You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#171

Post by ethbro » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 10:27 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #148

ethbro wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's generalizable and something I'm confused they don't teach kids in career counseling. Max(salary) = unit_value * number_of_units_impacted Software generates a high ceiling because number of units impacted can be huge, so unit value can be low. In contrast, you can only pay teachers / doctors / firefighters / police officers so much, because their number of units impacted has a fundamental cap (the number of peopl…

Congratulations. You just discovered the Baumol effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease

Hmm. I'd need to see some research to believe that's happening.

It seems like non-software folks are getting paid the same, leading to wider inequality.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#172

Post by gattr » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 10:28 PM UTC

numair wrote: post #86

All of these articles and ways of thinking always miss the bigger, more fundamental shift in human society — we now know there is literally no place we can access in any meaningful amount of time where the “grass is greener” than the places we’ve already been. This is profound, semi-depressing, and enlightening at the same time. Rather than seeking something new somewhere else, our new obsession is in improving what…

Charless Stross has illustrated this in his novel "Accelerando" (strongly recommended!). In the future, even though interstellar travel is technologically feasible, (almost) no one does it - because why the hell would any of the post-human superintelligences want to venture away from the hyper-connected, inner solar system-spanning Network where all the power, resources and fun are concentrated?

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#173

Post by Falkon1313 » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

nootropicat wrote: post #154

Animats wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it always space? Good question. The best off-earth real estate in this solar system is worse than the worst on-earth real estate. It's easier to build colonies in Antarctica or underwater on the continental shelf than on Mars. Mars is small, cold, and nearly airless. We're not short of low-value real estate, after all.

"Hell is other people". It's not possible to escape the state on Earth anymore. It's a pure question of travel time. Underwater continental shelf or Antarctica, it's all trivially accessible and indefensible. It's not possible to start a new way of living somewhere, like the Amish or Mormons did. What's needed is at least the equivalent of travel time and cost between Europe and Americas before steam ships. Space is…

Wherever we go, there we are. Humanity can't run away from itself. If we could go to Mars, we'd take our problems there with us.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#174

Post by pmiller2 » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #120

numair wrote: post #86

All of these articles and ways of thinking always miss the bigger, more fundamental shift in human society — we now know there is literally no place we can access in any meaningful amount of time where the “grass is greener” than the places we’ve already been. This is profound, semi-depressing, and enlightening at the same time. Rather than seeking something new somewhere else, our new obsession is in improving what…

Just as much, if you consider what it would be like, who would want to be stuck on a martian mining colony ... without any social networking . Social networking might have it's downsides but it's rather a boon to people stuck in areas of extreme boredom and isolation. The thing one can regret about the aesthetics of modern life, including social networking, is that it's made the uniqueness of places less (a social ne…

You seem to believe that Facebook and other traditional social networking sites are the only way to alleviate boredom and isolation online. Usenet and more traditional web forums also fill this need and don’t need to make billions of dollars, so they aren’t as infested with privacy violations and intrusive ads. I’d take that over all the Facebooks and Facebook wannabes out there in a heartbeat.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#175

Post by pmiller2 » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #156

itronitron wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you could create one here on earth, and sell connected 'pods' that people could live out of from their parents' basements (only half joking)

Now I want to write a browser extension which simulates earth-mars latency.

Wouldn’t be hard. Just execute every request with a ~20 minute delay.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#176

Post by scottLobster » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 10:35 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #155

numair wrote: post #86

All of these articles and ways of thinking always miss the bigger, more fundamental shift in human society — we now know there is literally no place we can access in any meaningful amount of time where the “grass is greener” than the places we’ve already been. This is profound, semi-depressing, and enlightening at the same time. Rather than seeking something new somewhere else, our new obsession is in improving what…

> access in any meaningful amount of time I agree about space constraints, but if we really wanted to, we 'd work to create humans that live long enough to go there , or somehow else send human hybrids frozen in a ship. Biotechnology is amazing but so constrained by premature regulation it's not seeing a lot of progress. I have the feeling that scientists were secretly wishing some rogue scientist would try to apply…

I'm not sure the public's imagination is ever gripped by grand visions for very long. Just look at how quickly Apollo ended once we made it to the moon, and how controversial its budget was at the time.

Going further back, remember that most of the Western settlers we romanticize as "pioneers" with "the spirit of exploration" today were in fact looking for economic profit and an escape from bad working conditions in settled country.

Sure some minority cares about noble action, grand perspectives and super-long-term consequences, but most people just want to drink, watch TV and die with hopefully a few friends and family around. They aren't directly included in the vision, so why should they care?

Necessity is the mother of invention, and sadly there is currently no necessity to birth human space exploration. We'd likely need a bad asteroid hit (bad enough to kill millions but not bad enough to collapse society) or a second cold war where establishing, say, a moon base would be strategically beneficial.

Until then, well I guess we have Elon, and eventually Bezos. Independently wealthy businessmen have been behind more than a few major inventions.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#177

Post by jacobwilliamroy » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #175

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I want to write a browser extension which simulates earth-mars latency.

Wouldn’t be hard. Just execute every request with a ~20 minute delay.

Naive implementation. Distance flucuates from 3-20 light minutes over time, and would have to double that for a round trip. Plus have to factor in EM interference and line-of-sight.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#178

Post by jacobwilliamroy » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

trixie_ wrote: post #162

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then there would be less money for things like PACE, ICE-SAT, ICE Bridge. They've been building earth satellites to improve fisheries management and inform earth conservation efforts. PACE will be particularly helpful for me as an oceanographer because of they've got those neato optical plankton sensors onboard. Also, NASA allocates funding based on decadal surveys of the scientific community, so they have reall…

By funding science they’ve actually held science back because the costs of access to space have not decreased. You can do a lot more science when the costs are low.

Why do you personally want to go to space?

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#179

Post by buboard » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 11:07 PM UTC

scottLobster wrote: post #176

buboard wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> access in any meaningful amount of time I agree about space constraints, but if we really wanted to, we 'd work to create humans that live long enough to go there , or somehow else send human hybrids frozen in a ship. Biotechnology is amazing but so constrained by premature regulation it's not seeing a lot of progress. I have the feeling that scientists were secretly wishing some rogue scientist would try to apply…

I'm not sure the public's imagination is ever gripped by grand visions for very long. Just look at how quickly Apollo ended once we made it to the moon, and how controversial its budget was at the time. Going further back, remember that most of the Western settlers we romanticize as "pioneers" with "the spirit of exploration" today were in fact looking for economic profit and an escape from bad working conditions in…

> most people just want to drink, watch TV and die

Religion is a counterexample to this. it has driven people to change their lives

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#180

Post by DennisP » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 11:15 PM UTC

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #160

DennisP wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, there would be less money for SLS. NASA has been spending $2 billion annually for SLS development for a while now, and all they'll get is a disposable rocket the size of Starship that costs at least a billion dollars per launch, or $10,000/kg payload. Meanwhile SpaceX is spending less than one billion dollars total for Starship/Super Heavy, and at scale it'll launch payload for $20/kg. How much more money would N…

That's strange. Why is NASA doing sls instead of just contracting SpaceX? From your comment it sounds like SpaceX is much more efficient at launching things into space than NASA, and I'd like to know how that came to be the case.

Various reasons:

Good: NASA started SLS years ago, and had no idea that SpaceX would be so successful. They also didn't know SLS would take as much time and money as it has.

Bad: NASA is at the mercy of Congress and SLS has a lot of political support. It spreads jobs over a lot of districts and pays big money to major defense contractors. At this point it's a huge sunk cost and embarrassing to cancel.

Ugly: Those contractors work on cost-plus contracts so they have little incentive to make a cheap launcher. To illustrate, the SLS uses Space Shuttle main engines, which cost several times as much per unit thrust as the Saturn V's engines. That was worthwhile for the Shuttle since it reused them. Naturally, NASA's contractors thought they were perfect engines to throw away on every flight.