More Everything Forever • Hacker News Board

Re: More Everything Forever

#311

Post by queenkjuul » Sun, Apr 27, 2025, 1:33 AM UTC

DoctorOW wrote: post #143

ivape wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can assure you she knows nothing about walking in the Bronx. Huh? You think a bartender in the Bronx wouldn't walk while living there?

Clearly in this fantasy the middle class of the Bronx all have chauffeurs

Re: More Everything Forever

#312

Post by cgriswald » Sun, Apr 27, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

dmonitor wrote: post #105

cgriswald wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need AI to scan social media posts for wrongthink. AI may let you go deeper, detecting thoughtcrime based on certain patterns of otherwise acceptable speech. However, AI is already good enough for that and the sort of people who want this don't care about false positives (or really truth at all) and are probably already compiling lists. Historically these sorts of folks just make stuff up against their enem…

I can see the appeal of "colonizing mars as an extinction-proof backup plan", but I'm not convinced that it's a positive-EV play. Attempting to go to mars increases odds of our survival in case of earth going to shit by some amount, but it also increases the odds of earth going to shit due to the waste, energy expenditure, and missed opportunity cost of not solving pressing issues.

Mars as a backup plan isn't about the changes we are making on Earth, but about civilization-ending or extinction-level events (e.g., asteroid collisions). These types of events are inevitable.

In any case, going to Mars isn't mutually exclusive with solving issues on Earth.

Re: More Everything Forever

#313

Post by Unit327 » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 8:05 AM UTC

queenkjuul wrote: post #310

Unit327 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are better at exploring and doing science than rovers, they could get things done a lot quicker and better. They can repair things and are very adaptable. A mission to spend 6 months on the surface would be great. Perhaps not worth the risk and expense though.

When it comes to doing science where there is no food, water, or air, robots are actually much better at it.

It depends how you are defining "better". Much cheaper and safer sure, but also much slower and much more limited. If it was me making the decisions I'd still go with robots, but I wouldn't call them "better".

Apollo 17 astronauts drove roughly 12 miles in around 8 hours to get to a site and do some science. The curiosity rover's longest drive in a day is around 150 meters. If it drills a rock and encounters some difficulty, it has to wait send a reply home, wait another 4-24 minutes for the message to get there, wait 4-24 minutes for a message to come back before proceeding. It's also obviously unable to conduct repairs on itself or it's tools, or even do something as basic as cleaning the dust from itself.

Robots certainly have the advantage in longevity; curiosity has been operating since 2012 and is still going, but it's like comparing a roomba vs a team of professional cleaners. I think if you asked a planetary scientist if they'd could go back in time and instead of sending curiosity, send a couple of people for six months, they'd do it in a heartbeat.

Re: More Everything Forever

#314

Post by queenkjuul » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 8:29 AM UTC

Unit327 wrote: post #313

queenkjuul wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to doing science where there is no food, water, or air, robots are actually much better at it.

It depends how you are defining "better". Much cheaper and safer sure, but also much slower and much more limited. If it was me making the decisions I'd still go with robots, but I wouldn't call them "better". Apollo 17 astronauts drove roughly 12 miles in around 8 hours to get to a site and do some science. The curiosity rover's longest drive in a day is around 150 meters. If it drills a rock and encounters some dif…

There's no reason a robot couldn't do repairs on itself or clean dust from itself.

Think of all the science the robot will get done in the decades of research and engineering necessary to figure out how to get a human there and back to do science without immediately dying.

Re: More Everything Forever

#315

Post by hnbad » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 9:30 AM UTC

anarticle wrote: post #288

hnbad wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rover is expendable, a human much less so. The PR cost of having a human smash into the surface of Mars the way it happened with a rover would easily outweigh the PR boost of having a human successfully land on Mars. And even if we managed to actually land someone, they'd most likely die there before we could bring them back. A rover runs mostly on solar power. Humans need breathable air, food, potable water, medic…

I agree that automation and robots are a good proxy for exploration. And yes it will be tough. That won't stop people from trying. PR or not, there are still skydivers and wing suit people pushing the envelope. I really don't agree with the doomerism/well actually crowd on these sorts of things, there is still the indomitable human spirit, no matter how irrational it seems. We still have field scientists that get sen…

I'm not saying we won't possibly land someone on Mars eventually. I just don't think that's going to happen in a reasonable near future. The resources involved are too much for one person willing to go on a suicide mission to do it themselves (and those who do have the resources are very much not interested in dying) and for a government to sponsor this you would need a culture of self-sacrifice rather than rugged individualism - in other words, a country like China might be more likely to take the lead here than the US and even that seems unlikely.

Again, the big problem here is scale. It takes a lot more resources to send someone to Mars than to Antarctica and it takes a lot more resources to keep them alive there. Your friend in the high arctic trundra probably also isn't living in collapsible tents and foraging for food - all the infrastructure available to him (even if it's just shelter) needs to be built on Mars too and is orders of magnitude more complex and more resource intense and the materials are much harder to ship and assemble - plus of course material failure is signficantly more lethal.

Re: More Everything Forever

#316

Post by rldjbpin » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 1:40 PM UTC

being critical about the messaging and the timeline of achieving these goals is fair. however the rest of the thesis seems too harsh, despite the author's credentials.

there is nothing wrong with "shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars" aspect about these literal moonshot projects. regardless of what you think about the people running them, but these initiatives tend to bring out a lot of innovation.

Re: More Everything Forever

#317

Post by indoordin0saur » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 4:14 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #192

ojbyrne wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia supports the claim that she was an intern for Ted Kennnedy, but none of the rest. Interestingly she has an asteroid named after her. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez

Right - the rest is pretty much nonsense. She grew up in a 2-bedroom house and went to the ~4th best school in Boston and we're supposed to believe she's some long con plant? Just silly.

Looking into this she seems to come from an upper-middle-class background but nothing elite. I will say before looking it up for some reason I had the impression that she came from a very humble working-class immigrant background.

Re: More Everything Forever

#318

Post by Unit327 » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 1:58 AM UTC

queenkjuul wrote: post #314

Unit327 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends how you are defining "better". Much cheaper and safer sure, but also much slower and much more limited. If it was me making the decisions I'd still go with robots, but I wouldn't call them "better". Apollo 17 astronauts drove roughly 12 miles in around 8 hours to get to a site and do some science. The curiosity rover's longest drive in a day is around 150 meters. If it drills a rock and encounters some dif…

There's no reason a robot couldn't do repairs on itself or clean dust from itself. Think of all the science the robot will get done in the decades of research and engineering necessary to figure out how to get a human there and back to do science without immediately dying.

There are many reasons why that you're dismissing with a wave of the hand. But regardless, we are both in agreement that sending robots right now is the wise decision.

Re: More Everything Forever

#319

Post by anarticle » Thu, May 01, 2025, 1:37 PM UTC

hnbad wrote: post #315

anarticle wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that automation and robots are a good proxy for exploration. And yes it will be tough. That won't stop people from trying. PR or not, there are still skydivers and wing suit people pushing the envelope. I really don't agree with the doomerism/well actually crowd on these sorts of things, there is still the indomitable human spirit, no matter how irrational it seems. We still have field scientists that get sen…

I'm not saying we won't possibly land someone on Mars eventually. I just don't think that's going to happen in a reasonable near future. The resources involved are too much for one person willing to go on a suicide mission to do it themselves (and those who do have the resources are very much not interested in dying) and for a government to sponsor this you would need a culture of self-sacrifice rather than rugged in…

Hate to break this to you, they do in fact go on expeditions in tents for quite a bit, with guns (polar bears). You've got them insofar as they don't forage for food, turns out we have portable food tech. There is a base camp but there are areas where they go far. They get govt issued Canada Goose jackets! What a perk! O Canada!

I agree with all you are saying, and those techs can be developed. I am a tech optimist. I see these as problems to try to solve, not a list of reasons why they can't happen.

We can agree as well that it will be fantastically more expensive and yes an order of magnitude etc etc. These are engineering problems, not physics problems. Probability vs possibility in my mind. We can disagree about if the resources are worth spending (that's not my call, I vote, which doesn't seem to do much). I can't predict the future.

Another point against it is it used to be a boat with dudes sent into the unknown with no way to know what to know what was happening. This was totally affordable for imperial seafaring nations at the time relative to the cost of rockets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_Age_of_Antarctic_Explor...

After this age there was a rise in using tech to do it. (mechanical age I think?)

It will be an insane feat to pull off, and I hope it happens in our life time.

Re: More Everything Forever

#320

Post by puetzk » Sat, May 03, 2025, 6:04 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #175

GauntletWizard wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AOC was an intern for Ted Kennedy before being strategically placed in a "bartending" position as part of her background grooming. Her family owned multiple New York Brownstones in the rich part of the city. She has as much claim to humble background as Trump.

Source for any of those claims? It's pretty well known after a few weird political fights that she grew up in a tiny house in Yorktown and that her dad died when she was a freshman in college and that her mom was a house cleaner. [her childhood home: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DhCMERUXUAAY68Z?format=jpg&name=... ]. Hard to square with her family "owning multiple brownstones". Trump's dad gave him millions of dollars…

> https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/about > > After high school, Alexandria attended Boston University, and graduated with degrees in Economics and International Relations (and tens of thousands of dollars in student loans). During this period she also had the opportunity to intern in the office of the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

She was indeed a congressional intern, but then her father died and family finances got rough, and a year later Ted Kennedy died (August 25, 2009) so she lost the job in his office.

> Following the financial crisis of 2008, tragedy struck when her father passed away suddenly from cancer. The medical bills and other growing expenses placed their home at risk of foreclosure. Alexandria pulled extra shifts to work as a waitress and bartender to support her family,

Her father seems to have been in the business of home remodeling and renovations. I haven't found any source for "owned multiple brownstones", but a little bit of house-flipping or some rental properties wouldn't be weird to see in that kind of business. Being a landlord with a mortgage doesn't necessarily mean huge wealth, and it it's easy to believe a combination of cancer treatment bills/being unable to work/2008 housing crisis could take a situation like that from comfortable to house-poor to foreclosure on upside-down loans in an awful hurry.