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As much as I want to agree with you I think it's a very naive way of thinking about this problem (which can sometimes be good so don't get me wrong). I persona

As much as I want to agree with you I think it's a very naive way of thinking about this problem (which can sometimes be good so don't get me wrong). I personally believe in what I call natural next steps. I.e steps that are naturally extending previous ones. To me, the next step is making the space station much more robust. And focusing on AI might actually be a much smarter move as it might allow us to build a secure and stable moonbase before we could do it using humans. So it's a very complex discussion where priorities might sometimes look like they are ignoring something like a space station on the moon, but actually end up being a better choice because it will allow us to get there quicker.

nnq 9y ago
> natural next steps This never works... People need to be forced into developing solution by creating more problems while solving existing one. Like "shit, the mars colony got wiped out by a diseases, no more humans to repair the stuff there, quick, figure out how to make robots that make more robots themselves, nothing else fits the budget". Or "shit, we underestimated the effects or magnitude of cosmic radiation on colonists, gotta accelerate work on those cures for cancer or we're fucked". And "alternative priority" things like AI or, dunno, cancer-research, will never compete for the same money bucket as space exploration. They'll likely end up receiving significantly more money since space exploration will just increase their value by orders of magnitude. Economy is never a zero some game like "spend money on this vs. that" if you play it on a large enough scale since most stuff is either in excess of "creatable". Only real finite resource is "space you can practically reach to fast enough". Too bad some people have started to actually believe the made up rules of our "economy game". Hmmm... now that I think about it, maybe our "economical game" is the problem: we've developed it so much, with manufactured needs and manufactured scarcities for the purpose of "hacking people into working the hardest they can", but now it's kind of turned against us. Maybe we need some serious rewrite of the code of global economy to start making the things that are technically possible actually possible...
- ThomPete 9y ago
  The economic game is what makes it all make sense.
  - nnq 9y ago
    > makes it all make sense Yeah, I know this kind of thinking... To many people have it. Hopefully I can try to "cure" at least a few from the "need for things to make sense" and to teach them to think more from the first principles of physics and the givens of biology. That's the only thing that needs to make sense.

nnq 9y ago

> natural next steps This never works... People need to be forced into developing solution by creating more problems while solving existing one. Like "shit, the mars colony got wiped out by a diseases, no more humans to repair the stuff there, quick, figure out how to make robots that make more robots themselves, nothing else fits the budget". Or "shit, we underestimated the effects or magnitude of cosmic radiation on colonists, gotta accelerate work on those cures for cancer or we're fucked". And "alternative priority" things like AI or, dunno, cancer-research, will never compete for the same money bucket as space exploration. They'll likely end up receiving significantly more money since space exploration will just increase their value by orders of magnitude. Economy is never a zero some game like "spend money on this vs. that" if you play it on a large enough scale since most stuff is either in excess of "creatable". Only real finite resource is "space you can practically reach to fast enough". Too bad some people have started to actually believe the made up rules of our "economy game". Hmmm... now that I think about it, maybe our "economical game" is the problem: we've developed it so much, with manufactured needs and manufactured scarcities for the purpose of "hacking people into working the hardest they can", but now it's kind of turned against us. Maybe we need some serious rewrite of the code of global economy to start making the things that are technically possible actually possible...

ThomPete 9y ago
The economic game is what makes it all make sense.
- nnq 9y ago
  > makes it all make sense Yeah, I know this kind of thinking... To many people have it. Hopefully I can try to "cure" at least a few from the "need for things to make sense" and to teach them to think more from the first principles of physics and the givens of biology. That's the only thing that needs to make sense.