4 ms·

We have done incredible things just not flying cars yet. I am talking 100s of millions of years (if we survive that far of course)

bena 4y ago
Once again, where's the evidence we will? There's also the logistical practicality of what is being proposed. We don't have flying cars for many reason, one of them being that any benefits they may have is outweighed by all of the very real logistical issues they have. I find this level of "techno-optimism" just flat out naive. It's a bet you never have to worry about being called. On the time scale of thousands of years, neither you nor I will be alive to find out who was right, but you are willing to say with unwavering faith that we will be able to do it. Simply because you believe smarter people than you will be able to solve the hard problems. Including problems we don't even know exist yet. Just to get to the moon, we had to first discover just how ill-equipped the human body is for travel outside of our atmosphere. But you talk as if building a giant shade in space is going to be relatively trivial in the future. There is nothing trivial about leaving the Earth. And it's quite possible that it will never be trivial. Before we worry about solar shades, we should wonder how we're first going to solve those hard problems.
- yalogin 4y ago
  The evidence is all around you. We are talking about 100s of millions of years. You seem to be way too fixated on flying cars for some reason. Look at the progress in just the last 100 years, it's astounding. I am more than comfortable to extrapolate from there. Also, it's not like we haven't done space travel, unlike flying cars, we are able to go to Mars too. Entering and living in space outside the earth's atmosphere is something we do on a continuous basis. I understand the problem is hard, but given the timescales involved I am more than happy to be optimistic about the human race. If anything I find your take incredibly shortsighted. It's ok we can differ in our outlooks.
  - bena 4y ago
    I'm not fixated on flying cars. I brought it up initially, along with meals in pill form, and shows set in the future that have either already passed or will pass soon, to show how shit we are at predicting the progress of progress. You then said we haven't done flying cars yet. You singled it out and made it the point of your response to me. So I was supposed to not respond? Because there are good reasons to not have flying cars. And I mentioned that. But most of all of my posts have been about things other than flying cars. We may feel comfortable to extrapolate on timescales humans haven't even existed on yet, that doesn't make that extrapolation good. You want to look at just the last 100 years and extrapolate from that. First by assuming that the last 100 years is geometric progress and not linear. But even given that it is geometric, where's the evidence that it will continue being geometric. Look at the last 50 years. We haven't done much more. We went to the Moon in 1969. We've thrown some robots at Mars since then. It's possible that progress isn't a vertical asymptote, but a sigmoid with a hard upper boundary. We don't know. And we can't get to Mars. As in actual people. It will take a person 9 months to make it to Mars, assuming all of the other problems are solved. Because there are other problems. We are not built for space travel. The radiation and lack of gravity are real problems with no good solutions at the moment. We haven't been to space (depending on your definition of space) since the Moon missions. Everything we do now is technically in the atmosphere and protected by the Earth's magnetosphere. Yes, the ISS is above the Karman line, but it's still within the thermosphere. And I'm not completely sure about the Apollo missions, but the Moon spends some time within our magnetosphere as well, so they may have done those missions during the time when the Moon was under Earth's protection. And that magnetosphere is important. Like all life on the planet would die without it important. So, living outside the Earth's atmosphere is not something we do. Ever. I find this extreme long term techno futurist optimistic thinking worse than useless. This is navel gazing at its most extreme. It either wants us to ignore the problems of today or ignore very real limitations imposed on us by various aspects of reality. Thinking ahead is fine. But techno-optimism forecasting out millenia is not thinking ahead. It's wishing.

bena 4y ago

Once again, where's the evidence we will? There's also the logistical practicality of what is being proposed. We don't have flying cars for many reason, one of them being that any benefits they may have is outweighed by all of the very real logistical issues they have. I find this level of "techno-optimism" just flat out naive. It's a bet you never have to worry about being called. On the time scale of thousands of years, neither you nor I will be alive to find out who was right, but you are willing to say with unwavering faith that we will be able to do it. Simply because you believe smarter people than you will be able to solve the hard problems. Including problems we don't even know exist yet. Just to get to the moon, we had to first discover just how ill-equipped the human body is for travel outside of our atmosphere. But you talk as if building a giant shade in space is going to be relatively trivial in the future. There is nothing trivial about leaving the Earth. And it's quite possible that it will never be trivial. Before we worry about solar shades, we should wonder how we're first going to solve those hard problems.

yalogin 4y ago
The evidence is all around you. We are talking about 100s of millions of years. You seem to be way too fixated on flying cars for some reason. Look at the progress in just the last 100 years, it's astounding. I am more than comfortable to extrapolate from there. Also, it's not like we haven't done space travel, unlike flying cars, we are able to go to Mars too. Entering and living in space outside the earth's atmosphere is something we do on a continuous basis. I understand the problem is hard, but given the timescales involved I am more than happy to be optimistic about the human race. If anything I find your take incredibly shortsighted. It's ok we can differ in our outlooks.
- bena 4y ago
  I'm not fixated on flying cars. I brought it up initially, along with meals in pill form, and shows set in the future that have either already passed or will pass soon, to show how shit we are at predicting the progress of progress. You then said we haven't done flying cars yet. You singled it out and made it the point of your response to me. So I was supposed to not respond? Because there are good reasons to not have flying cars. And I mentioned that. But most of all of my posts have been about things other than flying cars. We may feel comfortable to extrapolate on timescales humans haven't even existed on yet, that doesn't make that extrapolation good. You want to look at just the last 100 years and extrapolate from that. First by assuming that the last 100 years is geometric progress and not linear. But even given that it is geometric, where's the evidence that it will continue being geometric. Look at the last 50 years. We haven't done much more. We went to the Moon in 1969. We've thrown some robots at Mars since then. It's possible that progress isn't a vertical asymptote, but a sigmoid with a hard upper boundary. We don't know. And we can't get to Mars. As in actual people. It will take a person 9 months to make it to Mars, assuming all of the other problems are solved. Because there are other problems. We are not built for space travel. The radiation and lack of gravity are real problems with no good solutions at the moment. We haven't been to space (depending on your definition of space) since the Moon missions. Everything we do now is technically in the atmosphere and protected by the Earth's magnetosphere. Yes, the ISS is above the Karman line, but it's still within the thermosphere. And I'm not completely sure about the Apollo missions, but the Moon spends some time within our magnetosphere as well, so they may have done those missions during the time when the Moon was under Earth's protection. And that magnetosphere is important. Like all life on the planet would die without it important. So, living outside the Earth's atmosphere is not something we do. Ever. I find this extreme long term techno futurist optimistic thinking worse than useless. This is navel gazing at its most extreme. It either wants us to ignore the problems of today or ignore very real limitations imposed on us by various aspects of reality. Thinking ahead is fine. But techno-optimism forecasting out millenia is not thinking ahead. It's wishing.