6 ms·

Kind of depressing to realize we will never leave our own solar system ... more likely we are going to end ourselves as a species than taking that great leap.

gravelc 6y ago
We've not proven very good at ending ourselves as a species in the past. Quite the opposite. Not sure where the pessimism is coming from.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mellosouls 6y ago
  The species has barely existed for the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms so there's not much past in that regard. On our own timescale terms we have a rare tendency to group together for intra species battles, and a unique tendency to do that with groups numbering millions. We have an evolutionarily unprecedented and unmatched phenomenon, advanced intelligence, which we employ in scaling the destruction in those battles, to the point we now have the ability to cause catastrophic, possibly existential damage to our species, at least as a civilisation wherein this discussion makes sense; let alone the collateral damage to our environment and co-habitees. That's just the war stuff. The peaceful things we do are too depressing to mention.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 6y ago
    Humans have had advanced intelligence across evolutionary timescales because that’s how long it took to evolve. Handmade stone tools are dated all the way back to 3.3 million years, with other examples at 2.8 million years.
- IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  Source of pessimism? For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls Assign a non-zero probability that it'll actually go wrong, then extrapolate 10.000 years into the future. The odds aren't necessarily in our favour. And that's just one of many risks out there, over the course of a blink of an eye in the history of the universe/galaxy/earth/humanity.
- Voloskaya 6y ago
  > We've not proven very good at ending ourselves as a species in the past. We did not have the ability to end ourselves in the past. How would dolphins or monkeys end themselves even if they wanted to, short of mass suicide? We have had this capability only in the last 100 years or so in mainly 2 ways: * atomic armageddon * destroying our habitat We managed to hold on for that first one for the last 50 years but we are busily and productively working on that second point, so I'm not quite sure where your optimism comes from.
lmilcin 6y ago
There is no physical limitation that prevents us from leaving Sol system. It is actually quite easy compared to other technical problems. We have atomic power that can be source of energy for thousands of years and we have technology to build sustainable ecosystem and push it in a direction of another star (albeit very slowly). And we are also able to image other planets very precisely to something like kilometers per pixel through gravitational lensing. It is just that humanity is not very good at consensus to even not suffocate in our own home.
- gambiting 6y ago
  Yes, obviously - the problem is that there is no reason whatsoever to do it at the speeds that are currently thought to be physically possible.
  - lmilcin 6y ago
    There is reason, but people automatically dismiss reasons that give payoff a) after they are already dead and b) to somebody else than their immediate family.
    - jfk13 6y ago
      "A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit."
  - wongarsu 6y ago
    We can realistically each 5% the speed of light with nuclear pulse propulsion, giving a travel time of 80 years. That's not completely unreasonable, just insanely expensive with no clear payoff
    - aardvark179 6y ago
      We can reasonably send something to Alpha Centauri in 100 years assuming you can get the drive to work, but that’s the closest star to us, and Project Longshot was a design for an unmanned probe. Yes, the British Interplanetary Society did do a study on what a manned mission might be like, but they always seem to underestimate the biological problems of space flight. If you wanted to colonise a planet around a nearby star it would be a truly staggering undertaking, even getting the fuel for an unmanned probe probably require H3 mining of Jupiter.
onetimemanytime 6y ago
>>Kind of depressing to realize we will never leave our own solar system True for our generation, but then think of how far we have come just in the past 100 years (Wright Brothers to Musk). The next advances will kinda be logarithmic.
- krapp 6y ago
  We're going to be spending the next thousand years just trying to avoid our own extinction after climate change leads to the collapse of global civilization, mass famine, world war and the erasure of most of humanity's collective knowledge from its fragile and ephemeral digital infrastructure. The next century's advances are going to be things like "rediscover calculus" and "build a working steam engine."
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Or not. We've been using the energy stored up in the Earth over eons as if it's infinite, and now realised it's not. We've gone from Ader and Weisskopf to multiple nations having space programmes off the back of a dependency on fossil fuels. Those fuels are running out, and we have to stop using them in any case before we kill the planet. To my view the C19-20th has been a unique period of growth. We're going to need to be much more resource and energy conservative until {and even when} we develop new technologies (fusion? some sort of zero-point energy harvesting??). It seems renewables might be able to satisfy our current energy demands, as long as we don't do something like thinking we can continue along the curve we've been going on, particular wrt population growth, but also wrt our expectation of a bottomless pit of all elements. Our next revolution needs to be extreme longevity of goods/tools/appliances and full reuse/recycling. IMO that's incompatible with Capitalism, we need producers who are invested in _not_ selling more products than are needed and investors who want to achieve goals beyond extracting liquifiable value from our societal systems. Even going back to feudalism I fear we've fostered into power the sorts of people who will never choose the trajectories we need but will always go for personal wealth. It might already be too late to correct that.

gravelc 6y ago

We've not proven very good at ending ourselves as a species in the past. Quite the opposite. Not sure where the pessimism is coming from.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mellosouls 6y ago
The species has barely existed for the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms so there's not much past in that regard. On our own timescale terms we have a rare tendency to group together for intra species battles, and a unique tendency to do that with groups numbering millions. We have an evolutionarily unprecedented and unmatched phenomenon, advanced intelligence, which we employ in scaling the destruction in those battles, to the point we now have the ability to cause catastrophic, possibly existential damage to our species, at least as a civilisation wherein this discussion makes sense; let alone the collateral damage to our environment and co-habitees. That's just the war stuff. The peaceful things we do are too depressing to mention.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 6y ago
  Humans have had advanced intelligence across evolutionary timescales because that’s how long it took to evolve. Handmade stone tools are dated all the way back to 3.3 million years, with other examples at 2.8 million years.
IkmoIkmo 6y ago
Source of pessimism? For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls Assign a non-zero probability that it'll actually go wrong, then extrapolate 10.000 years into the future. The odds aren't necessarily in our favour. And that's just one of many risks out there, over the course of a blink of an eye in the history of the universe/galaxy/earth/humanity.
Voloskaya 6y ago
> We've not proven very good at ending ourselves as a species in the past. We did not have the ability to end ourselves in the past. How would dolphins or monkeys end themselves even if they wanted to, short of mass suicide? We have had this capability only in the last 100 years or so in mainly 2 ways: * atomic armageddon * destroying our habitat We managed to hold on for that first one for the last 50 years but we are busily and productively working on that second point, so I'm not quite sure where your optimism comes from.

lmilcin 6y ago

There is no physical limitation that prevents us from leaving Sol system. It is actually quite easy compared to other technical problems. We have atomic power that can be source of energy for thousands of years and we have technology to build sustainable ecosystem and push it in a direction of another star (albeit very slowly). And we are also able to image other planets very precisely to something like kilometers per pixel through gravitational lensing. It is just that humanity is not very good at consensus to even not suffocate in our own home.

gambiting 6y ago
Yes, obviously - the problem is that there is no reason whatsoever to do it at the speeds that are currently thought to be physically possible.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  There is reason, but people automatically dismiss reasons that give payoff a) after they are already dead and b) to somebody else than their immediate family.
  - jfk13 6y ago
    "A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit."
- wongarsu 6y ago
  We can realistically each 5% the speed of light with nuclear pulse propulsion, giving a travel time of 80 years. That's not completely unreasonable, just insanely expensive with no clear payoff
  - aardvark179 6y ago
    We can reasonably send something to Alpha Centauri in 100 years assuming you can get the drive to work, but that’s the closest star to us, and Project Longshot was a design for an unmanned probe. Yes, the British Interplanetary Society did do a study on what a manned mission might be like, but they always seem to underestimate the biological problems of space flight. If you wanted to colonise a planet around a nearby star it would be a truly staggering undertaking, even getting the fuel for an unmanned probe probably require H3 mining of Jupiter.

onetimemanytime 6y ago

>>Kind of depressing to realize we will never leave our own solar system True for our generation, but then think of how far we have come just in the past 100 years (Wright Brothers to Musk). The next advances will kinda be logarithmic.

krapp 6y ago
We're going to be spending the next thousand years just trying to avoid our own extinction after climate change leads to the collapse of global civilization, mass famine, world war and the erasure of most of humanity's collective knowledge from its fragile and ephemeral digital infrastructure. The next century's advances are going to be things like "rediscover calculus" and "build a working steam engine."
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
Or not. We've been using the energy stored up in the Earth over eons as if it's infinite, and now realised it's not. We've gone from Ader and Weisskopf to multiple nations having space programmes off the back of a dependency on fossil fuels. Those fuels are running out, and we have to stop using them in any case before we kill the planet. To my view the C19-20th has been a unique period of growth. We're going to need to be much more resource and energy conservative until {and even when} we develop new technologies (fusion? some sort of zero-point energy harvesting??). It seems renewables might be able to satisfy our current energy demands, as long as we don't do something like thinking we can continue along the curve we've been going on, particular wrt population growth, but also wrt our expectation of a bottomless pit of all elements. Our next revolution needs to be extreme longevity of goods/tools/appliances and full reuse/recycling. IMO that's incompatible with Capitalism, we need producers who are invested in _not_ selling more products than are needed and investors who want to achieve goals beyond extracting liquifiable value from our societal systems. Even going back to feudalism I fear we've fostered into power the sorts of people who will never choose the trajectories we need but will always go for personal wealth. It might already be too late to correct that.