system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What is the theoretical height-limit of a building using modern materials and engineering methods?
gpt
Modern materials come into play if you want to build a roughly cylindrical structure like a skyscraper. But you can build a very, very tall building with primitive materials if you use a lot of them. Imagine a tapering cone, where the radius decreases rapidly with height so that the amount of material at each level is proportional to the weight of the material above it. With such a shape, you could build it a structure out of stone and still make it arbitrarily high, up until the earth's crust starts to sink under it. Mount Everest is a small example of what could be done given a sufficient budget.