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This is indeed one perspective to have on it, but unfortunately we cannot control what others think. Saying that you'll look for life will lead people to expect

This is indeed one perspective to have on it, but unfortunately we cannot control what others think. Saying that you'll look for life will lead people to expect you to, for better or worse.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Yet the Viking landers in the seventies were quite happy to look for signs in the soil. I don't remember anyone thinking it a failure, just that it was bloody amazing, and wow those photos leading the news every night. Sure I see how simplistic social and web news has made things, and the promotion of minority views, but did we really descend that far into the Idiocracy? :(
- ars 7y ago
  I think it's actually exactly the opposite. We don't have the ability to definitively detect or not detect life on Mars. So if we send a machine with the goal of detecting life and it doesn't, well maybe it's there we just didn't detect it. So it's better to pretend that we can't actually detect while actually sending detectors.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  The Viking landers era was different. There was money for space exploration. Nowadays, space missions need to continuously prove their value, which I think changes how they're presented and ultimately their mission profiles. You send a probe to find life, it found no life? No money for the mission ops next year, cut the comms and go do something else. You send a probe to perform scientific measurement around life-bearing capability past and present? You can exploit the sunk-cost fallacy to request ops budget year after year, because it's now hard to just cut people off from a firehose of sweet science data. "Look how much we got for X$, for a few extra Y$ we can have a whole year more of that!". > Sure I see how simplistic social and web news has made things, and the promotion of minority views, but did we really descend that far into the Idiocracy? :( I think the truth is closer to "individuals are smart, societies are dumb".
- sgt101 7y ago
  But Viking looked for signs; and the results were equivocal. So that's the ulitmate failure basically.

This is indeed one perspective to have on it, but unfortunately we cannot control what others think. Saying that you'll look for life will lead people to expect you to, for better or worse.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Yet the Viking landers in the seventies were quite happy to look for signs in the soil. I don't remember anyone thinking it a failure, just that it was bloody amazing, and wow those photos leading the news every night. Sure I see how simplistic social and web news has made things, and the promotion of minority views, but did we really descend that far into the Idiocracy? :(

ars 7y ago
I think it's actually exactly the opposite. We don't have the ability to definitively detect or not detect life on Mars. So if we send a machine with the goal of detecting life and it doesn't, well maybe it's there we just didn't detect it. So it's better to pretend that we can't actually detect while actually sending detectors.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
The Viking landers era was different. There was money for space exploration. Nowadays, space missions need to continuously prove their value, which I think changes how they're presented and ultimately their mission profiles. You send a probe to find life, it found no life? No money for the mission ops next year, cut the comms and go do something else. You send a probe to perform scientific measurement around life-bearing capability past and present? You can exploit the sunk-cost fallacy to request ops budget year after year, because it's now hard to just cut people off from a firehose of sweet science data. "Look how much we got for X$, for a few extra Y$ we can have a whole year more of that!". > Sure I see how simplistic social and web news has made things, and the promotion of minority views, but did we really descend that far into the Idiocracy? :( I think the truth is closer to "individuals are smart, societies are dumb".
sgt101 7y ago
But Viking looked for signs; and the results were equivocal. So that's the ulitmate failure basically.