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James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

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Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#191

Post by keanzu »

mynegation wrote: post #186
keanzu wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the military would be the first to occupy What's your reasoning here? The purpose of the military is to defend valuables from others. Deploying military to Mars is as likely as deploying military to the Antarctic. Scientists will be the first and probably last to occupy. Difficult to imagine it will ever expand much beyond research missions. The Antarctic environment is far less harsh than Mars and no-one maintains…

Not because of the lack of trying though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_activity_in_the_Ant...

Text from that link:

As Antarctica has never been permanently settled by humans, there has historically been little military activity in the Antarctic. Because the Antarctic Treaty, which came into effect on June 23, 1961, bans military activity in Antarctica, military personnel and equipment may only be used for scientific research or any other peaceful purpose (such as delivering supplies) on the continent.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#192

Post by aguyfromnb »

keanzu wrote: post #108
valgor wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reply to thoughts like these are always the same: In the US we spend an insulting amount of money on military and defense. The amount of money Spacex is spending is nothing in comparison. If one is truly interested in helping humanity, then one should be advocating moving funds from the military to any branch of science or social welfare. To nitpick the small difference someone like Musk could make by doing someth…

There's no comparison here. Musk acquired his money through voluntary exchanges with buyers freely and willingly engaging in market transactions. The government uses coercive force to raise taxes, it is not voluntary. Tax money is public property and we should have a say in how it is spent. Musk's money we gave to him freely and is his to dispose of as he sees fit.

>Tax money is public property and we should have a say in how it is spent. Musk's money we gave to him freely and is his to dispose of as he sees fit.

A substantial portion of Elon Musk's company's funding comes from "tax money" (Goverment contracts, EV credits, tax breaks, subsidies). This seems to contradict both of your sentences.

And if you don't believe it's substantial: Tesla's EV credit sales alone were on the order of $500 million this quarter. Why is that not tax money that goes to better projects, instead of the bottom line of a company that has set its CEO up for a $350mm payday? Did the public have a say in that?

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#193

Post by Robotbeat »

leto_ii wrote: post #188
keanzu wrote: post #55

Perhaps it might have been possible in some long distant past to underestimate Elon Musk and write him off as a crazy person. That time is gone. If Musk appears to be doing something crazy you've not understood it. > It’s crazy, completely crazy. Elon Musk has read too much science fiction. He got carried away with it. If I were in his position, I would not waste my fortune on colonizing Mars. And all they would lear…

I'm gonna take the risk of being extremely unpopular and I'll say that Musk is completely overrated. I think he's nowhere near the level of people that we usually think of as geniuses. In certain ways he's good at marketing and hyping things up, but a lot of his ideas, especially the Mars one, are nonsensical. Just try to think about this: how bad do the conditions on Earth have to get before it makes sense to try to…

Musk's skill is not pure genius. He's relatively smart, but nothing Earth-shattering. And he's also not particularly good at marketing... What he's good at is executing on ideas that people think are absolutely crazy.

And he leans into the craziness a bit beforehand by choosing to describe stuff in a way that sounds a bit unbelievable ("hoverslam onto a droneship" = land under constant deceleration on a barge with station-keeping thrusters... "bioweapon defense mode" = good air filters, "autopilot" = good lane-keeping like an airplane's autopilot), drawing scoffs from a lot of intelligent, serious people. ...which pays off in spades when the thing succeeds. So maybe that's a bit of marketing instinct, but not in the traditional sense.

So the more nonsensical he makes it sound, the greater the return when it actually happens.

He gets the scoffers to do his marketing for him.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#194

Post by threatofrain »

hising wrote: post #64
unicornmama wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is wrong here? Many cancers are now treatable - no longer a death sentence. Cancer treatment improvements have snowballed.

Oh, so many wrongs in his statement: 1. He extrapolates from his own experience of cancer 2. He blames people for not taking care of it (so dying of it is their fault) 3. He talks about a disease group that kills a lot of people like it is a cold

And this is the age of the smartphone, so anyone, including him, could just look up empirical summaries over Wikipedia. There's really no need to summon individual stories of cancer to tell people how dangerous (or harmless) it really is.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#195

Post by keanzu »

awb wrote: post #178
keanzu wrote: post #55

Perhaps it might have been possible in some long distant past to underestimate Elon Musk and write him off as a crazy person. That time is gone. If Musk appears to be doing something crazy you've not understood it. > It’s crazy, completely crazy. Elon Musk has read too much science fiction. He got carried away with it. If I were in his position, I would not waste my fortune on colonizing Mars. And all they would lear…

> If Musk appears to be doing something crazy you've not understood it. Even geniuses make mistakes. We can celebrate him and question him at the same time. We don't need a hero or a fairytale ending to be able to appreciate the impact his companies are having and could have on the world.

"It's not that he's never wrong. It's that how outlandish his statements are is not a good indicator of how likely he is to be wrong." -SuoDuanDao

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22225597

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#196

Post by AndrewKemendo »

cgriswald wrote: post #182
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I argue we should be building a more capable and survivable successor to biological intelligence that can survive beyond traditional biological extinction periods (M of years).

It's a bit of a false dichotomy to suggest we have to choose between the two, but... If we must choose, we should choose to colonize Mars. Statistically speaking, an asteroid impact is inevitable. Time is the relevant variable. The sooner humanity can be a multi-world species, the sooner we are more robust against that threat. The same will be true of our successors who will necessarily have less time than we to spre…

You're just re-stating the original argument for colinization (an asteroid/event would make the earth less inhabitable than mars is currently) that I disagree with and originally addressed.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#197

Post by leto_ii »

I feel that overall the interview is a mixed bag. Lovelock is unnecessarily dismissive of some things (e.g. Fridays for Future), understandably dismissive of some other things (colonization of Mars), but also right on a few counts.

I think it's especially useful to draw attention to the benefits of nuclear power when it comes to combating climate change and pollution more generally.

I also agree with his observation that the way we teach science (as separate, independent subjects) is really limiting. This, as a matter of fact, goes for all other subjects.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#198

Post by gbrown »

34679 wrote: post #122
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JFK sold us on space because "we choose to do these things because they are hard." It was an aspirational exploratory message. The reality is that we are in space because it is required for great power contests. I'm mired in space as a DoD executive, so I promise you space - at least inside the GEO orbits - is extremely practical. Starlink is honestly amazing. Mars though? I've steel-manned that one and I don't see i…

> there is no future event that would make earth as uninhabitable as Mars is today. Wouldn't that imply if we can make Mars habitable, then we'll be capable of dealing with whatever problems arise here on Earth? Think of it as a nice test run without the immediate fate of humanity's only biosphere at stake.

> Wouldn't that imply if we can make Mars habitable

We can't (excluding domes etc.). We won't be able to unless we acquire such powerful planetary engineering technology that we could much more easily build enormous orbital cities complete with functioning biospheres.

It may work to live in enclosed environments on Mars, but the scale of actually terraforming it puts it in the realm of fantasy.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#199

Post by Tepix »

wyldfire wrote: post #179

> A sunshade a few hundred miles in diameter on a heliocentric orbit between the Earth and the sun could stop global warming completely Does this need to be put at a lagrange point to be stable? It's a very interesting idea but seems like this could have enormous unintended consequences.

Yes, at Lagrange point 1 between the Sun and Earth.

This approach has a big advantage: If it has some unwanted side effects we can rather quickly stop doing it. That's unlike some other proposed solutions such as creating clouds by spreading stuff in the upper atmosphere.

Re: James Lovelock: 'I Would Not Waste My Fortune on Colonizing Mars'

#200

Post by jacquesm »

dirktheman wrote: post #130
legohead wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mars is totally inhospitable to humans in multiple ways. And that's precisely why we should go there! We would have forced leaps in technology, habitation, and most importantly for Earth, terraforming.

Yep. I'm Dutch, we've been converting sea to land since the early middle ages. Considering the technology at hand at that time, colonizing Mars is even somewhat comparable.

It is absolutely not comparable at all. Not even close. Not even in the same ballpark (cheap shot: not even on the same planet...).
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