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> Regardless of who gets there first, Musk thinks it's vital for mankind to create a self-sustaining city on Mars to protect against human extinction, and also

by bbayer 11y ago

> Regardless of who gets there first, Musk thinks it's vital for mankind to create a self-sustaining city on Mars to protect against human extinction, and also to inspire people. I can understand inspiration part but don't get how this help preventing human extinction. Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? I understand that trying to reach other planets can push forward technology to incredible levels but it would be more meaningful if this technology can find areas to resolve Earth's current problems.

kelseyfrancis 11y ago
And if we completely address hunger, poverty, disease, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, sectarian violence, economic inequality, etc. but then an asteroid or comet causes our extinction?
- seiji 11y ago
  Yeah, it's like focusing on writing 100% test coverage for all code you use so your company is more reliable while ignoring all your code is stored on just one 10 year old HD that could fail at any moment (or fire, flood, cloverfield, etc).
- rhino369 11y ago
  If you are worried about that, why not build a biodome in the antarctic instead. Or build millions of greenhouse farms to survive impact winter. Even if you are really into space exploration, developing a comet pusher would be infinitely more valuable.
  - skorgu 11y ago
    At least for the comet pusher, the tech needed to put a non-trivial number of humans on Mars has a ton of overlap with the tech needed to divert potential impacts.
kiba 11y ago
I can understand inspiration part but don't get how this help preventing human extinction. Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? I understand that trying to reach other planets can push forward technology to incredible levels but it would be more meaningful if this technology can find areas to resolve Earth's current problems. They are mostly political problems rather than technologies. The exception would be diseases, because a lot of that is the scientific challenge and research and development. And they're all problems that plague our quality of living rather than posing any kind of existential risks. Nuclear war, asteroid strikes, and UFAI would qualify as existential risks. Plus, by establishing a colony on Mars, you reduce the probability of extinction should something happens to Earth.
agildehaus 11y ago
There are very real astronomical and human-caused events that could wipe us out here on Earth. Becoming multi-planetary makes extinction much less probable. What makes you think technology pushed to incredible levels won't assist with Earth's current problems?
SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
> Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? Several times on HN I have posed replies that consist of the snappy comment: "your logical fallacy is: " followed by a link. It doesn't usually go over well. Yes, it would be wise to do those things. I mean, to do them as well: It's not one of the other. The "don't go to Mars, fix poverty" argument is something like Whataboutery or "Fallacy of relative privation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/156-relative-privation http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci...
- noam87 11y ago
  I wonder... do we have the knowhow to build `logical_fallacy_bot` and deploy it to the general Internet yet?
  - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
    Your logical fallacy is: Just because we can doesn't mean we should. That's what my experience indicates, anyway ;)
  - ziszis 11y ago
    I love this idea. Alongside factual_error_bot it would completely transform political discourse. Imagine if presidential debates had real-time scoring of what was being said. Politifact is great, but 24h delay makes it substantially less impactful.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
      People already use bots to harass their opponents on twitter, etc. It's not a good thing. This sounds good for a short while, but think through how misguided or malicious people would use it.
  - gradys 11y ago
    Do you know of any data sets of examples of logical fallacies?
clessg 11y ago
Well, Musk has also been working on climate change. I think that counts as an existential threat. But with the decent possibility of somebody like Donald Trump becoming President, I think the journey to Mars can't come soon enough.
fab13n 11y ago
> hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? Those are threats to individual human beings, not to mankind as a whole. A Great Plague or a (non-nuclear) world war here and there can wipe 1/3 of humanity, but for the species as a whole it's just an inconvenience: it can be compensated in a couple of generations, through our adaptable fertility rate. There are dangers, mostly ecological, which can wipe out the whole species: nuclear winter, mega-volcanoes, meteors... (yes, most of them are about some form of climate change) The mitigation for those dangers is to have several separated ecosystems, not regrowing the population locally after a demographic setback. A city on Mars would probably take centuries to turn into an independent ecosystem (including all of the mining, transforming and recycling of every material required, and the means to extend itself across the planet. Or even, maybe, terraforming). But a partially Earth-dependent Mars city is a very important milestone towards the big goal. Finally, he doesn't say that all of our efforts should be dedicated to that single goal: he's quite involved in fixing Earthly problem, including energy, climate change and transportation. He's also vocal about how we should think very hard about the kind of IA we want to cohabit with.
- jeremyjh 11y ago
  You don't just need an ecosystem or contained biosphere. You also need an industrialized civilization that can fully support itself, producing everything used to operate that ecosystem, and everything needed to send rockets into space - which is the very tip of an enormous technological pyramid built on the backs of many, many people. So you need an ecosystem big enough to support that, which might have a realistic lower bounded size of as many as a hundred million people. Perhaps a terraforming project could be accomplished in a few thousand years, but for the most part this is all ridiculous pipe dream. We only have one planet.
alejohausner 11y ago
I agree. It's astronomically expensive to set up humans on the moon, and much more so on another planet. Think of the much much more productive ways that money could be spent here at the bottom of the gravity well. As for asteroid mining, aren't metals available here on earth too, at a fraction of the cost? How about an R&D effort to make batteries and other technology out of easily-available metals here? Wouldn't that spending yield useful products much more cheaply than trying to get them from out there in the sky? We have to stop reading science fiction and taking it as prophecy. The case for seeding our species on another planet makes no economic sense.

by bbayer 11y ago

kelseyfrancis 11y ago

And if we completely address hunger, poverty, disease, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, sectarian violence, economic inequality, etc. but then an asteroid or comet causes our extinction?

seiji 11y ago
Yeah, it's like focusing on writing 100% test coverage for all code you use so your company is more reliable while ignoring all your code is stored on just one 10 year old HD that could fail at any moment (or fire, flood, cloverfield, etc).
rhino369 11y ago
If you are worried about that, why not build a biodome in the antarctic instead. Or build millions of greenhouse farms to survive impact winter. Even if you are really into space exploration, developing a comet pusher would be infinitely more valuable.
- skorgu 11y ago
  At least for the comet pusher, the tech needed to put a non-trivial number of humans on Mars has a ton of overlap with the tech needed to divert potential impacts.

kiba 11y ago

I can understand inspiration part but don't get how this help preventing human extinction. Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? I understand that trying to reach other planets can push forward technology to incredible levels but it would be more meaningful if this technology can find areas to resolve Earth's current problems. They are mostly political problems rather than technologies. The exception would be diseases, because a lot of that is the scientific challenge and research and development. And they're all problems that plague our quality of living rather than posing any kind of existential risks. Nuclear war, asteroid strikes, and UFAI would qualify as existential risks. Plus, by establishing a colony on Mars, you reduce the probability of extinction should something happens to Earth.

agildehaus 11y ago

There are very real astronomical and human-caused events that could wipe us out here on Earth. Becoming multi-planetary makes extinction much less probable. What makes you think technology pushed to incredible levels won't assist with Earth's current problems?

SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago

> Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? Several times on HN I have posed replies that consist of the snappy comment: "your logical fallacy is: " followed by a link. It doesn't usually go over well. Yes, it would be wise to do those things. I mean, to do them as well: It's not one of the other. The "don't go to Mars, fix poverty" argument is something like Whataboutery or "Fallacy of relative privation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/156-relative-privation http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci...

noam87 11y ago
I wonder... do we have the knowhow to build `logical_fallacy_bot` and deploy it to the general Internet yet?
- SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
  Your logical fallacy is: Just because we can doesn't mean we should. That's what my experience indicates, anyway ;)
- ziszis 11y ago
  I love this idea. Alongside factual_error_bot it would completely transform political discourse. Imagine if presidential debates had real-time scoring of what was being said. Politifact is great, but 24h delay makes it substantially less impactful.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
    People already use bots to harass their opponents on twitter, etc. It's not a good thing. This sounds good for a short while, but think through how misguided or malicious people would use it.
- gradys 11y ago
  Do you know of any data sets of examples of logical fallacies?

clessg 11y ago

Well, Musk has also been working on climate change. I think that counts as an existential threat. But with the decent possibility of somebody like Donald Trump becoming President, I think the journey to Mars can't come soon enough.

fab13n 11y ago

> hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? Those are threats to individual human beings, not to mankind as a whole. A Great Plague or a (non-nuclear) world war here and there can wipe 1/3 of humanity, but for the species as a whole it's just an inconvenience: it can be compensated in a couple of generations, through our adaptable fertility rate. There are dangers, mostly ecological, which can wipe out the whole species: nuclear winter, mega-volcanoes, meteors... (yes, most of them are about some form of climate change) The mitigation for those dangers is to have several separated ecosystems, not regrowing the population locally after a demographic setback. A city on Mars would probably take centuries to turn into an independent ecosystem (including all of the mining, transforming and recycling of every material required, and the means to extend itself across the planet. Or even, maybe, terraforming). But a partially Earth-dependent Mars city is a very important milestone towards the big goal. Finally, he doesn't say that all of our efforts should be dedicated to that single goal: he's quite involved in fixing Earthly problem, including energy, climate change and transportation. He's also vocal about how we should think very hard about the kind of IA we want to cohabit with.

jeremyjh 11y ago
You don't just need an ecosystem or contained biosphere. You also need an industrialized civilization that can fully support itself, producing everything used to operate that ecosystem, and everything needed to send rockets into space - which is the very tip of an enormous technological pyramid built on the backs of many, many people. So you need an ecosystem big enough to support that, which might have a realistic lower bounded size of as many as a hundred million people. Perhaps a terraforming project could be accomplished in a few thousand years, but for the most part this is all ridiculous pipe dream. We only have one planet.

alejohausner 11y ago

I agree. It's astronomically expensive to set up humans on the moon, and much more so on another planet. Think of the much much more productive ways that money could be spent here at the bottom of the gravity well. As for asteroid mining, aren't metals available here on earth too, at a fraction of the cost? How about an R&D effort to make batteries and other technology out of easily-available metals here? Wouldn't that spending yield useful products much more cheaply than trying to get them from out there in the sky? We have to stop reading science fiction and taking it as prophecy. The case for seeding our species on another planet makes no economic sense.