timtyler comments on The $125,000 Summer Singularity Challenge - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 29 July 2011 09:02PM

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Comment author: timtyler 03 August 2011 03:48:19PM 1 point [-]

Building society the first time around, we were able to take advantage of various useful natural resources such as relatively plentiful coal and (later) oil. After a nuclear war or some other civilization-wrecking catastrophe, it might be Very Difficult Indeed to rebuild without those resources at our disposal.

We have a huge mountain of coal, and will do for the next hundred years or so. Doing without doesn't seem very likely.

Comment author: gjm 03 August 2011 08:42:13PM 3 points [-]

How easily accessible is that coal to people whose civilization has collapsed, taking most of the industrial machinery with it? (That's a genuine question. Naively, it seems like the easiest-to-get-at bits would have been mined out first, leaving the harder bits. How much harder they are, and how big a problem that would be, I have no idea.)

Comment author: timtyler 04 August 2011 08:45:44PM *  2 points [-]

It's probably fair to say that some of the low hanging fossil fuel fruit have been taken.

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