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This is poetic, but I don't think it's true. The world is too complex to model perfectly. It's easy to feel like a digital lens is the whole world, but it reall

• scarecrowbob 6y ago
  Consider the impact that simply believing the relevant portions of the world has been modeled "well enough". If magic and mystery is the good thing, then simply feeling like there's no place you can get to which hasn't been mapped might be enough to choke off that feeling, regardless of the resolution of the map.
  • pbronez 6y ago
    Absolutely. It's self-fulfilling belief. If you believe yourself to be trapped in an exhausted world, then you are. It's usually better to choose an abundance mentality. The idea that the world has been mapped to the point of killing all mystery is ludicrous. The Map Is Not The Territory[1]. There are mysteries lurking in your own neighborhood that you won't notice until you traverse it in a new way. Go for a walk with a child or dog. Take a bike instead of a car. Use a wheelchair. Volunteer with local advocacy groups. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation
    • colecut 6y ago
      “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” ― Albert Einstein With a little creativity we should never get bored.
    • test6554 6y ago
      Imagine a world with so much mapped data that it too needs explorers. Data recorded generations ago that has never been observed by anyone to study it.
      • Aerroon 6y ago
        We live in such a world. It wouldn't surprise me if most security camera footage is never seen by a human.
    • Robotbeat 6y ago
      Additionally, the increase in space access is increasing the scope of humanity to well beyond the Earth. It may seem ludicrous now, but the same tech that makes cheap satellites possible will open up other worlds, in particular the Moon and Mars.
    • photojosh 6y ago
      > There are mysteries lurking in your own neighborhood > Take a bike I do this... and then I map my discoveries in OpenStreetMap. I recently discovered OpenInfraMap [0] and that inspired me to go find infrastructure that wasn't mapped and add it too. It works a little in reverse for me; I find a random thing that isn't mapped well and use it as a motivator to go explore it on bike or foot and then map it. I did this for a bunch of local creeks... ran along it, fixed up the errors, and then added all the individual ways to a relation. A lot of places that are accessible by foot only often aren't mapped, so I'll go explore a suburb and find the unmapped paths that shorten foot routes. Making the map better match the territory. [0] https://openinframap.org/ https://openinframap.org/
    • Aerroon 6y ago
      There are also mysteries that we can map, but still can't figure out. The weather is one of those - we can map the entire world, but we've yet to be able to create a model at a scale that allows us to make accurate predictions of more than a few weeks.
    • t0r0nat0r 6y ago
      It’s not black or white. OP’s point is still true regardless - as time progresses, things do become more and more mapped. Be it a scientific field, a territory, etc.
  • sangnoir 6y ago
    > Consider the impact that simply believing the relevant portions of the world has been modeled "well enough". That is dangerous belief to those caught-out by the edge-cases, especially seeing how actual humans lazily defer to, and others defend "the (application) system": see any HN thread on AI bias and/or Tesla Autopilots deficiencies.
  • sdht0 6y ago
    I was just reading about the future space missions [0] to the outer solar system already planned within the next couple of decades. "Whether it’s Dragonfly going to Titan, Clipper going to Europa, hopefully a lander going to Europa, hopefully a mission that’ll fly through the plumes of Enceladus, exo-planets going gangbusters, SETI hopefully taking on a broader and broader search and surveying those exo-planets. Within the next few decades we could potentially answer this primordial, age old question of, “Are we alone?” And that’s gonna revolutionize biology. It’s gonna revolutionize how we think about our place in the universe. And so for all of the pains and agony of trying to operate on these time scales, we do live in a beautiful time where we might transform the universe in which we live into a biological universe." Along with the commercialization of space travel, I'd say there is a sufficiently large part of this universe we are yet to "touch" but soon will be able to. I for one am tremendously excited about the future. [0] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/04/13/92-kevin-hand-on-life-elsewhere-in-the-solar-system/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/04/13/92-k...
    • holoduke 6y ago
      More than 90 percent of all galactic systems are moving away from us faster than speed of light. There is no way we can ever reach them. The unreachable horizon is capturing more and more of what we currently observe. https://youtu.be/4iC9Qi3y9q8 https://youtu.be/4iC9Qi3y9q8
      • sdht0 6y ago
        Right. To be specific, the whole of the Local Group is available to humanity for exploration. That still has a trillion stars, with at least as many planets. That's a lot of real estate!
  • jrlocke 6y ago
    Consider the things beyond this one planet. Surely we're simply at an interregnum between two great ages of exploration.
• TLightful 6y ago
  With respect. The small sat revolution is a load boll@cks. Forgive me.
  • SonicScrub 6y ago
    Care to bring up any reasons why you believe the small sat revolution is a load of bollocks? I work in this industry, and can address questions or concerns that you may have.
    • salawat 6y ago
      I'll bite. Assume every person put a small satellite into orbit, just once. What problems do we have to overcome for what payoff? What revolutionary change do we open the door to? Sat launch is at best an Engineering issue at this point. More satellites open up avenues for more data collection by well heeled interests, additional burdens on municipalities when the bloody things deorbit, or worse, if they don't. It already obstructs or complicates ground based observation and launch/mission planning/tracking, and adds excessive risk from debris based on current propulsion methods. It does nothing to advance the State of the Art in manned spaceflight (one of the species more pressing challenges), and it'll become costlier and costlier to get common fuels for rocketry as demand spins down for fossil fuels elsewhere. I just guess I don't see the point in throwing more autonomous junk into space beyond the minimum necessary to get the job done, or to hyperfocus on any endeavor that doesn't eventually culminate in people in space self-sustainably. Maybe I've spent too much time mired in Cost-Benefit Analyses recently and it's killed my ability to dream and imagine, but I just don't sea more passive satellites doing what everything else up there already does, but better and with a queue fixing anything; it'd be a boon for launch companies I guess, but do you really need to be in orbitt to solve half the problems people generally throw mini-sats at? I'm not sure the answer is yes. Love to hear your viewpoint though.
      • SonicScrub 6y ago
        I think you're downplaying the benefits of more small-sats bring to multiple industries and giving too much weight to certain negative side-effects. For starters, let's address some of small-sat applications. In you comment you said "I don't see the point... beyond the minimum necessary to get the job done". What job specifically are you referring to? Navigation aids? Communications? Because "the job" that can be handled by small-sats has near unlimited scope. I'm sure you've already heard about LEO communication constellations (such as Starlink) that are bringing world-wide communication infrastructure. Communications infrastructure is a pre-requisite for industrialization, and can greatly assist with providing education to remote areas. Both of these have the potential to lift many of the global poor out of extreme poverty. Communications infrastructure is something that is very easy to take for granted living in a developed first world nation, but the net benefit it provides to society cannot be understated. People like to focus on the big extravagant projects popularized by eccentric billionaires, but the CubeSat space is filled with other valuable applications as well. Here are some other industry applications that don’t get as much time in the spotlight: - Resource management / surveying (logging, fishing, mining etc) - Poaching / illegal fishing detection and monitoring - Data collection for weather / climate models - Extreme weather forecasting / detection - Forest fire monitoring / detection - Space-based astronomy - Agriculture monitoring The above list won't directly impact your day-to-day like the smart-phone revolution did, but that list indirectly touches many aspects of our lives. So again, which “job” are you referring to “getting the job done”? The list above alone (even excluding the comms constellations) could easily require 1000s of CubeSats. The interesting thing about the CubeSat revolution is that because it’s so cheap to send something into space, every possible niche is being explored as industry scrambles to carve out their slice. This comment “but I just don't see more passive satellites doing what everything else up there already does” is not one at all shared within the industry. The CubeSat revolution is doing things that have never been done before. And is doing the things that had been done previously cheaper, faster, and better. Now let’s talk about the downsides. The space junk and Kessler Syndrome problem is typically brought up in the context of the CubeSat revolution, but it is largely misplaced. CubeSat applications typically require low-earth orbit. In low-earth orbit, atmospheric drag is sufficiently high that junked satellites de-orbit naturally in reasonable time-frames. In addition, placing these satellites into such a low orbit does not create large amounts of junk during launch/insertion. In addition, with space now accessible to more than just government agencies, the appropriate regulatory frameworks for managing space traffic / space junk are being drawn up. The commercial benefits of open, accessible space create huge incentives for governments to manage these issues. I also see you are disappointed that the CubeSat revolution does nothing to advance manned space-flight. I assure you; this is far from true. In the early days of space exploration, space was very expensive. People focus on launch costs, but it’s much more than that. Supply chains didn’t exist. Nothing was mass manufactured. Everything was custom made. This is changing. The space economy of scale is ramping up, and government-led “for the good of mankind” projects are directly benefiting.
• 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago
  Like how do you make friends who can pay to put one into orbit? Last I checked it was 100K.
• unchocked 6y ago
  Indeed. I suspect it's generally true that the more you know, the more questions you have.