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> You can't always know, so have as many backups as you can afford. A backup on mars is basically the most ludicrously expensive backup you can imagine. It's

> You can't always know, so have as many backups as you can afford. A backup on mars is basically the most ludicrously expensive backup you can imagine. It's as if when I make a backup for my hard-drive in Europe, I rent a safe in Japan to put it in. That would not make sense unless I think the whole European continent could be wiped out somehow. That's the thing : I don't think anything, not even the possibilities you mention, could make Earth worse a place to live than mars, not even a nuclear war. And I don't see a scenario that would wipe out all humans. Again, not even a nuclear war. And even if one of these scenarios could indeed wipe out humans, chances are that in a world where interplanetary travel is cheap, mars would not be spared.

sqeaky 9y ago
I think whatever is on your disk is less valuable than humanity as a species. I think the amount of backup you can "afford" should be relative to the value of the thing being backed up. Backing up is also not the strongest reason to go to Mars. "Because its there" is easily the strongest, but its not understood by those who don't understand it... That seems tautological, but it is hard to label this thing, it is like a sense of adventure but less childish. It is the same thing started every other exploration into the unknown and left everyone who stayed behind alive and poorer for it. When it pays it pays off in vast sums, literal new worlds are the payoff.
- grondilu 9y ago
  "Because its there" is the argument of mountain-climbers[1]. That can be an argument for an Apollo-style mission, not for a colonization project. 1. Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question "Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?" with the retort "Because it's there", which has been called "the most famous three words in mountaineering". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    I am well aware of the quote and its use in stopping analysis for a further reason, because it is the reason. I don't see why there is a threshold between moonshot and mars colonization, it seems arbitrary to me. Could you explain to me the method for determining the threshold of validity in the reasoning behind "Because it's there"?

sqeaky 9y ago

I think whatever is on your disk is less valuable than humanity as a species. I think the amount of backup you can "afford" should be relative to the value of the thing being backed up. Backing up is also not the strongest reason to go to Mars. "Because its there" is easily the strongest, but its not understood by those who don't understand it... That seems tautological, but it is hard to label this thing, it is like a sense of adventure but less childish. It is the same thing started every other exploration into the unknown and left everyone who stayed behind alive and poorer for it. When it pays it pays off in vast sums, literal new worlds are the payoff.

grondilu 9y ago
"Because its there" is the argument of mountain-climbers[1]. That can be an argument for an Apollo-style mission, not for a colonization project. 1. Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question "Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?" with the retort "Because it's there", which has been called "the most famous three words in mountaineering". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory
- sqeaky 9y ago
  I am well aware of the quote and its use in stopping analysis for a further reason, because it is the reason. I don't see why there is a threshold between moonshot and mars colonization, it seems arbitrary to me. Could you explain to me the method for determining the threshold of validity in the reasoning behind "Because it's there"?