[HN Gopher] Futurists have their heads in the clouds
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       Futurists have their heads in the clouds
        
       Author : spekcular
       Score  : 7 points
       Date   : 2021-11-18 21:40 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (erikhoel.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (erikhoel.substack.com)
        
       | dmitrybrant wrote:
       | Wait, a colony on Mars by 2050 that doesn't need to be resupplied
       | from Earth? ...lol no.
       | 
       | Strong, _strong_ disagree that there will be any kind of
       | "colony" on Mars by 2050, and my prediction is that we won't even
       | have our first manned mission to Mars this _century_.
       | 
       | We haven't been back to the Moon in 50 years. We haven't left LEO
       | in 50 years. Surely we would need to build a colony on the Moon
       | first, as a trial for building a colony somewhere that's _three
       | orders of magnitude_ farther away. We are nowhere close to doing
       | this.
        
       | tuatoru wrote:
       | I don't really care where futurists keep their heads, but they,
       | including Hoel, use them intermittently, superficially and in a
       | slipshod manner. They don't do their homework.
       | 
       | I very much doubt that Hoel has properly thought through in
       | detail what it would take to operate a permanent colony on Mars
       | and what would have to happen to set one up. If he has, he has
       | not troubled to write down his thoughts.
       | 
       | As an example of what I'm taking about, Brian Potter, on his blog
       | "Construction Physics", has delved into the detail and explained
       | _some_ of the mass of physical, economic, informational,
       | institutional, organisational, and cultural factors that result
       | in the building construction industry and construction costs
       | being what they are.[1]
       | 
       | I have never seen its like from any futurist.
       | 
       | 1. https://constructionphysics.substack.com/
        
       | basedgod wrote:
       | I really doubt there will be a rise of the throuple in any
       | meaningful sense. The entire point of the authors essay is how
       | unchanging society is, but suddenly it's going to become not
       | uncommon for inherently complicated (more dynamics than dyads)
       | relationships to exist?
       | 
       | It hasn't been the case at any point in human history (other than
       | extremely small minorities). This is not going to change now.
       | Humans don't work that way on a mass scale.
       | 
       | The same with education. Education does not exist to educate, it
       | exists to babysit children (parents have to go to work! look at
       | the last election in Virginia), and be a hoop to jump through for
       | accreditation. Online learning will be hugely inconvenient for
       | these purposes, and traditional in person education will remain
       | the most common form well into the end of the 21st century
       | 
       | Nothing ever changes
        
         | pempem wrote:
         | I'm here for the cynicism but here's the thing: we went from no
         | weekends to weekends; we went from random schools to mandatory
         | school; we went from child labor to almost no child labor with
         | noted exceptions
         | 
         | things do change. we can change them more.
         | 
         | i agree that throuple is an unlikely emergence from those
         | efforts :D
        
       | adamcstephens wrote:
       | Some self-reflection seems like it would be valuable here.
        
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       (page generated 2021-11-18 23:01 UTC)