6 ms·

All of these articles and ways of thinking always miss the bigger, more fundamental shift in human society — we now know there is literally no place we can acce

by numair 7y ago

All of these articles and ways of thinking always miss the bigger, more fundamental shift in human society — we now know there is literally no place we can access in any meaningful amount of time where the “grass is greener” than the places we’ve already been. This is profound, semi-depressing, and enlightening at the same time. Rather than seeking something new somewhere else, our new obsession is in improving what we’ve got, where we are right now. I know a lot of you are going to make hand-wavy claims about space mining and things like that, but our population curve seems to indicate a very minimal benefit to all of that. If anything, the fastest-growing environmental concern seems to be space and sky pollution. Starry-eyed young engineers have been sold on the idea of interstellar space travel, when the reality of the commercial application of their work is that it’s more likely to lead to an over-proliferation of satellites and help rich people get to places faster via space plane. The final argument someone’s inevitably going to make is, survival of the race. Yeah, okay. You might want to self-reflect on our existence as deeply terrestrial beings that are intrinsically connected to the Earth. Even if you spend all of your day hidden in a bedroom, you can’t escape your bond with this planet. Instead of trying to find a mistress in the form of another moon/planet, we need to spend more time working on the marriage. I think space technologies are fun, and that rich people obsessed with suicide missions to other planets should be able to do what they want, but let’s not kid ourselves on the moral superiority of these sorts of things. There is no shame, and no inferiority, in working to optimize our Earth-bound existence.

guelo 7y ago
I try to imagine humanity a thousand years from now, still bound to the same increasingly inhospitable planet, paying for the sins of our generations but nowhere to escape to. With probably an abandoned Mars or moon colony. Just nothing to explore. Even the boundaries of natural science would be mostly understood by that point. It would be so depressing. Our only salvation would be if we still have enough resources remaining for computers to run virtual worlds for us to explore. Basically video games, that's our best hope.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ddingus 7y ago
  Should those humans, along the way, do the work to exist here more harmoniously, the planet would not be increasingly inhospitable. Starting that work now is a huge economic opportunity too. There is no need to continue to squander resources. There are a lot of wants to do that. Understandable too. No judgement. We have a global priority conversation coming. The sooner the better.
- zanny 7y ago
  I don't think there is any chance we make it a thousand years without either reaching technological singularity or destroying ourselves. In the 80 years of transistor technology we went from string manipulation via pneumatic tubes to real time ray tracing. Though to be fair, both outcomes basically end biological human life - a technological singularity obsoletes carbon based biology and any rational successor species wouldn't keep living humans around when they can trivially archive our genetic code and reproduce us at will if ever needed - which is also then unlikely to happen. Its that or nuclear annihilation.
  - 7thaccount 7y ago
    Paul Davies (head of SETI) has a fantastic book called "The Eerie Silence". It was the first time in years that I had read a good science book written for the layman that taught me not only a lot of new scientific ideas, history I didn't know about, and made me think about humanity in a new light. I really can't recommend it enough. Ok, so he makes an argument that made me put down the book (ok 17 year old me) and really ponder the statement. It was his belief that "all biological life is transistory". Of course we have no other intelligent life outside of earth to compare against, but it kind of makes sense in a completely unproven kind of way. A species develops as biological and eventually transcends to machine. At that point, you would be far more intelligent (maybe) and the only requirement for society would be lots and lots of energy. You would essentially be a mind floating around in infinite cyber space experiencing everything there is to experience. You could travel to the stars if you would like (no cryogenics or food necessary), but honestly...why would you want to? The book mostly sticks to scientific fact and covers a lot of SETI history, but there are many additional topics like this that are thought provoking. Some of my friends were horrified by this (end of biological humanity assuming it is ever possible), but to me...it is the most logical progression for humanity to become more than what it currently is. These flesh bodies cause us to die far too early and our brains can probably only be enhanced so much.
joe_the_user 7y ago
Just as much, if you consider what it would be like, who would want to be stuck on a martian mining colony ... without any social networking. Social networking might have it's downsides but it's rather a boon to people stuck in areas of extreme boredom and isolation. The thing one can regret about the aesthetics of modern life, including social networking, is that it's made the uniqueness of places less (a social network and the Internet generally lets you be everywhere and yet nowhere and makes everywhere kind of the same). But I can't see martian colonies making human places more unique given such colonies would have to have a very uniform structure dictated by a harsh environment.
- jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
  I'd love to hang out on the martian web. Sounds cool as hell, and a lot healthier than earth web.
  - itronitron 7y ago
    you could create one here on earth, and sell connected 'pods' that people could live out of from their parents' basements (only half joking)
    - jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
      Now I want to write a browser extension which simulates earth-mars latency.
      - pmiller2 7y ago
        Wouldn’t be hard. Just execute every request with a ~20 minute delay.
        jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
        Naive implementation. Distance flucuates from 3-20 light minutes over time, and would have to double that for a round trip. Plus have to factor in EM interference and line-of-sight.
ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
>The final argument someone’s inevitably going to make is, survival of the race. Yeah, okay. You might want to self-reflect on our existence as deeply terrestrial beings that are intrinsically connected to the Earth. Even if you spend all of your day hidden in a bedroom, you can’t escape your bond with this planet. Instead of trying to find a mistress in the form of another moon/planet, we need to spend more time working on the marriage. There's plenty of ways for life to end on this planet that don't require any human interaction.[1] Many have occurred in the past, it's naive to think it won't happen again. There's no reason why anyone has to choose between the stars and not killing ourselves on this planet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  In the face of all extinction events, the bottom of the ocean would be more habitable than an alien planet.
  - foxrider 7y ago
    But there is little to gain living on the bottom of the ocean. Space expansion offers us more than just survival, it bring orbital mining, Low G manufacturing, scientific projects and so on. It's much harder if not impossible to create something self-sufficient underwater than on Mars, since due to huge pressure any mechanical failure of your equipment is much more catastrophic. There are virtually no light or any good energy sources for growing food, you can't mine underwater effectively, and so on. It's a glorified bunker and nothing more. Compare it to mars - structures can be erected from much lighter spacious materials and expand outwards, there is sunlight, a lot of minerals to mine and since everything is pressurised from the inside the repairability is higher.
    - heavyset_go 7y ago
      > But there is little to gain living on the bottom of the ocean. What? You're surrounded by water, you can produce oxygen through electrolysis and generate hydrogen fuel, there's food living all around you, there are plenty of seamounts to mine. > It's much harder if not impossible to create something self-sufficient underwater than on Mars All of you supplies need to live on Mars need to come from elsewhere. All of your necessities from life need to come from elsewhere. If you want to live on Mars for any appreciable amount of time, you need a robust supply chain that'll supply resources to you from Earth. On the seafloor, you are surrounded by water, sources of oxygen, and food. > you can't mine underwater effectively, We've yet to mine anything that isn't on Earth. We may never be able to mine effectively anywhere other than Earth. > there is sunlight There is barely an atmosphere on Mars, and it lacks oxygen.
buboard 7y ago
> access in any meaningful amount of time I agree about space constraints, but if we really wanted to, we 'd work to create humans that live long enough to go there , or somehow else send human hybrids frozen in a ship. Biotechnology is amazing but so constrained by premature regulation it's not seeing a lot of progress. I have the feeling that scientists were secretly wishing some rogue scientist would try to apply crispr on humans. I think it's true that the public's imagination is not much gripped by grand visions anymore but rather numbed and distracted with mindless trivialities
- scottLobster 7y ago
  I'm not sure the public's imagination is ever gripped by grand visions for very long. Just look at how quickly Apollo ended once we made it to the moon, and how controversial its budget was at the time. Going further back, remember that most of the Western settlers we romanticize as "pioneers" with "the spirit of exploration" today were in fact looking for economic profit and an escape from bad working conditions in settled country. Sure some minority cares about noble action, grand perspectives and super-long-term consequences, but most people just want to drink, watch TV and die with hopefully a few friends and family around. They aren't directly included in the vision, so why should they care? Necessity is the mother of invention, and sadly there is currently no necessity to birth human space exploration. We'd likely need a bad asteroid hit (bad enough to kill millions but not bad enough to collapse society) or a second cold war where establishing, say, a moon base would be strategically beneficial. Until then, well I guess we have Elon, and eventually Bezos. Independently wealthy businessmen have been behind more than a few major inventions.
  - buboard 7y ago
    > most people just want to drink, watch TV and die Religion is a counterexample to this. it has driven people to change their lives
    - scottLobster 7y ago
      I'd argue it's the other way around, that those seeking to change their lives for the better are a relatively self-driven minority and likely would have succeeded with or without religion, religion was just a convenient vehicle due to widespread availability and approach-ability. It's anecdotal, but I was raised Baptist and married into a Catholic family (although neither my wife nor I are particularly religious). The people I've met in church over the years are no more or less driven than any other segment of the population I've encountered.
gattr 7y ago
Charless Stross has illustrated this in his novel "Accelerando" (strongly recommended!). In the future, even though interstellar travel is technologically feasible, (almost) no one does it - because why the hell would any of the post-human superintelligences want to venture away from the hyper-connected, inner solar system-spanning Network where all the power, resources and fun are concentrated?
205guy 7y ago
Exactly, Manifest Destiny is over, the world is full now and we recognize we can't just take land from others anymore. Time to learn how to live together without depleting or destroying our biosphere.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
It just makes me think we need to invest more into terraforming Mars :D

by numair 7y ago

guelo 7y ago

I try to imagine humanity a thousand years from now, still bound to the same increasingly inhospitable planet, paying for the sins of our generations but nowhere to escape to. With probably an abandoned Mars or moon colony. Just nothing to explore. Even the boundaries of natural science would be mostly understood by that point. It would be so depressing. Our only salvation would be if we still have enough resources remaining for computers to run virtual worlds for us to explore. Basically video games, that's our best hope.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ddingus 7y ago
Should those humans, along the way, do the work to exist here more harmoniously, the planet would not be increasingly inhospitable. Starting that work now is a huge economic opportunity too. There is no need to continue to squander resources. There are a lot of wants to do that. Understandable too. No judgement. We have a global priority conversation coming. The sooner the better.
zanny 7y ago
I don't think there is any chance we make it a thousand years without either reaching technological singularity or destroying ourselves. In the 80 years of transistor technology we went from string manipulation via pneumatic tubes to real time ray tracing. Though to be fair, both outcomes basically end biological human life - a technological singularity obsoletes carbon based biology and any rational successor species wouldn't keep living humans around when they can trivially archive our genetic code and reproduce us at will if ever needed - which is also then unlikely to happen. Its that or nuclear annihilation.
- 7thaccount 7y ago
  Paul Davies (head of SETI) has a fantastic book called "The Eerie Silence". It was the first time in years that I had read a good science book written for the layman that taught me not only a lot of new scientific ideas, history I didn't know about, and made me think about humanity in a new light. I really can't recommend it enough. Ok, so he makes an argument that made me put down the book (ok 17 year old me) and really ponder the statement. It was his belief that "all biological life is transistory". Of course we have no other intelligent life outside of earth to compare against, but it kind of makes sense in a completely unproven kind of way. A species develops as biological and eventually transcends to machine. At that point, you would be far more intelligent (maybe) and the only requirement for society would be lots and lots of energy. You would essentially be a mind floating around in infinite cyber space experiencing everything there is to experience. You could travel to the stars if you would like (no cryogenics or food necessary), but honestly...why would you want to? The book mostly sticks to scientific fact and covers a lot of SETI history, but there are many additional topics like this that are thought provoking. Some of my friends were horrified by this (end of biological humanity assuming it is ever possible), but to me...it is the most logical progression for humanity to become more than what it currently is. These flesh bodies cause us to die far too early and our brains can probably only be enhanced so much.

joe_the_user 7y ago

Just as much, if you consider what it would be like, who would want to be stuck on a martian mining colony ... without any social networking. Social networking might have it's downsides but it's rather a boon to people stuck in areas of extreme boredom and isolation. The thing one can regret about the aesthetics of modern life, including social networking, is that it's made the uniqueness of places less (a social network and the Internet generally lets you be everywhere and yet nowhere and makes everywhere kind of the same). But I can't see martian colonies making human places more unique given such colonies would have to have a very uniform structure dictated by a harsh environment.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
I'd love to hang out on the martian web. Sounds cool as hell, and a lot healthier than earth web.
- itronitron 7y ago
  you could create one here on earth, and sell connected 'pods' that people could live out of from their parents' basements (only half joking)
  - jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
    Now I want to write a browser extension which simulates earth-mars latency.
    - pmiller2 7y ago
      Wouldn’t be hard. Just execute every request with a ~20 minute delay.
      - jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
        Naive implementation. Distance flucuates from 3-20 light minutes over time, and would have to double that for a round trip. Plus have to factor in EM interference and line-of-sight.

ApolloFortyNine 7y ago

>The final argument someone’s inevitably going to make is, survival of the race. Yeah, okay. You might want to self-reflect on our existence as deeply terrestrial beings that are intrinsically connected to the Earth. Even if you spend all of your day hidden in a bedroom, you can’t escape your bond with this planet. Instead of trying to find a mistress in the form of another moon/planet, we need to spend more time working on the marriage. There's plenty of ways for life to end on this planet that don't require any human interaction.[1] Many have occurred in the past, it's naive to think it won't happen again. There's no reason why anyone has to choose between the stars and not killing ourselves on this planet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

heavyset_go 7y ago
In the face of all extinction events, the bottom of the ocean would be more habitable than an alien planet.
- foxrider 7y ago
  But there is little to gain living on the bottom of the ocean. Space expansion offers us more than just survival, it bring orbital mining, Low G manufacturing, scientific projects and so on. It's much harder if not impossible to create something self-sufficient underwater than on Mars, since due to huge pressure any mechanical failure of your equipment is much more catastrophic. There are virtually no light or any good energy sources for growing food, you can't mine underwater effectively, and so on. It's a glorified bunker and nothing more. Compare it to mars - structures can be erected from much lighter spacious materials and expand outwards, there is sunlight, a lot of minerals to mine and since everything is pressurised from the inside the repairability is higher.
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    > But there is little to gain living on the bottom of the ocean. What? You're surrounded by water, you can produce oxygen through electrolysis and generate hydrogen fuel, there's food living all around you, there are plenty of seamounts to mine. > It's much harder if not impossible to create something self-sufficient underwater than on Mars All of you supplies need to live on Mars need to come from elsewhere. All of your necessities from life need to come from elsewhere. If you want to live on Mars for any appreciable amount of time, you need a robust supply chain that'll supply resources to you from Earth. On the seafloor, you are surrounded by water, sources of oxygen, and food. > you can't mine underwater effectively, We've yet to mine anything that isn't on Earth. We may never be able to mine effectively anywhere other than Earth. > there is sunlight There is barely an atmosphere on Mars, and it lacks oxygen.

buboard 7y ago

> access in any meaningful amount of time I agree about space constraints, but if we really wanted to, we 'd work to create humans that live long enough to go there , or somehow else send human hybrids frozen in a ship. Biotechnology is amazing but so constrained by premature regulation it's not seeing a lot of progress. I have the feeling that scientists were secretly wishing some rogue scientist would try to apply crispr on humans. I think it's true that the public's imagination is not much gripped by grand visions anymore but rather numbed and distracted with mindless trivialities

scottLobster 7y ago
I'm not sure the public's imagination is ever gripped by grand visions for very long. Just look at how quickly Apollo ended once we made it to the moon, and how controversial its budget was at the time. Going further back, remember that most of the Western settlers we romanticize as "pioneers" with "the spirit of exploration" today were in fact looking for economic profit and an escape from bad working conditions in settled country. Sure some minority cares about noble action, grand perspectives and super-long-term consequences, but most people just want to drink, watch TV and die with hopefully a few friends and family around. They aren't directly included in the vision, so why should they care? Necessity is the mother of invention, and sadly there is currently no necessity to birth human space exploration. We'd likely need a bad asteroid hit (bad enough to kill millions but not bad enough to collapse society) or a second cold war where establishing, say, a moon base would be strategically beneficial. Until then, well I guess we have Elon, and eventually Bezos. Independently wealthy businessmen have been behind more than a few major inventions.
- buboard 7y ago
  > most people just want to drink, watch TV and die Religion is a counterexample to this. it has driven people to change their lives
  - scottLobster 7y ago
    I'd argue it's the other way around, that those seeking to change their lives for the better are a relatively self-driven minority and likely would have succeeded with or without religion, religion was just a convenient vehicle due to widespread availability and approach-ability. It's anecdotal, but I was raised Baptist and married into a Catholic family (although neither my wife nor I are particularly religious). The people I've met in church over the years are no more or less driven than any other segment of the population I've encountered.

gattr 7y ago

Charless Stross has illustrated this in his novel "Accelerando" (strongly recommended!). In the future, even though interstellar travel is technologically feasible, (almost) no one does it - because why the hell would any of the post-human superintelligences want to venture away from the hyper-connected, inner solar system-spanning Network where all the power, resources and fun are concentrated?

205guy 7y ago

Exactly, Manifest Destiny is over, the world is full now and we recognize we can't just take land from others anymore. Time to learn how to live together without depleting or destroying our biosphere.

stjohnswarts 7y ago

It just makes me think we need to invest more into terraforming Mars :D