81–90 of 325 posts
It is dangerous to think fish have a destiny outside Ocean, said a vocal member in a school of fish 400 million years ago.
I would argue that only when society is expanding does life get better for most people. When societies start to contract, people start trying to get control of as much of the shrinking pie as possible, and the people least able or with the least power struggle the most. If you want an equitable society, and you don't want an authoritarian state forcing equity on everyone, then you need society to expand to space. Edi…
As right as you are, contraction is inevitable. Even if colonize space, it is not going to happen in any significant scale the next 100 years.
So, maybe we are doomed because people in power will always want more power and that creates a downwards spiral for non-growing societies. Maybe that is the "great filter" that await for us.
I believe that societies will accommodate for the new situation. Not only Americans, but humans, always do the right thing after trying everything else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk (while Elon isn't posting moronic nonsense on Twitter) would take all the money they've invested in their pet projects trying to colonize Mars and the like and directly invested it in local programs to get some of the worst areas in the USA affected by homelessness fixed, it would likely have a greater impact on more peoples lives than what they're doing now IMO.
I'd take the other side of that bet if it was possible. Just one of the many things that the money has enabled is 100Mbps internet to the entire globe.
And as you've mentioned it helps create new technology opportunities which also generate efficiency/value/taxes like space internet and in the longer term mining without destroying our planet.
There are plenty of benefits to society. Although there will always be a contingent who thinks everything not an altruistic social giveout = bad use of excess capital.
> Indeed, the idea that technological developments will solve all of our problems —eventually allowing us to leave Earth — is instrumental to political mobilization on behalf of the powers that be. It helps to perpetuate the current socio-economic system that is designed for the one percent to stay in power and the working class to stay working. Sorry to say, but almost EVERYTHING big that happens on this planet help…
I agree that they made some big leaps when turning this into a narrative, but I think there's truth to the basic premise that focusing too much on a hypothetical future amongst the stars - which at best would be harsh, difficult, and miserable - serves as a distraction against the very real and very urgent and very solvable problems facing our species and habitat as it exists right now. Even if we managed interstella…
People on Earth thrived in the Arctic, which is incredibly far from the savannas of Africa, and did this with the technology of 10,000 years ago. Saying that people with the technology of 1000 years from now can't possibly thrive on an airless rock is a little pessimistic to me.
And that's ignoring space habitats, which would plausibly be better tuned to our human needs than Earth is.
At one point it was dangerous to think the Earth revolves around the Sun. It's good to think that we should be able to leave Earth at some point. The problem is not that line of thinking. The problem is that we're spending money on military eq instead of medicine, proper education and development. I think we'd be a lot further than we are now. For now we are still "savages" in the grand scheme of things.
Earth is going to get annihilated at some point. It would be nice if our species didn't go with it.
This is frankly a blatantly wrong and quite foolish argument. Space exploration has already created many significant benefits for humanity on Earth , by advancing hundreds of new technologies with terrestrial applications and launching satellite networks that support a safer, more peaceful world for humans, with improved agricultural efficiencies as well as advanced warning and a better understanding of extreme weath…
It leads to a very delayed gratification despite very real near term costs. So it’s easy to attack the costs and focus and prioritization...
But if you don’t invest in science as a whole, eventually you start running out of new things that improve life generally.
Space exploration is one of those areas where we learn and continuously bring back learnings to the rest of society.
At the same time - this doesn't mean we shouldn't explore space! Just that we should understand that exploration as low-to-no-return investigations, not investments in the foreseeable future. I also don't think we've reached the limit for that kind of research. Our society could safely tolerate much higher levels of investment in space exploration (as long as it remains a very small proportion of all investments). We have many other "pure research" fields which are key to long-term health, but do not meaningfully contribute to our current survival.
Like Roko's Basilisk, this is a good reminder of the dangers of using resources that we have today to try to reach a future we may never see. The human ability to plan for an imagined future is key to our humanity, but so is our ability to deceive ourselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were people living in the Americas before your ancestors arrived there.
Not the OP, but I suppose one can read their comment as referring to the original colonizers who crossed the Bering strait, not those who crossed the Atlantic.
When we'll arrive to the only planet in reach where it is even vaguely conceivable to survive for more than a couple of hours, we'll find a freezing desert with high radiation levels and no air where every cubic centimetre of living space will need to be created from scratch and maintained.
I would argue that only when society is expanding does life get better for most people. When societies start to contract, people start trying to get control of as much of the shrinking pie as possible, and the people least able or with the least power struggle the most. If you want an equitable society, and you don't want an authoritarian state forcing equity on everyone, then you need society to expand to space. Edi…
> When societies start to contract people start trying to get control of as much of the shrinking pie as possible and the people least able or with the least power struggle the least. As right as you are, contraction is inevitable. Even if colonize space, it is not going to happen in any significant scale the next 100 years. So, maybe we are doomed because people in power will always want more power and that creates…