[HN Gopher] The Starship or the Canoe: Where Will Our Future Ada...
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The Starship or the Canoe: Where Will Our Future Adaptations Be?
(2017)
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 15 points
Date : 2024-03-20 20:11 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alumni.berkeley.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (alumni.berkeley.edu)
| johnea wrote:
| There's actually a third intractable reality up against star
| travel:
|
| A significant portion of the human species doesn't have adequate
| food or housing, much less modern health care or education. Even
| populating Mars is a ridiculous waste of resources given this
| situation.
|
| The whole "sun runs out in 5B years" thing is so disconnected
| from our present situation, that it doesn't even matter if it's
| even actually true or not (I'm not doubting it, just it's
| influence on our current situation).
|
| Does anyone really think our species will still even be here in
| 5B years?
|
| With the current trends in eco destruction, and primate warfare,
| it's questionable if we'll make it to the end of the century.
|
| Understanding and dreaming of the stars can certainly continue to
| intrigue and inspire humanity, but dedicating massive resources
| so people can live in underground shipping containers on Mars,
| while billions of people still live in mud huts, is just so
| outrageously wasteful, not to mention self-centered and selfish,
| that's it's literally a crime against humanity.
|
| This is all emblematic of the incredible failure of perspective
| of our place in this world...
| Vecr wrote:
| It's not a crime against humanity. "Crimes against humanity"
| are actually very specific things, if you consider them real at
| all and not made up and enforced post hoc. General
| considerations of property rights let you go to mars using your
| resources if you want to.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| True, humanity has big problems. But those aren't caused by
| resources diverted to space exploration.
|
| And more importantly: diverting those resources elsewhere would
| do little to solve those problems. History, politics,
| dictators, colonialism, economic inequality, greed,
| ethnic/religious conflict, etc etc. Nothing that eg. NASA or a
| bag of $$ would fix.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Particularly when considering how small the amount going
| towards space is, which in the US, Congress is all too eager
| to pare down even further. Funding would be better sourced
| from cuts to things like military spending, which is well
| known for being egregiously wasteful and inefficient with its
| problems with pork barrel projects, fractal spiral
| subcontracting, and how practically anything it asks for gets
| rubberstamped with little question.
| ptdn wrote:
| The last century has involved the fastest reduction in severe
| poverty ever seen in human history, and it's not stopping
| anytime soon. We're allowed to also do other things.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| Wow.
|
| 1. There are people who live the way they do by choice. Folks
| who got that education and opportunity and rejected it. Your
| perspective of "mud huts bad" is very centric to how you were
| raised. It's one step removed from handing the natives a bible
| and having them build a church to civilize them.
|
| 2. No matter how we organize the word, there's always gonna be
| a line, and someone will be at the back. Sending that line in a
| new direction might be the next evolution of the species. Your
| iPhone is magic to someone 200 years ago, should we wait till
| everyone has a iPhone till we make any more advancement.
|
| 3. Warfare? Eco destruction? Unless your very old, its likely
| primate warfare at scale was well before your lifetime. As for
| the eco side of things, well you should take some comfort in
| the rate of change for the positive that your seeing.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| Good read!
|
| In the greater scheme of things, spaceflight isn't _that_
| different from early ocean explorers, right?
|
| Build a vessel that suits the environment it'll travel in, stock
| it with equipment & supplies, head off into the unknown. Hope
| that supplies last long enough to set foot on the other side,
| and/or 'live off the land'.
|
| Viewed like that, asteroids are kinda like islands, where some
| fresh fruit, timber etc may be found. Adventurers may like it &
| hang there while the ship sails on.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Except early ocean explorers didn't have to worry about being
| obliterated by a tiny speck of dust going too fast.
|
| e.g. If a random speck of dust hitting their raft could have
| done the same, there likely would have been a very different
| paradigm...
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| That was unexpectedly charming.
|
| Something hinted at, here, and something I've only recently come
| to accept, is that we - we humans - _are_ Earth. I mean,
| literally, we 're systems of systems composed of stuff that's
| Earth stuff. And of course many interlocking systems besides, all
| made of the same stuff.
|
| Separate a portion of the larger system, and the component will
| not retain the original's complexity - it will lose complexity to
| entropy, and revert to the mean.
|
| Along those same lines, imagine, just for a second, a completely
| separated other Earth, and the systems interlocked inside it. Now
| imagine those, mixing with ours, all those interlocking systems,
| interfering, constructively and deconstructively. There's only
| one way that shakes out[1]. It's not great.
|
| I'm not saying interstellar voyaging is impossible. I just think
| it's impossible for us, as human animals, as Earth systems. But
| Earth systems are not the only systems that exist. Our
| technological systems have a leg up, in that they can be
| developed on a substrate of understanding beyond just the crust
| of the one planet. Technological systems have better messaging
| between systems, and they can make at least an attempt at
| centralized control. A technological surrogate will be the one to
| experience other suns. Something that remembers us, and maybe
| remembers us well enough it can pretend to be human occasionally.
|
| I suppose that sounds nice, in the same way the traditional blue-
| sky-golden-gate-fluffy-cloud-big-bearded-old-chap afterlife
| sounds nice. But God, it also sounds patronizing as all hell.
| Just put me in the ground so I can help the garden. See, as I get
| older, watched things die and grow, I've come to realize: the
| afterlife quantifiably exists . . but you don't get to be selfish
| about it.
|
| [1] Not counting technological solutions, like genetic
| engineering and, failing that, the magical realm of nanowhatever,
| although I suspect nanowhatsit will act an awful lot like living
| systems, which are of course their own sort of nanothingy
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