"Dark humor is like food, not everyone gets it." - Commisar Isaac Arthur. Yet another insightful look at a common sci-fi trope. The sheer scale is simbly mind-boggling.
It's true, they were sealed by the Ordo Chronos in M37, though some say copies are available still in the Tower of the Hegemon and various radical Forgeworlds :)
The true reason the inquisition and mechanicum are looking for STCs is so they can stream TH-cam videos from a cloud archive containing SFIA and recover archaeotech
"Seas of liquid fat, or icebergs of it, might actually make more sense for calorie storage-" Shit like this is why i'm still subscribed after all these years
Having just graduated my college for early childhood pedagogy it is kinda surreal to hear you randomly congratulating me, but thank you. And it's nice to see you picking sponsors with a seemingly positive impact on the world.
The book of the new sun was one of the most series I've ever read. It balances on the knife's edge of Sci-fi and Fantasy and rocks wildly between "This writing is amazing" and "I can never recommend this book to anyone I know". I'm glad I finished it.
@@SilentSalad Yup, our chief SFIA mod over on facebook loves the series and has been encouraging me to retry it for years, I typically give the audiobooks a new shot about once a year too, it's clearly a great series but it's a daunting one. Took me a decade to do Wolfe for that matter.
It's something different but the video reminded me of the "Blame!" Manga (misnomer because there's no "m" katakana). It's a civilization that has achieved technological singularity and the singularity is in charge of managing everything, at some point the singularity malfunctions and lets all its subordinate AIs just do whatever they were doing but without further instructions, so they just keep building living space... more and more and more for tens of thousands of years. The manga takes place at a time where the structure they've built has enclosed the space from the sun up to at least Jupiter, but probably far beyond that. The AIs disassembled everything they came across, all planets, comets, asteroids, etc. to build more living space that becomes increasingly bizarre as the AIs start to fail and malfunction. It's a really nice and depressing setting
"Your typical human corpse contains enough calories to feed a person for two months. This is a non-trivial dietary supplement. If a typical person lives for 70 years, then a city of a billion people could support 2.4million dedicated cannibals." You make me fall in love with math all over again.
“And with all the other wasted food going into the garbage, you can have entire Hunter gatherer civilizations living in some adnormous landfill, gathering garbage like they were nuts and berries, gathering mushroom, fighting cyber seagulls for the detritus.” I don’t know sounds like the average Freegan Newyorker.
love how enthusiastically you say 'have a great week' at the end. ppl usually just throw these things at you but one can tell when the other person means it. so thanks, you have yourself a great week too : )
@@sidesw1pe I stand corrected. In my defense though I thought, upon my initial re-read, you were referencing the second your. Actually pretty funny. So this is what crow taste like, ugh, kinda bitter. Lol
Large walkable buildings/structures always gave me a comfy feeling of being deep into the "womb" of civilization for a lack of putting it into the right words, of course sadly only on rare occasions you can experience this with a pleasantly corresponding environment and interior design. I often think of the Citadel from Mass Effect as one good example or most Cyberpunk inspired architecture and Akira of course. Anyways, great video, thanks!
unfortunately, in America we live with urban planning so spread out and isolating that you'll only meet your closest neighbor once a month if your lucky. and the closest essential resources can be multiple miles away.
@@isaacarthurSFIA as a 40k nerd and sfia fan since subtitles, I say do it :3 It can never hurt to add more pop culture , that’s how I got into science (ghost in the shell anime). That or do a second channel JUST for pop culture science stuff where you could also do shorter videos and even get the kids to help eventually while showing everyone at any age can love science; even if it’s just pop culture science
@@isaacarthurSFIA If you're considering it, please also consider computing worlds. Hidden in eternal shade when life exists only in cyberspace. You once made an episode about Titan pointing to the moon as a possible industrial or computing hub. You can explore two ways of Titan's development: forge world or digital empire.
Post scarcity is all relative. We’re nearly post scarcity with regard to basic textile and foodstuffs (not so higher quality), and water, as can be seen by the fact that these things are frequently given out for free. I think that’s a good metric for determining when you’re practically post scarcity or nearing it: if everybody has access to it or if you can get it for nearly free or nearly no effort. As you go into the future, it’s likely that handheld electronics will become standardized and essentially post scarcity, probably in the next century. Transportation is going to be limited by space constraints so while it’s conceivable that cars could become free for all on earth, vehicles to go to space or travel the solar system will be the new frontier of scarcity. And so on
The problems with the idea of post-scarcity are (at least) threefold: 1. While biological needs are finite and definable, psychological needs vary from individual to individual, and wants can be effectively infinite. 2. In societies more advanced and affluent than mere survival-level, it becomes imcreasingly difficult for most members to tell the difference between a want and a need. 3. So, who decides the difference between wants and needs among the populace? Does this party determine what their own resource allotments are?
I just want to mention this, but one of the best examples of a broken megalopolis is Girl’s Last Tour Anime/Manga. The premise and story are amazing, but they revolve around an absolutely stunning world, and I can’t recommend checking it out more. Seriously, Blame! Vibes all around.
Nice recommend. Looks good during a quick skim. I’d also recommend Blame and the nausicaa (of the valley of the wind) manga as they both feature people living way down the line on top of ageing civilisations. Nausicaa more open word than give but still compelling.
A Hive City the size of Qatar could hold 200 million people if each person had 50m2 of space. A Hive City at least 28km high with Hive Primus could hold tens of billions of people and still have room for food and vertical farms
If a mile-long ship of arrives every day carrying food, I imagine it or another similarly-sized ship leaves every day with, er, "night soil"? That itself might become a problem during a seige, though as the food supply is consumed that space can be put to use for storage of food's waste product.
@@spaceman081447 minerals, nitrogen, and other nutrition plants need can be depleted by growing crops on the same land year after year without some kind of fertilizer or other soil treatment.
I think the best way to visualise a Hive City is to imagine a 1,000 Detroits stacked on top of each other, expanded out to cover an entire planet, only with less poverty and crime than the actual Detroit.
I call mine ‘Gajapolis’, a portmanteau of Gaja (Which is the Titan of the Planet in Greek Myth) and Polis which is also Greek for City. But 80% of my inspiration comes from”Okay but what if 40k, but not grimdark.” 😂🎉
@@PyrusFlameborn Yes, technically also called the Golden Age of Technology. It is a matter of perspective. But the gist was it ended because of AI apocalypse.
@@twenty-fifth420 What does Dark Age mean in Warhammer 40k since we use it to describe the early medieval era in Europe it means we have little knowledge of the era due to the lack of sources?
Hey Isaac I have a question if we could theoretically access a seperate universe where 1000 years equal mere moments in this world and therefore a lifetime spent there would be seconds in our world. Would a computer built there with good memeory able to compute anything.
You can only compute what you can accurately describe. Without “quantum computing” the limit remains on the possible data inputs available to create a predictive model, with quantum computing you only need that time-dimension to filter out the “bad” data in the vast array of results.
About heat dissipation in large cities... London subway uses the surrounding soil as a heat sink, as operating the trains generates a lot of heat that need to be managed to keep the tunnels useable. After a century of operation, the soil reached its maximum heat capacity and its a concern during the real hot days.
Ok, I expected something different when reading "Hive Worlds". I have a hive world in a current WIP and was hoping to get some info on the topic, but mine is not dystopian nor does it feature humans. It's a planet inhabited by naturally occuring machines that work together like colonial organisms (e.g. Siphonophores) or maybe like eusocial insects. Now I have to see whether there is a video about creatures like this.
Yeah, to me its reminiscent of Gene Ha's artwork from the Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix set in a very dystopian 40th century, that rounded metallic building look, I'm not sure if Taylor was inspired by Ha or vice-versa or someone else but it's very nice style.
It's easy to imagine how planet other than Earth can become a Hive: 1) imagine planet that is like Earth before life appeared; 2) initial wave of settlers need to bring only algae and bacteria to make it hospitable for life - eventually; No planetary-engineering required; 3) meanwhile settlers would be living in closed space; possibly for generations while planet become more and more hospitable to life; 4) however since there is no "wild" "nature" to be concerned about all the land would be used for farming activity (first and for quite a while - under some sealed greenhouses); 5) there is nothing particularly bad about living in well designed and enclosed city - especially when outside is basically desert, sterile saline ocean and toxic fumes here and there, mixed with sealed greenhouses and aquariums; 6) eventually as population grows and grows entire planet will become one big farmland with crops and farm animals spread around the planet to be better suited for its different climate zones, as well as have at least some biodiversity for redundancy in case some virus or other crop/livestock threatening pathogen happens, while population will be living in several extremely densely populated cities 7) also since bioshpere of such world is entirely artificial, it would be possible to keep concentration of gasses like CO2 at levels most productive for farming and that is 5-10 times higher than that on modern Earth; 8) finally as population grows some planetary engineering would be required, like changing direction of rivers so that they would bring water to more arid areas, making artificial lakes / flooding lowlands with seawater to make more hospitable local climate (like hypothetical project of flooding center of Australia to create a large saline lake - inner sea - to have a lot more biomass around it) and so on. Honestly that sounds like that could be a pretty good place to live in.
20:12 "Civilizations with fairly dark and utilitarian attitudes toward its citizens, or ones that are simply desperate, might keep immense cryo-vaults packed to the brim with soldiers, who they thaw out when needed - riots or sieges - and stuff non-wartime citizens in till its time to rotate them." This video came before HELLDIVERS 2.
@cosmictreason2242 Yeah, he did! Fitting video to shout him out in too! Two of my favorite creators! I'd love to find a way they could do a joint video! Maybe above hive worlds or how warhammer 40 talks about O'Neil Cylinders as the shipd that carried humand out to thr stars or just about anything would be cool!
@@smoore6461 Isaac would correct Luetin’s syntax errors (clearly caused by cuts during editing or very complex sentences in most cases) and Luetin would offer a rare opportunity for Isaac to have someone else to discuss realism and logistics with 😂
I honestly never equated give world with dystopian mega city… I thought this would be about sociology and humans adapting more from Ant/Bee/Termite societies.
Yet another winner! I have watched every video you have put out (the older ones at least 25 times each some even more!) thanks for filling my imagination with fantastical ideas and giving my 12 year old son an interest in space like mine ❤ you are awesome Isaac
@@mill2712 Personally I agree that we should turn earth into a nature preserve. But why stop at just earth? Why not build wilderness habitats in O'Neill cylinders? And why do you think humanity should live intermingled with nature? I am sure there would be such cities that have that aesthetic, but actually living admist nature would be hell. Dying of dysentery and getting eaten alive by animals isn't as great as you may think.
When you bring up the sheer number of people in these vast mega cities and starspanning empires, one statistic that I find grimly intriguing is your estimate that, barring any changes in mental health and psychotherapy, a stellar empire with quadrillions will have more serial killers then there are people in the United States. I confess that may or may not have inspired one of the conflicts in a military sci-fi book I'm working on...
It's funny to me that 40k is one of the wackiest and most fantastical sci-fi franchises out there, but they actually capture the sheer scale of a galaxy-spanning civilization pretty well. An average hive world in 40k has something like 50 billion people living in each hive, with 10+ hives across the planet. I think the biggest of them house over two trillion, which seems reasonable to support with the level of technology they have. Meanwhile George R R Martin is pretty well regarded for writing more grounded-in-reality fantasy stories, but one of his earlier sci-fi works tells the story of a spacefaring civilization that is somehow facing a massive overpopulation crisis with around 10 billion people, struggling with food shortages despite having their entire moon terraformed and used for agriculture. Just interesting how far apart the two extremes are.
Because of my ADHD you always get extra watch time from me because I find myself rewinding dozens of time each video because my brain goes on a vacation while I’m watching and I completely miss what you’re saying.
Hive City - Sounds like a giant Amazon warehouse with a technocratic healthcare system, where everybody eats Soylent Green & bounty hunters chase everyone down who’s “aged out”…
Some Chinese researchers figured out how to synthesize starches from scratch, with vastly more energy efficiency then plants. Other researchers also figured out they can get plants to grow faster by adding synthesized acetone to their growth medium, that the plants metabolize.
Coruscant with factory worker living conditions while a / the major portion of the world would have housing tracts, food production, recycling for profit, waste treatment and management, as well as a seriously major portion of the world with just massive foundries, forges, and other mass production areas, again the factories, however, conditions may be... sparse. The secret to running a good Hive World is atmospheric reclamation through plants and other air treatment methods so that people can live and breathe there.
Your comment on there being 'small' gangs that are more and better organized than some present national militaries makes me wonder what the future of Organization itself will be. Thoughts on the future of the human/AI action of Organizing? Relative to Entropy?
My favourite hive mind is Serpo, from the book, Journey to Serpo. Serpo has a hive society. And note well, humans, a mantis was observed there. (A reference to historian Dr. David Jacobs book "Walking Among Us ".) Arthur, your Overton window is too small.
Isaac, you often refer to waste heat, but perhaps you could do an episode on methods to USE waste heat rather than simply get rid of it? Perhaps utilizing some kind of special crop to outright devour the heat that even if it cannot be eaten itself would potentially make fertilizer for more palatable dishes.
I always think that, eg. Use it to turn water into steam and then you still have the heat, it's just in the water/steam that needs to be cooled before reuse. In the novel Sundiver they use it to power a lazer and get rid of heat that way. But it's still a case of moving the heat somewhere else. Unfortunately, it's all a bit beyond my level of understanding. Lol
Not how this Universe works, unfortunately (or at least it appears to be one of the most fundamental Laws of the Universe). Any machine, living beings, chemical reaction, etc. can only take part of energy as it flows from heat source (stars) to cold - space int the end: heat is radiated into space as photons where this photons fly forever in the void without interacting with anything ever again (that is unless universe expansion is reverted and universe collapse back into singularity). Speed at which heat can flow, temperatures/energy levels of radiated photons are fundamental constants - i.e. not something it is possible to affect.
Though my understanding is limited, I do for sure know that there is a new class of power generation plates/panels that absorbs infrared light. Whether it could be scaled down enough to combine with machinery or even bodies to generate power from excess radiated heat is entirely a topic for research to discover
Unfortunately, any mechanism that moves heat around with any kind of efficiency will, inevitably, produce more heat itself. So you can't actually "recycle" heat.
I suppose it is appropriate that a video with a lot of Warhammer 40K would come to the conclusion that the actual limit to the size of a hive world that relies heavily on imports comes down to how long the planet could survive a siege. Moreso than most fictional universes, the Imperium would understand exactly what happens when a city-planet is surrounded and cut off.
6:25 We already have mini societies like that. It's been like 6 years since I saw a segment on PBS about an area of China. It has a giant landfill and some people living in that area go into the landfill for necessities. They talked to a lady that was going in to get food for her dog
if i were a solar level government i would have a dedicated agri-world, the colony world proper, a dedicated forge world as set forth in the colonial charter of the greater empire so the greater empire doesn't have to micromanage the governments of every sector and are just more like a dedicated fleet garrison, the average patrol fleet and in times of war each world is self sufficient enough to supply and merely be used for levies of manpower.
Fascinating discussion on the technology and resources needed to build, maintain and operate a hive world, but little attention given to the great psychological pressures such "unnatural" environments would exert on their populations, and the mind boggling array of cultures that would arise in them.
Humans will come to accept as "normal" any conditions that don't immediately kill them. You might think it's unnatural to live in vast cities. Your children won't.
Tucson is a city in southern Arizona so is warm most of the year. California investors buy up housing in Arizona, then they multiply the rent to well over $1200 for a 1-bedroom apartment in a city where minimum wage is more common than not. Thus, we have a large Homeless population. Many of these homeless people scavenge dumpsters behind restaurants and often alleys in residential areas. I was emptying my trash and saw two people eating garbage I had thrown away as uneatable. THIS is common in American cities and there is NO solution presented so it will only get worse.
The solution is to let their price gouging result in getting fewer tenants or driving people to buy instead, so that they’ll have to offer lower rent eventually to not have to sell at a loss
as usual the main problem, reality is unrealistic, almost no human would consider making city sized space stations easier and better than interstellar travel, yet the previous one could be done now (more or less), while the other is probably not possible in meaningful way.
I was thinking that earths current hot spots would be where terras forges set drawing up magma from the mantle for resources with the leftover slag molded into enormous arogell like legos for construction.
Maybe Mr. Asimov used 40 Billion in the so called long ladder. Meaning 40 Billion=4*10^13. Would be much more plausible. As far as i know the meaning of "Billion" changed in english from 10^12 to 10^9. Just not sure, which meaning was used by Asimov.
I think the oceans could act as a good heat sink. Dump the excess heat down to the water. Once the oceans boil, the vapor rises in chimneys that release it high in the atmosphere where it cools off and returns as rain.
Seriously I dont know anything about this but the fact that more people knows it and you never know how are they gonna use it scares me a lot.Sorry but we like to see it in real life is crazy how many suffering on this world with so much ahead us that does exist.
I think the real problem with the hive city concept is that humans in cities don't have kids. Youd have to have some large change in psychology or import the population.
The reason they don’t now is not because of how many people live near them but for ideological reasons. People in the burbs are more tightly packed than rural farm communities 300 years ago, and that’s not stopping them.
The sheer scale of what Mankind might achieve both impresses and frightens me. I can't imagine a trillion people on Earth let alone a quadrillion or more. The number is just too big. Sliding 40k references into the mix makes it worse both for the scale and the grimdark setting. The Imperium of man has literally a million worlds or more. It has been stated that worlds are often simply forgotten...lost to the Warp or to the maze of the bureaucracy. Imagine living on an Earth-sized planet and the fleets that come and go almost daily simply stop.
I notice you go a lot towards Warhammer 40K, You want something even more Hivemind, maybe you should reference the Borg, from Star Trek. Not only are there lots of worlds all Borg, but you have ships, trans warp hubs that are fueled by stars.
The one thing none of the books or films ever dreamed of was a planet with a shrinking population like we have now. World Population Growth - Our World in Data The world population increased from 1 billion in 1800 to around 8 billion today. The world population growth rate declined from around 2% per year 50 years ago to under 1.0% per year.
This is probably just temporary. Right now progressive ideologies got the world in a choke hold. In a few generations they will die out from lack of breeding and those with genetic disposition to traditional ideologies will keep on breeding.
"Indeed a hive world without giant mutant rats is no hive world at all"
How profound.
Also needs cannibal human mutants somewhere.
@@seriousmaran9414 bred and kept as pets by the rats no doubt
That is New York City.
@@MrKIMBO345 ran by demorats
"Giant ratmen are not real, citizen!" - Imperial Inquisitor
"Dark humor is like food, not everyone gets it." - Commisar Isaac Arthur.
Yet another insightful look at a common sci-fi trope. The sheer scale is simbly mind-boggling.
“Dark humour is like food, not everyone gets it”. That line has several layers seriously deep meaning 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
I almost spat my drink haha
Meh
It only has the 2 layers, bud, it was just a very well executed joke by someone who nailed the wordplay.
Literally laughed out loud for a full minute after that one.
I don't get it, and I'm hugery
In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, there are no Isaac Arthur videos.
Yeah there are but they're just hidden in the emperor's palace.
@@mill2712 Nope, they would be hidden away on Mars by the Adeptus Mechanicus and closely guarded by the God Engines of the Legio Ignatum.
It's true, they were sealed by the Ordo Chronos in M37, though some say copies are available still in the Tower of the Hegemon and various radical Forgeworlds :)
The true reason the inquisition and mechanicum are looking for STCs is so they can stream TH-cam videos from a cloud archive containing SFIA and recover archaeotech
"Seas of liquid fat, or icebergs of it, might actually make more sense for calorie storage-" Shit like this is why i'm still subscribed after all these years
What a fitting Mother’s Day tribute! Hail the Hive Queen!
And to follow that up: "The only good bug is a dead bug."
_Stares suspiciously in Ordo Xenos_
Having just graduated my college for early childhood pedagogy it is kinda surreal to hear you randomly congratulating me, but thank you. And it's nice to see you picking sponsors with a seemingly positive impact on the world.
"But as many the administrator of a hive city can tell you, Dark humor is like food… not everyone gets it."
Love that line!
The book of the new sun was one of the most series I've ever read. It balances on the knife's edge of Sci-fi and Fantasy and rocks wildly between "This writing is amazing" and "I can never recommend this book to anyone I know". I'm glad I finished it.
Yeah I gather it's in the Malazan+ tier of great but hard to read book series
@@isaacarthurSFIA I only ever read the first few chapters of Malazan and the sheer force of the imagery was winding.
@@SilentSalad Yup, our chief SFIA mod over on facebook loves the series and has been encouraging me to retry it for years, I typically give the audiobooks a new shot about once a year too, it's clearly a great series but it's a daunting one. Took me a decade to do Wolfe for that matter.
@@isaacarthurSFIA 20:52 And I thought I had it hard, being an inquisitor married to a sister of battle 😮
Channel motto: The future is an awesome place to live
Topic: Warhammer40 Hive planets
This is going to be fun
Isaac misses his military days going around and BLAMing cowardly defectors.
It's something different but the video reminded me of the "Blame!" Manga (misnomer because there's no "m" katakana).
It's a civilization that has achieved technological singularity and the singularity is in charge of managing everything, at some point the singularity malfunctions and lets all its subordinate AIs just do whatever they were doing but without further instructions, so they just keep building living space... more and more and more for tens of thousands of years. The manga takes place at a time where the structure they've built has enclosed the space from the sun up to at least Jupiter, but probably far beyond that. The AIs disassembled everything they came across, all planets, comets, asteroids, etc. to build more living space that becomes increasingly bizarre as the AIs start to fail and malfunction.
It's a really nice and depressing setting
also giant robots get introduced and killed almost instantly.
the story feels kinda non sensical. but the quality of the drawing is really impressive
@@isuckatusernames4297 agreed. the story is meh, but I absolute love the atmosphere the drawings evoke
"Your typical human corpse contains enough calories to feed a person for two months. This is a non-trivial dietary supplement. If a typical person lives for 70 years, then a city of a billion people could support 2.4million dedicated cannibals." You make me fall in love with math all over again.
Still bad math. Totally forgetting birthrate
You've been on a warhammer40k-kick lately and I love it.
You mean a "Warhammer 40Kick?"
It's a rare example of a sci-fi setting that really shows off the massive scale of space
“And with all the other wasted food going into the garbage, you can have entire Hunter gatherer civilizations living in some adnormous landfill, gathering garbage like they were nuts and berries, gathering mushroom, fighting cyber seagulls for the detritus.”
I don’t know sounds like the average Freegan Newyorker.
love how enthusiastically you say 'have a great week' at the end. ppl usually just throw these things at you but one can tell when the other person means it. so thanks, you have yourself a great week too : )
I love how your opening line describing a completely hypothetical sci-fi future also adequately describes parts of modern society.
I mean, if you live in Dubai, yeah, but I can't think of many places like this that aren't deserts with princes as heads of state.
Dope!! 40k and you are like a perfect match. Thanks!
What are we eating today? Corpse starch.
What are we eating tomorrow? Soylens Viridians.
What did we eat yesterday? Grandpa Thomas.
You are a great inspiration Mr. Arthur. Thank you for your armed service and for SFIA.
^you’re
@@jedimasterted4712 That’s how it is used; since you understand that, you should have no reason to refuse my correction 🙂
@@sidesw1pe I stand corrected. In my defense though I thought, upon my initial re-read, you were referencing the second your. Actually pretty funny. So this is what crow taste like, ugh, kinda bitter. Lol
@@jedimasterted4712 🙃
Very interesting. Looking forward on your video on "one man army" theme Isaac.
Large walkable buildings/structures always gave me a comfy feeling of being deep into the "womb" of civilization for a lack of putting it into the right words, of course sadly only on rare occasions you can experience this with a pleasantly corresponding environment and interior design. I often think of the Citadel from Mass Effect as one good example or most Cyberpunk inspired architecture and Akira of course. Anyways, great video, thanks!
unfortunately, in America we live with urban planning so spread out and isolating that you'll only meet your closest neighbor once a month if your lucky.
and the closest essential resources can be multiple miles away.
Next episode: Forge World 😘
I am seriously condiering it, I suppose we'll see how today's episode goes :)
@@isaacarthurSFIA nono dear Isaac you don't need to wait, just start the preparation already 😂
@@isaacarthurSFIA as a 40k nerd and sfia fan since subtitles, I say do it :3
It can never hurt to add more pop culture , that’s how I got into science (ghost in the shell anime). That or do a second channel JUST for pop culture science stuff where you could also do shorter videos and even get the kids to help eventually while showing everyone at any age can love science; even if it’s just pop culture science
@@isaacarthurSFIA If you're considering it, please also consider computing worlds. Hidden in eternal shade when life exists only in cyberspace. You once made an episode about Titan pointing to the moon as a possible industrial or computing hub. You can explore two ways of Titan's development: forge world or digital empire.
@@isaacarthurSFIA your narration style is perfect for 40K videos!!!
"In the bright luminescence of the far future.... there is only post-scarcity"
We can make it happen! All we need to do is purge the mutant, the witch and the alien!
@@nickkorkodylas5005 for the god emperor! His light will guide us to post-scarcity
Post scarcity is all relative. We’re nearly post scarcity with regard to basic textile and foodstuffs (not so higher quality), and water, as can be seen by the fact that these things are frequently given out for free. I think that’s a good metric for determining when you’re practically post scarcity or nearing it: if everybody has access to it or if you can get it for nearly free or nearly no effort. As you go into the future, it’s likely that handheld electronics will become standardized and essentially post scarcity, probably in the next century. Transportation is going to be limited by space constraints so while it’s conceivable that cars could become free for all on earth, vehicles to go to space or travel the solar system will be the new frontier of scarcity. And so on
The problems with the idea of post-scarcity are (at least) threefold:
1. While biological needs are finite and definable, psychological needs vary from individual to individual, and wants can be effectively infinite.
2. In societies more advanced and affluent than mere survival-level, it becomes imcreasingly difficult for most members to tell the difference between a want and a need.
3. So, who decides the difference between wants and needs among the populace? Does this party determine what their own resource allotments are?
I just want to mention this, but one of the best examples of a broken megalopolis is Girl’s Last Tour Anime/Manga. The premise and story are amazing, but they revolve around an absolutely stunning world, and I can’t recommend checking it out more. Seriously, Blame! Vibes all around.
Nice recommend. Looks good during a quick skim.
I’d also recommend Blame and the nausicaa (of the valley of the wind) manga as they both feature people living way down the line on top of ageing civilisations. Nausicaa more open word than give but still compelling.
Great job. Orbital Rings and orbital plates are great ways to sidestep any transportation issues. Have a great weekend.
A Hive City the size of Qatar could hold 200 million people if each person had 50m2 of space. A Hive City at least 28km high with Hive Primus could hold tens of billions of people and still have room for food and vertical farms
Necromunda's hive cities are absolutely enormous, I just wish we had more novels showing off the logistics of daily life in hive cities.
Billions is still just unrealistic
Now i wanna hear about paradise worlds!
They're overrated, honestly. Unless you're into slanessh vibes😅
In futurama they built the city on top of literal ruins that are still accessible but deserted.
Human mutants lived there.
A literal city mountain
If a mile-long ship of arrives every day carrying food, I imagine it or another similarly-sized ship leaves every day with, er, "night soil"? That itself might become a problem during a seige, though as the food supply is consumed that space can be put to use for storage of food's waste product.
Why would "night soil" be shipped out? It can obviously be used as fertilizer for crops, as fuel, and as feedstock for many chemical processes.
@@spaceman081447 To avoid depleting the soil where the food is coming from.
@@barryon8706
I don't understand. Please explain.
@@spaceman081447 minerals, nitrogen, and other nutrition plants need can be depleted by growing crops on the same land year after year without some kind of fertilizer or other soil treatment.
I think the best way to visualise a Hive City is to imagine a 1,000 Detroits stacked on top of each other, expanded out to cover an entire planet, only with less poverty and crime than the actual Detroit.
Twenty-four minutes in and we're at the 'talking seriously about the utility of strategic lard reserves' stage. Pure Isaac Arthur that.
I call mine ‘Gajapolis’, a portmanteau of Gaja (Which is the Titan of the Planet in Greek Myth) and Polis which is also Greek for City.
But 80% of my inspiration comes from”Okay but what if 40k, but not grimdark.” 😂🎉
"What if 40K but not Grimdark"
Wouldn't that be the time period that the Imperium calls the Dark Age of Technology?
@@PyrusFlameborn Yes, technically also called the Golden Age of Technology. It is a matter of perspective.
But the gist was it ended because of AI apocalypse.
@@twenty-fifth420 Certainly a matter of prospective. Just ask the Eldar.
Noble Bright?
@@twenty-fifth420 What does Dark Age mean in Warhammer 40k since we use it to describe the early medieval era in Europe it means we have little knowledge of the era due to the lack of sources?
Hey Isaac I have a question if we could theoretically access a seperate universe where 1000 years equal mere moments in this world and therefore a lifetime spent there would be seconds in our world. Would a computer built there with good memeory able to compute anything.
That might depend on the mechanism of traveling and transferring the information between universes.
You can only compute what you can accurately describe. Without “quantum computing” the limit remains on the possible data inputs available to create a predictive model, with quantum computing you only need that time-dimension to filter out the “bad” data in the vast array of results.
We might finally get to play Crysis at max settings
About heat dissipation in large cities... London subway uses the surrounding soil as a heat sink, as operating the trains generates a lot of heat that need to be managed to keep the tunnels useable. After a century of operation, the soil reached its maximum heat capacity and its a concern during the real hot days.
Funny, that should be an easy fix: to switch into regenerative braking. Or at least resistor one...
0:13 IA, I appreciate the nod to Warhammer 40K Brother. Keep the “corps starch bars” and “archeo tech “ flowing to the masses . lol
I’ve been waiting for this all my life. Thank you.
man this channel rocks! so much to think about, so much to dream about. great work brother!
Ok, I expected something different when reading "Hive Worlds".
I have a hive world in a current WIP and was hoping to get some info on the topic, but mine is not dystopian nor does it feature humans.
It's a planet inhabited by naturally occuring machines that work together like colonial organisms (e.g. Siphonophores) or maybe like eusocial insects.
Now I have to see whether there is a video about creatures like this.
I would recommend his video on ecology of the void.
2:54 Nice Choice of Mega City One pictures. This had been one of my favorites.
Yeah, to me its reminiscent of Gene Ha's artwork from the Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix set in a very dystopian 40th century, that rounded metallic building look, I'm not sure if Taylor was inspired by Ha or vice-versa or someone else but it's very nice style.
It's easy to imagine how planet other than Earth can become a Hive:
1) imagine planet that is like Earth before life appeared;
2) initial wave of settlers need to bring only algae and bacteria to make it hospitable for life - eventually; No planetary-engineering required;
3) meanwhile settlers would be living in closed space; possibly for generations while planet become more and more hospitable to life;
4) however since there is no "wild" "nature" to be concerned about all the land would be used for farming activity (first and for quite a while - under some sealed greenhouses);
5) there is nothing particularly bad about living in well designed and enclosed city - especially when outside is basically desert, sterile saline ocean and toxic fumes here and there, mixed with sealed greenhouses and aquariums;
6) eventually as population grows and grows entire planet will become one big farmland with crops and farm animals spread around the planet to be better suited for its different climate zones, as well as have at least some biodiversity for redundancy in case some virus or other crop/livestock threatening pathogen happens, while population will be living in several extremely densely populated cities
7) also since bioshpere of such world is entirely artificial, it would be possible to keep concentration of gasses like CO2 at levels most productive for farming and that is 5-10 times higher than that on modern Earth;
8) finally as population grows some planetary engineering would be required, like changing direction of rivers so that they would bring water to more arid areas, making artificial lakes / flooding lowlands with seawater to make more hospitable local climate (like hypothetical project of flooding center of Australia to create a large saline lake - inner sea - to have a lot more biomass around it) and so on.
Honestly that sounds like that could be a pretty good place to live in.
Dark humor is like food.
_Delicious._
5:43
What is the crucible doing there? Shouldn't it be out about killing reapers?
Back in my Cycle, the Crucible harvested the Reapers...
20:12
"Civilizations with fairly dark and utilitarian attitudes toward its citizens, or ones that are simply desperate, might keep immense cryo-vaults packed to the brim with soldiers, who they thaw out when needed - riots or sieges - and stuff non-wartime citizens in till its time to rotate them."
This video came before HELLDIVERS 2.
Huge fan of Leutin!! And as always SFIA is fantastic!!! Great eposide sir!
I missed it, did Isaac shout out Luetin09? Very cool if so
@cosmictreason2242 Yeah, he did! Fitting video to shout him out in too! Two of my favorite creators! I'd love to find a way they could do a joint video! Maybe above hive worlds or how warhammer 40 talks about O'Neil Cylinders as the shipd that carried humand out to thr stars or just about anything would be cool!
@@smoore6461 Isaac would correct Luetin’s syntax errors (clearly caused by cuts during editing or very complex sentences in most cases) and Luetin would offer a rare opportunity for Isaac to have someone else to discuss realism and logistics with 😂
I honestly never equated give world with dystopian mega city… I thought this would be about sociology and humans adapting more from Ant/Bee/Termite societies.
Yet another winner! I have watched every video you have put out (the older ones at least 25 times each some even more!) thanks for filling my imagination with fantastical ideas and giving my 12 year old son an interest in space like mine ❤ you are awesome Isaac
Thanks Natasha, and please give him my best!
For the glory of The Emperor a new Isaac Arthur episode has been delivered to the undeserving.
Praise the Omnissiah!
_Loyalty is its own reward._
I always thoroughly enjoy your content but the last couple episodes have been right up my alley.
Thank you for the subtitles, and for the great content.
What a dystopian nightmare.
I just hope humanity will find a way to live in small towns amidst nature, rather than concrete and tarmac.
At least on earth.
@@mill2712
Personally I agree that we should turn earth into a nature preserve. But why stop at just earth? Why not build wilderness habitats in O'Neill cylinders? And why do you think humanity should live intermingled with nature? I am sure there would be such cities that have that aesthetic, but actually living admist nature would be hell. Dying of dysentery and getting eaten alive by animals isn't as great as you may think.
When you bring up the sheer number of people in these vast mega cities and starspanning empires, one statistic that I find grimly intriguing is your estimate that, barring any changes in mental health and psychotherapy, a stellar empire with quadrillions will have more serial killers then there are people in the United States. I confess that may or may not have inspired one of the conflicts in a military sci-fi book I'm working on...
It's funny to me that 40k is one of the wackiest and most fantastical sci-fi franchises out there, but they actually capture the sheer scale of a galaxy-spanning civilization pretty well. An average hive world in 40k has something like 50 billion people living in each hive, with 10+ hives across the planet. I think the biggest of them house over two trillion, which seems reasonable to support with the level of technology they have. Meanwhile George R R Martin is pretty well regarded for writing more grounded-in-reality fantasy stories, but one of his earlier sci-fi works tells the story of a spacefaring civilization that is somehow facing a massive overpopulation crisis with around 10 billion people, struggling with food shortages despite having their entire moon terraformed and used for agriculture. Just interesting how far apart the two extremes are.
The human mind isn't good with big numbers, so the exaggerated version is closer to reality, and the grounded version is close to parody.
G r r martin a not so smart good writer
This isn't the Mother's Day content I was expecting.
This is Mother Of All Day content.
It's scary to think that we may be living in the best age of humanity for individuals. After all the dangers of nature, before all the horrors of man.
Xeelee sequence has some groups of humans in hidden and lost colonies that evolve into eusocial hives.
Same for Man After Man.
Because of my ADHD you always get extra watch time from me because I find myself rewinding dozens of time each video because my brain goes on a vacation while I’m watching and I completely miss what you’re saying.
It's nice that you gave Lutein a callout, loved the episode.
Hive City - Sounds like a giant Amazon warehouse with a technocratic healthcare system, where everybody eats Soylent Green & bounty hunters chase everyone down who’s “aged out”…
Some Chinese researchers figured out how to synthesize starches from scratch, with vastly more energy efficiency then plants.
Other researchers also figured out they can get plants to grow faster by adding synthesized acetone to their growth medium, that the plants metabolize.
Isaac is such an optimist of humanity and society.
Guess this sundays snack will be Corpse starch
I’ve been catching these episodes early on Nebula lately but always come back here to read the comments. Too bad you can’t also comment there.
Its on the long list of planned features :)
Coruscant with factory worker living conditions while a / the major portion of the world would have housing tracts, food production, recycling for profit, waste treatment and management, as well as a seriously major portion of the world with just massive foundries, forges, and other mass production areas, again the factories, however, conditions may be... sparse.
The secret to running a good Hive World is atmospheric reclamation through plants and other air treatment methods so that people can live and breathe there.
Hell yeah dude. That was a good episode!
I want to see sheet after sheet of hexagonal living quarters all joined up and accessible from the roof which is also the ground.
I literally just got into 40K and this is a very, very good day
Your comment on there being 'small' gangs that are more and better organized than some present national militaries makes me wonder what the future of Organization itself will be. Thoughts on the future of the human/AI action of Organizing? Relative to Entropy?
My favourite hive mind is Serpo, from the book, Journey to Serpo.
Serpo has a hive society.
And note well, humans, a mantis was observed there.
(A reference to historian Dr. David Jacobs book "Walking Among Us ".)
Arthur, your Overton window is too small.
The image of "Cyber Seagulls" made me laugh... and then shudder.
WOW ! THE TECNOLOGY PICTURES ARE GREAT. FANTASTIC FOR AN ARTIST LOOKING OR IDEAS.
Isaac, you often refer to waste heat, but perhaps you could do an episode on methods to USE waste heat rather than simply get rid of it? Perhaps utilizing some kind of special crop to outright devour the heat that even if it cannot be eaten itself would potentially make fertilizer for more palatable dishes.
I always think that, eg. Use it to turn water into steam and then you still have the heat, it's just in the water/steam that needs to be cooled before reuse.
In the novel Sundiver they use it to power a lazer and get rid of heat that way. But it's still a case of moving the heat somewhere else.
Unfortunately, it's all a bit beyond my level of understanding. Lol
Not how this Universe works, unfortunately (or at least it appears to be one of the most fundamental Laws of the Universe).
Any machine, living beings, chemical reaction, etc. can only take part of energy as it flows from heat source (stars) to cold - space int the end: heat is radiated into space as photons where this photons fly forever in the void without interacting with anything ever again (that is unless universe expansion is reverted and universe collapse back into singularity).
Speed at which heat can flow, temperatures/energy levels of radiated photons are fundamental constants - i.e. not something it is possible to affect.
Though my understanding is limited, I do for sure know that there is a new class of power generation plates/panels that absorbs infrared light. Whether it could be scaled down enough to combine with machinery or even bodies to generate power from excess radiated heat is entirely a topic for research to discover
Unfortunately, any mechanism that moves heat around with any kind of efficiency will, inevitably, produce more heat itself. So you can't actually "recycle" heat.
I suppose it is appropriate that a video with a lot of Warhammer 40K would come to the conclusion that the actual limit to the size of a hive world that relies heavily on imports comes down to how long the planet could survive a siege. Moreso than most fictional universes, the Imperium would understand exactly what happens when a city-planet is surrounded and cut off.
I like the idea of a hive world mountain city that just keeps growing
We would become like dwarves
6:25 We already have mini societies like that. It's been like 6 years since I saw a segment on PBS about an area of China. It has a giant landfill and some people living in that area go into the landfill for necessities. They talked to a lady that was going in to get food for her dog
if i were a solar level government i would have a dedicated agri-world, the colony world proper, a dedicated forge world as set forth in the colonial charter of the greater empire so the greater empire doesn't have to micromanage the governments of every sector and are just more like a dedicated fleet garrison, the average patrol fleet and in times of war each world is self sufficient enough to supply and merely be used for levies of manpower.
Fascinating discussion on the technology and resources needed to build, maintain and operate a hive world, but little attention given to the great psychological pressures such "unnatural" environments would exert on their populations, and the mind boggling array of cultures that would arise in them.
Humans will come to accept as "normal" any conditions that don't immediately kill them.
You might think it's unnatural to live in vast cities. Your children won't.
thanks for releasing this video. Its a good way to forget about my exam tomorrow
Good luck
@@isaacarthurSFIA thank you!
Tucson is a city in southern Arizona so is warm most of the year. California investors buy up housing in Arizona, then they multiply the rent to well over $1200 for a 1-bedroom apartment in a city where minimum wage is more common than not.
Thus, we have a large Homeless population.
Many of these homeless people scavenge dumpsters behind restaurants and often alleys in residential areas. I was emptying my trash and saw two people eating garbage I had thrown away as uneatable.
THIS is common in American cities and there is NO solution presented so it will only get worse.
The solution is to let their price gouging result in getting fewer tenants or driving people to buy instead, so that they’ll have to offer lower rent eventually to not have to sell at a loss
great episode, as always.
as usual the main problem, reality is unrealistic, almost no human would consider making city sized space stations easier and better than interstellar travel, yet the previous one could be done now (more or less), while the other is probably not possible in meaningful way.
I was thinking that earths current hot spots would be where terras forges set drawing up magma from the mantle for resources with the leftover slag molded into enormous arogell like legos for construction.
Maybe Mr. Asimov used 40 Billion in the so called long ladder. Meaning 40 Billion=4*10^13. Would be much more plausible. As far as i know the meaning of "Billion" changed in english from 10^12 to 10^9. Just not sure, which meaning was used by Asimov.
I think the oceans could act as a good heat sink. Dump the excess heat down to the water. Once the oceans boil, the vapor rises in chimneys that release it high in the atmosphere where it cools off and returns as rain.
Boiling your oceans off to speed cooling would definitely fit the dystopian hive world flavor :)
To answer your first question... have you looked at earth lately? Hive world. We're all cogs. but we can change it.
Yeah, but what does the food taste like? Pop tarts? Tacos al pastor? Pasta alle Vongole?
Oh shit 40K type stuff, strap in folks...forget popcorn get some pizza or something.
You should make a short video on all the books you recommended by Issac Asimov
Life in 2323 made me want a series, from 2121 to the classic 2525, but why stop there? 2929, followed by 3030, jump to 4040...
Seriously I dont know anything about this but the fact that more people knows it and you never know how are they gonna use it scares me a lot.Sorry but we like to see it in real life is crazy how many suffering on this world with so much ahead us that does exist.
Stellaris is a must for anyone who likes this kind of content. I usually play as Mind Hive (or AI).
It's one of the few games where I honestly don't mind losing.
I think the real problem with the hive city concept is that humans in cities don't have kids. Youd have to have some large change in psychology or import the population.
The reason they don’t now is not because of how many people live near them but for ideological reasons. People in the burbs are more tightly packed than rural farm communities 300 years ago, and that’s not stopping them.
Would be great to have a book list featuring Hive worlds
Here's a partial:
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HiveCity
The sheer scale of what Mankind might achieve both impresses and frightens me. I can't imagine a trillion people on Earth let alone a quadrillion or more. The number is just too big. Sliding 40k references into the mix makes it worse both for the scale and the grimdark setting. The Imperium of man has literally a million worlds or more. It has been stated that worlds are often simply forgotten...lost to the Warp or to the maze of the bureaucracy. Imagine living on an Earth-sized planet and the fleets that come and go almost daily simply stop.
I notice you go a lot towards Warhammer 40K, You want something even more Hivemind, maybe you should reference the Borg, from Star Trek. Not only are there lots of worlds all Borg, but you have ships, trans warp hubs that are fueled by stars.
TH-cam never lists Isaac Arthur videos in my notifications... it's very frustrating.
Really liked the animation of the channel's graphic meat printed.
Love the classic 40k art.
Is there any episodes on hive-mind civilizations?
For me they are one of the more scarier to think about.
Arthur 0 seconds into the video: "In the grim and dark future..."
Me: Oh -god- emperor yes
The one thing none of the books or films ever dreamed of was a planet with a shrinking population like we have now.
World Population Growth - Our World in Data
The world population increased from 1 billion in 1800 to around 8 billion today. The world population growth rate declined from around 2% per year 50 years ago to under 1.0% per year.
This is probably just temporary. Right now progressive ideologies got the world in a choke hold. In a few generations they will die out from lack of breeding and those with genetic disposition to traditional ideologies will keep on breeding.