My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness • Hacker News Board

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#91

Post by SantalBlush » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

osigurdson wrote: post #85

dao- wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is legitimate as well, yet you've completely missed the point.

Imagine that you are in Bezos situation, you have 20 people super excited about what was just achieved (including yourself). You have one person that is reacting in a deeply philosophical way. Everyone knows that you are the leader and you set the tone. Do you want to change the tone at that moment to a deeply philosophical (and slightly non-positive) one? Being the leader is not as easy as many think. I suspect the…

>Everyone knows that you are the leader and you set the tone.

This sounds more like a presumption taken on by an arrogant person. It's certainly not a given, as you suggest here.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#92

Post by sneak » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #71

INTPenis wrote: post #38

This was very well written, very insightful and humble. Considering he's usually an asshole to people IRL. But I guess he just comes off that way when he wants to convey his truth to people. Not completely foreign to myself, having discovered that I'm actually autistic in my late 30s. That explained a lot. Anyways, this overview effect is something I always felt, even without going into space. I always felt we were w…

I used to be in favor of a world government. But then I realized it could quite easily turn into an authoritarian system at some point, which due to the global scope would then be rather difficult to get out of.

Government always turns into an authoritarian system when it is around long enough, and all major world governments are working toward a single Earth government. They will probably achieve it in the next 500 years if the trend of governmental consolidation continues as it has for the last thousand.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#93

Post by CaptArmchair » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 2:15 PM UTC

osigurdson wrote: post #85

dao- wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is legitimate as well, yet you've completely missed the point.

Imagine that you are in Bezos situation, you have 20 people super excited about what was just achieved (including yourself). You have one person that is reacting in a deeply philosophical way. Everyone knows that you are the leader and you set the tone. Do you want to change the tone at that moment to a deeply philosophical (and slightly non-positive) one? Being the leader is not as easy as many think. I suspect the…

The answer is yes. Definitely yes. When you're the leader, it's not just about you and how you feel. It's about everyone. It's about fully understanding the gravity of the enterprise you're all pursuing and how the experience might affect participants in different ways.

Traveling to space isn't the same as canyon rafting or bungee jumping. It's not just "exciting", it elicits a wide range of profound experiences and deep emotions. And all of them are just as valid and should be affirmed. If you are organizing and leading people into space, you have to be fully aware as well as humble.

Over the past decades, Bezos spend mountains of energy expounding the importance of space travel, including its philosophical aspects. Bezos response to Shatner makes all of that questionable. It leaves one speculating whether or not he sees commercial space travel as anything else then another thrill ride that might add to the profit margins of his companies.

Maybe he did have a deeper discussion in private. But given Bezos' public image and demeanour, I wouldn't assume he fully understood the importance of that moment before the camera's in hindsight.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#94

Post by unity1001 » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

Roark66 wrote: post #73

nequo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like things changed after... iraq, iraq 2, afghanistan, syria and many others... Conscription is a huge difference. Hundreds of thousands were sent to Vietnam against their will. > Somehow occupying sovereign countries and killing kids is a bad thing only when putin does it. Ugh this both sideism.

>Somehow occupying sovereign countries and killing kids is a bad thing only when putin does it. If you don't see a difference between a war where soldiers that rape and pillage are criminals in their own country, where questionable decisions that caused civilian suffering are widely condemned, a war that saw very large domestic movement against it as it unfolded and another one where rape, torture, slavery, ethnic ge…

> If you don't see a difference between a war where soldiers that rape and pillage are criminals in their own country

All of those are claims that are made by the very ones who lied 8 years about nonexistent WMDs.

Moreover, the Ukrainian minister who made those lies up was fired by the Ukrainian government because even the govt. found it way too extreme. She is now busy backstabbing her former employers by saying that "They made me lie that way"...

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#95

Post by textide » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 2:19 PM UTC

osigurdson wrote: post #85

dao- wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is legitimate as well, yet you've completely missed the point.

Imagine that you are in Bezos situation, you have 20 people super excited about what was just achieved (including yourself). You have one person that is reacting in a deeply philosophical way. Everyone knows that you are the leader and you set the tone. Do you want to change the tone at that moment to a deeply philosophical (and slightly non-positive) one? Being the leader is not as easy as many think. I suspect the…

That is a great perspective. I thought at the time that Shatner was being a bit of a drama queen for the cameras, making it about himself and his own experience. This piece made me realize I judged incorrectly. The others seemed genuinely happy, perhaps having processed the philosophical stuff more readily or perhaps it hadn't hit them yet. There in the middle was Bezos trying to keep things positive. Tough job when the eyes of the world are upon you.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#96

Post by matt123456789 » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 2:19 PM UTC

Oh my God, reading this with the narrative interspersed with the recalled thoughts of this 90(?)-year-old traveling to space on essentially the world’s first tourist rocket was hilarious. If you’re like me and you often skip the link and go straight to the comments, you owe it to yourself to read the piece.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#97

Post by logifail » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

j3s wrote: post #64

> I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years… but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space,…

> [..] talk about death always gets to me

At some point during the Covid years, I turned a mental page and decided that 'carpe diem' is my new motto.

Not in the traditional "bucket list" sense, until Covid I had a mental list of places I [thought I] wanted to go ... and experiences I [thought I] wanted to have. Daft stuff usually involving long-haul travel and/or hard to get to places.

I've ditched all of that.

Now it's about seeing people.

Mundane stuff (but not mundane during the Covid years!) such as taking our kids to see their grandparents. Taking time off work to visit my sister, who lives 1000mi away, and partially due to our rather complex relationship, I've not actually visited at any of her various homes for just over 20 years. Encouraging/enabling my wife to make time to visit her parents, who also live a long way from us.

Life has a habit of sneaking up on you when you're not paying attention. Seize the day (while you can).

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#98

Post by baxtr » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

> It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.

Very well written. Conveys his feelings quite well I find.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#99

Post by osigurdson » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

SantalBlush wrote: post #91

osigurdson wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that you are in Bezos situation, you have 20 people super excited about what was just achieved (including yourself). You have one person that is reacting in a deeply philosophical way. Everyone knows that you are the leader and you set the tone. Do you want to change the tone at that moment to a deeply philosophical (and slightly non-positive) one? Being the leader is not as easy as many think. I suspect the…

>Everyone knows that you are the leader and you set the tone. This sounds more like a presumption taken on by an arrogant person. It's certainly not a given, as you suggest here.

It is more of an analysis of probabilities. I suspect that this was the case but of course I don't know. What probability would you assign to Bezos being seen as the leader/setting the tone in this situation?

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#100

Post by somenameforme » Sat, Oct 08, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #71

INTPenis wrote: post #38

This was very well written, very insightful and humble. Considering he's usually an asshole to people IRL. But I guess he just comes off that way when he wants to convey his truth to people. Not completely foreign to myself, having discovered that I'm actually autistic in my late 30s. That explained a lot. Anyways, this overview effect is something I always felt, even without going into space. I always felt we were w…

I used to be in favor of a world government. But then I realized it could quite easily turn into an authoritarian system at some point, which due to the global scope would then be rather difficult to get out of.

I think this is a similar scenario that emerges in many aspects of life, and in nearly every aspect of life. It's also formalized in game theory.

In game theory there are exploitative solutions that focus on achieving the most optimal best case scenario (you picked rock 100 times in a row, I'm going to pick paper), and game theory optimal solutions that focus on achieving the least awful worst case scenario (you picked rock 100 times in a row, but I'm still going to pick my choice randomly because otherwise you could predict I'm going to pick paper, suddenly swap to scissors, and exploit me). When things are going optimally, the exploitative solution will dramatically outperform the optimal. But when things are going poorly, the optimal will even more dramatically outperform the exploitative.

So do you pick the scenario that will never do especially well but will also never do especially poorly? Or do you pick the one that can have extremes of achievement, but also extremes of failure? I suspect framed this way, few would ever pick the latter. But we humans have this annoying ability to convince ourselves of things like the failure scenario being impossible - even though history has endlessly repeated that not only is it possible, but it will happen, and generally far more quickly than one could ever imagine.