Mega-Cities
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 23 авг 2024
- Science Fiction delights in showing us grim, dark, giant, and dystopian future cities of covered in garbage and where life is cheap, but how realistic are such metropolises and how can we avoid living in them?
Visit our sponsor, Brilliant: brilliant.org/...
Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @isaacarthursfia
Visit our Website: www.isaacarthur...
Join Nebula: go.nebula.tv/i...
Support us on Patreon: / isaacarthur
Support us on Subscribestar: www.subscribes...
Facebook Group: / 1583992725237264
Reddit: / isaacarthur
Twitter: / isaac_a_arthur on Twitter and RT our future content.
SFIA Discord Server: / discord
Credits:
Mega-Cities
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 259; September 17, 2020
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur
Cover Art:
Jakub Grygier www.artstation...
Graphics:
Ken York / ydvisual
LegionTech Studios
Sergio Botero www.artstation...
Udo Schroeter
Music by Miguel Johnson
/ migueljohnsonmjmusic
When I played Sim City 2000 as a kid, i loaded my city with Arcologies, then they all appeared to blow up and the game provided a notification that they had left the surface of the planet to colonize other worlds. Millions of Sims cheated to escape my taxes!
Huh, I heard that could happen, but I totally thought it was a myth.
@@CocoDaPuf After building 301 launch arcos & after the year 2051, a message will appear saying: "The exodus has begun" and the arcos will appear to explode one by one (a process which takes over two minutes to complete) and the game will show another message: "Your launch arcos have departed into space to find new worlds. You have been compensated for the construction." - SimCity WIki
@@donotthink yes exactly. But your entire city disappears in the process! (the ppl and the lauch Arcologies anyway) I spent months building that city and everybody went to space!
Considering they were specifically called "launch" arcologies, I'm not sure how you didn't see that coming.
Drew McTygue maybe you learned a lesson to not tax people like California does? 🤣
I love that this episode has Isaac saying "mutant cannibals" so casually like he finds it reasonable or likely that it would happen
The thing is, it probably will happen so he would be correct
Probably a 40k reference EDIT: nevermind, we're calculating for mutant cannibal populations now.
@@carl8703 Or Judge Dredd. One Grimdark universe or the other :)
Oh we totally need a show episode now on underground mutant cannibals in the sewer 😀.
morlocks :-)
A solution to the elevator conundrum is to treat the elevator system as a vertical train line: The elevator cars would be self-propelled and driving on rail instead of being pulled by cables. This allows multiple elevator cars to share the same shaft instead of having a seperate shaft for each car. Therefore, there could be a few high-speed shafts that elevators take for most of their journey before branching off into another shaft to slow down and stop their destination. A lot of high-speed train line design principles could be carried over into designing such elevator systems.
Self-propelled elevators are already in development as the tallest buildings in the world are facing problems with scaling the cable mechanisms to the extreme shaft length.
Nah, the solution to the elevator conundrum is to have multiple ground levels. The elevator conundrum only applies if all the shafts must return to the (singular) ground floor; if all of your buildings have robust connections to neighboring buildings on (for example) every twentieth floor, then you 'reset to zero' every twentieth floor.
Very clever.
An obvious solution now that you’ve mentioned it.
a la Star Trek Turbolift...
then there comes a second problem, a self propelled shuttle sharing the same shaft(s) as other, is bound to crash against another eventually, probably not that frequent, but given the amount of elevator shafts in a city (let alone MC 42) a crash or two a year could be the norm.
I think it is best explained by comparing elevators to railways yes you can add an extra track for every train but you can also have the trains switch between tracks, you can do the same with elevators having them only run on dedicated tracks of going up and down and stopping at stations that branch from the main track. the technology to do this is already here although it is currently still kind of slow and bing tested more i think but in the future i see no reason why this problem could not have been solved as it is a relatively simple issue.
@@39401JLB The problem with your reset to 0 is that you only increase the number of elevators with the number of 0 floors. If you have a 200 story building, you'd get 20 elevators for 2 shafts, with the system of the original commenter, you can have 20 or 30 or 40 or ...
Moreover either you have double the amount of shafts at every 0 floor (one "set" for those coming from below, another for those going up) or you need to always traverse stairs at these 0 floors. Eitherway you will lose a lot of time.
If someone needs to get from 0 to 200 he'd have to change elevators 20 times and possibly many times having to wait for elevators to come down.
Not to mention the extra stops of people getting off/on at the other floors inbetween, this again you don't have with the proposed solution where you can have many multiple elevators per shaft and elevators would be able to get out of the shaft sideways into a "standstill corridor" to pick up/drop off people where it isn't immediately in the way of other elevators. Because of this the time to get to any destination floor, especially those far away, is much shorter.
Ahh, here in the mega-city there is a near limitless number of places to grab a drink and a snack! Though, in the worst estates, you may not want to ask what went into them...
Most of them are probably vending machines, like Tokyo.
Soy slurry and recycled bread from a very talkative public fridge might be in store for us in a coming dystopia-- :/
Only Kraw kalash
No, Don't ask...(if you are lucky, it's only Bug Protein)
Mhm, sweet Corpse-Starch.
Or a market for NIGHT DIRT... $$$$$
I feel Megacities would promote more cremation over building a necropolis for their dead.
Or in a more darker hue, they'd recycle human corpses just as they recycle everything else, be it as food (soilent green) or soil enrichment (compost)... ^^'
Send meat wagon to my location. Multiple casualties and corpses for recyc.
I would personally rather have my remains be dealt with in the following order of priority: organ donation, scientific/educational purposes, fertilizer, burned for energy, cremation, natural burial, coffin burial.
I'll be dead, i won't need my body anymore but it could still be of use to others.
Just go synth, and maybe even digital. More options for less footprint
@@icecold9511 Just remember that I can't take him live. It's against regulations.
Logically for any sufficiently long lasting civilization this *must* be the case as calcium(the ideal ion for Neuron and muscle action potentials) and phosphorus (remember bones are primarily composed of calcium phosphate and ATP DNA and RNA are all phosphorus based molecules essential for life as we know it) are precious and in a very finite supply.
Otherwise given enough time a civilization to end up running out of phosphorus. I guess presumably a civilization could make due with a process which extracts all the phosphorus from the dead if they really insist on burials but that will get costly with waste and eventually calcium and molybdenum(a platinum group metal used to biologically produce crucial enzyme catalysts) among other essential trace elements would become a limiting factors especially as they are also important for industry.
"The Government doesn't have to be cruel and callous for massive amounts of gangs to appear" **Cites US statistics**
A simple answer: Pascal, Qurra, Tesla, and Rutherford can be traveled in a circle (P -> Q -> T -> R -> P or P -> R -> T -> Q -> P), only Sagan is "a dead end", so once visiting Sagan, the traveler has to return the same way he arrived, which is through Rutherford. thus Rutherford is the city he visits twice. By the way, modes of transportation and a number of lines between cities are irrelevant, it only matters if there is any connection.
beat me to it! ill be a contrarian and say that there's no dead end. all the four other cities are clearly on the same planet since they're linked by either train or air. since Sagan can be reached by space from the planet's surface it must not be particularly far away, and we know pascal has a spaceport. the tourist can fly straight home from sagan so long as he doesnt mind seriously upsetting some space traffic authorities
I may be doing this wrong but it looks to me like all the cities have a spaceport?
@@AuntyProtoni think tesla's only got air, train and warp
My first thought was; yeah right!
All you big brains looking at the pattern. I just counted how many times every name came up and Rutherford was the only 3 hence the answer. Thank you for confirming my lazy brilliance
0:38 Large Cities in Fiction
- _Crowded & Crime-Filled_ & Dirty
3:02 New York City Skyscrapers 🏙
9:48 Movement: The Elevator Conundrum
15:23 Food Shortage Problem
22:11 Technology
26:34 If You Feed It, It Will Grow
🙏🏽 thx
*somewhere in a mega-city of the future*
Kid: "Daddy, what is Nature?"
Daddy: "I don't know kid, never heard of.."
Damn.
Daddy :- ask Google
Or whatever becomes Google
I often find it amusing that Mega City one in the Judge Dredd Comics tend to be considered a dystopia. If you do a deeper dive into the setting you find that it is anything but. Most of the dystopia appearance comes from everyone having to survive on a planet that is radically polluted and dangerous to be out in the environment of. There are actually very few Judges and law enforcement for the size of mega-city one. The amount of crime that actually takes place is far far lower than what exists in most western cities today. Most violence that does take place in mega-city one and other cities like it on the same world in Judge Dredds Universe actually take place in a designated area. This area and the violence which takes place has replaced small claims court. People go there make a register fill out a form and they fight it out to determine who owes who money or some other legal claim that today would be handled in small claims court. It's surprisingly not as violent as it appears to be. The setting appears to be so violent because you are following somebody around in the setting whose job it is to intercede in violent activities.
If you have a consistently and radically non-violent Society. Then you have a small group of individuals whose purpose it is to wander around within that and go to where violence is happening. They actually are sent anywhere anytime violence does take place. You're following one of these individuals around on their daily life you will find that the City appears to be incredibly violent even when it is not. Mega City one and the other mega cities on Earth in judge Dredd's fictional universe is depicted as violent because of a matter of perspective. You're following the guys around whose job it is to stop violence so they go to where the violence is.
It's not real,it's fiction.
Perception is everything.
The guys who follow the violence around and make it seem more prevalent than it really is are called "journalists".
@@ravenmad9225 - what he described really happens
@@gives_bad_advice I haven't actually seen many journalists in journalist in judge dread comics movies or anything else.
In our world the journalists follow the violence and try to depict it as fiery but peaceful :) Unless somebody allows a few hippies into a congressional building :( Then it's oh my God it's the end of the world they're revolting they're revolting yeh I know they smell bad but the truth is they're just wandering around being too stoned to look in a straight line without crossing their eyes.
"Massively overpopulated" with 8 billion people, lmfao
I'd figured it as 11 billion standing in residence, with another eight billion visitors that live in the solar system and in orbit. All of that controlled to prevent thermal collapse (AKA climate change).
"After the first year of taking a three hour commute from Gamma Platform, down the beanstalk, and out to Newark you get used to it. There's plenty to do on a factory-bound train."
"Really?"
"Nah! Not without renting a cabin. If ya' know what I mean."
The world *is* massively overpopulated and economically and environmentally unsustainable. IPCC has determined this *as a fact* with data to back it up in their 2014 report.
(More data to back that up: www.overshootday.org/kids-and-teachers-corner/what-is-an-ecological-footprint/ , www.overshootday.org/solutions/population/ ).
911, post-GFC, the rise and rise of China, COVID, global warming, climate change, BLM riots, global Holocene mass extinction, it should be painfully clear and obvious to humankind that American Capitalism is not economically and environmentally sustainable. Everyone is blindly attempting their own personal scheme to cheat death and the world is already a huge uncooperative disorganised mess. We have misled and deluded ourselves to be happy living in our own bs and the world follows self-entitled god complex toxic Amerika down a corrupt subliminally brainwashed internet dopamine addicted narcissistic dark cognitive dissonant Dunning Kruger effect hole in the ground...
Tax the rich! Stop this stonks gambling addicted race the bottom!
Stay safe and good luck!
#BraveNewWorld #BigBrother #aClockworkOrange
Still, with current consumption and pollution rates we are massively over populated.
@@PeterKnagge cope commie
Well China is ultra-capitalista actually
Hats off to the best youtuber in the entire multiverse!
Nah that would be some version of him where he just phased into existence due to random chance and just started talking about quantum physics
@Chris Jones he dis not mention you
@@JohnSmith-gz4fs
This is an OUTRAGE. I demand trial by combat.
Anonymous 27 cough *Simon Whistler* cough lol
4:45 okay I actually breathed a sigh of relief that they only wanted her purse that was really uncomfortable to watch
I did the same.
In my fantasy RPG games, I tend to treat medieval demographics realistically, and my players are always shocked at how many taverns and brothels there actually should be in a realistic medieval city of 20,000.
Quantity really does have a quality all its own. Scale is everything.
Add some television and internet. Those brothel and tavern requirements will drop significantly.
@Nathan Zhang Nothing inherently immoral about either of them. Industry abuse can be tackled by proactive regulation and general customer attitude.
@@classarank7youtubeherokeyb63 Depends on your morality system.
I'm curious can you give us some of those numbers?
What numbers do you use for that?
I think mega cities might be relatively common on exoplanets, bc there isn't a lot of livable space, especially at the start
More than likely. With how difficult it is to actually build a settlement, without all the infrastructure we have today thats easy to take for granted you'd probably start from a few nuclei that sprawled out into large megacities. Especially with the fact you would need to build all your domes/buildings to contain an atmosphere, really incentivizing you to really make use of the space you have.
@@abhiprakash74999 While an O'Neill Cylinder is generally preferable, you'd still probably see hundreds of millions, or billions of people living on planets like Mars and Venus because it's just their preferred lifestyle. Just like we have people who live in urban areas, suburbs, and rural communities. Everyone has their own tastes.
@UCojmOpZOF8a_86BTOHftEkw Sci-fi writers have people live on planets because it's difficult for many writers to depict the sheer scale of a megacity or a McKendree cylinder let alone a banks orbital or topopolis.
Why? If anything, they might spread out more. Any resource problems can be solved by trading.
You need a better infrastructure the more you stack. You don't just need double the oxygen producing machines with double the population, you also need more than double the ventilation, and maybe double the power. Increasing population and infrastructure means increasing your throughput issues, and improving your infrastructure, while incurring development costs. I see cities spreading out more, capped at 1 or 2 Mill at most.
@@abhiprakash74999 true, but my idea is that when people start flying beyond sol, multiple generations had already lived on o'neill cylinders as well as various moons of outer planets, Mars, Ceres etc. Most of these places don't have a lot of resources or/and overcrowded. People with tendency to explore will travel to "strange new worlds where no man has gone before"© and spread news about endless expanse of land or so.
Happy Arthursday everyone
Def a holiday in my house!
THOR’sday ⚡️
I must say episodes like this are what inspired my numbers. In the book I wrote (currently looking for a publisher), I have an ecumenopolis with some eight hundred billion people. It is airy, full of parks and green floors. There can be a lot of people in some popular places, but it isn't hard to find nearly empty city blocks. They are also fed on-location through hydroponics.
I've written similar fiction based on Isaac's works. wiki.travellerrpg.com/Yaskoyloyt_(world) for example: 1 trillion people (over half of them human, but there are also many aliens) on a world slightly smaller than Earth. Granted, a significant chunk of that population lives on a complex of orbital structures, significantly increasing the living area. The setting features FTL travel and some focus on economic effects; that density of population is like a gravitational lens on the nearby interstellar economy.
I watched this channel's Kardashev Scale video and It's crazy to think just how inaccurate most science fiction writing actually is with the numbers.
What exactly are you describing as an Ecumenepolis in terms of the types and sizes of buildings? If you are talking about having super skyscrapers and starscrapers with pyramid shapes and bases that exceed a km height predominating, then one does not have a Ecumenopolis. There will be MUCH MUCH more green space and unoccupied land than there will be any built up space in such a case. Vertical farming, hydroponics, aquaculture, and manufactured meat growing undertaken in such skyscrapers and starscrapers can easily be sustained with the energy necessary to provide the heat, water, and nutrients necessary for their growth and raising via controlled nuclear fusion.
@@AdrianTymes
If one has mastered controlled nuclear fusion power - which also begets a HUGE increase in antimatter production which can be utilized for antimatter power production - then a trillion people on Earth, living mostly in arcologies that are skyscrapers and starscrapers, and every person having lots of living space for themselves, and the Earth being overwhelmingly wilderness with less of a carbon footprint that exists today, is highly plausible.
I wonder what the possible mega-cities of the future will have for people like me, the extreme introverts. I live on about 11 acres, with some woods, with my cats and the racoons and possums and deer that hang out around the house, and the nearest neighbors are hundreds of feet away on other rural properties, so that we go months without running into each other ... and I feel crowded. I grew up overseas, in huge cities, and even worked a few months in Chicago, and loathed being surrounded and packed into places like a bunch of rats in a cage. The very idea of living in some gigantic metropolis with hundreds of people around, nowhere I can just go outside and be utterly alone, makes my flesh crawl.
I hope I don't live to see cities bigger than what we have now. They're already horrible
Marc Melvin: I couldn’t agree more. My cabin sits on 18-1/2 acres at 7000’ above sea level. It’s the county with the lowest population density in the state. Eagles, hawks, elk, mule deer, rabbits, prairie dogs, coyotes, and even the rare wolf or black bear are my usual visitors. The night skies are strewn with diamonds, and the daytime skies are so brilliant that the blue appears artificial. What could a futuristic mega-city offer you or me?
@@alfredsutton7233 that's soooo awesome.. currently saving for land in WNC🙏
Alfred Sutton sounds pretty similar to where I live in Canada but 7000’ is darn high up there
Alfred Sutton you must be very fit living at that height 👍🏻
"Eat recycled food, it's good for the environment and ok for you..."
lol
Sounds like something advertised on the side of a vending bot, a distracting message when your meal is too hot. ;)
I wish the episode "Terrifying Aliens" about how we as humans could scare Aliens ... not the other way around :D
Have them visit a typical kindergarten...when the teacher's not around.
@@amciuam157 I think that it is general problem of the sentience. Tendency to go off norm is source of innovation. So I generally think that humanity overvalue itself in any possible way as for aliens, we most likely would be boring. Especially as most sentient beings would most likely live in the virtual creative hubs, with soft AI managing most of infrastructure.
"No one goes there anymore, its too crowded." - Yogi Berra
If the last few years have taught us anything its that people with very few actual problems will simply invent problems to make their lives more interesting or dramatic. You pack a billion people in a city and the biggest problems you'll have are depression, ennui and boredom. Mega cities like this would have much of their population sedated or on psyche meds or self medicating with booze and drugs, when they weren't joining cults or a mob marching down the street. Sometimes the worst thing you can do is make life too easy for someone. A bunch of lonely, angry, bored people packed together watching robots live their lives for them is a recipe for dystopia. Cities can't just be daycare centers for a useless humanity or they will fail and so will humanity.
lol you make the mistake of forgetting to factor in that we have achieved hive mind status and nobody is a person anymore, just a node in the greate collective intelligence that is the City
The trick is to give their life meaning by building ways for people to challenge and improve themselves as opposed to the world around them. There are probably millions of skills and sources of entertainment people could grind their lives away doing, like sculpting or coding or playing sports.
"Mega city distopia is something for the future"
Detroit left the chat
Detroit isn't a megacity. It's pretty big, and run by mind-mindbogglingly incompetent politicians, but nothing like a megacity.
Me: I want the Aesthetics of Cyberpunk without the Actual Dystopian aspect.
Me in 2020: OH GOD WE ARE ALREADY ON THE PATH TO CYBERPUNK 2077 DYSTOPIA.
Great Video BTW :)
And with none if the Aesthetics!
Its the worst year!
@@allhumansarejusthuman.5776 Unfortunately :(
Sucks.
@Mikhail G is that game good? I'm ready for a neon dystopia escape. IRL I would much rather have the skyscrapers dotting the pristine wilderness.
Rutherford, as Sagan is the only location outside of the "loop." Pretty apparent with a quick visualization.
Yeah, the transport modes were a bit of a red herring.
25:30 Regarding warehouses:
The advantage of warehouses (and cupboards) is that it gives you a buffer against the unexpected. Otherwise if the supply of food drops below demand you end up with no food in the entire city rather quickly.
As we saw earlier this year when demand for goods rose very quickly compared to the supply.
Last time I was this early... Ok I'll shut up
Many thank you
@@TalkingAboutYooh No problem aha
Just wanted to say Thursday is my favorite day of the week because of your videos.
I accidentally grabed a snack and a drink at the beginning of the episode; I didn't notice he DIDN'T tell us to untill he pointed it out, lol.
Ah yes, the conditioning is working. Now for the next step in his plan of world domination.
He can't realistically hope to conquer the world with just a bunch of helpless nerds like us 🙄. So I believe he's just feeding our comments to train an AI in his basement.
Well I'm eating crisps/potato chips. Lol n the picture he used 🥔
Still going to eat my gummi bears, though.
@@gregoryvasilyev9675 he's playing the long game, bobby. the nerdy kids inspired by him will grow up to create things crucial to daily life and they will also be inherently pro IA, it wouldn't take much for him to sway them to his side.
although he's probably just going to bring the lot and bugger off into space to make dyson swarms than getting stuck in a ball of dirt.
Large cities are displayed as dystopias because large cities generally suck to live in today. The cost of living makes it rather unpleasant for anyone who isn't pulling a six-figure income
Erm…..no? I've lived in London and enjoyed it and I certainly wasn't making six figures. Loads of people love living in cities, including me.
@@neshirst-ashuach1881 a lot of that sentiment is for *US* cities. They tend to be horrid compared to their European equivalent.
@@DFX2KX Iv'e never visited the USA so I couldn't really say but I can guarantee that its not a problem all cities have.
@@DFX2KX There are cities that don't need a six-figure income to live well. Sacramento, for example, is one of those. I was Googling costs of living in major cities. Sacramento isn't the cheapest, but cities are generally more expensive than other areas. I think for housing, the average cost was about $300,000. Compare that to San Francisco: $1.5 million.
Or maybe my mind automatically thought of a million because I think of that as six-figure territory. Though I guess the hundreds of thousands range is six numbers. Or is the six-figurers term just referring to the number of zeroes?
@@albertjackinson sacremento isnt a big city. Population was only 500k for perspective thats pretty similar to kansas city or omahaw Nebraska.
I love this channel. As a New Yorker who lives near the top at one of the city's tallest high-rise residential buildings, I think about these things all the time. Even at my level, the water pressure can be an issue, & elevators are both a blessing & a curse. If they go too fast, people don't like it & can get nauseous. If they go too slow, people feel anxious. My building has grass & trees in "yards" at certain levels that have outdoor space. We also have a roof where there is entertainment, sports fitness classes, a restaurant/ snack bar, etc. There are downsides to living at the top of a high-rise, like the length of time it takes to get out if there is an emergency. However, it's also very safe with great security & a community. The main reason I choose this location is bc I have fairly severe allergies & allergic asthma, & living in a highrise improves our respiratory health, bc allergens decrease dramatically as you go higher.
Isaac, you forgot the thousands of psychers that need to be sacraficed to keep the Emperor's warp flashlight on.
The Emperor protects!
Indeed, Issac might be on the very cusp of heresy! But his content is great, so I won't tell any Inquisitors if you won't! :)
@@munstrumridcully HERESY!
And no, its Aspec
The most evocative imagery I can remember for a mega-city is Stand on Zanzibar, where a domed over New York City is covered with a constant drizzle of condensed human sweat.
I love much of Brunner's work. Re-reading "Meeting at Infinity" right now, in fact.
Happy Arthur's day!
earth overpopulated by 8 billion people?
Man that's a lot, I didn't know Asimov made up such extreme ideas in some of his books. What a madman.
He also wrote a short story where people had machines on their desks which could tap into some sort of global data base of knowledge. That'll be the day.
@@hueyiroquois3839 And I remember Arthur C Clarke's book, City under the stars where they had this supercomputer one billion years in the future that was so advanced, if you asked for a name or some info from its data base, it took it only an hour to go through data and give you an answer! Imagine a search engine on a computer that fast!
Unreal!
@@maan7715 Man I hope future people aren't going to throw shade at us for underestimating technological advancements.
@@Alexander-tu3iv hope they will. That just means we'll get stuff done faster than we expected today. That's good!
@Nathan Zhang Yeah, but Google isn't looking through a Billion years worth of data!
Re: Recycling literally everything -- The Zimmerman Wet Oxidation process. Basically an ultra autoclave that also acts like an incinerator. It pretty much reduces anything organic to water and oxides of elements. It's even exothermic, so you just have to get rid of or use the waste heat. This solves sewage, much of the garbage, and mortuary logistics.
stcredzero
😯...So-🤔So why isn’t this widespread?
stcredzero
🤨-*OTOH*-Who doesn’t see this _possibly_ inspiring a scene in a Gangland/Mobster film?
@@Sedgewise47 Autoclaves and other high pressure devices are expensive, even when they're countertop sized. There are tons of way cheaper ways to dispose of stuff. Basically, it's not widespread because we don't have space colony closed ecosystems yet. Zimmerman wet oxidation -- when you absolutely, positively have to recycle EVERYTHING!
Whoa
I checked out the basics, and there's another, slightly different process that does almost the same thing, called Super-Critical Water Oxidation. You have to get the slurry up above the critical point of water (which is slightly higher in temperature and pressure than is the normal range for the Zimmerman process) and then you inject oxygen. The result is a complete oxidation of the contents of the system. Useless for what Zimmerman was trying to do (he was looking for process chemistry, not pure waste conversion) but not too bad if you've got lots of energy kicking around and you want to reduce your waste to the simple chemicals you can (mostly) just pour into the hydroponics system as plant feed. Not worth it on the large scale on Earth at this time, but probably really good for space colonies.
>has a wormhole and spaceships
>sorry, the airports closed
Beautiful world building Issac
Considering how disorderly, dirty and dysfunctional so many of our cities in the world are today, methinks that megacities may be not a particularly good idea.
1:30 ngl that 8 billion bit got me, really made me think "wait... 8 billion???" weird knowing were so close to that.
ya or if you watch a movie from 20 years ago or whatever and they say "earth has 6 billion people"
@@nymeriagloves3957 How crazy will it be when life extension comes out and there is a sudden burst in the world population not due to births but to people no longer dying. That first decade is going to be weird while people adjust to the fact that the population just exploded even in developed nations. The doomsayers are going to have a heyday. Most of the people that I run into have the mentality that 9 or 10 billion is just too much and everyone's going to starve at those numbers, and the better ones I run into freak out when I suggest the possibility of life extension cuz they have found some (twisted?) comfort that between now and 2100 more people will die than will be born.
@Albert Westings I see you are in this hole too? Peko
@@zachsquach ayy one of my people... das peko
@@zachsquach the hell rly and the last bit is kinda insane to think about, the only way i see the latter happening is if there's gonna be multiple intense minor wars or a few major wars... or another world war then nuclear war, buter overall bar that happening i dont see the latter bit of your comment happening.
i literally just woke up, opened my 3D modeling software, and got back to work on a megacity project minutes before going to youtube to find something to listen to while I work, and found this in my subscriptions. very good timing, man.
my city's main issue i'm trying to figure out right now is transportation. it's a space colony inside of a ring that is double-sided, so you have a city on the ground and one on the ceiling. the aliens that build it have the tech to manipulate gravity easily so i figured that could be their main mode of transport? most vehicles don't have engines, it's just a matter of falling in the direction you want to go. these folks gotta be immune to vertigo for this to work lol
Sooooo, this guy is incredible if you're a scifi writer. My book's city just came to life in my head watching this. Thanks man!!!
Judge Dredd, not even a minute in, I'm happy.
The Dredd movie was hella good. I Wish it was still streaming for free.
ISAAC: Your videos are helping me keep my sanity, no lie, no joke. I'm hurting so badly right now. You are helping me. Thank you so fucking much. You'll never know how much you will have helped so many, just describing possible positive futures. Even the shit ones. Your voice is soothing, and your content is amazing. Thank you. May whatever deities you feel for Bless you.
As for your content here, we will engineer buildings to grow, using tree and food plant DNA. The tree buildings will absorb our wastes, and grow new rooms and homes, as well as producing Plant Based food literally within every person's home. I'm an Aspie. I see this. It will happen.
Hmm. That's pretty trippy.
I think my favourite thing about 40k Hive Cities is the recycling. The Underhive is clogged with ten thousand years worth of industrial refuse, with ancient hab-domes and industrial blocks now crushed by the weight of the Hive above. Time and pressure has produced new resources from ancient waste, meaning that there are legitimate interests looking to mine, refine and export these materials up-Hive.
Note the elevator conundrum is solvable with more modern "3D" cable less elevators. Ones that drive up and down or side to side in travel shafts, but slide off onto "docking pads" where they dock to the doors. They have been prototyped by big elevator makers, but so far no buyers.
You could in a mega city not only use this for getting around in a mega building, but if the elevators were a municipal Standard, you could go all over the Megacity. Essentially PRT modules ( or standardized personal cars ) rapidly taking you all over to any floor dock, in any building, throughout the city. Or the city sized equivalent or Star Trek Federation "Turbolifts".
I can see lighting, especially present sunlight like lighting, could be a limit on the city height/density. Heat and air can be pumped around, but huge floors of low one story height areas, especially with no natural like lighting. Though obviously a mega city doesn't reall need in anyway to be a huge Borg hive. More towers, or pyramids with factories, vertical farms, shopping, theater districts in the core, with terraces of parks and apartments on the surfaces, would do better and be easier to build and refit.
Of course this assumes our current low birth rates ( far to low to sustain global population ) don't increase, or life expectancies grow.
I, for one, welcome my albino mutant cannibal overlords.
*Underlords.
He has to visit Rutherford twice, since Sagan is not connected to any city but Rutherford.
Isaac : "Note that I did not suggest you get a drink and a snack at the start"
Us : "It's treason , then"
Humans: Builds forest into buildings
Mosquito's: *It's free free real estate*
Bird: it's free lunch
Cats: what the bird said
Why mosquitos lol. They need water for reproduction (laying eggs)
@@redhidinghood9337 Note that there are two major groups of mosquitoes that target humans one lay their eggs in water directly these are host to the malaria parasites and West Nile Virus the other lays their eggs next to the water or in areas which periodically fill up with water and these are immune to malaria but are host to lots of mosquito born viruses like Dengue, Yellow Fever, Chikungunya and Zika among others
@@redhidinghood9337 trees need water to grow. A hydroponics or garden facility with lax anti pest protocols could be an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. However, it would also be a good place to introduce some small birds to provide pest control and a little bit of supplemental fertilizer.
@@davidthomas2870 Gardens and simmilar stuff is sprayed with pesticides easily and mosquitos need a calm water like a lake or a slow spring/river, not something thats circulating all the time
Have you watched The Expanse? If so what do you think about it?
31:19 He needs to visit Rutherford twice
Pascal - Qurra - Tesla - Rutherford - Sagan - Rutherford - Pascal.
But which mode of travel does he take between each stop?
@Nathan Zhang Teleportation doesn't exist between all the cities, only some
Trick question. He has to visit Rutherford and Pascal twice. Because if he started and ended in Pascal, he went their twice.
@@vodrake
Well it was already said he wanted to go back to Pascal, so that doesn't count as he started there too.
Your right.
5:22 I think there is a body in there~!
I thought the same thing, and the trash collector didn't even question the bags weight and awkward response to being moved😬✔️ -😂🍻
24:47 Issac my friend you forget that megacities probably would have some type of mass transit system anyway. Because having to keep track of that many cars would probably get problematic.
He visits Rutherford twice....
Pascal Vacuum to
Quarra Airship to
Tesla Wormhole to
Rutherford Spaceship to
Sagan Wormhole to
Rutherford Spaceship to
Pascal
The problem was a little disappointing in the end because the existence of the different modes of transport was irrelevant. (I was expecting some complication like "the traveller can't use any mode of transport more than once" or "must use each mode at least once" or "cannot use mode X because of a phobia". But that would have required more connectivity and/or more modes of transport.) Ah well.
In the end it's obvious that S is only connected to R, so R is the only one that must be visited at least twice.
There are, technically speaking, an infinite number of possible paths because loops are possible and there's no upper limit on the number of times the traveller can visit each city before returning home. (Eg: P->Q->T->R->S->R->T->R->T->R->T->R->T->Q->P)
@@jon_j__ I felt similarly, was a bit disappointed to realize that the actual modes of transport are just a distraction. This answer is correct and can also be done in reverse, P>R>S>R>T>Q>P.
Perhaps it's a trick question? You don't have to go to any twice.
You start out in Pascal, take vacuum train to Qurra, fly to Tesla, wormhole to Rutherford, wormhole to Sagan, and from Sagan you take a spaceship to Pascal because both can operate spaceships and a spaceship, unlike a wormhole or vacuum train, can go to multiple locations?
@@Druidjezus That's my thought. Tesla is the only city that doesn't have spaceships so you can easily do a round trip without going to any city twice if you assume the spaceships don't have to travel fixed routes.
@@Druidjezus I pretty much just eyeballed it once I realized how many links included Rutherford.
“Without science, everything is a miracle.”
-- Lawrence Krauss
Without miracles, everything is science. -RomanceR
@@pyroromancer As it should be
@@pyroromancer And with science we can make more miracles come true than any god.
... but with science you create miracles
@@EliasMheart and then you can mass produce them to make everybody's life better instead of a few people here and there.
He visits Rutherford twice, Sagan is only connected to Rutherford so he will have to start and return to Rutherford to visit Sagan.
Given the general content of this video, why is it when you talk about O'Neill Cylinders you talk about their population being thousands? In the standard old-fashioned 5-mile-diameter by 20-mile-long design, the area of that cylinder is 314.16 square miles, which is more than New York City's 302.6. Wouldn't the population easily be millions? If a person needs 400 square feet of space to feel comfortable you could devote 10% of that area to 10-story-tall apartment buildings (still .99g at the top floor, if a commercial story is 14 feet/a bit less than 5 meters) and house almost 22 million people, leaving 90% for roads, paths, greenspace, commercial, light industrial, etc. It's hard to find good hydroponic estimates online but depending on how you designed the endcaps of those cylinders there should be ample space to grow food for that many.
Not me personally, but some people like the dense crowded energy of big cities and since we're exporting culture into space as well as people I can see large populations in more urbanized cylinders.
One problem with O’Neil cylinders is that artificial “gravity” becomes weaker the higher up you go. A super tall structure within the cylinder would properly have weaker gravity at the top than the bottom, something that would likely cause some issues. However that doesn’t rule out a totally urbanised cylinder without any open space safe for a few parks or the like. If the habitat is just a giant structure why have buildings like we do on earth, would probably be easier to just build homes and other facilities into the structure itself rather than having buildings.
@@setlerking just skip the gravity. It sucks for mobility and limits size and expandability, and by the time you build them on mass your bioengineering tech should be more than enough.
@@setlerking The varying artificial gravity thing, that's a feature, not a bug.
You'll always have the option to build higher, or lower, depending on whether you're looking for a higher or lower g environment, that's great. It's especially great because it's not really harder to build laterally, you can always make the cylinder longer, infinitely if you really want to.
AntaresMC I doubt people would willingly give up having a body capable of sustaining itself under any significant gravity. Gravity is needed for many things, the downsides of an environment with gravity vs one without is not imo great enough to justify skipping it.
@@setlerking there are plenty of things that can be produced in the lower gravity areas. Food production and oxygen production would also need room but the biggest issue is still heat generation. Then you have a lot of space in space so it would be better to make more cylinders and spread out population.
I learned today that the Earth has 7.8 billion people.
I need to get back to nuclear energy activism.
We need more people. You can’t power 8 billion people with windmills and solar panels. You can power a trillion with nuclear.
I hope you mean pro-nuclear not anti.
@@JayVal90 especially as technology improves and we get access to better fossile deposits
@@JayVal90 Only not one milliard people living in the what-will-soon-be the former United States.
@@Gnefitisis Yeah Nuclear is probably the only long term scalable baseload power with sufficient energy density to support larger population densities but the long build time means it can't reasonably be built at the needed scale without revolutionary new technologies. and probably then only in conjunction with green renewables.
Also I find it sadly ironic that the Petroleum industry due to extracting most natural gas and oil deposits from beneath concentrated salt domes actually produce more radioactive waste than all nuclear incidents combined the salt brine from wells and fracking is on average more radioactive than the reactor core in Chernobyl. Fossil fuels basically have stoked the public fear of the dangers of radioactivity as an excuse to make Nuclear technology uncompetitive, but through their lobbying prevented similar measures being applied to "naturally concentrated radioactivity" effectively creating one of the saddest hypocrisies and starkest levels of corruption. Nuclear reactor waste which is 5 to 15 picocuries per liter is carefully contained while the Fossil fuel lobby's control of governments ensures they can freely sell extremely radioactive radium contaminated salts as road salt for deicing. (Also yes that salt. stay the hell away from road salt brine as a lot of that is contaminated with high radium concentrations in brines which have been measured at over 7000 picocuries per liter nearly over 500 times excess of the legal radioactive waste limit! Not only do fossil fuels burn extreme amounts of carbon they also release extreme amounts of radioactive waste per day where that amount of waster per day alone makes the total radiation from Chernobyl and Fukashima look like a joke in comparison.
Funny enough I'm watching this for my fantasy world building
Clark's Third Law applies.
dropdead234 Star Wars is Sci-fi fantasy, so it’s not like the two are mutually exclusive
Nathan Zhang The Space Opera is great, and I was mainly commenting on the Clarke’s three laws comments
@Nathan Zhang Science fantasy is a poorly explored genre which realistically is where pretty much any series with FTL probably belongs since there is growing evidence that space is more likely to be a byproduct of causality (i.e. experiments have shown locality can be violated in quantum systems but as long as causality isn't violated in quantum systems)
This is both fascinating and depressing so if we can't have FTL in real life why not allow fantasy magic elements along with it filling space with cosmic elementals and magical stars and planets? Space dragons naturally fit in perfectly in a space opera setting. ;)
@Nathan Zhang No that doesn't apply to the laws of physics physics only resolves better detail on the laws of nature.
Though technically it is hypothetically possible to try and change the laws of physics by reheating the Universe to the conditions prior to the "big bang" or quantum tunneling into a different metastable state of the Universe but that would be very very bad and likely would likely result in vacuum decay ending the Universe.
In fact according to some potential models for the so called "theory of everything"(a bit pretentious I know) they suggest that the "big bang" was really a phase transition to a finite speed of light which made the existence of atoms possible. Regardless even if that isn't true were FTL possible it likely would enable vacuum decay to propagate faster than the speed of light eliminating the universe so since I like you know actually existing I think we should not try to change the laws of physics even if it were possible....
Remember that according to the standard model and observations of the top quark and Higgs boson if the Higgs field was in its ground state all of the universe would collapse into a singularity incapable of supporting structure.
Our universe is a metastable state which enables atoms chemistry stars and planets to exist to change the laws of physics is to reroll the dice on the laws of nature with most states collapsing to the ground state of eternal nothingness. We don't want this outcome to occur ever. 0_o
Ha! Simple ... if he wants to start at Pascal, visit other cities and then end at Pascal. The city he'll DEFINITELY find himself in twice will be Pascal.
There's plenty of space for everybody, and no mutant cannibal need go hungry. Truly utopian.
As someone who chose many years ago to leave a large city and relocate to a rural area, I confess that even the utopian view of the mega-city is horrifying.
Still; great video, as always.👍
I know that it may be unimaginable, but the latest development shows that cities are not really necessary. If communication between people and automation of work will evolve why we would sit in the same area? What are the reasons that people flock to single area? Could those reasons disappear in the future?
Short term... maybe? But if the Earth's population continues to grow larger and larger... where will they all live if they don't live close together in cities? As I see it, if they do not live in densely packed megacities, then they'd either have to migrate away from Earth to live in space (or on colonies), or they would have to live underground or underwater.
@@XpaceTrue First of all it is misconception that population grow over norm. In realty population correspondent to infrastructure what grow vastly over time. Plus he is somewhat correct. In the past people move to cities in search of work and utilities, but growth in communication cause opposite effects, with rise of the sub-urbia. Still most people forget that it is more that cities grow outside, more then high as utilities are now more accessible.
If humans were cold blooded, could that mean a higher limit for the heat problem ?
If humans were cold-blooded, we'd need more heating to stay comfortable, so it would probably be the same. Cold-blooded animals tend to become sluggish and stop moving when it's cold.
@@Wambueducation but we would need much less food, and even oxygen
@@Wambueducation The real issue probably comes in cognitive function brains don't work as well for ectotherms since brains tend to take a lot of energy to maintain more than a ectotherm can reasonably supply. People often forget that there is a metabolic budget for organic organisms and metabolism is the amount you have to budget in the first place. Cutting endothermy means cutting the metabolic budget so the amount of brain you can support is much less largely because brains like computers generate a lot of waste heat that can cause problems if an organism doesn't have some way to expel it. This is probably a big factor in why people are cognitively sharper in cooler environments as the brain overheats more easily in warmer conditions limiting cognitive function
Ectotherms can compensate by turning activity in their brains up or down as needed and available which enables them to be fairly smart when they need to be but that is on a demand basis and is quite limited to their environment. Lacking thermoregulation i.e. body temperature control is very bad for extended activity such as you know complex thinking there probably is a way to make it work but most of those solutions would be pushing against the boundary we consider ectothermy or coldbloodedness. most smart animals are quite differently structured with a more decentralized system, endothermic and or mesotherms which focus on maintaining a constant body temperature for their nervous system.
Because "cold blooded animals lack means to regulate their body temperature they struggle to cool off or warm up and thus are far more vulnerable to heat limits.
"And for show regulars, note that I did not suggest a drink and a snack at the start of the episode." He says as I'm literally in the middle of my lunch.
Love the content, and I love that there’s not an advert every few minutes. Cheers 🤙
Its great to see you making content on cities! Big fans for a long time ! We should make a video together
great content!
I'll take a giant pass on living in any 'mega' city...
Woah, so this video was made in Octobet 2020, and he said "we're expected to hit 8 billion [world population] by 2023". But I'm watching this in February 2022 and we already 8 billiona few weeks ago! Crazy
Thanks as always, Isaac. You really have a knack for putting things in perspective with your very practical "scaling" that you do on a regular basis!
One book that hit me was David Weber's Empire of Man series. In it, DC is the capitol of an empire of several hundred world empire with FTL. The old Congressional Bunker under the Greenbriar resort in southern West Virginia is a secret base under a warehouse, lost in the vast urban sprawl.
Yeah great series . Another great book on this topic is "Chasm City", by Alastair Reynolds, cannot forget The Canopy with Zebra, The Mulch, The Palanquins , The Volantors, the Dream Fuel and -in this year context- The Melding Plague.
WE LOVE YOU ISAAC
I honestly don't know how many cars would be in a super-sized city. Public transport is the lifeblood of walkable town plans. Build an attractive town square around a train station and surround the town square with shops and services. (The town square can be underground, a nice designed shopping mall, or a rooftop garden as long as it functions the same way.) It immediately becomes a vibrant local place of work, rest, and play. Unlike oversized suburban Mega-malls a 20 minute drive away (plus parking time!), local town squares are a 5 minute walk away. Unlike an oversized shopping mall servicing the 300,000 people from many suburbs around, town squares service the local 15,000 people. Instead of being oversized and alienating, they are intimate and community creating. They provide most of the weekly shopping needs for the local walking distance neighbourhoods. There are many benefits. It decreases car use - and makes towns livable without a car. This has benefits for the poor. It decreases the size of our cities down to 20% or 10% of today's suburban sprawl. It decreases our carbon emissions, traffic jams, loneliness, environmental impact, and even the size of our waistlines! Studies and videos here.
eclipsenow.wordpress.com/rezone/
10:00 or so ... thanks for mentioning the elevator problem .... having to pay extra to get out of your appartment is a real dystopia
Great invention - the toll elevator
He must visit Rutherford twice.
There are two solutions:
Pascal - Qurra - Tesla - Rutherford - Sagan - Rutherford - Pascal
Or, you could reverse it and get:
Pascal - Rutherford - Sagan - Rutherford - Tesla - Qurra - Pascal
I forgot where the start was and examined the problem more generally. You have to visit Rutherford at least twice no matter where you start, and three times if you start there (start, end, and as a stop between it and Sagan, Tesla, or Pascal).
@@Roxor128 I drew a graph of the problem and analysed it from there. Totally unnecessary for this particular case but this style of problem usually becomes easier when you do.
@@garret1930 That's what I did, too. Actually, it was the only approach I could think of.
@@Roxor128 you can force your way through the logic purely abstractly. Since we are told that we must visit only one of the cities more than once, we can just search for which cities have more or less than two connections, whichever one is connected to the one with one connection must be the one we visit more than once.
Regarding elevators, prior to the invention of optical fiber, as commercial use of computers grew in the 1960s-70's, many of the older buildings in NYC, specifically the Empire State Building, started taking elevators out of service so that they could hang electronic riser cable to connect the growing number of computers on each floor. The prime driver for the invention of optical fiber was long-haul communications, but when fiber became available, its first big application was risers in NYC. Suddenly the old buildings could get all of their elevators back in service.
Rutherford. The only place Sagan connects to is Rutherford, and to visit Sagan, that means two stops in Rutherford (once on the way there, and once on the way back(.
It seems like a DLC for Stellaris.
Megacorp?
My answer to your question: I'm gonna stay home inside my nuclear- and zombie-proof bunker :-p
BTW: I just went to Amazon after watching your video and pre-ordered that movie you recommended: 2067. Is that where you got the clip of those zombies slowly climbing those stairs? That one zombie girl was kind'a cute :-p
Am i the only one hoping for a bio-mass converter system for the issue of the dead? It makes sense to strip out the carbon and useful materials, using the rest to fill storage tanks and using the waste as compost. Also the large mega cities, eugomonopolis' and floating cities would be used in tandem to make use of the most amount of space while keeping nature functional enough to produce air with a heavy recycling effort focused on reducing pollution in air, land and sea. Results: damn near perfect habitation for multiple worlds and given the experience aquired and accumulated, settling other worlds will be made much easier.
Talking about cities built on top of older structures makes me think about the Pioneer Square area of Seattle. At one point the city decided to make the second story of that area become the first story. The streets were raised and in some areas filled in with dirt. So counting basements some buildings in that area have two to four stories below ground. There are tunnels and even old streets under what you currently see. The homeless have found there way down there to create underground communities.
The answer is Rutherford. Simplifying, Rutherford is the only place with three links, all the others have two. The modes of transport are irrelevant, only the nodes and connections matter.
Now the fun bit, based on the modes of transport you gave. (I'm referenceing Larry Niven's Known Space setting)
Since Qurra and Tesla have aircraft, they're on a habitable planet. Since they only have air travel the surface between them must be impassable. Pascal and Rutherford are each physically connected to one of the surface cities, but use only spaceships between them, meaning they're in space. Sagan is the odd one out, connected only by spaceship and wormhole gate.
Qurra and Tesla are the major cities on either a Jinx type world (a highly oblate world where the equator is uninhabitable to to dense atmosphere and the poles are in near vacuum, with two habitable bands between them) or a Plateau type world (a Venus-like world with high mountains that reach up into the habitable layer of atmosphere). Each is in a different habitable band or on a different mountain.
Pascal and Rutherford are space colonies, connected to Qurra and Tesla respectively by space elevators with vacuum trains running through them. On a Jinx world, most probably a moon orbiting a gas giant, they'd be at the L1 and L2 points, possibly using multiple tethers to equalise the off centre space elevator.
Sagan is on a separate moon, planet or free flying asteroid colony, probably for resource extraction.
Tesla is the capital, and probably them most populous and high status. Simple physics says a wormhole generator is going to be more energy expensive than a space ship. The wormhole portal provides instant transport for a premium price. Primarily professional services, education (Ivy League university), finance and possibly some low volume, high tech manufacturing.
Qurra is the major manufacturing and industrial centre, and has it's own orbital spaceport. Shuttles are slower and cheaper than wormholes, but faster and more expensive than the space elevator vac trains, which are relatively slow but very cheap. It supplies Tesla with most of it's consumer goods by air transport, possibly zeppelins rather than jet aircraft.
Both cities also transport bulk cargo and economy class passengers via the vac tube space elevator to and from space.
Pascal is the major receiving centre and orbital space port for raw materials to supply Qurra. It uses low thrust, cheap orbital transports, maybe using light or laser sails to ferry large volumes of cargo. These can only really operate in orbit, not deep space. It probably has some in-vacuo manufacturing of it's own.
Rutherford is the main orbital spaceport for the system, acting as a transhipment centre between Sagan and Pascal. It's probably also a resort, with high end luxury leisure complexes and docks for private space yachts. It is the centrepoint for the wormhole network, allowing you to travel from Tesla to Sagan in minutes. Lower levels recieve the interplanetary/cislunar cargo freighters from Sagan and transfer materials to the orbital haulers.
Sagan is a giant mining colony. It supplies the raw materials. It must also have at least a few private retreats for the wealthy, effectively summer homes.
You have the right answer but for a wrong reason. The reason Rutherford is passed twice is because Sagan is in a dead end connected only to it, the fact that Rutherford has the most connections is irrelevant.
@@goncalovazpinto6261 I thought that was implicit in what I said.
Though thinking on it, you have a point. If Tesla connected to Pascal rather than Rutherford, Pascal would be the only one with three connections, but to do the walk, you would have to pass through both Pascal and Rutherford twice, despite Rutherford having only two nodes.
So my blithe initial statement was wrong, or at least incomplete.
I made a drawing and the dead end nature of Sagan was immediately apparent, if Tesla connected to Pascal in addition to it's original connections, it would have been tied with Rutherford for most connections and still Rutherford would be the right answer. I guess being one of the most connected cities could be considered a "second tier" condition to being the one passed twice, but the clincher would still be that it was the only one connecting to Sagan.
That was a good balanced presentation, on par with the awesomeness of this channel. The fact of my own more optimistic vision of the future notwithstanding, we do have to keep in mind the potential pitfalls. People didn't think Detroit of 1980 could possibly become Detroit of today during their lifetime, either, which is most of why it has. Nothing is invulnerable to corruption and incompetence.
However, I'd like to put in a voice and a couple solutions to the troubles shown here, starting with the projection of infinite population growth:
For one, the population curve is not exponential or infinite. It's adaptive. The only real reason we have population growth on earth even today is because of the influence of bronze-age irrational fertility cults like some factions of Christianity and Islam that suppress women's rights and over-encourage their members to try to fuck everyone else out of existence.
As these religious sects continue to lose influence over society and politics, and as per capita income and life choices in the control of women increases anyway, the earth's population as seen elsewhere has already flatlined or started to decrease. The current projections for break-even population is between 10-15 billion.
With increased confidence in the survival of their children, women do not create overpopulations. They just don't. Instead, they concentrate on developing improved opportunities for advancement for the 1-3 kids they do have. That's just the statistical facts. Having an overabundance of basic needs available does not change this behavior. In fact, it reinforces it.
When food and physical survival cease to be the primary competing/limiting factors, they also cease to become the prestigious ones. Competition moves to more subtle factors like education, social influence, fashionability, spare income, etc, which are better served by having a smaller family that can concentrate their efforts per child.
Then let's move on to the megapolis drawbacks. I think the solution here is to defeat inefficiencies of scale with modularity:
I'll agree that if you make cities and even individual buildings to that kind of maximum possible engineering scale presented in the episode, you're going to have issues. The way to beat that is to find the balance of economic scales on the small side of the margin, and space them out across the landscape.
Let's say you can make a building 10-20 stories high that takes up a half of a city block, that can feed and recycle for itself. You can put one of those on each block, or even every other block to allow other diversities, leaving 50% green space and still providing more housing and business/shopping per area than the average of a current city.
Just require that each design have a comfortable minimum floorspace per inhabitant for residential floors, sufficient on-site parking for itself (underground preferred), produce calories of farming equal to the residential population, and self-sufficiency in energy and recycling. Yes, you could do that today by having in-building/floor zones instead of blocks-area city zones.
This would increase local business/service/goods availability. You would shop, get your hair done, get most of your food & restaurants, etc, right on your own block or one nearby, rather than driving miles to specialized districts. This would radically reduce traffic and shipping burdens on the roadways. It's just a matter of proportioning.
Consider the life of an average city dweller then. You would have, say, 100 m2 of living space per person. The episode thought that was tight, but that's over a 3000 sq ft townhouse for a couple with 1 child! In most modern countries, that's already considered excessive. You would have food, shops and services from a dozen such buildings within a few minute walk or bike. Produce and utilities would be extremely cheap, with renewable electric nearly free.
The magic of this limited-size modularity is that people would have a sensible number of direct neighbors that they would actually know, like small-town safety in the big city. "Street" crime or gang formation would be easily countered by security measures, and the whole building is small enough to be contained and controlled by security/police in the event of some kind of criminal incident.
A side effect of this would be to reduce people's dependence on government for their needs and security. A mostly self-sufficient building can deal with its needs and issues a lot easier than some distant government that is more corruptible and has vested interests elsewhere. Each building would be a bit like a little Swiss canton looking out for its own well-being.
Well, that's my story for the day. No one has to read it, but I enjoyed projecting it. It's basically a version of Lao Tzu's "small paradise" for modern times, and it would house the likely maximum population of earth in efficient spaces. I don't know that we'll do it, but we could, and at least a few will, and it could be as wonderful as a clean slate can be.
" influence of bronze-age irrational fertility cults" Making evolutionary highly adaptive decisions, just with odd justification seems quite rational to me. Side note: both Christianity and Islam are actual from iron age.
"earth's population as seen elsewhere has already flatlined or started to decrease" Under assumption that only cultural factors are in game and genetics is not relevant. If we lift this assumption, then in plain language we experience a strong evolutionary pressure in favour of heavy K strategy (plain language: likes children) and ability to maintain a highly traditional mindset even when facing affluent society. As far as I remember the models, if one factors, as the West first entered demographic transition, so the West should have first rebound, already before the end of this century.
"Competition moves to more subtle factors like education, social influence, fashionability, spare income, etc, which are better served by having a smaller family that can concentrate their efforts per child." At the end of the day, as long as maintain anything resembling democracy, then sheer numbers matter. As they say demography is the destiny.
@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 I dated the Abrahamic traditions from their claims of origin and authority, which puts both deriving from the Torah or the Old Testament and similar patriarchal/heroic tales. Those books and stories are carryovers from bronze-age Mesopotamia.
Job dates to 1500bc, Proverbs is from a Hittite or Assyrian translation of the Egyptian "Book of the Ruler" from 800-1100bc, and Exodus events are set before or contemporary with the time of the tin shortage around 1200bc. Noah's flood is basically a retelling/resetting from as far back as Gilgamesh, and could arguably be based on a folk memory from the Younger Dryas inundation thousands of years earlier.
I've heard debates on when various regions hit the iron age, but the Mediterranean certainly was still in the bronze age until some time after the Minoan collapse and the Homeric setting. The oldest iron weapon I've heard of from the region was a singular specimen from around 700bc, and it was unusual for its time. Iron-working existed earlier for base tools, but it didn't dominate technologically until... well, the Roman Empire was still driven by bronze.
+ + + + +
As for the effectiveness of raw reproduction to maintain political control, that is debatable. Given the vast withdrawal in both piety and absolute membership from these religions in the last century, it would seem that the life of ideas can spread and change attitudes faster than new humans can be produced traditionally, especially in this mass-communications era.
In other words, it takes 20 years to raise a fundamentalist, but they can realize how stupid it is in 20 minutes. This generation is loaded with people who were "raised XXX-religion but believe in progressive values" like equal/personal rights, democracy, and ecological sustainability.
@@animistchannel2983 OK, if you look by claimed origin, then at least from Bronze Age, if not from the moment universe was created ;)
More seriously. "raw reproduction" - this one would indeed be a lost case for more traditionalist people. Just we're dealing here with evolutionary pressure - in order to pass genes it is beneficial to be religious/traditionalist. So as reproductive rate of secular people is below replacement rate, we're effectively watching evolution of "super-creationists" in action. Whichever genes (including even slightly lower IQ, this feature is also selected against) make one more likely to maintain such mindset, would be more popular in next generation, even though each generation would be hit by heavy attrition rate.
"believe in progressive values" Sort of. Just there is an emerging phenomena of people who were brought up in much more progressive mindset but lost faith in it and right now are so called "red-pilled".
@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 Ooh, thanks, I had heard the phrase "red pill" lately, but hadn't heard what it referred to. At this wack-a-doodle point in politics across the spectrum, I think a lot of people are wishing they could wake up out of the simulation :)
@@animistchannel2983 More precise definition would be "a fancy term for learning a few pieces of information that undermine left wing position in a way that changes worldview". For example many of those position are built on implicit assumption that effectively all differences between humans have purely social origin and there are no underlying biological differences.
"Hug the cyber gators" that should be on some merch
One thing about the area in a city. If a city has 20 km2 of actuall floor space on the first story but the average building is 10 stories tall you actually have approaching 200 km2 of floor space in the same footprint.
When you have gangs of tens or hundreds of thousands of members each, are they really gangs anymore or are they micronations? I can't help but feel like the scale would inherently change how things operate especially as you mentioned how viable it is to grow enough mushrooms for sustenance in the "underhive" as it were. It seems to me like it would end up being outcast communities rather than full on violent gangs at that point.
Well there was ones Pirate fleet of 82000 pirates in the 1800's .....Ching Shih
@@hannofrerichs8133 A pirate fleet is not a gang.
@@Shenaldrac Robbin...rapin...murderin. Sometimes by government decree....they're a fuckin gang!
@@wolfvale7863 Nnnnope. If you can't see the difference in skill, organization, minimum requirement of something of value (a gang needs nothing, pirates need a ship which is a costly thing to acquire and maintain, and also requires a ton of skill to work) between some street gang made up of disenfranchised youths and a group of pirates then I don't know what to tell you.
Or let me put it another way. A dozen thugs with a couple pistols can forma gang. That same group could not be an effective pirate crew.
@@Shenaldrac Gee lets see.....drug smuggling by plane, boat, submarine. Outsmarting authorities at every turn. Laundering the money... Sailing is not that difficult, or a skill that is required by all members. How many pirates does it take to drive an Escalade? Seems you like to split hairs and must always be right.
We gotta run run run to the cities of the future.
Take what we can and bring it back home
NO NO NO NO
Packing people into slums where no one has financial mobility creates crime.
The one thing I can DEFINITELY say about such a developed city is that wealth inequality there would make the gap between the guy working the fries at McDonalds and the CEO of McDonalds look like their each other's acquaintances lol
"In that novel Earth is horribly overpopulated with 8 billion people"
.....
Well...
so during my lifetime, the Earth's population has doubled, so what would have been the point of Thanos killing half of humanity if we would be right back where we started in just 50 years
Shhhhh, don't tell Marvel about the plot hole!
@31:00
Answer: WHY DIDN'T WE BUILD WORMHOLES BETWEEN ALL OF THEM?! xD
Idiot bureaucrats and special interests who pay them money to legislate in favour of their companies.
5:02 That's the most passive reaction I've ever seen to a theft
I don't need Film Noir to fuel fatalism and pessimism about giant cities, all I need is look at our current large cities and then look further back at other historical examples of large concentrations of people to know that stacking people on top of each other does not make for a safe environment the larger and denser you go.
It's probably driven by the fact you in a city you meet a lot of people only once, which means there's no incentive for either you or them, to be honest. Also, in a small town, if you cheat someone world will get round. In a large city, it will not. Another factor is that in a large enough city, especially a diverse one, you can get tribes forming where cheating inside the tribe is punished but cheating outsiders is positively encouraged.
@@user-qf6yt3id3w *something something* Dunbar's number
@@AdarBlu I don't think it's the same mechanism as Dunbar's Number. You don't need to be inside someone's Dunbar Number list of known people to worry about what they think of you. So a business that cheats people in a town with a population bigger than Dunbar's number will be notorious enough to be bankrupted. In a big city, they can cheat people so long as they never run into them or anyone they complained to again.
Since Rutherford is the only city with a connection to Sagan, our traveler will have to pass through Rutherford to get to Sagan, and then again when leaving Sagan.
However... you DID also say that the traveler was starting in, and wished to finish in Pascal... therefore, our traveler will be visiting Pascal twice as well.
in the grim darkness of the future there are only skylights in the ceiling.
Arthursday: best day of the week, month, and year and today is no exception!
Here's what matters to me in a futuristic mega city setting: Can you Freerun in it?
only until the IMC shows up to complain
If taller buildings demand more elevators, and more elevator space, to ferry more people up and down floors for longer distances, then perhaps they'll need to come up with a novel solution that draws inspiration from mass transit systems like buses or metro, as higher-capacity alternatives to the more traditional taxi-like elevator systems that we're stuck with currently? After all, with a one-way looping mass transit system, you don't necessarily need additional road space to service more vehicles, such as taxis or private cars. (And yes, I'm a fan of Cities: Skylines, along with other transportation-heavy games like Factorio and Transport Fever.)
By the way, I decided to accept the challenge that Isaac Arthur put out for his viewers, and here's my answer: Since Sagan only has connections to Rutherford, while all the other cities have connections to at least 2 other cities, with Rutherford itself having connections to 3 cities: Sagan, Pascal, and Tesla, then my answer would be that only "Rutherford" would have to be visited twice if one wanted to visit all 5 cities at least once.
The only way to get to Sagan is from Rutherford and the only place you can go from Sagan is Rutherford, so Unless he starts or ends at Sagan, he has to go to Rutherford twice.
"800 million people living in the ruin of the old world and the mega structures of the new one. Mega blocks. Mega highways. Mega City One."