41–50 of 321 posts
Colonizing Mars is such a dumb idea. I wish it was a strawman, not the stated goal of the world’s richest man. Anyway, some of the utopian/distopian thinking, I get. We aren’t going to create an AI god, good or evil. That belief is probably a side effect of the facts that Millennials are (finally) grabbing the reins, and we grew up in an era where computers actually got, tangibly, twice as good every 18 months or so,…
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%…
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%…
- 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 their own eras. In hindsight we take for granted how significant these are; e.g. I was born on a continent that my ancestors had never set foot on until a few hundred years prior.
What we want as a species is "portfolio" of pro-human bets. Some of this can be low-risk, low-reward social spending to alleviate here-and-now problems on Earth, but some of it can be high-risk, high-reward "moon-shots" (or "Mars-shots") which, if successful, unlock completely new/better modes of existence. The two are not mutually exclusive, they are both part of a balanced strategy.
> He encourages us not to get hung up on galaxies far, far away but to pay more attention to our own fragile planet and the frail humans around us. While I don't necessarily agree with the motives of the Silicon Valley billionaires you must have a really basic imagination to hate on the future, and the answers to Man's oldest questions which may be on Mars and beyond. Of course, like a broken record, out comes the tr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are large swathes of earth that are too inhospitable, like deserts. They're more accessible and easier to support life in than Mars, and yet no one lives there. The deserts even have breathable air.
But there are people living in the inhospitable deserts that have useful resources like oil. Or artificial resources like legalized gambling. Antarctica is even more inhospitable than deserts, and there are people living there for research purposes.
Going a little further, living in the ocean is easier than living on Mars. As far as I can tell there are no billionaire-funded submarine civilisation programs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is more important. We spend > $2T per year fighting climate change. We spend > $10T per year on social welfare programs. We spend less than $10B per year on going back to the moon and trying to inhabit Mars.
And both of these amounts seem to not be enough based on the resulting state of the world.
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 a few humans on mars within 100 years (optimistically). It will be hard! There are many problems to solve (as the book seems to note). There's a place there for SpaceX and all other competent private companies - I love public-private partnerships.
I actually think this kind of low-information escapism about the future (we will "fix it" with technology in a way that is impossible) is similar to religious faith in a coming apocalypse. Faith in an impossible event raising you up and casting down your doubters and opponents. Technology can do a lot! It has a lot of potential! But we cannot fix any of our big problems (climate change, eventually making humans multi-planet, equality) with technology alone and the people who tell you we can just want to scam you out of your money.
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%…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there are people living in the inhospitable deserts that have useful resources like oil. Or artificial resources like legalized gambling. Antarctica is even more inhospitable than deserts, and there are people living there for research purposes.
I'm just making the basic point that we have a wealth of much more hospitable places to live on earth, and somehow they're not viable candidates as "backup plans" for humanity. Going a little further, living in the ocean is easier than living on Mars. As far as I can tell there are no billionaire-funded submarine civilisation programs.
OTOH, if one of those took out human life on Earth, people living on Mars could re-colonize Earth.
Also reviewed by Cory Doctorow: https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/22/vinges-bastards/#cyberpun...
Yesterday I had someone here tell me timnit gebru didn't contribute to hard science She has a PhD in electrical engineering and has worked at Google before researching on Ai with a more philosophical approach
She became famous for adopting a strain of strident and problematic activism, using it to attack her colleagues and making claims just as wild as some of the ones she cherry picks to critique.
It's not at all surprising that she ended up an extremely divisive figure. And meanwhile, the state of the art sped far ahead of where she drew her line in the sand.
It's hard to find discussion of her that isn't strongly biased in one direction or another (surely, my own comment included). In my experience (sample size 1), when she gets brought up (or involved), the quality of the discussion usually plummets.