The Cambias Digression

Notes and thoughts on everything from what I had for breakfast to the fate of the Universe.

  • Twenty Years!

    Today marks a significant anniversary. Twenty years ago, on October 31, 2000, the first crew launched to the International Space Station. Station crews are called "Expeditions," so Expedition 1 began on that date. We're currently on Expedition 64, with three in the pipeline and many more planned. The Expeditions overlap, so that the new crew…

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  • Snow

    It's snowing outside as I write. Feh. The leaves aren't all off the trees yet. I was waiting for all of them to fall before raking. Now there's a layer of wet unraked leaves under the snow. Feh.

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  • The Need For Long Campaigns

    Here's an interesting — and, I think, important — brief essay on the value of long things. Listening to long pieces of music, reading long books, and (for us nerds) playing long roleplaying campaigns. It's by David McGrogan, better known as "Noisms," the somewhat mysterious author of the amazing Yoon-Suin game setting.  Possibly revealing confession:…

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  • Notes on the Invisible Man

    On Friday evenings my wife and I have a regular Movie Night. We've been doing it ever since it became impossible to go out to a real movie theater, and I expect we'll continue after (if) they re-open. To avoid conflicts over what to watch — or, worse yet, an "Abilene Paradox" situation where in…

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  • Great Filters, Part 9: Odds and Ends

    Well, I think I've come to the end of my series on the Great Filters and the Fermi Paradox. There are a few bits which didn't quite fit into any of the earlier posts. So here they are, in more or less random order. Have We Looked? First, there's the issue of what Michael Hart…

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  • Great Filters, Part 8: Space Filters

    Wow, I've been doing this for two months and am not done yet. Now I know how Proust must have felt. Assuming Proust was writing blog posts about the Fermi Paradox, of course. So far I've looked at all the Great Filters which lie in our past — barriers to the evolution of life, barriers…

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  • A Prediction

    If you read this article — "The Bias that Divides Us," by Keith Stanovich — you will nod sagely about the cognitive bias it describes. And then you will spend ten or fifteen minutes reassuring yourself that you aren't affected by it.

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  • Great Filters, Part 7: Disaster Filters!

    We've brought ourselves up to the present day in the evolution of the Earth, life, and human civilization. My estimates for the various filters we've passed through indicate that there ought to be around fifty other civilizations in the Milky Way. The principle of mediocrity suggests that a good half of those fifty should be…

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  • Hanson Again

    No, I don't have some kind of Internet stalker crush on Robin Hanson. I know I've spent six weeks writing 'blog posts about an idea he had a decade ago, but that doesn't prove anything. Posting a link to a recent piece by him about technological progress (or the lack thereof) doesn't prove anything either.…

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  • Great Filters, Part 6: Civilization Filters

    In my previous posts on the topic of Great Filters, I've looked at all the hard science limits on life and intelligence on other worlds. Those limits left us with a ballpark figure of 5,000 intelligent species in the Milky Way. Now we're shifting to the "softer" sciences, with a focus on history and archaeology.…

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The Worldbuilding Index