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More Everything Forever

nytimes.com

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Re: More Everything Forever

#251

Post by schnitzelstoat »

dudeinjapan wrote: post #43
bko wrote: post #20

This book seems insufferable, at least based on the review. Half of the review is trying to poke holes in why people won't live on mars and the other half is about how people trying to pursue goals such as this are self-serving and corrupt. I'm sure a market exists for this kind of book, but to me it's just exhausting. What's the harm in trying to go to mars if it results in decreasing the cost of space flight by 99%…

We can back-test the mentality of this book: - Longevity research is bad/wasteful > In 1900 and prior, the global average life expectancy was around 32 years. Thanks to modern medicine, this has doubled to 70 years. This is a tremendous gift to every human alive today. - Going to Mars is bad/extravagant/fruitless > Going to the moon, exploring new continents, these were all "extravagant/fruitless" undertakings in the…

> exploring new continents, these were all "extravagant/fruitless" undertakings in their own eras.

Was this ever true?

Within a few decades of the European discovery of the Americas they had already subjugated both the Aztec and Inca empires and were able to extract vast amounts of wealth.

I agree with you though.

Re: More Everything Forever

#252

Post by schnitzelstoat »

cousin_it wrote: post #114
aethrum wrote: post #107

If you like optimistic Sci-Fi, I would recommend the Culture Series. It really changed me when I read it in university.

The Culture is a world of AIs that are far better than humans at every task, and keep humans as basically pets out of sentimentality. I agree a lot of "nice" futures with AI will look like that, but the problem is that there are much more "nasty" futures than "nice". I don't see a path from AIs built for profit and national defense to a Culture-like future or any "nice" future at all. Or rather, there could be such a…

Is there any optimistic sci-fi that doesn't have something like superpowerful perfect AI?

It feels like such a thing is a bit of a cop-out as it removes all the problems that arise from human imperfections and yet our own history is that of an improving standard of living despite these imperfections.

Re: More Everything Forever

#253

Post by FL33TW00D »

os2warpman wrote: post #249
FL33TW00D wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can argue technicalities all day long but to me, this exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGiNKcVSek

The payload on that flight was a single stuffed toy banana, for scale. On all test flights with a payload exceeding the mass (~300 grams) of a single stuffed toy banana (for scale), the flight has failed. Flight 7: 20,000 kg payload (starlink mass simulators) - engines fail after 7m39s Flight 8: 8,000 kg payload (starlink mass simulators) - engines fail after 8m04s Flight 9 is not currently planned to carry a payload…

Agree there are obviously still issues, but you've just made the case yourself. We are discussing Flight 9 for Starship ~5 years into development. 10 years into the development of SLS we won't even see launch 2.

They just operate in different universes no matter how much you dislike the CEO.

Re: More Everything Forever

#254

Post by rsynnott »

pasquinelli wrote: post #190
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 years optimistically!? That's an incredibly pessimistic timeline, maybe one of the most hardline "nothing ever happens" outlooks I've ever heard articulated.

that's crazy to say. mars is very cold and very dry and not shielded from radiation and doesn't have much air and that air isn't breathable. i wouldn't say we've settled antarctica, which is on our planet and has air. 100 years would be a wild amount of time for us to settle mars.

It's also particularly awkward to land on, as it has just enough atmosphere to be annoying, but not enough to be particularly helpful. Most Mars landings have involved some sort of ridiculous Rube Goldberg machine or other (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_crane_(landing_system) , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Pathfinder#Entry,_descent... ) which would not be viable for humans (and were only arguably viable for the probes they were used for; the risk of failure was high).

Re: More Everything Forever

#255

Post by bluefirebrand »

nitwit005 wrote: post #219
bluefirebrand wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the cool things about humanity is that we do stuff that doesn't seem to make much sense, like set sail in a direction without any idea if there is even land out there The reason to colonize Mars is to see if we can For a lot of people that's a sufficient reason And frankly it may be worthwhile because if we can colonize Mars we may be able to colonize a large asteroid full of resources that we need, or somethi…

People stopped being interested in the moon landings pretty quickly. There's a lot of interest in visiting Mars because it hasn't been done. There are a lot of exploration fans. It'll stop being novel once we've made a few visits.

I suspect that if there was suddenly a huge effort to put a base on the moon like the ISS and have humans live there part time, people would get pretty excited

We stopped being interested in the moon landings because they weren't doing anything new

Re: More Everything Forever

#256

Post by amanaplanacanal »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #235
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth after a global nuclear war or comet strike is still more hospitable than Mars. It's hard to imagine anything that would make Mars a better place to live than simply staying on earth.

Yes it would be. But that doesn't matter if no humans make it through the apocalypse in the first place.

The moon would do the job at a lot cheaper price.

Re: More Everything Forever

#257

Post by moolcool »

ctoth wrote: post #71
moolcool wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is obviously true that technology allows us to modify nature to an ever greater extent I would dispute the relative significance or meaning of those changes though. We can build dams and tall buildings. We can cure diseases and develop elaborate communications infrastructure. I don't see that these developments alter our essential humanity though. If you read any classic literature from 100, 200, or even 1000 ye…

I had a deadly childhood cancer, Retinoblastoma, which would have killed me without modern medicine. I'm pretty fond of existing. These developments sure altered my humanity. By making it possible.

Modern medicine saved my life as well. It seems like splitting hairs, but changing _who_ one is is different from changing _that_ one is. My point is that technology isn't going to do anything to alter the core human experience: envy, passion, jealousy, gratitude, love, etc... aren't mutable in the way that rationalists or transhumanists would have us believe.

Re: More Everything Forever

#258

Post by red-iron-pine »

Unit327 wrote: post #195
Spivak wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, it's a reasonable prior. The timeline is "it will never happen" until the leap forward happens that makes it "within 2 years." Basically the same as air flight. You can't know when the leap will happen so it's basically picking a year that seems far enough off to be pretty darn sure.

It doesn't require a leap forward, we could put boots on the ground with 1990s tech.

aye we could have. and they'd all be long dead on the surface of Mars by this point. getting them there isn't enough.

Re: More Everything Forever

#259

Post by sorcerer-mar »

derektank wrote: post #170
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Current international law prohibits nation states from establishing permanent territories or settlements, but the Artemis Accords both afford states the opportunity to exploit resources and establish "safety zones" around operational settlements that prohibit other actors from interfering with them. This means that, practically speaking, whoever establishes a permanent operational presence on any celestial body has a…

The Artemis Accords don't establish a land grab, they just don't prevent one.

So this argument is: we need to get there first so we can mine it. But what can we mine? We have no evidence of anything on Mars that's valuable to mine for any reason other than Mars colonization or further space exploration.

If you don't already believe Mars colonization or space exploration are intrinsically valuable, there's no evidence of anything worth mining on Mars.

Re: More Everything Forever

#260

Post by os2warpman »

FL33TW00D wrote: post #253
os2warpman wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The payload on that flight was a single stuffed toy banana, for scale. On all test flights with a payload exceeding the mass (~300 grams) of a single stuffed toy banana (for scale), the flight has failed. Flight 7: 20,000 kg payload (starlink mass simulators) - engines fail after 7m39s Flight 8: 8,000 kg payload (starlink mass simulators) - engines fail after 8m04s Flight 9 is not currently planned to carry a payload…

Agree there are obviously still issues, but you've just made the case yourself. We are discussing Flight 9 for Starship ~5 years into development. 10 years into the development of SLS we won't even see launch 2. They just operate in different universes no matter how much you dislike the CEO.

You are misunderstanding me.

I am on two embryonic programs that are not viable without starship or an equivalent.

If starship exists I will be able to cash out, buy a 54-foot catamaran and spend the rest of my life sailing around the world scuba diving and spear fishing.

I want starship to exist and do not care who builds it.

It does not exist and I know this because I am currently on the third floor of a boring cookie cutter business park building right now staring at computer screens and not off the coast of Gili T doing mushrooms after a dive.

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