want certainty. It is why astrologers still exist at this late date. I used to dabble in those “sciences”. Got rather good at it. It was never about reading the cards. It was about reading the people asking the questions. Obviously this is very prone to manipulation. Since I never got a lot of satisfaction out of manipulating people, I gave it up. There are others who find such manipulations satisfying and profitable.

To understand what is going on a study of human nature would be much better than studying CO2.

So let me start with the main driver. In humans fear of loss is a much stronger driver than hope of gain. It explains why newspapers focus on bad news despite the fact that for most of us most of the time the news is good. If AGW was proven today to be bad science, there would be a new scare tomorrow.

There also seems a propensity to magnify the opposition. We need devils. No one is immune. For many here (myself included) it is the AGW folks. For the AGWists it is the deniers and the oil companies. We all want our devils, because devils is a “better” explanation than error coupled with self interest. Evil intent is much more satisfying than human bias towards the stupidity of the day.

Let me add another biasing mechanism. Youth likes novelty and change. Age likes stability. The dividing line seems to be around age 20 or 25. One of our most famous modern poets put it to music in a song called “My Back Pages” - you can look it up.

With all this going on it is a wonder we manage any rationality at all.