It boggles my mind, with the understanding and technology we have, that we have not leveraged our entire world economy to the single goal of establishing human colonies off world and sending generation ships to nearby stars.
It is the single most beneficial act to the survival likelihood of the human species that seems available to us.
Oops. I accidentally downvoted you by mistake, there's no way to undo that. I mostly agree with you actually! Except we shouldn't devote all our resources to it. Actually about 1-2% of our resources would be enough. Currently we expend less than 0.1% or so of global resources to space exploration (not just Mars). A tenfold or twentyfold increase would make a really big improvement there, enough to establish a foothold and grow.
It boggles my mind, with the understanding and technology we have, that we have not leveraged our entire world economy to the single goal of eradicating poverty of the world.
There goes the "but we have so many problems down here" argument again. Starting a Mars colony would require the efforts of a few thousand people and cost a few percent of world GDP. Eradicating poverty would require the cooperation of millions of people, many of whom would sooner murder each other, and more than half of world GDP. So not only are the two projects not mutually exclusive, a Mars colony is actually much less difficult.
If your Mars colony is just a PR^H^H national pride game - you've got a handful of people, some high-school kids' plant experiment and the Little Box with the Antenna some TLA agency asked you to leave behind - then sure, it would be no more expensive than the SDI, the Libyan war or any other stupid boondoggle we can apparently afford.
If you want an actual self-sufficient colony, you've got a much bigger project. I don't think we know what is actually required to create a self-sustaining technical culture in space, because we've only really done it by accident and not in space. But this: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insuffic... is as decent a hand-wavey starting point as any. And it is quite a bit more resource-intensive than a few kilopeople/few percent of organized human output.
The comparison to those stupid boondoggles doesn't really do the scale we're talking about justice. A few percent of gross world product is 4 trillion dollars per year. That's more expensive than the entire Second World War. That's enough money to fund NASA for two centuries. That's enough money to launch the mass of the empire state building into LEO twice using current disposable rockets.
As horrible as it sounds, from the perspective of species survival, poverty is not a big issue. The globalization of culture and ideology that such a movement would impose to eradicate poverty would itself be a bigger threat to survival than poverty.
Diversity of thought and culture is a huge survival benefit, and to fulfill the western fantasy of poverty eradication we would have to impose a new set of values and thoughts upon all those affected. It would have to be built on the destruction of diversity that is of higher utility than those people's welbeing.
But this is admittedly, from a perspective that would be cruel to a great many people.
I can see strong arguments for modifying cultures worldwide to lower poverty, but only in ways that promote that they find their own varied and unique solutions to the problems, rather than imposing a single solution.
You talk about ensuring the survival of the species, yet you downplay the suffering of fellow humans. What would there be left to save if everyone thought this way?
Not much. I'm not evangelistic about my ideals. Variety of thought, values and philosophy is a survival boon. We just need enough people to think this way, all of us would not be good.
I don't want to save my ideology, i want to save the existence of any ideology.
Do ideologies of destruction and self-destruction get the same treatment as any other? Preserving them for the sake of preservation and diversity perhaps?
Yes. I hope people get the chance to re-invent slavery, racism, genocide and every other horrible thing over and over. I have strong ideas about all of those things, but they are part of what humanity is. Maybe humanity will change, maybe it wont. I want to save it either way.
Among the list of things I'm not too worried about that could eradicate humanity or at least send it back to stone ages during the next 500 years, "terrorism" ranks above asteroids.
(For example, think about genetically modified super-disease. And consider how much easier it could become to make one.)
And what feeds terrorism? Poverty and injustice.
Frankly, I guess I'll sound like a broken record, but if we're worried about the future then there's no bigger imminent threat than CO2. Left unchecked, every major coastal cities in the world will be underwater by 3000.
* Besides, are you seriously saying that "non-Western" cultures should remain poverty-stricken so that the "Western culture" can benefit from the resulting diversity? This is wrong on so many levels.
> * Besides, are you seriously saying that "non-Western" cultures should remain poverty-stricken so that the "Western culture" can benefit from the resulting diversity? This is wrong on so many levels.
You hit the nail on the head here. The problem is not that we should or should not be helping them, but rather that we ACTIVELY and WILLFULLY base our economy on their continued poverty.
I think the best thing the US could do to end poverty is exit the world economy. The problem is that our standard of living and way of life is built upon the cheap labor of impoverished countries to produce the goods we consume.
I don't think western culture would benefit from such diversity. In fact the idea of diversity being a benefit is hinged upon the understanding that if western culture is not the most fit strategy, that there will be other cultures to rise when it falls.
The reason that I promote colonization as a more effective strategy then trying to fix problems here is simple:
- Attempting to fix problems here slightly improves the state of affairs, and reduces one of many possible causes for local extinction.
- Adding even one viable colony squares the chance of loss (that is an awesome improvement) and every additional colony exponentially improves on our likelihood of survival.
Based on actual behaviour of the people, the survival of the human species does not score very high in the Values scale.
We don't even really care about most of the current population - save if by chance of a crude documentary we feel they are closer to us than where they really are.
There is a big difference between survival of the species and survival of the majority. We were at one time fewer than 10k people (give or take) and we came through fine.
Even if we build a spaceship that can accelerate up to the speed of light and send it to the nearest star, we won't even know what happened to it in our lifetime. Doesn't seem like something the world could agree to donate all its money for.
The diameter of our galaxy is about 100,000 light years. Unless you've got some way to go faster than light then you're 2 orders of magnitude out on your estimate.
Aside from many other technical challenges (including how to shield your super-fast ship from microasteroids so it doesn't get holes punched in it at 0.5c), the main problem is: where do you get the energy needed to maintain constant 1g acceleration?
We can't even agree on carbon. There's no way we can agree on something like that. People are too busy surviving individually to worry about survival of the species.
Honestly, that is the problem in a nutshell. We have followed the optimization strategy of self-interest to it's optima. We will have to change strategies to break out.
So how can we change what people value, without destroying that which we are attempting to preserve?
> We can't even agree on carbon. There's no way we can agree on something like that.
Not with that attitude.
It's not so much that we "can't agree" but more that the main argumentative mode these days is sneering and insults, occasionally backed up by mob violence. No wonder people get stubborn about sticking to their positions.
If you want everyone in the world to agree it's not going to happen. If you want enough people in the world to agree to move things a little towards what you want, it's possible.
The original premise here was that humanity would "leverag[e] our entire world economy to [a] single goal." You'd need a very significant chunk of humanity to agree in order to change the entire world economy. That's the part I find unlikely, and I think carbon is a decent example of why.
(And since you brought up the topic of sneering and insults, frankly, the only time I've felt insulted at at on this site recently was your "Not with that attitude" comment. Perhaps you're assuming some kind of ill will or political motivation on my part that was not in fact there. Regardless, your comment still reads like a sneer to me, three days later.)
Other dangers are more present and tangible. Among the great nations, who will drop their gun first? That might be a good question to start with. Otherwise people will rightly think you are a kook, because there will be no future us anyway, without security considerations here and now.
I couldn't care less about the long term survival of the human race. I can't think of a lower priority. Explain to me why it should be my highest priority...
It depends on your moral system.
If a cause it not apparent to you, than I doubt your moral system would value it.
The most universally accepted argument is that one has an obligation to one's own ancestors to maximize their chances of survival.
I consider it to be the asymptotic biological imperative. I've decided not to have children, thus I have an obligation to ensure that everybody else's children have better odds of survival.
A lot of people are probably not into this because it won't help with their individual survival. I don't think many people care about the survival of the human species if they themselves are left out.
It boggles my mind that people seriously consider this a real solution.
Even if we assume one of the worst case scenarios of a massive asteroid impact, the earth would still be more habitable than decades of development on Mars and without massive resource outlays to get it there.
I view the asteroids as a better colonization target than mars because you are right.
I think we should be focus on building self-reproducing tin-cans that contain a minimal human-supporting ecosystem (and humans). The problem is not finding better planets, it is about being planet-bound at all.
I think more beneficial would be if we focus our force on getting thermonuclear fusion working (or other source of 'free' energy'). Cheap endless energy will superspeed all other endeavors.
It boggles my mind when people assume that their pet ideas should be everyone's. Patience was a virtue. In a couple hundred years time people will be able to do that without having to "leverage the entire world economy".
>> It is the single most beneficial act to the survival likelihood of the human species that seems available to us.
> people assume that their pet ideas should be everyone's.
It's not exactly a pet idea, but it is against the grain of most Human thinking, which is far more geared for tribal thinking than thinking at the species level, which is why it doesn't "boggle my mind". That said, I think is important, and arguing it's not selfish[1] by definition, as it puts one's personal, community, national, continental and/or world interests above the interests of the species, which ultimately is survival. Off-world colonies is procreation at the species level, and is the only way to prevent an extinction level event of the type that we know happen occasionally on earth.
1: I'm not trying to imply your statement is selfish as much as make a general point.
> Off-world colonies is procreation at the species level, and is the only way to prevent an extinction level event of the type that we know happen occasionally on earth.
To be fair it doesn't prevent an ELE at all, it just means that one would destroy 99.9%+ of the human species instead of 100%.
Shotgunning even a few tens of thousands of people in all directions would not meaningfully change the end result of an ELE on Earth unless you wound up with 100-200 of them on the same hospitable rock.[0]
99.9% loss is infinitely better than the current expected loss rate. The most effective technique for lowering the total loss likelihood is to have as many independent populations large enough to self-propagate indefinitely as possible.
> it just means that one would destroy 99.9%+ of the human species instead of 100%.
That is the difference between extinction and non-extinction. It changes what would previously have been an extinction level event into a non-extinction level event. That is, it doesn't prevent the event, it prevents it from being extinction level, which is the whole point.
> Shotgunning even a few tens of thousands of people in all directions would not meaningfully change the end result of an ELE on Earth unless you wound up with 100-200 of them on the same hospitable rock.
The point isn't to just send people to other locations, but to eventually create self-sustaining colonies. That doesn't happen without first getting people there. (and hospitable is relative).
If survival is the goal, why not spend this few percent of world GDP to solve global warming. Plaster the deserts with solar panels.
Heck, we could maybe use the same tech to both robotically plaster the deserts with solar panels. Then send those finely tuned bots up to Mars to do the same thing there.
Global warming will not cause human extinction. At most, it could cause a drop in population, and a regression of civilization in the hardest hit areas. A giant asteroid will not be thwarted by our good stewardship of the Earth.
We went to the moon to show military might, and beat the USSR. Having done so, no interest in more?
We've never been back since. A moonbase is the obvious place to experiment, develop and benefit from 1/6th gravity as a staging post to Mars. We should have been there for the last 40 years.
It saddens me we're so short sighted. No votes in it?
Could we even organise a global effort? The governments would spend decades arguing over who got to make which bit.
I'm much more hopeful of the private efforts to be truthful.
Last thing I remember reading from NASA about manned mars exploration was via a space station in lunar orbit and associated moonbase. It wasn't that long ago but maybe they found preferred methods.
A space station at one of the Lagrange points is likely. If one wanted to do a space station near the moon, L1 and L2 would work. L1 is on the Earth side while L2 is on the dark side of the moon. L4 and L5 have long been proposed for long-term space stations.
It's not as if establishing an off-world colony will solve any of our actual, serious challenges (mankind's aggression, our lack of empathy, our disregard for environments around us). If anything, it will only further spread the disease known as the human condition.
It's an escapist nerd fantasy and I say this as someone who sleeps next to a copy of Dune.
Survival but only in the extremely long term sense of the word. The sun will rise tomorrow and the next day, there's no pressuring impending need to jump planets. This plus the expense is why its slow going. But the important part is there are some people working on it.
Nobody really cares about the long term-survival of the human species.
Also : we're all going to die. We learn to live with this idea. Why the perspective of our end as individuals could not be extended to our end as a whole?
Also : if you want to ensure humanity's long term survival, spending hundreds of billions to go live on a desert, rusty planet with an oxygen-less, tenuous atmosphere is a weird idea. If you're afraid of asteroids, build a shelter and store food.
Nobody is a strong word. The person above does, I do, and many other intelligent people do.
Maybe you could argue that they're just worried about their own particular genes (i.e. the Selfish Gene), but some people certainly care about ensuring that humanity survives.
So far, Homo sapiens barely even merits a footnote in the history of Earth life.
What we could be doing is manufacturing and launching panspermia spores.
K-strategy is fine. We can launch generation ships as well. But in the absence of any conclusive evidence that a life-like complex of self-propagating chemical reactions exists anywhere else in the universe, r-strategy seems best. Assemble the minimum viable package for propagation of Earth-style life, and manufacture copies until you run out of mass.
We don't actually know whether all life in the universe could be exterminated by sterilizing just one planet. Using a similar amount of resources, we could create about 140k reasonably stable human colonies, or we could send 5 kilograms of spores towards every star in the galaxy, instructing the probe controller to shoot off a few any time it can detect liquid water.
That way, if humanity fizzles out anyway after an eon or so, there will eventually be other species to try their grasping appendages at space colonization.
I really don't get it! Could someone please explain this to me:
- Why do humans today work so hard so that some other members of homo sapiens species can inhabit another planet? Those creatures, you, everyone you know and the entire species will be gone. Why bother to do that or anything at all? What is the end game?
- Is the decision to care about humans going to Mars made by careful & rational consideration which resulted in conclusion that members of homo sapiens species should be on Mars and that there is an objective moral duty to do so? Why pick homo sapiens species instead of some other animal species? Is it objectively true that a bio-chemical process known as a homo sapiens has intrinsic value and that everyone should work to sustain it?
Given that your comment is well constructed, you seem to be dismissed simply for not having the same point of view. I'll try to engage constructively.
------------------------------
If I read you correctly, you are raising two arguments:
1. what does an individual gains from participating in the project
2. objectively, why homo sapiens?
Regarding 2, I would say that there is not much to say aside from that we are not objective, and would prefer it if it was “us” who got to get to Mars.
I find point 1 much more interesting, especially what it says about society. Some individuals are very interested in the colonization of space, but not all are ready to directly work on it, and others are just uninterested.
However, having a structured government and a tax system allow us to make better use of individual skills, even that of those who are not directly interested in the project. Additionally, this is the kind of project where the ROI would be very long term and hard to estimate. Large scale coordination (governments and international institution) allow to make use of the "surplus workforce" that automatization is slowly making grow.
>Given that your comment is well constructed, you seem to be dismissed simply for not having the same point of view.
That's standard operating procedure around here.
What's really bad is that, unlike Reddit where anyone has the ability to down-mod, on here only people with high karma (over 1000) can down-mod, yet in my experience you're much more likely to be down-modded to oblivion here for having an unpopular viewpoint, whereas on Reddit you'll get both down-mods and up-mods and generally stay neutral.
So if you think about it, the set-up here reinforces the "hive-mind" dynamic: because only high-karma people have down-mod ability, people who are popular get modded up more, and down-mod people they disagree with, and this creates a feedback loop which silences any unpopular or dissenting opinions. Over on Reddit, even though people complain a lot about a hive-mind mentality, anyone can create an account there in seconds and then has the same up-mod and down-mod ability as anyone else, as long as they don't get restricted or banned by moderators, so it's far more democratic. (And if they do get banned, they can just create another account in 10 seconds...)
I do not feel like the hivemind effect is stronger on Hacker News than on e.g. /r/programming, and definitely lower than on default subreddits.
My main gripe about Reddit is the sheer amount of low-value comments, with repeated remarks, jokes and puns trumping constructed and sourced arguments. It is obviously hard to find a good compromise.
Well one thing you have to remember about Reddit is that every subreddit is basically a totally different forum, with different moderators, different rules to an extent, and a totally different crowd. The people who hang out on /r/Linux are not likely to be the same people who hang out on /r/Windows for instance, and there's plenty of subreddits that don't cater to tech crowds much at all. So what gets modded up or down will vary wildly from subreddit to subreddit.
But I definitely do feel the hivemind effect is greater here, at least in my personal experience (however I do not frequent /r/programming so I can't speak for that subreddit specifically). I constantly see posts down-modded here for no good reason, other than that someone doesn't like them because they go against the viewpoint of the elites here. I feel this is inevitable where you have a system where some people are "more equal" than others, as it is here. It might seem better in one way, with fewer "low-value comments" and jokes and memes and such, but it also turns into an echo chamber with misfits forced out.
The human race is a race of explorers, and always has been. We will go to Mars because it is there.
And if you really feel that mankind is on the same level as every other animal on the planet, despite no other species having built skyscrapers, gone to the moon, or printed their language, then that's not even really a conversation worth having.
I think that's quite an interesting conversation to have, personally. You, for example, assign a great deal of importance to things like building skyscrapers or going to the moon but given enough scale those activities are meaningless when compared to the other animals running around on this planet.
You made a great point. He puts building skyscrapers into a definition of greatness(an abstract term). But, why is that great and ants building they own habitats not great? They are small, so you can't expect them to build big habitats for humans.
Imagine saying that humans can't live and thrive in radioactive environment, like some fungi in Chernobyl do and therefore they are not great. Greatness means being able to live in radioactive environment.
You are only saying that certain bio-chemical structures reshuffle atoms in a different way, which in most cases suits their survival. You're judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Also, you make it seem that there is an objective scale which measures 'levels' [of greatness, I assume]. But, there is no evidence that such a scale exists. You pick these arbitrary shuffling of molecules, like building skyscrapers or going to another rock[Mars], as great or progressive. That is the result of having an unjustified bias towards your own species. Many animals can do things humans can't do and vice versa. But, that is just a difference, not an objective superiority or inferiority.
Why do these discussions always end up turning into pseudo-philosophical nihilist pity parties?
We can define greatness however the fuck we want, because as far as we can tell we're the only self-replicating assemblage of molecules that knows or cares what greatness even means. So if, during whatever time we're not spending making more copies of ourselves, we decide we enjoy shuffling molecules into a particular arbitrary pattern, who the fuck is going to tell us that isn't greatness? When you ask why we should bother making copies of ourselves on a different pile of dirt than the one we're currently on, you might as well be asking why we should go on making copies of ourselves at all. There is no endgame. There is only doing interesting shit, doing boring shit, and death. I choose interesting shit.
I don't even know why people then write papers, do research or discuss things when they could call someone dummy or label what they are talking about as 'pseudo-X'. What is 'pseudo-philosophical' about the questions asked? It is your reply that is a diatribe devoid of any substance.
'We can define greatness however the fuck we want, because as far as we can tell we're the only self-replicating assemblage of molecules that knows or cares what greatness even means.'
Hmm, this is not cool. I sense emotional rage from the beginning. 'Greatness' or 'great' is actually well-defined. What you're writing is that many humans can use language. That's obvious. Fish can swim, birds can fly, some fungi inhabit radioactive space. It's all shuffling of particles.
'So if, during whatever time we're not spending making more copies of ourselves, we decide we enjoy shuffling molecules into a particular arbitrary pattern, who the fuck is going to tell us that isn't greatness?'
It's not greatness, because greatness cannot apply to almost everything. Imagine that every email you ever get is labeled as 'important'. Well, if every is important, then labeling it as such become useless and just clutters you subject line. Same with the word 'special'. If everyone is special, the no one is. These words, like greatness apply to minority of things or otherwise they become useless. So, since shuffling atoms is done all the time everywhere, labeling that as greatness makes no sense.
'When you ask why we should bother making copies of ourselves on a different pile of dirt than the one we're currently on, you might as well be asking why we should go on making copies of ourselves at all.'
Yes... and?
'There is no endgame. There is only doing interesting shit, doing boring shit, and death. I choose interesting shit.'
These 3 activities and events are also shuffling of particles. So, fundamentally, there is no distinction between them in the end. Since death requires the least amount of effort, it would be the best choice for creatures looking for an easy way out.
The human race is a race of explorers, and always has been.
I'm not convinced. The majority of humans are not explorers. The majority of humans like things to stay the same and like to keep doing what they've always done. The majority of humans throughout history die pretty much where they're born. Even today the majority of humans don't even move across their country. To say that humans are a race of explorers because a very small proportion of them are seems wrong.
>Why bother to do that or anything at all? What is the end game?
People want to leave their mark on the universe.
There's some solace in thinking about how after everyone you know and your entire species is gone, something may come across traces of your existence and give thought to who was responsible for it.
I'm referring more to when the Sun explodes and wipes out Earth or when universe goes cold, becomes inhabited by black holes, which will also be gone - a dead universe.
Nothing against you, but why are link shorteners still allowed on HN? I feel like they are an easy attack vector for malware, and don't make life any easier for us as readers - in fact, they make it significantly harder because I have no idea what I'm clicking.
Questions abound. Why are important quantities such as 2.2) and 3) estimated per person when their link to population size is very unclear? Why is the reserve in Fig. 1 an afterthought (sufficient for 6 months minimum consumption at best) when mission frequency is stated to be two years? Etc.
> Why are important quantities such as 2.2) and 3) estimated per person when their link to population size is very unclear?
The answer for 2.2) seems to be that this water would be mostly related to concrete production for habitat construction/maintenance. More people means more construction/maintenance.
See:
"Concrete production will most likely use the most water out of all the manufactured materials because that water isn’t easily reclaimed. And, although there may be more need for manufactured products towards the early stages of the colony, the amount required will be normalized to the amount of people in the colony."
The explanation for 3) appears to be that this water is a byproduct of oxygen production, which occurs in proportion to oxygen consumption, which should be proportional to population size.
See:
"This amount relates to the water that would be extracted from the atmosphere during the process of extracting the required oxygen for breathable air (Wieland, 1998)."
Yes, I've seen the explanations in the paper but it's still confusing.
2.2) New construction should depend on population growth not population levels. In table 1, the population growth rate varies between 20% and 100% per mission, so it's hard to see the ratio (new construction)/population staying constant.
3) This assumes that a) all oxygen is produced from the atmosphere, none from the soil, plants etc. b) there will be no oxygen demand from manufacturing etc. Both assumptions seem quite tenuous.
The .6 kg/hr/person figure for water is pretty generous - that works out to 3.8 gallons/day/person. As any burner could tell you, you only really need about 1 gallon of water per day for survival. Spending 2.8 gallons per day on hygiene is quite luxurious when you consider that you have to crack that water out of regolith. Taking a 1-gallon sponge bath once a week and drinking the rest would cut it to < .2 kg/hr/person - before reclamation!
Incorrect - the 0.6 number is purely for personal survival. They cite the number when including plant maintenance, regolith processing, etc, as 1.2. See the article:
> "The amount of water needed for extended human survival is around 0.6 kg/hr/person which includes water for consumption, hygiene, and everyday living in space (Bobe et al., 2007; Horneck et al., 2003, 2006). This estimate is based on space station living and, assuming water consumption is less in a micro-gravity environment, would increase up to 0.7 kg/hr/person to account for living with gravity. The amount required if demands from a growing colony (regolith processing, manufacturing, perchlorate remediation, plant growth, habitat maintenance, etc.) are added to human needs is estimated at 1.2 kg/hr/person."
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[ 15.1 ms ] story [ 2890 ms ] threadIt is the single most beneficial act to the survival likelihood of the human species that seems available to us.
Good point. And arguably that's actually happening.
If your Mars colony is just a PR^H^H national pride game - you've got a handful of people, some high-school kids' plant experiment and the Little Box with the Antenna some TLA agency asked you to leave behind - then sure, it would be no more expensive than the SDI, the Libyan war or any other stupid boondoggle we can apparently afford.
If you want an actual self-sufficient colony, you've got a much bigger project. I don't think we know what is actually required to create a self-sustaining technical culture in space, because we've only really done it by accident and not in space. But this: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insuffic... is as decent a hand-wavey starting point as any. And it is quite a bit more resource-intensive than a few kilopeople/few percent of organized human output.
Diversity of thought and culture is a huge survival benefit, and to fulfill the western fantasy of poverty eradication we would have to impose a new set of values and thoughts upon all those affected. It would have to be built on the destruction of diversity that is of higher utility than those people's welbeing.
But this is admittedly, from a perspective that would be cruel to a great many people.
I can see strong arguments for modifying cultures worldwide to lower poverty, but only in ways that promote that they find their own varied and unique solutions to the problems, rather than imposing a single solution.
I don't want to save my ideology, i want to save the existence of any ideology.
(For example, think about genetically modified super-disease. And consider how much easier it could become to make one.)
And what feeds terrorism? Poverty and injustice.
Frankly, I guess I'll sound like a broken record, but if we're worried about the future then there's no bigger imminent threat than CO2. Left unchecked, every major coastal cities in the world will be underwater by 3000.
* Besides, are you seriously saying that "non-Western" cultures should remain poverty-stricken so that the "Western culture" can benefit from the resulting diversity? This is wrong on so many levels.
You hit the nail on the head here. The problem is not that we should or should not be helping them, but rather that we ACTIVELY and WILLFULLY base our economy on their continued poverty.
I think the best thing the US could do to end poverty is exit the world economy. The problem is that our standard of living and way of life is built upon the cheap labor of impoverished countries to produce the goods we consume.
I don't think western culture would benefit from such diversity. In fact the idea of diversity being a benefit is hinged upon the understanding that if western culture is not the most fit strategy, that there will be other cultures to rise when it falls.
The reason that I promote colonization as a more effective strategy then trying to fix problems here is simple:
- Attempting to fix problems here slightly improves the state of affairs, and reduces one of many possible causes for local extinction.
- Adding even one viable colony squares the chance of loss (that is an awesome improvement) and every additional colony exponentially improves on our likelihood of survival.
You are also forgetting how hard it to maintain that 1g of acceleration for a long period.
So how can we change what people value, without destroying that which we are attempting to preserve?
Not with that attitude.
It's not so much that we "can't agree" but more that the main argumentative mode these days is sneering and insults, occasionally backed up by mob violence. No wonder people get stubborn about sticking to their positions.
(And since you brought up the topic of sneering and insults, frankly, the only time I've felt insulted at at on this site recently was your "Not with that attitude" comment. Perhaps you're assuming some kind of ill will or political motivation on my part that was not in fact there. Regardless, your comment still reads like a sneer to me, three days later.)
The most universally accepted argument is that one has an obligation to one's own ancestors to maximize their chances of survival.
I consider it to be the asymptotic biological imperative. I've decided not to have children, thus I have an obligation to ensure that everybody else's children have better odds of survival.
Even if we assume one of the worst case scenarios of a massive asteroid impact, the earth would still be more habitable than decades of development on Mars and without massive resource outlays to get it there.
I think we should be focus on building self-reproducing tin-cans that contain a minimal human-supporting ecosystem (and humans). The problem is not finding better planets, it is about being planet-bound at all.
> people assume that their pet ideas should be everyone's.
It's not exactly a pet idea, but it is against the grain of most Human thinking, which is far more geared for tribal thinking than thinking at the species level, which is why it doesn't "boggle my mind". That said, I think is important, and arguing it's not selfish[1] by definition, as it puts one's personal, community, national, continental and/or world interests above the interests of the species, which ultimately is survival. Off-world colonies is procreation at the species level, and is the only way to prevent an extinction level event of the type that we know happen occasionally on earth.
1: I'm not trying to imply your statement is selfish as much as make a general point.
To be fair it doesn't prevent an ELE at all, it just means that one would destroy 99.9%+ of the human species instead of 100%.
Shotgunning even a few tens of thousands of people in all directions would not meaningfully change the end result of an ELE on Earth unless you wound up with 100-200 of them on the same hospitable rock.[0]
[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1936-magic-number-for...
That is the difference between extinction and non-extinction. It changes what would previously have been an extinction level event into a non-extinction level event. That is, it doesn't prevent the event, it prevents it from being extinction level, which is the whole point.
> Shotgunning even a few tens of thousands of people in all directions would not meaningfully change the end result of an ELE on Earth unless you wound up with 100-200 of them on the same hospitable rock.
The point isn't to just send people to other locations, but to eventually create self-sustaining colonies. That doesn't happen without first getting people there. (and hospitable is relative).
Heck, we could maybe use the same tech to both robotically plaster the deserts with solar panels. Then send those finely tuned bots up to Mars to do the same thing there.
We've never been back since. A moonbase is the obvious place to experiment, develop and benefit from 1/6th gravity as a staging post to Mars. We should have been there for the last 40 years.
It saddens me we're so short sighted. No votes in it?
Could we even organise a global effort? The governments would spend decades arguing over who got to make which bit.
I'm much more hopeful of the private efforts to be truthful.
There are things that make the Moon interesting, but none of them are Mars.
Mars DRM 5.0 is still for direct launch, but they keep on talking about side projects as being essential to Mars because mumble.
It's not as if establishing an off-world colony will solve any of our actual, serious challenges (mankind's aggression, our lack of empathy, our disregard for environments around us). If anything, it will only further spread the disease known as the human condition.
It's an escapist nerd fantasy and I say this as someone who sleeps next to a copy of Dune.
Also : we're all going to die. We learn to live with this idea. Why the perspective of our end as individuals could not be extended to our end as a whole?
Also : if you want to ensure humanity's long term survival, spending hundreds of billions to go live on a desert, rusty planet with an oxygen-less, tenuous atmosphere is a weird idea. If you're afraid of asteroids, build a shelter and store food.
Maybe you could argue that they're just worried about their own particular genes (i.e. the Selfish Gene), but some people certainly care about ensuring that humanity survives.
What single 'world economy' is there?
What we could be doing is manufacturing and launching panspermia spores.
K-strategy is fine. We can launch generation ships as well. But in the absence of any conclusive evidence that a life-like complex of self-propagating chemical reactions exists anywhere else in the universe, r-strategy seems best. Assemble the minimum viable package for propagation of Earth-style life, and manufacture copies until you run out of mass.
We don't actually know whether all life in the universe could be exterminated by sterilizing just one planet. Using a similar amount of resources, we could create about 140k reasonably stable human colonies, or we could send 5 kilograms of spores towards every star in the galaxy, instructing the probe controller to shoot off a few any time it can detect liquid water.
That way, if humanity fizzles out anyway after an eon or so, there will eventually be other species to try their grasping appendages at space colonization.
- Why do humans today work so hard so that some other members of homo sapiens species can inhabit another planet? Those creatures, you, everyone you know and the entire species will be gone. Why bother to do that or anything at all? What is the end game?
- Is the decision to care about humans going to Mars made by careful & rational consideration which resulted in conclusion that members of homo sapiens species should be on Mars and that there is an objective moral duty to do so? Why pick homo sapiens species instead of some other animal species? Is it objectively true that a bio-chemical process known as a homo sapiens has intrinsic value and that everyone should work to sustain it?
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If I read you correctly, you are raising two arguments:
1. what does an individual gains from participating in the project
2. objectively, why homo sapiens?
Regarding 2, I would say that there is not much to say aside from that we are not objective, and would prefer it if it was “us” who got to get to Mars.
I find point 1 much more interesting, especially what it says about society. Some individuals are very interested in the colonization of space, but not all are ready to directly work on it, and others are just uninterested.
However, having a structured government and a tax system allow us to make better use of individual skills, even that of those who are not directly interested in the project. Additionally, this is the kind of project where the ROI would be very long term and hard to estimate. Large scale coordination (governments and international institution) allow to make use of the "surplus workforce" that automatization is slowly making grow.
That's standard operating procedure around here.
What's really bad is that, unlike Reddit where anyone has the ability to down-mod, on here only people with high karma (over 1000) can down-mod, yet in my experience you're much more likely to be down-modded to oblivion here for having an unpopular viewpoint, whereas on Reddit you'll get both down-mods and up-mods and generally stay neutral.
So if you think about it, the set-up here reinforces the "hive-mind" dynamic: because only high-karma people have down-mod ability, people who are popular get modded up more, and down-mod people they disagree with, and this creates a feedback loop which silences any unpopular or dissenting opinions. Over on Reddit, even though people complain a lot about a hive-mind mentality, anyone can create an account there in seconds and then has the same up-mod and down-mod ability as anyone else, as long as they don't get restricted or banned by moderators, so it's far more democratic. (And if they do get banned, they can just create another account in 10 seconds...)
My main gripe about Reddit is the sheer amount of low-value comments, with repeated remarks, jokes and puns trumping constructed and sourced arguments. It is obviously hard to find a good compromise.
But I definitely do feel the hivemind effect is greater here, at least in my personal experience (however I do not frequent /r/programming so I can't speak for that subreddit specifically). I constantly see posts down-modded here for no good reason, other than that someone doesn't like them because they go against the viewpoint of the elites here. I feel this is inevitable where you have a system where some people are "more equal" than others, as it is here. It might seem better in one way, with fewer "low-value comments" and jokes and memes and such, but it also turns into an echo chamber with misfits forced out.
A downvoted post needs someone to downvote it, and then for nobody else to upvote it.
People shouldn't downvote for disagreement, but they do. It's probably more important to upvote grey posts than complain about downvoting.
And if you really feel that mankind is on the same level as every other animal on the planet, despite no other species having built skyscrapers, gone to the moon, or printed their language, then that's not even really a conversation worth having.
Imagine saying that humans can't live and thrive in radioactive environment, like some fungi in Chernobyl do and therefore they are not great. Greatness means being able to live in radioactive environment.
We can define greatness however the fuck we want, because as far as we can tell we're the only self-replicating assemblage of molecules that knows or cares what greatness even means. So if, during whatever time we're not spending making more copies of ourselves, we decide we enjoy shuffling molecules into a particular arbitrary pattern, who the fuck is going to tell us that isn't greatness? When you ask why we should bother making copies of ourselves on a different pile of dirt than the one we're currently on, you might as well be asking why we should go on making copies of ourselves at all. There is no endgame. There is only doing interesting shit, doing boring shit, and death. I choose interesting shit.
I'm not convinced. The majority of humans are not explorers. The majority of humans like things to stay the same and like to keep doing what they've always done. The majority of humans throughout history die pretty much where they're born. Even today the majority of humans don't even move across their country. To say that humans are a race of explorers because a very small proportion of them are seems wrong.
People want to leave their mark on the universe.
There's some solace in thinking about how after everyone you know and your entire species is gone, something may come across traces of your existence and give thought to who was responsible for it.
It's the same reason people draw dicks on things.
I'm referring more to when the Sun explodes and wipes out Earth or when universe goes cold, becomes inhabited by black holes, which will also be gone - a dead universe.
1) Drinking, hygiene, "everyday living": 0.07 kg/hr/person
2.1) Regolith processing: negligible.
2.2) Manufacturing: 0.04 kg/hr/person
2.3) Perchlorate remediation: negligible.
2.4) Plant growth: 0.003 kg/hr/person
2.5) Habitat maintenance: 0.01 kg/hr/person
Total: 0.123 kg/hr/person
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In-situ sources:
3) Atmospheric processing (MARRS): 0.02 kg/hr/person
4.1) Robotic extractor (MISWE): 0.2 kg/hr
4.1) Bore hole digging rover w/ microwave heating: 0.3 kg/hr
4.2) Hothouse: 2.08 kg/hr (implied from Table 3)
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Questions abound. Why are important quantities such as 2.2) and 3) estimated per person when their link to population size is very unclear? Why is the reserve in Fig. 1 an afterthought (sufficient for 6 months minimum consumption at best) when mission frequency is stated to be two years? Etc.
The answer for 2.2) seems to be that this water would be mostly related to concrete production for habitat construction/maintenance. More people means more construction/maintenance.
See: "Concrete production will most likely use the most water out of all the manufactured materials because that water isn’t easily reclaimed. And, although there may be more need for manufactured products towards the early stages of the colony, the amount required will be normalized to the amount of people in the colony."
The explanation for 3) appears to be that this water is a byproduct of oxygen production, which occurs in proportion to oxygen consumption, which should be proportional to population size.
See: "This amount relates to the water that would be extracted from the atmosphere during the process of extracting the required oxygen for breathable air (Wieland, 1998)."
2.2) New construction should depend on population growth not population levels. In table 1, the population growth rate varies between 20% and 100% per mission, so it's hard to see the ratio (new construction)/population staying constant.
3) This assumes that a) all oxygen is produced from the atmosphere, none from the soil, plants etc. b) there will be no oxygen demand from manufacturing etc. Both assumptions seem quite tenuous.
> "The amount of water needed for extended human survival is around 0.6 kg/hr/person which includes water for consumption, hygiene, and everyday living in space (Bobe et al., 2007; Horneck et al., 2003, 2006). This estimate is based on space station living and, assuming water consumption is less in a micro-gravity environment, would increase up to 0.7 kg/hr/person to account for living with gravity. The amount required if demands from a growing colony (regolith processing, manufacturing, perchlorate remediation, plant growth, habitat maintenance, etc.) are added to human needs is estimated at 1.2 kg/hr/person."
Definitely not within my lifetime.
Probably not within the lifetime of anyone alive today.
Politicians would rather spend money on wars.