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> I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael
by shrthnd 4y ago
> I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”
- api 4y agoMaybe all the billionaires should go.
- Helmut10001 4y agoWe should send Putin, too.
- rapnie 4y agoIf the profound positive impact on Amazon policy-making by Bezos after his trip is an indicator, then yes.
- amelius 4y agoWhat impact? Did I miss something?
- limaoscarjuliet 4y agoI sense sarcasm.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- MerelyMortal 4y agoHe basically went up an untethered elevator and saw a very limited view of Earth. He did not orbit Earth and did not see or experience the same things as the others.
- Kiro 4y agoWasn't he in the same ship as Shatner?
- MerelyMortal 4y agomouth insert foot Thank you for pointing that out. I still feel like it's not the same thing that people who orbit experience. Of course some people think differently, and I'm sure Bezos and Shatner think very differently. Of course who I am to speak; the highest I've been is in an airliner (so far).
- ehnto 4y agoDo you mind explaining what kind of policy making you are referring too? It's proving difficult to search for.
- bombcar 4y agoI assume it’s sarcasm, but personally I’m a bit disappointed he hasn’t gone complete Lex Luthor yet. If we’re going to have billionaires in space we might as well get an origin story out of it.
- sp332 4y agoHe stepped down as CEO last February and went to space last July.
- mnsc 4y agoHumans: It's so small... (sadness) Billionaires: It's so small... Maybe I can own it?
- hotpotamus 4y agoAnd Bezos wept, for there was only one small Earth to conquer.
- delusional 4y ago> Billionaires: It's so small... Maybe I can own it? Billionaires: It's so small, I have to go to mars so I can own that too.
- angelaguilera 4y ago[dead]
- goodpoint 4y ago...and stay there.
- lagrange77 4y agoBack in the day, i was naively hoping, that the internet had a similar effect on man.
- amcoastal 4y ago
- Theizestooke 4y agoSocial media has caused a lot of people to shift their world views, and re-examine their identities. Not necessarily in ways that benefit themselves or society.
- bboygravity 4y agoThe insinuation/assumption that social media somehow had an obvious negative effect on people's beliefs world wide compared to the past. A statement in the form of a post on HN social media and an often propagated popular opinion on other social media. An opinion thay I completely disagree with, discussed/questioned on this same social media. Freely. How meta. How ironic.
- perihelions 4y agoThey're opposites: one's being far removed from humans, one's seeing too much of them at once. Try building a 50k-capacity orbital hotel for instagram tourists, and see what happens to this #OverviewEffect.
- lagrange77 4y ago> They're opposites: one's being far removed from humans, one's seeing too much of them at once. I get your point. What i meant was, the internet empowering mankind to communicate in 'real-time', transparent to man made concepts like borders and countries. I was hoping that this 'wormhole' would strengthen the sense of a global community.
- 4y ago
- flobosg 4y ago> You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.” ―Edgar D. Mitchell
- Kiboneu 4y agoI experienced this playing freeorion while listening to Carbon Based Lifeforms as a kid. A few ambient tracks from CBL made me tear up: they used field recordings of the world (birds, children, trees, cities), woven through low frequency drones and rifts. It would sort of create a distance between the recording samples, and then, through sound, you zoom out, glide, become ephemeral in the face of the planet, like a cloud. Freeorion primed my mind to think in some detail about a reduced form of state-level strategy (as 4x games tend to do). I realized that the first 10 rounds were highly predictive of success for the next 100 rounds, and so forth, so I understood that my actions could have the same non-linearity and influence (and the predictive power of that influence was based on my model of the world, which is easy in a 4x game but difficult in meatspace). Combined, I saw in detail the cybernetic flows around the world… i was a world systems thinker. it’s taken some work not to pop my head out of frustration. Now that part of me is applied to more localized systems and small things: seeds around me that grow via the world into things i may never witness directly, and putting out small fires around me that I hope to never witness as big fires. Memes, basically (or anti-memetic memes? Not so sure).
- sva_ 4y agoSounds like the effects of LSD.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago>> a people orientation Nope. >> an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world No. >> and a compulsion to do something about it Lawl, no not all. >> You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, Look at that, you son of a bitch No, didn't have that effect on me. You're thinking about meth maybe?
- forgingahead 4y agoSo we should send all journalists and foreign policy establishment "experts"?
- bombcar 4y agoYou’d end up with them supporting exactly what they did before but with new reasons why.
- Piezoid 4y agoThis make me wonder if flat-earth and other limiting cosmological views are mental shields against the realization that nothing matters except our peculiar existence.
- saiya-jin 4y agogenerally limited world views regardless of the facts are a mental shield of people afraid of something. the problem is, the fear is so deep beneath the crust of hatred and other negative emotions that getting to it and working with it is often practically impossible
- mionhe 4y agoWhat other world views are you referring to? (excluding the flat earth example)
- merely-unlikely 4y agoReligion would be an obvious one. The geocentric model maybe as well (though I haven't heard this claimed).
- kingkawn 4y agoThe idea that nothing matters also doesn’t matter so you can go back to enjoying yourself and letting things matter without being a downer for nothing