161–170 of 321 posts
When I read this, I sort of resist the idea. Which reminds me of the "Dogma of Otherness" by the scifi author David Brin: "Think about it. 'There's always another way of looking at things' is a basic assumption of a great many Americans." https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/dogmaofotherness.html
I will say that our discourse is weighted pretty heavily towards people who don’t deserve it. Most genuine experts are careful to only talk about things they know, not bloviate about everything under the sun. I am sure Marc Andreesen is a very intelligent person but he built and sold a web browser. He isn’t an expert on every tech topic. Same with Peter Thiel and the rest of the PayPal mafia. PayPal isn’t revolutiona…
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This also illustrates the bad research that goes into this sort of thing. There are no deep roots of 'TESCREAL' (which doesn't exist to begin with) in Russian Cosmism, because there are no roots of any of those ingredients separately in Russian Cosmism. Stross just made that up, as pure post hoc ergo propter hoc. There are no sources, and he got it from Hannu: https://gwern.net/review/quantum-thief#fn2 Stross has cho…
Good counterpoints. They prompted me to search through the old Extropians mailing list archive. Fedorov was discussed there in the early 2000s, but those discussions were much too late to be foundational of Western transhumanism. One of the messages pointed me to this now-long-dead link, helpfully preserved via Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20010211141901/http://members.nb... I probably hadn't read tha…
Sarcasm aside, that was a bit of a pity, because even if it had no relationship to anything in 'TESCREAL', Cosmism is an interesting historical artifact. When I was in LA back in 2019, I was able to visit the Museum of Jurassic History where there was an exhibit of Tsiolkovsky stuff like drawings on how humanity might live in space, and it was much more interesting when you knew a little bit about the Cosmism background there.
I am surprised this obviously correct take is so controversial! The problem, essentially, is that the "more everything forever" crowd wants to get paid for the idea of the future today and then will never actually deliver what they promise. They are selling snake oil for the new millennium. Yes, of course I support space travel and settling on mars. I expect that, if we doubled or tripled NASA's budget, we could get…
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I am sure Marc Andreesen is a very intelligent person but he built and sold a web browser. He isn’t an expert on every tech topic. Same with Peter Thiel and the rest of the PayPal mafia. I would say it's similar to politicians. We won't really have your, I don't know, career Costco Manager in political leadership. We'll get AOC or a Vance (staying bipartisan to make the point, moving off this topic next sentence). Th…
You know AOC was a bartender before running for congress right? While most reps are lawyers, many come from a diverse range of backgrounds, there probably is in fact someone in congress who used to manage a supermarket. This diversity of backgrounds is generally seen as a good thing when it comes to understanding the impact of upcoming legislation.
"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." The rest of us can meet up every couple millennia around Alpha Centauri for an old-home week.
That is a much darker tone that I’ve ever thought of that passage in. On a slightly related note, I think a lot of people today don’t realize when Jesus talked about the “Kingdom of Heaven” many of his audience heard that as a real, physical kingdom which would overthrow Rome. I believe Jesus also believed this, which to me is why Jesus’ dying words (“My God, why have you forsaken me?”) is quite literally an admissio…
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I am sure Marc Andreesen is a very intelligent person but he built and sold a web browser. He isn’t an expert on every tech topic. Same with Peter Thiel and the rest of the PayPal mafia. I would say it's similar to politicians. We won't really have your, I don't know, career Costco Manager in political leadership. We'll get AOC or a Vance (staying bipartisan to make the point, moving off this topic next sentence). Th…
I think the ideal foundation of democracy consists of: 1) All citizens get mandatory high education on Math, Science, Language and Logic (what level is high enough is open to debate. I'd say college level), regardless of career -> This is to make sure they have the basic knowledge to participate in meaningful discussions; 2) All citizens are encouraged, and by law mandated to attend and organize political stuffs -> T…
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I understand that but she is pretty much in the mold of Hilary at this point (career politician). It's bartender to straight Congressional aid or something like that and I believe straight to national politics. So, by 27 she is already in the stratosphere (earlier even, in terms of being in the circuit) and no longer down to earth. Talk about going to mars. She's supposed to represent the Bronx, and I can assure you…
I’m not sure where you get this impression of AOC. From her Wikipedia article: > After college, Ocasio-Cortez moved back to the Bronx and took a job as a bartender and waitress to help her mother—a house cleaner and school bus driver—fight foreclosure of their home. That sounds pretty “real Bronx” to me. As for her campaign: > Ocasio-Cortez began her campaign in April 2017 while waiting tables and tending bar at Flat…
I like her, but to pretend that she's just some up-start from the Bronx to go against the grain is absolutely false. She was selected, groomed, and installed because she fit a profile and she is a very manufactured candidate.
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The goal was "get a few humans on Mars". Not the insane goal of "a million in 20 years". Firstly, there's no reason the trip can't be one-way, or at least, temporarily one-way. Secondly, there's not a huge need to develop a new rocket. We've delivered lots of one-way cargo to Mars using the Atlas V; something like the SLS could deliver much more, plenty for a couple humans to get there and not die. We've already laun…
We also haven't specified if we're sending live humans to Mars. Just shuck someone onto the next rover we send over and call it a night. Sending a live human, or group of humans, on a suicide mission in the name of bragging rights as a species would be really bleak. I doubt you'd get much political support for a Mars mission without a return plan, or at least a sustainability plan.
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> Colonizing Mars is such a dumb idea. A back-of-the-napkin calculation puts humanity's total military expenditure at about $100 trillion (USD adjusted to 2022 $) since 1949. That's not accounting for lives lost, infrastructure destroyed, and all the other negatives that come from war. Humanity is spending unfathomable fortunes just to be able to kill each other. And you're saying colonizing Mars is a dumb idea? Huma…
> You could have levied the same argument against the Apollo program, any of FDR's New Deal megaprojects, the national highway system, the Large Hadron Collider, ITER, etc All of those had (and always had) far more obvious benefits than colonizing Mars, including the squishy benefit of "beating the Soviet Union to a contested goal." You can disprove me by stating plainly what the benefits of colonizing Mars would be?
Given the current geopolitical climate, it's possible we could see nation states feel an urgent need to stake their claim in order to not lose out on access to those resources forevermore. This is just as much, if not more, of an argument to colonize the Moon rather than Mars, but both are subject to the same international laws.