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I feel like I want to hear more about what you're saying but despite reading it several times, your comment remains pretty opaque to me. Could you elaborate in

I feel like I want to hear more about what you're saying but despite reading it several times, your comment remains pretty opaque to me. Could you elaborate in a more plain English how exactly you think Mars colonisation will actually go? My understanding is that Elon considers this unmistakably as a concrete near-term goal, whereas - certainly to my knowledge - "tweaked versions of us... in a different substrate" seem significantly closer to science-fiction still (despite Neuralink etc.). So I'm curious what concrete things and time lines you were referring to...

hutzlibu 5y ago
I think he means transhumanism. Genetically adopted humans/cyborgs, that can survive the radiation etc. Scie-Fi for sure.
- est31 5y ago
  It's not sci fi. Hominids have evolved radiation adaptations here on earth already through natural selection alone: dark skin. > The evolution of dark skin is believed to have begun around 1.2 million years ago,[9] in light-skinned early hominid species after they moved from the equatorial rainforest to the sunny savannas. In the heat of the savannas, better cooling mechanisms were required, which were achieved through the loss of body hair and development of more efficient perspiration. The loss of body hair led to the development of dark skin pigmentation, which acted as a mechanism of natural selection against folate depletion, and to a lesser extent, DNA damage. The primary factor contributing to the evolution of dark skin pigmentation was the breakdown of folate in reaction to ultraviolet radiation; the relationship between folate breakdown induced by ultraviolet radiation and reduced fitness as a failure of normal embryogenesis and spermatogenesis led to the selection of dark skin pigmentation. By the time modern Homo sapiens evolved, all humans were dark-skinned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_skin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_skin
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    No doubt about that - but I don't think anyone would want to have natural evolution with natural selection as the primary way to achieve humans can live on mars. Because that would not be pleasant. And genetic engeneering has come a long way, but modifying humans genetically for improved radiation protection is sci-fi at the moment. Maybe it comes already in a couple of years, but currently it is not remotely there - so sci fi.
sgtnoodle 5y ago
I assume he's talking about loading human consciousness into computers or artificial brains, and running them in a data center on Mars. Meanwhile here in 2021, I can't get 5.1 surround to work on Disney+ or HBO Max over HDMI ARC on a 6 year old TV. I enjoyed watching the first season of "Upload" on Amazon Prime though!
natch 5y ago
Yeah, someone else said it — transhumanism, basically. Timelines are medium to high single digit decades from now, not one or two decades. It's already a matter of historical record that the first landings on Mars have been robots. Robot intelligence is only getting better. The Singularity is projected to happen late in this decade. There will be Mars landings throughout this decade and it will make sense that some of them will send more robots. But we'll also want to send humans, because, well that's just how we roll. Then at some point we get better and better at making smart robots, and they get smarter and smarter. And also there are hybrids. I'm not saying which way it will go — robots, hybrids, both — because I have no idea. But any combination seems possible. Humans likely will be in the mix at first as well, just not sure about the long term for our body types. And Mars is kind of a "safe" (scare quotes because it's not, really) remote place to park embodied AI experiments beyond what we might allow to roam around freely here. Some things we disallow on Earth might be allowed to happen on Mars. Around the time when the transportation systems are getting robust (a decade or so), we will be heavily feeling the impact of the fact that life support systems could be a lot easier if we just send the non-meat versions of ourselves, or human 2.0, which will be either what today we might call robots, or some hybrid creature with somewhat human-ish sensibilities. If it's a hybrid, the base body plan will not necessarily start with a human body. Let's say we are in a decade where the available tech is something like Neuralink. Going to Mars, maybe you want a much smaller body, for whatever reasons. Lower gravity, more space efficient, etc., so maybe it will make sense to start with, say just for example, a Macaque monkey body, enhanced with Neuralink. The fact that Mars creatures need to be autonomous from Earth also figures in here. The SNL skit scenario with Chad is not going to happen, because of the communication delay. So We can't just send dumb robots forever. Our current robots there have already been autonomous to increasing degrees for several generations, the last few missions over the last couple of decades. It is science fiction, but we are getting there… it's going to be real, unless something really bad happens before then.

hutzlibu 5y ago

I think he means transhumanism. Genetically adopted humans/cyborgs, that can survive the radiation etc. Scie-Fi for sure.

est31 5y ago
It's not sci fi. Hominids have evolved radiation adaptations here on earth already through natural selection alone: dark skin. > The evolution of dark skin is believed to have begun around 1.2 million years ago,[9] in light-skinned early hominid species after they moved from the equatorial rainforest to the sunny savannas. In the heat of the savannas, better cooling mechanisms were required, which were achieved through the loss of body hair and development of more efficient perspiration. The loss of body hair led to the development of dark skin pigmentation, which acted as a mechanism of natural selection against folate depletion, and to a lesser extent, DNA damage. The primary factor contributing to the evolution of dark skin pigmentation was the breakdown of folate in reaction to ultraviolet radiation; the relationship between folate breakdown induced by ultraviolet radiation and reduced fitness as a failure of normal embryogenesis and spermatogenesis led to the selection of dark skin pigmentation. By the time modern Homo sapiens evolved, all humans were dark-skinned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_skin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_skin
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  No doubt about that - but I don't think anyone would want to have natural evolution with natural selection as the primary way to achieve humans can live on mars. Because that would not be pleasant. And genetic engeneering has come a long way, but modifying humans genetically for improved radiation protection is sci-fi at the moment. Maybe it comes already in a couple of years, but currently it is not remotely there - so sci fi.

sgtnoodle 5y ago

I assume he's talking about loading human consciousness into computers or artificial brains, and running them in a data center on Mars. Meanwhile here in 2021, I can't get 5.1 surround to work on Disney+ or HBO Max over HDMI ARC on a 6 year old TV. I enjoyed watching the first season of "Upload" on Amazon Prime though!

natch 5y ago

Yeah, someone else said it — transhumanism, basically. Timelines are medium to high single digit decades from now, not one or two decades. It's already a matter of historical record that the first landings on Mars have been robots. Robot intelligence is only getting better. The Singularity is projected to happen late in this decade. There will be Mars landings throughout this decade and it will make sense that some of them will send more robots. But we'll also want to send humans, because, well that's just how we roll. Then at some point we get better and better at making smart robots, and they get smarter and smarter. And also there are hybrids. I'm not saying which way it will go — robots, hybrids, both — because I have no idea. But any combination seems possible. Humans likely will be in the mix at first as well, just not sure about the long term for our body types. And Mars is kind of a "safe" (scare quotes because it's not, really) remote place to park embodied AI experiments beyond what we might allow to roam around freely here. Some things we disallow on Earth might be allowed to happen on Mars. Around the time when the transportation systems are getting robust (a decade or so), we will be heavily feeling the impact of the fact that life support systems could be a lot easier if we just send the non-meat versions of ourselves, or human 2.0, which will be either what today we might call robots, or some hybrid creature with somewhat human-ish sensibilities. If it's a hybrid, the base body plan will not necessarily start with a human body. Let's say we are in a decade where the available tech is something like Neuralink. Going to Mars, maybe you want a much smaller body, for whatever reasons. Lower gravity, more space efficient, etc., so maybe it will make sense to start with, say just for example, a Macaque monkey body, enhanced with Neuralink. The fact that Mars creatures need to be autonomous from Earth also figures in here. The SNL skit scenario with Chad is not going to happen, because of the communication delay. So We can't just send dumb robots forever. Our current robots there have already been autonomous to increasing degrees for several generations, the last few missions over the last couple of decades. It is science fiction, but we are getting there… it's going to be real, unless something really bad happens before then.