261–270 of 495 posts
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40% of US GDP is financial services it would be hard to argue that you could preserve that without being dominant military power.
Financial services - including insurance - are 7.5% of the US economy, not 40%. https://www.selectusa.gov/financial-services-industry-united...
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For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans. For reference, Opportunity Rover has only traveled 45 km/28 mi in 14 years. A human can collect more specimens in a day than ALL of the rovers have to date. If we remove this year's launch window, you have 10 minimum-energy launch windows in the next 21 years. 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026, 2029, 2031, 2033, 2035, 2037, 2039. If we could g…
Or just decrease the insane US defense budget.
If anything the need to project influence is rising again in a way we haven't seen since the height of the soviet union. despite the rhetoric being thrown at other NATO members right now i fully expect the budget to swell again towards 700-750 over the next two terms
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> are we safe forever on Earth ? and that's why Mars exploration is more important than curing cancer. Cancer is unlikely to kill everyone of us all at once.
There's almost nothing we could do to this planet which would make Mars a more attractive option. I guess there's always a meteor/comet risk, but practically anything else still leaves Earth as a better option. Even if we all had to live in bio-domes because the planet was so polluted, it would _still_ be a better option than Mars, just by virtue of the fact that we have gravity and an atmosphere. On Mars, a cracked…
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How many generations down do you care about? Do you think fixing global warming is a waste of time, if it might affect 3 generations down?
It's hard to pinpoint an exact generation where I stop caring. Here's how I like to think of it. If every human alive today died instantly and painlessly, ending the human species and potentially eliminating all sentient life in the universe, I wouldn't care. The people felt no pain, experienced no dread. The only reason to care in that instance is if you believe that the human race has inherent value just be being a…
I'd argue we're more likely to change human nature through space colonization than here on Earth, but that's a debate I don't expect to see much value from.
More importantly, http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html
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An oncologist wishing more money was spent on cancer? In other news, water is wet. First of all, the optimal place for me to spend my money is not necessarily the optimal place for someone else to spend theirs. We can't know for sure, of course, but who were would have preferred Elon Musk start a cancer research firm instead of SpaceX? Secondly, there is no universal "cancer" that we can fight. There are hundreds of…
Many medical research organizations have more money than they know what to do with. The heart and stroke foundation is a great example of that. I’m not suggesting we don’t fund these orgs, even reduce funding, but i feel like we could diversify into exploration of the universe a little more than we currently are.
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Money is going into biotech fortunately though. Sam Altman started nudging YC towards biotech a few years ago (one article example https://www.wired.com/2015/11/y-combinator-sam-altman-interv... ) and to date has funded the following companies directly involved in cancer research and treatement: Cambridge Cancer Genomics, Oncobox, Mednet, HistoWiz, Luminist, iSono Health, Notable Labs. And I agree, cancer needs figur…
I agree with you, but I think money spent on iPad games is nothing compared to what's wasted in trying to kill each other, bailing bankers and other things that keep funding the 1%
I'm not saying games are a waste of time in general, but societies current obsession and normalization of playing them is unfortunate. Same goes for TV, so this started awhile ago, but games dial it up quite a bit.
Why don't we send a rover to some of these interesting places? It seems like we're constantly making fascinating finds on Mars, then send rovers to the middle of a random rocky desert.
For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans. For reference, Opportunity Rover has only traveled 45 km/28 mi in 14 years. A human can collect more specimens in a day than ALL of the rovers have to date. If we remove this year's launch window, you have 10 minimum-energy launch windows in the next 21 years. 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026, 2029, 2031, 2033, 2035, 2037, 2039. If we could g…
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An oncologist wishing more money was spent on cancer? In other news, water is wet. First of all, the optimal place for me to spend my money is not necessarily the optimal place for someone else to spend theirs. We can't know for sure, of course, but who were would have preferred Elon Musk start a cancer research firm instead of SpaceX? Secondly, there is no universal "cancer" that we can fight. There are hundreds of…
I think the dialogue quoted here demonstrates the underlying issue that is lost in futurist thought. No one "pioneered the west". Various groups of people with powerful technology traveled west and stole land from other groups of people. They also traveled south and east and used that technical and economic power to enslave other humans and forced them to develop the west. Development and progress for progress' sake…
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I was talking to an oncologist yesterday. Her biggest frustration is that Silicon Valley billionaires are spending billions upon billions to send things to space, when there are serious problems on Earth that could be fought, most importantly cancer. It’s hard to argue with her. $400B/yr would fund a lot of research that would benefit humanity a lot better than a coordinated mission to Mars, even though it would be v…
An oncologist wishing more money was spent on cancer? In other news, water is wet. First of all, the optimal place for me to spend my money is not necessarily the optimal place for someone else to spend theirs. We can't know for sure, of course, but who were would have preferred Elon Musk start a cancer research firm instead of SpaceX? Secondly, there is no universal "cancer" that we can fight. There are hundreds of…
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Then why do you expect anyone to value your opinion on what to do with human-race-as-a-whole-scale resources?
Because I care to what happens about all living humans today. I simply don't care about the long term survival of our species. Spreading across the galaxy or the universe so that there can be more humans alive or to ensure that if one planet gets wiped out, some humans live on are placing value on the existence of humans as a species in the universe. That's what I don't care about. I don't think we have intrinsic val…
> why should I care whether all of our eggs are in one basket, or two baskets, or a million baskets? The survival of the human race as a whole is not a concern of mine.
In short, because others care.
You cannot reach your goals alone. You need a cooperation from others. But if you didn't care what they care, there would be no cooperation, or cooperation would be not so good as it might be.
Cooperation needs shared values, and the more values are shared, the more effective cooperation would be. If you care only about your goals and not about goals of others, than others would not play with you. If you share some goals (I believe that those who care about long term benefits value short term also) then they accept your cooperation when working on short term goals, but you will not have any influence over them, when they work on long term goals. The only lever on them you would have is a force. Military, political, financial or any other. They would not cooperate willingly.
You can choose war and force those who have other values to work on your values. Or you can respect their values and cooperate with others on them. It is your choice.