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My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

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Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#151

Post by renewiltord »

peteradio wrote: post #84
dorkwood wrote: post #30

Worth watching is the moment Shatner tries to explain his experience to Bezos, and Bezos barely listens. A portrait of two very different men. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1AilPvC37c

The only thing that sucks is that all this had to be videotaped. Has noone else been pulled in multiple directions at a party, its an uncomfortable situation kind of like having high-guy telling you all his mindblowing theories he just thought of and your like I'm not drunk yet.

Haha, it's a funny video in exactly the way you say: it's so Seinfeld-relatable. He's trying to make sure everyone is acknowledged and there's no way to do it in that instant comfortably. The best you can do is ack each thing and then come to it when you can come to it.

In the end, the Bezo didn't do that poorly.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#152

Post by ajsnigrutin »

ethanbond wrote: post #78
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are the baddies. I live in a small EU country, and have soldiers in syria now. We could atleast have pulled them back home, before pointing a finger at putin, but we didn't even do that (and they'd all fit in a minibus). We're currently destroying our own economies because someone else is doing something that we've been doing for years now. Technically we deserve being cold and maybe some kind of a revolution, bec…

Did your country just send soldiers to Syria when it was thriving independent state? Or was it when there was a brutal civil war and the state used chemical weapons against civilian populations?

Yeah, same as iraq had wmds and afghanistan had to be attacked because some saudis were bad pilots.

Yes, my country had soldiers in all the mentioned countries too.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#153

Post by ajsnigrutin »

RestlessMind wrote: post #140
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like things changed after... iraq, iraq 2, afghanistan, syria and many others... dead kids from all over US and europe losing their lives for some rich people to get richer. Somehow occupying sovereign countries and killing kids is a bad thing only when putin does it.

> a bad thing only when putin does it. Here is a key difference between Russia and the US/Europe. When Iraq war is bad, thousands of people can march across American/European cities without a fear of getting jailed. People can run for elections hammering their opponents on voting for a monstrous war (Obama trounced Hillary and others) and win. And that makes a difference (Syria - US/Europe didn't go there; in fact, t…

Yes, protestng when it's irrelevant for the government... closing peoples bank accounts when it's not (canadian truckers).

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#154

Post by edgyquant »

pohl wrote: post #118
seydor wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also technically an impossibility, since evolution would not be possible without extinction

Sure, there's no life without death, but you're kind of underselling the Anthropocene Mass Extinction a wee bit, aren't you?

No he’s really not

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#155

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

sandworm101 wrote: post #145
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's technically wrong. Evolution is possible via expansion into new biomes, or by being able to use/exploit as-yet unmetabolized compounds, or through shifting inter-species relationships (e.g. entering (or leaving) symbiosis).

Extinction is not limited to species. Species arent really a thing as one eventually transforms into another over near-infinite steps. Only genes/traits matter. Evolution is in fact impossible without the loss of traits between generations. Extinction of traits in favor of better ones is baked in to the very definition.

> Only genes/traits matter.

and yet almost every selection mechanism can only operate on phenotypic forms. The nature of a "species" is a shorthand for "sufficiently distinctive phenotype(s) that evolution will operate distinctly on this group of individuals", and in this sense, "species" do matter.

> Extinction of traits in favor of better ones is baked in to the very definition.

I don't know what definition you're talking about, but this also completely wrong. Evolution can generate new traits without old ones vanishing, and that can be true whether the new ones have higher or lower fitness than the old. Evolution is a change generation mechanism primarily; selection is a secondary mechanism and at various times and places, selection pressure can be extraordinarily weak, allowing a large diversity of traits to coexist.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#156

Post by chrismartin »

ETH_start wrote: post #120
sandworm101 wrote: post #103

With all respect to Shatner (first canadian space tourist iirc) I dont take much from these narratives. A rich/famous/connected person does a thing that we all want to do but cannot afford, something that requires insane amounts of energy/pollution. Then they turn around and talk of the profound experience and how it has made them a better person. Big deal. The pubic good is limited to a few interviews and an article…

>>These adventures require so much energy that they will only ever be availible to an elite nanopercent of the population The cost of launching to space has declined by orders of magnitude over the last 50 years and can be expected to decline by orders of magnitude more in the coming decades. At one point, air travel was reserved for the richest of the rich, and today hundreds of millions of people fly every year. Th…

One could say that air travel is much cheaper than it should be, if airlines or fossil fuel companies had to pull those greenhouse gases back out of the atmosphere. Getting to space is even more GHG-intensive, orders of magnitude more for orbital flight.

(also, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29062022/space-tourism-cl...)

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#157

Post by trgn »

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's such a very narrow perspective, that Bezos was just modeling to be a great leader. Bezos showed himself to be a really poor leader in fact, modeling exactly the wrong behavior.

Shatner was on that trip as a prop. Most famous space captain going to space for real! Bezos had the opportunity to curb that, and let some humanity seep back into what was basically just a PR stunt.

More damning than that, Bezos was rude to an elderly man, which is rude full stop, no matter the setting.

If Bezos's staff really needed the celebration so much, have their boss come down to their level to do the hooting-and-hollering, and couldn't wait a whole two minutes, they are guilty for the same reasons that Bezos was.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#158

Post by BobbyJo »

loceng wrote: post #135
BobbyJo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your flippancy about mass extinction leads me to believe you aren't internalizing any of the suffering therein, or the loss. Extinction happens, and, more broadly, death happens. However, we don't stand and deliver a eulogy composed of "idk, people die, no big deal" at a family member's funeral. Immense loss imparts grief.

What exactly did I say that made you think I don't take life seriously? From all I can see is you incorrectly simplified what I said to a strawman argument of '"idk, people die, no big deal"'. The reality is over the last 10+ years, without going into any details, I've been working towards and exponentially being closer and closer to helping humanity survive and change course as quickly and efficiently as possible; t…

The post is about the experience of grief in response to internalizing the scale of earth and the negative human impact thereon. You responded to a post that implicitly shrugged off the negative impacts as inevitable or necessary with "I don't know why you're being downvoted," in essence, supporting the response.

I wasn't making a straw man, or simplifying, I was pointing out a lack of recognition that said grief is kind of the topic at hand.

Side note, saving humanity on Mars is cool and all, I'm totally for it, but in the event that actually happens, all of an entire planets lives and ecosystems will be destroyed. Exploration is aspirational, but, as a "backup plan," Mars is an incredibly bleak and sad future to rely on.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#159

Post by s1artibartfast »

the_doctah wrote: post #131
ThePhysicist wrote: post #14

I like him, he seems to be a thoughtful person. I once listened to his album (which has a great cover of the song "Common People", that jokes about how rich people see the world [1]), in which he reflects on the death of his previous wife, who drowned in their pool, I found that quite touching as well 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0

I don't know, I feel like I've read several "What celebrity is an asshole in real life" threads on Reddit and there seem to be plenty of stories about him being a complete alcoholic and asshole.

Seconded, I think is smart and makes good art, but a friend who knew him hated his guts for his abusive behavior to his family.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#160

Post by trinsic2 »

seydor wrote: post #134
pohl wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there's no life without death, but you're kind of underselling the Anthropocene Mass Extinction a wee bit, aren't you?

Those are unscientific things. I didn't expect that what i said would be considered controversial. We live in extraordinary challenging times and people should steer away from sentimental fluff.

Life isn't just about science, contrary to popular belief. In fact, you can do better science by making the mind-body connection to the unseen and unverified. Knowing that something exists outside of scientific understanding while grounding yourself to reality strengthens awareness and removes mental positions/projections which are barriers to real science.
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