David Shapiro talks about systems thinking. One thing that stuck out to me was the creation of layered models. Like the OSI model. When trying to understand systems changing levels of perspective is also important to develop this model.
For energy its something like
Energy laws → Evolutionary requinements to reproduce → agriculture
Smil covers traditional farming in chapter 3. Traditional farming is defined by the use of animal and human labour. Or more poetically, the use of just solar power. The plants create phytomass using the suns energy. This is processed by humans (using their energy) and consumed by humans and animals. In turn they use this energy to create plants which use the sun to create photomask and so on. This seems like it can’t be self-sustaining.
- If we say that the BMR of the average person is 7MJ/day.
- 1 person needs 500g wheat/day.
- If wheat yield is 1t/ha of land and requires 600 hours of labour.
- 600 hours of labour is 47/24600 which is 696 MJ of energy.
- That energy input would give you 1000kg of grain which is 13.5GJ of energy.
- So to keep you alive for 600 hours and work is 696 + 175 = 871MJ of energy. The net return then is ~15.
The yield here is the major factor. The absolute magnitude of usable you get out for energy put in.
Qing Net energy from fertilization
A good late Qing dynasty winter wheat harvest of about
- 1.5 t/ha
- required just over 300 hours of human and about 250 hours of animal labor.
- Fertilization took, respectively, 17% and 40% of these totals.
- Fertilization hours are 51 and 100 hours.
- 10 t/ha of fertilizer which contains 0.5% nitrogen.
- Due to leaching only half that nitrogen becomes available.
- 25 kg/ha nitrogen for crops.
- Each kg will add 10kg of grain. So 25*10 = 250kg of extra grain.
- 3% used then as animal feed.
- I think what Smil is saying is that you get 200kg of flour (2.8GJ) for 51 hours of extra work (40MJ) of energy.
I’m confused by Smil only taking into account additional energy, do you not have to include BMR in all calculations? Or I suppose you can look at additional energy if all the other units are marginal.
Prompt Engineering
Anatomy of a prompt
- Instructions
- Top of the prompt, describing how to construct an output from input.
- External info/ context
- User input
- Output
How do I make AI a tool to work for me?
If I’m so convinced that an LLM OS will be so powerful, why not make one?