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Wow the angst really amped up in this thread. I had no idea that the vast vast vast VAST majority of people choose to go to a school that they hate so they can take classes they despise to obtain a degree in a major they loathe so they search for job they can apply to that will leverage their education and passion into a soul crushing melancholic existence that is only preferable to a slow death of starvation. The ability of humanity to find the willpower to get out of bed in the morning and face another day of having their hopes and dreams dashed against the rocks of fiendishly evil employment is a daily miracle. I would weep for the poor souls in the workforce but after decades of toil alongside them I have no more tears to shed.

 Yodhrin wrote:


But don't possess basic civility, it seems. Also: see above. Also: it must be really nice to have a job that gives you that sense of accomplishment and achievement, but perhaps you could engage those wonderful "human emotions" for long enough to remember that the vast, vast, vast, unimaginably vast majority of people don't have that luxury. They do gak work, or boring work, or backbreaking work, usually for arsehole bosses, and often for little pay, not because they're fulfilling some deep seated desire to be productive hastag-blessed, but because they need money to continue being alive.

fething exalted.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
That's because people like eating and not living in hedges too.

But you only have to look at an existing subset of society, the retired, to see how many people will essentially work for free to fill their time in voluntary roles etc because they feel the need to avoid boredom and contribute to society.

I always wonder at how people start here, with a perfectly reasonable point, and then leap like Golden Age Superman to "thus our conception of work under the capitalist paradigm is the only way to achieve those goals".

"I'm choosing to spend a couple of days a week doing community work" is a far fething cry from "if I don't labour for X hours per week in my job that I hate I will starve and then die". There's is nothing whatsoever about the human impulse to engage in socially valuable activities that demands maintaining a scarcity-based economic system where workers are forced to exchange their labour for money in order to survive and, if they're lucky, scrape up some manner of joy in the little time they get to themselves outside of work.

People have been exchanging things for other things since there were things. People do things for other people because they detest being bored and like to feel good about themselves.

None of this is that thing you're trying to make it about that is banned from the board.

Prestor Jon wrote:
Wow the angst really amped up in this thread. I had no idea that the vast vast vast VAST majority of people choose to go to a school that they hate so they can take classes they despise to obtain a degree in a major they loathe so they search for job they can apply to that will leverage their education and passion into a soul crushing melancholic existence that is only preferable to a slow death of starvation. The ability of humanity to find the willpower to get out of bed in the morning and face another day of having their hopes and dreams dashed against the rocks of fiendishly evil employment is a daily miracle. I would weep for the poor souls in the workforce but after decades of toil alongside them I have no more tears to shed.

It's more like optimistic kids trying to get into a career they think they'll love, only to find it's not what they think it is, or there aren't any jobs in their field so they have to take whatever pays.

Beyond that, well, SOMEONE has to maintain sewers, collect garbage, and stock sheves. Someone has to do the nasty, bloody, filthy laundry in hospitals and nursing homes. And I can promise not only do they not enjoy it in the majority, they rarely get paid enough to live on while they do it.

At which point the employer not paying enough graciously allows us to SOCIALIZE their payroll so they can increase their PRIVATIZED profits.

 Vulcan wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Wow the angst really amped up in this thread. I had no idea that the vast vast vast VAST majority of people choose to go to a school that they hate so they can take classes they despise to obtain a degree in a major they loathe so they search for job they can apply to that will leverage their education and passion into a soul crushing melancholic existence that is only preferable to a slow death of starvation. The ability of humanity to find the willpower to get out of bed in the morning and face another day of having their hopes and dreams dashed against the rocks of fiendishly evil employment is a daily miracle. I would weep for the poor souls in the workforce but after decades of toil alongside them I have no more tears to shed.

It's more like optimistic kids trying to get into a career they think they'll love, only to find it's not what they think it is, or there aren't any jobs in their field so they have to take whatever pays.

Beyond that, well, SOMEONE has to maintain sewers, collect garbage, and stock sheves. Someone has to do the nasty, bloody, filthy laundry in hospitals and nursing homes. And I can promise not only do they not enjoy it in the majority, they rarely get paid enough to live on while they do it.

At which point the employer not paying enough graciously allows us to SOCIALIZE their payroll so they can increase their PRIVATIZED profits.

Two of my in laws work for the county sanitation dept and while I don’t think they LOVE it the job does not crush their souls or make them miserable, the work is outdoors, the pay and benefits take care of their families and they live happy content lives. The janitorial staff at the hospital my wife works at is unionized and they definitely get properly compensated for doing laundry. A job is just a job it’s not the defining aspect of your life. Where do you guys work that you think everyone is living unhappy lives toiling away at miserable jobs?

Those particularly dirty and dangerous jobs typically pay pretty well, because no one really wants to do them. They may not be glamorous or fulfilling, but they do pay.

 Luciferian wrote:
Those particularly dirty and dangerous jobs typically pay pretty well, because no one really wants to do them. They may not be glamorous or fulfilling, but they do pay.

It depends. A garbage collector does indeed make a nice pay in my country, but a maid who does a similarly difficult and dirty job, but doesn't get paid a lot. Both jobs are hard physical jobs one because you handle heavy loads all day and the other because you strain in uncomfortable position all day and both require you to work fast.

On the whole job debate, I think that people do have need to work and feel useful to their society. That's the best and fastet way to gain respect, validation and status and people all need a minimum of all those. If we didn't need to work and didn,t get paid for it, we would still work, but less. We wouldnt work like 8-9 hours in row almost every day. We would work a few hours here and there in the week. Instead of making 40 hours at least of work and commute every week we would probably work and commute for like 15-20. The rest, we would play and even learn.

Prestor Jon wrote:
Wow the angst really amped up in this thread. I had no idea that the vast vast vast VAST majority of people choose to go to a school that they hate so they can take classes they despise to obtain a degree in a major they loathe so they search for job they can apply to that will leverage their education and passion into a soul crushing melancholic existence that is only preferable to a slow death of starvation. The ability of humanity to find the willpower to get out of bed in the morning and face another day of having their hopes and dreams dashed against the rocks of fiendishly evil employment is a daily miracle. I would weep for the poor souls in the workforce but after decades of toil alongside them I have no more tears to shed.

Even if you don't hate your job you're not going to go work for someone else's profits for free. Like, I went to school to get an engineering degree. I like my field and my job well enough that I'm not hating it, but if my employer stopped giving me my salary there's no way in hell I'd be coming to work anymore. And if I somehow had the financial freedom to not be obligated to work (without sacrificing standard of living) I have plenty of personal projects of my own to give my life meaning. I give my time to my employer instead of myself because under the current capitalist system I have to spend 40 hours a week of labor to get the money that provides my current standard of living and pays for the things that I care about. Even if that exchange isn't unspeakable misery for everyone involved it's still something I do because I have to, not because I want to.

And I'm one of the lucky people who has a job that I like and a good standard of living. Consider the much larger number of people who are working minimum-wage fast food/retail/etc jobs. How many people do you think are going to show up to work at McDonalds for 60 hours a week if they aren't getting paid for it? Pretty close to zero I'd bet.

Of course you're not going to work for free, I never said that. But if all jobs were replaced with automation for example, I don't think it would make the human experience better. Look at the people who win the lottery and don't need to work, but I see lots who continue to work, because most humans either need to accomplish things, or need to not be bored.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I understand that you can't comprehend things like people having an innate desire to produce or accomplish things, or that they may enjoy their jobs for whatever reasons, but not everyone is programmed in machine binary like you are, some of us possess human emotions.

But don't possess basic civility, it seems. Also: see above. Also: it must be really nice to have a job that gives you that sense of accomplishment and achievement, but perhaps you could engage those wonderful "human emotions" for long enough to remember that the vast, vast, vast, unimaginably vast majority of people don't have that luxury. They do gak work, or boring work, or backbreaking work, usually for arsehole bosses, and often for little pay, not because they're fulfilling some deep seated desire to be productive hastag-blessed, but because they need money to continue being alive.

Well since my thread's been yanked off the rails and will no doubt soon be locked (yawn) I might as well go with it.

The world desperately needs a smartphone app that does this:



Or this"

That's the danger with threads in here.

deleted

 Peregrine wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Wow the angst really amped up in this thread. I had no idea that the vast vast vast VAST majority of people choose to go to a school that they hate so they can take classes they despise to obtain a degree in a major they loathe so they search for job they can apply to that will leverage their education and passion into a soul crushing melancholic existence that is only preferable to a slow death of starvation. The ability of humanity to find the willpower to get out of bed in the morning and face another day of having their hopes and dreams dashed against the rocks of fiendishly evil employment is a daily miracle. I would weep for the poor souls in the workforce but after decades of toil alongside them I have no more tears to shed.

Even if you don't hate your job you're not going to go work for someone else's profits for free. Like, I went to school to get an engineering degree. I like my field and my job well enough that I'm not hating it, but if my employer stopped giving me my salary there's no way in hell I'd be coming to work anymore. And if I somehow had the financial freedom to not be obligated to work (without sacrificing standard of living) I have plenty of personal projects of my own to give my life meaning. I give my time to my employer instead of myself because under the current capitalist system I have to spend 40 hours a week of labor to get the money that provides my current standard of living and pays for the things that I care about. Even if that exchange isn't unspeakable misery for everyone involved it's still something I do because I have to, not because I want to.

And I'm one of the lucky people who has a job that I like and a good standard of living. Consider the much larger number of people who are working minimum-wage fast food/retail/etc jobs. How many people do you think are going to show up to work at McDonalds for 60 hours a week if they aren't getting paid for it? Pretty close to zero I'd bet.

Yes, the labor market is just a big version of the Ultimatum Game in which you and your employer find acceptable terms for both parties under which to contract out your labor. If we played the game and I had $100 but I could only keep any of it if I shared it with you so I offered you $1 on the premise that you'd take $1 because it's better than $0 you'd refuse because you'd rather we both have $0 than feel like I've taken advantage of you for my benefit. If I offered you a $50-$50 split you'd probably say yes, you might even say yes to 55/45 or 60/40 but you likely wouldn't take a more uneven split than that. Likewise, you are contracting out your engineering labor to your employer because whatever benefit your employer derives from you labor the compensation you are paid is enough to convince you the arrangement is equitable.
Work is not defined as something you would never do in the absence of monetary compensation. Work is activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result. You would do work for yourself if the benefit derived from working on your personal projects was greater than the benefit derived from working for your employer. If you eliminated financial gain as a motivator then you would do work for yourself or your family or friends or community, etc. for metaphysical benefits like joy, a sense of accomplishment, QoL improvements etc. We all do work all the time for non financial benefits, we work on our relationships, our families, ourselves, our communities etc.
I don't think anyone would work 60 hours a week at McDonald's for free either. In a world where everyone has financial security and lives a life of leisure there wouldn't be a high demand for fast food anyway. The most appealing aspects of fast food are that it's cheap and convenient. If everyone already has all the money they'll ever need then cost isn't nearly as important and if we all live a life of leisure than convenience isn't important either because none of us are devoting the bulk of our time to a job. Nobody is arguing the point that working at McDonald's is fun, we're pointing out that doing "work" does not require you to be doing something that you would otherwise not do without adequate financial compensation and that doing work can, and often is, done with at least a modicum of enjoyment.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Well since my thread's been yanked off the rails and will no doubt soon be locked (yawn) I might as well go with it.

The world desperately needs a smartphone app that does this:



Or this"

Actually, I think these are, indeed, technologies we need pretty desperately.

Not that anyone would pay the slightest attention to them, but at least they couldn't say they weren't warned anymore.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
Wow the angst really amped up in this thread. I had no idea that the vast vast vast VAST majority of people choose to go to a school that they hate so they can take classes they despise to obtain a degree in a major they loathe so they search for job they can apply to that will leverage their education and passion into a soul crushing melancholic existence that is only preferable to a slow death of starvation. The ability of humanity to find the willpower to get out of bed in the morning and face another day of having their hopes and dreams dashed against the rocks of fiendishly evil employment is a daily miracle. I would weep for the poor souls in the workforce but after decades of toil alongside them I have no more tears to shed.

Even if you don't hate your job you're not going to go work for someone else's profits for free. Like, I went to school to get an engineering degree. I like my field and my job well enough that I'm not hating it, but if my employer stopped giving me my salary there's no way in hell I'd be coming to work anymore. And if I somehow had the financial freedom to not be obligated to work (without sacrificing standard of living) I have plenty of personal projects of my own to give my life meaning. I give my time to my employer instead of myself because under the current capitalist system I have to spend 40 hours a week of labor to get the money that provides my current standard of living and pays for the things that I care about. Even if that exchange isn't unspeakable misery for everyone involved it's still something I do because I have to, not because I want to.

And I'm one of the lucky people who has a job that I like and a good standard of living. Consider the much larger number of people who are working minimum-wage fast food/retail/etc jobs. How many people do you think are going to show up to work at McDonalds for 60 hours a week if they aren't getting paid for it? Pretty close to zero I'd bet.

Yes, the labor market is just a big version of the Ultimatum Game in which you and your employer find acceptable terms for both parties under which to contract out your labor. If we played the game and I had $100 but I could only keep any of it if I shared it with you so I offered you $1 on the premise that you'd take $1 because it's better than $0 you'd refuse because you'd rather we both have $0 than feel like I've taken advantage of you for my benefit. If I offered you a $50-$50 split you'd probably say yes, you might even say yes to 55/45 or 60/40 but you likely wouldn't take a more uneven split than that. Likewise, you are contracting out your engineering labor to your employer because whatever benefit your employer derives from you labor the compensation you are paid is enough to convince you the arrangement is equitable.
Work is not defined as something you would never do in the absence of monetary compensation. Work is activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result. You would do work for yourself if the benefit derived from working on your personal projects was greater than the benefit derived from working for your employer. If you eliminated financial gain as a motivator then you would do work for yourself or your family or friends or community, etc. for metaphysical benefits like joy, a sense of accomplishment, QoL improvements etc. We all do work all the time for non financial benefits, we work on our relationships, our families, ourselves, our communities etc.
I don't think anyone would work 60 hours a week at McDonald's for free either. In a world where everyone has financial security and lives a life of leisure there wouldn't be a high demand for fast food anyway. The most appealing aspects of fast food are that it's cheap and convenient. If everyone already has all the money they'll ever need then cost isn't nearly as important and if we all live a life of leisure than convenience isn't important either because none of us are devoting the bulk of our time to a job. Nobody is arguing the point that working at McDonald's is fun, we're pointing out that doing "work" does not require you to be doing something that you would otherwise not do without adequate financial compensation and that doing work can, and often is, done with at least a modicum of enjoyment.

Yes, we understand this, we acknowledge this, some people do indeed find their work enjoyable or highly satisfying or personally fulfilling.

Can you at least acknowledge that for a large number of people the exact opposite is true?

I'll try and reset the rails and chip in on the battery front:

Most of what we produce is battery powered Search and Rescue equipment where I work, but we wouldn't necessarily benefit from the improvement of battery tech, given that S&R requirements only need the devices to run for 48h on "oh " mode, which we're happily meeting.
Granted, one of the things I've been working on uses 10 D-Cells, but the thing's going to be big enough to house them anyway.
One of the current regulations is that battery packs are replaced every 5 years. Combine that with our packs being one-shot capacity, it's sales of those that keep us floating and funded to do everything else. Having Military Standard [MIL] certification lets us make a hilarious profit on them.
Ignoring the monetary perspective of it, increasing cell capacities would massively improve the S&R sector; having a beacon transmitting fully for a week would see those really pesky missing-plane circumstances all resolvable, essentially.
But if cells got smaller for the same capacity, we could make some of our stuff smaller, which is a help to the personell equipment. Would make them so much nicer to handle.

But there's the underlieing issue of the current materials used; Lithium Ion batteries burn for days when they go up. Remember that electric supercar Hammond crashed?
That's mainly adoo with just how fantastically dense the energy capacity is on those, but then there's the other materials within like Cadmium that are ragingly toxic. It's an unfortunate blight of all the different battery techs that these complex alloys are needed. Fascinating chemistry behind it, though.
On top of that, there's the danger of Thermal-Runaway [TR] with multi-celled batteries, which happens when a cell suffers voltage reversal due to a chemistry quirk from deep discharge, and rams high current through the pack and causing a cascade. There was an incident in 2015 where the battery of an Emergency Location Transmitter [ELT] went up on a plane (it was parked up, unoccupied, thankfully) due to a TR. Turned out it was because there was an issue during production where the wires were squeezed against the grounded housing, eventually causing a short as the insulation was rubbed away.
Result of the following case study was many companies revisiting the designs of their battery packs to be more permissive of the cells venting when they get too hot, usually pre-ignition. (Like a tin of beans exploding in a microwave). If they can do that, the TR can be cut short.

Basically, what'd be good on the battery perspective is a more rugged chemistry, and such improvements as to allow single-celled packs, but then you run into all sorts of other chemical issues when you try to increase the voltage of a single cell, and then there's the pattern of voltage degradation, which is best gotten around by using multiple lower-voltage cells over one large high-voltage cell.

Petrol having more complete combustion is probably the best immediate improvement atm; exhaust should only be water and carbon dioxide, if the fuel is kept pure. That stuff's easy for the planet to cope with. Weird nasty alloys? Not so much.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
What do you think is the most needed new technology, the most important technological break thru we could have today?

Education.

It has been stuck in the 1800s mentality since, well.... the 1800s.

Imagine where humanity would be if the same brain power that went behind the smart phone was used for education.... Amazing. As long as education is monopolized by government, reform and advancement will never happen.

Until then, people spend 15+ years in an "education" system that tells them knowledge is unknowable. You go from being 4 years old trying to understand the world around you to being 25 years old assuming the world is an illusion... -smh-

 BuFFo wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
What do you think is the most needed new technology, the most important technological break thru we could have today?

Education.

It has been stuck in the 1800s mentality since, well.... the 1800s.

Imagine where humanity would be if the same brain power that went behind the smart phone was used for education.... Amazing. As long as education is monopolized by government, reform and advancement will never happen.

Until then, people spend 15+ years in an "education" system that tells them knowledge is unknowable. You go from being 4 years old trying to understand the world around you to being 25 years old assuming the world is an illusion... -smh-

Since the alternative is education for only the wealthy it's pretty much going to stay universally accessible.

Also just because you disagree with a philosophical stance doesn't make the entirety of education useless.

smh

 BuFFo wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
What do you think is the most needed new technology, the most important technological break thru we could have today?

Education.

It has been stuck in the 1800s mentality since, well.... the 1800s.

Imagine where humanity would be if the same brain power that went behind the smart phone was used for education.... Amazing. As long as education is monopolized by government, reform and advancement will never happen.

Until then, people spend 15+ years in an "education" system that tells them knowledge is unknowable. You go from being 4 years old trying to understand the world around you to being 25 years old assuming the world is an illusion... -smh-

There are plenty of private schools. They're just too expensive for the average family to afford. So if not for the government stepping in, you'd have a large percentage of the population getting no education AT ALL. Which I think we can all agree is a bad thing, yes?

Now I agree that education can be handled far better than it is, and we should work to make it better. But when you say the government should do NOTHING when it comes to educating kids, you're basically saying you want the average kid to go uneducated and nothing more... regardless of what you're INTENDING to say.

Fusion solves literally all our non-psychological issues. Infinite clean power equals infinite food, infinite living space, etc.

 BuFFo wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
What do you think is the most needed new technology, the most important technological break thru we could have today?

Education.

It has been stuck in the 1800s mentality since, well.... the 1800s.

Imagine where humanity would be if the same brain power that went behind the smart phone was used for education.... Amazing. As long as education is monopolized by government, reform and advancement will never happen.

Until then, people spend 15+ years in an "education" system that tells them knowledge is unknowable. You go from being 4 years old trying to understand the world around you to being 25 years old assuming the world is an illusion... -smh-

Some weird stuff happening in here.
First, there are dozens of quite distinct approaches to educations being practiced even at state level around the world, so it's difficult to talk about it as a homogenous bloc.

Second, in Europe, at least, much of it is critiqued for being too modern and I'm sure the same goes for most nations. You yourself are saying that education is characterised by a pretty modern epistemological paradigm - and not one I think has really found traction in any mainstream education until very recently, whilst claiming education is stuck in the 19th century.

Third, many, many private schools exist. I fear they're usually the most tightly locked into long-established approaches.

As someone who teaches (or more importantly, marks!) people from multiple generations and from across the world (albeit with a weighting towards European and North American millennials) I'm not convinced that anyone is doing education amazingly, but I'm positive it's is being done in a highly varied way.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Fusion solves literally all our non-psychological issues. Infinite clean power equals infinite food, infinite living space, etc.

Not to start another debate, but Fusion power isn't even close to infinite. I love the idea of it being a stable replacement for Fission and Coal, but it's not going to be a slam dunk on our technological issues.

I think Terraforming tech is a more general field that we most need progress on. Not only for our planet but for the next one. There are several solutions (not great ones, but solutions) for most aspects of expanding to another planet (and reducing our population size on the current one), but creating a stable, livable environment is well beyond us.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Fusion solves literally all our non-psychological issues. Infinite clean power equals infinite food, infinite living space, etc.

Even assuming that such magic even works and 'literally' solves electric power issues, you're going to have to explain where the infinite food and infinite living space comes from.
Especially the infinite part and the edible food part. We can't digest energy, so power=food is missing a lot of steps, even ignoring the absurdity of 'infinite' in any context. To a lesser extent the same is true for construction materials for the 'infinite living space,' but that seems less pressing than food. (Or drinkable water, which you kind of left out, and is a major need)

Voss wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Fusion solves literally all our non-psychological issues. Infinite clean power equals infinite food, infinite living space, etc.

Even assuming that such magic even works and 'literally' solves electric power issues, you're going to have to explain where the infinite food and infinite living space comes from.
Especially the infinite part and the edible food part. We can't digest energy, so power=food is missing a lot of steps, even ignoring the absurdity of 'infinite' in any context. To a lesser extent the same is true for construction materials for the 'infinite living space,' but that seems less pressing than food. (Or drinkable water, which you kind of left out, and is a major need)

Well, infinite power would be functionally infinite water as you can use that energy to directly desalinate seawater. But yeah, living space and food isn't going to be made available with infinite electricity.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Voss wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Fusion solves literally all our non-psychological issues. Infinite clean power equals infinite food, infinite living space, etc.

Even assuming that such magic even works and 'literally' solves electric power issues, you're going to have to explain where the infinite food and infinite living space comes from.
Especially the infinite part and the edible food part. We can't digest energy, so power=food is missing a lot of steps, even ignoring the absurdity of 'infinite' in any context. To a lesser extent the same is true for construction materials for the 'infinite living space,' but that seems less pressing than food. (Or drinkable water, which you kind of left out, and is a major need)

Well, infinite power would be functionally infinite water as you can use that energy to directly desalinate seawater. But yeah, living space and food isn't going to be made available with infinite electricity.

You could use infinite power to cost-effectively drain a sea or two. That is a massive load of new living space and agricultural land right there.
Infinite power would also go a long way towards improving our ability to cost-effectively transform Mars into a habitable space.

Of course, Fusion power isn't going to magically solve all of our energy problems right away. But it can eventually, and that is why I agree that it is probably our most needed new technology. Fusion power will be a major breakthrough like the steam engine in the past. It will allow us to do all sorts of things that simply were not feasible before.

You could use infinite power to cost-effectively drain a sea or two. That is a massive load of new living space and agricultural land right there.

Ok, 'draining a sea or two' would be horrifyingly bad from an ecological perspective. You'd also have to deal with severe risks from flooding and erosion for generations.

Also, no. Former sea beds wouldn't be useful agricultural land, at least not without a lot of additional work (and fresh water) to deal with all the salt accumulation and get the soil up to the point that it's workable.

It's feasible in small areas over time and with the required infrastructure (like the polders in the Netherlands), but a 'drained sea' isn't going to be a feasible agricultural area for generations.

Voss wrote:

You could use infinite power to cost-effectively drain a sea or two. That is a massive load of new living space and agricultural land right there.

Ok, 'draining a sea or two' would be horrifyingly bad from an ecological perspective. You'd also have to deal with severe risks from flooding and erosion for generations.

Also, no. Former sea beds wouldn't be useful agricultural land, at least not without a lot of additional work (and fresh water) to deal with all the salt accumulation and get the soil up to the point that it's workable.

It's feasible in small areas over time and with the required infrastructure (like the polders in the Netherlands), but a 'drained sea' isn't going to be a feasible agricultural area for generations.

You wouldn't drain an entire ocean all at once. That'd be a bad idea. But there is no reason you couldn't make polders on demand. The oceans are vast, there is plenty of room to construct polders without having to drain the entire sea. And there is no reason you couldn't fill up smaller seas such as the North Sea with a series of large polders. In fact, the Dutch have seriously thought about doing just this several times. The only thing stopping them is the high costs (which would be greatly reduced if we had infinite energy) and the fact that the British probably wouldn't like suddenly sharing a land border with Europe again.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
You could use infinite power to cost-effectively drain a sea or two. That is a massive load of new living space and agricultural land right there.

Tell me how well that worked out for the Russians and (effectively) draining the Aral Sea.

The problem with draining seas is the water has to go somewhere. And being places where water has collected in the past, water tends to collect there in the future. So you'd be perpetually draining your farmland because its in a giant bowl.

If you want to create farmland where there was none before, it would be better to make hydroponic stations. And if you want to put them where there is an ocean you can make them floating platforms.

Given that one of the threats to human civilisation this century is rising sea levels, the last thing we want to do is to drain a sea like the Mediterranean by walling off the straits of Gibraltar and pumping the water into the Atlantic. That's apart from the loss of transport and fisheries.

The most urgently needed new technology according to CERN is a follow-on to the Large Hardon Collider. This is the equipment which found the Higgs Boson. The new proposal is called the Future Circular Collider (FuCC) and is planned to be over 60km in circumference.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
You could use infinite power to cost-effectively drain a sea or two. That is a massive load of new living space and agricultural land right there.

Tell me how well that worked out for the Russians and (effectively) draining the Aral Sea.

The Aral Sea was a lake, not a sea. It is located in a very arid region and was largely drained for use in irrigation. Obviously draining a lake in a desert isn't going to magically create new fertile farm land, but nobody was trying to do that. What they were planning to do was to use the Aral Sea to create agricultural industry elsewhere, and that has been pretty succesful. It turned the formerly infertile deserts of Uzbekistan into the world's largest exporter of cotton. Of course, the project was mismanaged and the water was drained much faster than it replenished, but that is the problem with lakes.
And that is another way in which infinite energy will eventually provide virtually infinite food. With infinite energy it will become feasible to desalinate sea water and transport it over large distances to irrigate deserts and other formerly infertile areas. There is easily enough water in the ocean to turn the entire Sahara into a green garden.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The problem with draining seas is the water has to go somewhere. And being places where water has collected in the past, water tends to collect there in the future. So you'd be perpetually draining your farmland because its in a giant bowl.

Welcome to the Netherlands.

Living below sea level works perfectly fine provided you handle your water management properly. And with infinite energy, that would become even easier than it is today.

 Grey Templar wrote:
If you want to create farmland where there was none before, it would be better to make hydroponic stations. And if you want to put them where there is an ocean you can make them floating platforms.

That is not a good idea. You can't live on a hydroponic station. A polder has a dual purpose of both creating new agricultural land and new cities to solve overpopulation. The hydroponic stations would also have to be massive, and there'd be serious risks of accidents or them breaking. Risks which you do not have with a polder.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Given that one of the threats to human civilisation this century is rising sea levels, the last thing we want to do is to drain a sea like the Mediterranean by walling off the straits of Gibraltar and pumping the water into the Atlantic. That's apart from the loss of transport and fisheries.

No, you can't drain an entire sea like that. That is not how polders work. You have to leave room for the water to go, so polders really are artificial islands, not just an emptied sea. And draining the Mediterranean would be particularly unwise giving its crucial role in regulating the climate of the Mediterranean area and its central role as a shipping route. Other seas however, such as the North Sea, South China Sea, Celtic Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk or really most marginal seas do not have that problem. While you would not drain them entirely to leave sufficient room for water and shipping, you could fill up the majority of those seas with polders without this having drastic effects.