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It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

techeffect.substack.com

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Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#141

Post by GrayTextIsTruth »

avz wrote: post #62

Earth is a graveyard of species. Looking at the geological record, more than 99% of species that ever existed here have gone extinct [1]. Overwhelming majority of them long before we showed up. And in any case, this planet will not support life forever [2]. Believing we have no destiny outside Earth is believing we have no destiny at all. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Everything ends.

Say we end up spreading throughout the universe. Well the universe is just another cell in a larger organism, another node on the tree. It will die too, and so will the body that the universe is inside of.

But if we start "universe hopping" maybe it will take a very long time before we run out of hosts.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#143

Post by Retric »

jupp0r wrote: post #131
macspoofing wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The future of humanity is not only on earth. Where are you going to go? Outside of Earth, there is no place for us in the entire Solar System. Sure we may build some research stations here and there, just as we did in inhospitable places on Earth (like Antarctica), but there's no long-term option anywhere. Interstellar travel is science fiction, but even if it wasn't, there is no place for us to go as well.

What do you think would prevent a self sufficient colony on Mars in a few hundred years? I don't see any fundamental obstacles to it.

Self sufficient requires a manufacturing base to include everything needed to sustain it’s self, including redundancies. Going from zero humans on mars to 100’s of millions is a massive bootstrap problem with minimal incentive for the the people involved or the multiple years worth of earth’s GDP to get to that point.

It’s like the “self replicating” 3D printers where they can produce 98% of the structure by weight and approximately 0.001% by complexity. A base that’s producing it’s own food is doable, shipping machines to say build solar panels or a specific chip isn’t a problem.

However, even just the effort to figure out a minimal slice of earth’s technology to be self significant is hard. Aka building even a single type of LCD requires a massive number of different components, and the ability to build all the machines to make those components, and machines to make those machines, ... Now realize that’s just for an LCD, manufacturing every type of Medicine is a whole other list.

Finally you need to accept everyone on Mars living in relative poverty for generations due to the inefficiencies involved.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#144

Post by WhompingWindows »

"[this thinking] perpetuates the myth that, through technological developments, humans are destined to leave Earth and find a utopia elsewhere. After all, who cares about sustaining the planet when our destiny is to leave it?"

This is a straw man argument, and further more the OP makes the straw-man look like Trump, saying it's Trump's priority to do these things.

Step back, and we see spending money on space exploration and NASA has led to numerous innovations useful here on Earth. There's also the inspiration, the joy, the passion, that space exploration will bring. This should be a priority; definitely not the top priority, but we should spend more on space exploration than we do on baseball or cosmetics or rims for our cars.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#145

Post by babesh »

This point of view is moot. Private companies seem to be rapidly advancing in capability and in some cases have already surpassed the capabilities of nation states.

SpaceX seems to be the dominant player in the launch market with RocketLab quickly eating up the small satellite market. BlueOrigin is supplying the rocket engines for the NASA rocket to the moon. NASA is contracting private companies for the moon landing.

Unless this point of view advocates banning space colonization, private companies will take people to space, the Moon, and Mars. I wonder if this person’s position is really to ban colonization of other worlds and habitats in space.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#146

Post by WhompingWindows »

This is an extremely poorly structured and stream-of-consciousness rant by the OP. They mention Trump, Heidegger, the Nazis, Flint Michigan, Seth Rogen, and all in just a short blog post. There's nothing good of substance to be found, just rambling opposition without solid logic.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#147

Post by kwhitefoot »

Retric wrote: post #143
jupp0r wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think would prevent a self sufficient colony on Mars in a few hundred years? I don't see any fundamental obstacles to it.

Self sufficient requires a manufacturing base to include everything needed to sustain it’s self, including redundancies. Going from zero humans on mars to 100’s of millions is a massive bootstrap problem with minimal incentive for the the people involved or the multiple years worth of earth’s GDP to get to that point. It’s like the “self replicating” 3D printers where they can produce 98% of the structure by weight a…

Why does it need hundreds of millions of people?

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#148

Post by jcranmer »

laverya wrote: post #84
brundolf wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Evolution has geared us for this world. We might be able to cobble together a survival elsewhere, but I doubt we could ever thrive. 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 th…

This is perhaps getting a bit pedantic, but the development of Arctic civilizations (and specifically arctic climate here, not subarctic) seems to actually be more around the third millennium BC, or 4-5kya rather than 10kya.

It's also worth pointing out that Arctic peoples adapted to their environment largely by utilizing the capabilities of existing fauna (e.g., hunting existing apex predators, or using reindeer furs to keep warm). And when non-Arctic peoples tried their hands in the region without similar adaptations, the result tended to be "everyone dies," as in the Shackleton and Franklin expeditions.

Note that there are places on Earth we haven't been able to successfully inhabit. For example, somewhere around 17,000 feet appears to be the maximum possible altitude for permanent human habitation.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#149

Post by lhorie »

> The problem with this line of thinking — and the Trump administration’s ideological and monetary support for NASA exploring the solar system — is that it perpetuates the myth that, through technological developments, humans are destined to leave Earth and find a utopia elsewhere

This seems like a strawman. The myth of flat earth, for example, is also perpetuated by some social media circles. That doesn't make it a primary factor for driving policy or anything at all, for that matter.

IMHO, the real danger here is the idea that some high priority problem on earth can be solved by just diverting funds from one thing and throwing more money at said problem. Not just because that often doesn't work (e.g. the classical "nine women to make a baby in a month" analogy in project management), but also because of the underlying mentality that analytical/scientific work is a second class cog that can and ought to be coerced and discarded willy nilly by the whims of whoever has the reins on financial support.

This mentality shows a deep disdain for intellectual endeavor and due diligence, which are critical to solve the very issues the author claims are important.

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