so you want to move large amounts of people and cargo around? it will be most efficient to build one large specialized engine that pulls a bunch of cheap, modular passenger and cargo compartments in a long line
no they definitely all have to have their own engine
very well, i suppose that increases the modularity. we can have vehicles that carry 50 to 100 people, perhaps, and…
no, we’re talking like 5 people, at most, and they have to be very friendly with each other
ugh, fine, so we physically attach them to each other and…
no no no! they can’t be physically attached!
coordinate a virtual tether over wifi by having them drive really close to one another?
finally! a technological solution to this problem!
Feel like makes more sense. Sheldon was canonically a train nerd and refused to drive himself.
Also Sheldon was shunned in his rural texas hometown because the one time he took an objective look at trying to solve political problems he almost immediatly arrived at communism.
Haven’t even watched the show but I feel fairly confident this would be his favorite website.
is this young sheldon?
because older sheldon is incredibly reactionary
Wait what where can I read about this
Are you telling me the Bazinga guy has at least one redeeming trait
well i’m going more for silicon valley tech grifter nerd than mckinsey neolib bureaucrat
maybe ?
of course
The first one would say:
no they definitely all have to have their own engine, because they should have the freedom of choice. Trains are authoritarian because they only allow for one route.
Which then leads to
But they’re all mainly travelling the same few routesYes, but they should have the freedom to choose other routes
So you want to build highways everywhere?
Yes! Or no, not really. Just highways for the main routes people travel.
That’s just rail lines but worse.
No it isn’t, people can completely decide where they want to go themselves. We’re gonna have offramps at major clusters of traffic, you know where a lot of people get on and off the highway. And then we’re gonna have less heavily dedicated roads for smaller traffic.
That’s just light rail, you’re describing light rail. Are you going to asphalt the entire world?
No, there’s not enough money in that.
So you still decide what routes people can take. Whatever, this "road"system will require immense resources to maintain.
No it won’t, there’s not enough money in maintaining public infrastructure. We’re going to let things just sort of… decay. Maybe we will sell off some major nodes to private companies that can then charge outrageous amounts of money for using the road.
Will you use trains for anything?
Yes! We will use them to transport toxic chemicals.
The power of our emoji game on this site never fails to impress me. Did not expect to be reading the dialectic of lib Sheldon and robo Lenin but what better parties to have the debate
Trains are simply an example of Mustelization, a similar phenomena to Carcinization where life-forms convergently evolve weasel-like traits, instead of evolving crab-like traits.
the long, flexible ‘body’ and short ‘legs’ are peak Weasel, way more than Crab. Perhaps trains are a combination of the best features of both, the spinal flexibility and body length from Weasels and multi-legged stability and armored exoskeleton from Crabs.
Seems more centipede/millipede than weasel
This will be our schism
carcinization
traincinization
boxcarcinization