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That's a "motte & bailey" [0] type of argument. The billionaires talk about "saving humanity" or "making a lifeboat" but when they get questioned, they maneuve

That's a "motte & bailey" [0] type of argument. The billionaires talk about "saving humanity" or "making a lifeboat" but when they get questioned, they maneuver the discussion to the motte: "there is no planet B" (or the equivalent). Then, when the attention is elsewhere, back to fantasies of Mars. [0] - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey

api 4y ago
This is a straw man. I still don’t hear anyone serious saying humanity will pick up and move to Mars or anywhere else. They say a very small number of humans (relative to the billions of us) may try to go to the Moon or Mars. That is conceivable. In our lifetimes I could picture basically McMurdo station on the Moon and some flights back and forth to Mars. I could picture a mostly autonomous settlement somewhere in 100 years.
- bulgur 4y ago
  [dead]
  - hattmall 4y ago
    But why would a terraformed mars somehow be better than even a highly polluted earth? The only potentially legitimate reason for a move to Mars would be to get away from other people on earth.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      A desire to explore and settle a new frontier isn't legitime?
      - coldtea 4y ago
        Not so much. Populations look for new better frontiers, not merely new frontiers...
      - paulryanrogers 4y ago
        Desire is reasonable. Yet permanently settling Mars or beyond is unreasonable based on some fundamental physics.
        adrianN 4y ago
        Which laws of physics prevent a permanent base on Mars?
        paulryanrogers 4y ago
        Gravity primarily and the lack of carbon on the surface. Also the lack of a magnetic field to maintain atmosphere and shield from radiation.
        adrianN 4y ago
        Mars has carbon in its atmosphere. I don't think we have the necessary data to say that Mars' lower gravity prevents long-term settlement. Mars has enough mass to keep an atmosphere for millions of years, but you probably want to mostly live underground for the foreseeable future.
        ben_w 4y ago
        Gravity can be solved the same way as on a space station (spinning), you just don't put the floors at the same angle because you're adding the constant vector from the mass to the frame of reference vector from being in a centrifuge. Artificial magnetic fields are easy. Sometimes we do them when we don't want them. Carbon is 1/3rd of the atmosphere (such as it is) by mass. Conveniently in solid form near the poles during Martian winter. I'm not sure it has nitrogen in any significant quantities, though…
        paulryanrogers 4y ago
        Spinning enough to produce usable gravity is non-trivial and building something like that in space requires overcoming Earth's own gravity well.
    - hoseja 4y ago
      , which is a great reason.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      We're well into the realm of arguing ridiculous scenarios, but in that vein: the Earth will 100% become thermally uninhabitable before Mars as the Sun turns towards being a red giant. There will be a period of time when a terraformed Mars would be more temperate than the Earth.
  - chriswarbo 4y ago
    > The world is run by people who seriously think that we’ll have the means soon to terraform Mars (we won’t) This is the straw-man I was complaining about. Here's a direct quote from Musk, saying the exact opposite ( https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1329205209915154433 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1329205209915154433 ) "Terraforming will be too slow to be relevant in our lifetime. However, we can establish a human base there in our lifetime." > or at least put a million people there That's an incredibly different question (see the sibling comment about Motte and Bailey fallacies). A million people on Mars seems plausible, if we take "soon" to mean a century or two (Musk seems to have an incredibly optimisitic goal of 2050, but that still seems the right order of magnitude)
- lapcat 4y ago
  > This article is a straw man. This comment is a straw man. The author gave a link to what the "planning" entailed: https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-p... "‘Even at a million, you’re really assuming an incredible amount of productivity per person, because you would need to recreate the entire industrial base on Mars,’ he [Musk] said."
  - YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
    >> That's a "motte & bailey" [0] type of argument. >> This is a straw man. >> This comment is a straw man. There isn't, but there should be, an HN guideline against throwing formal fallacies at each other instead of just saying what one disagrees with.
    - jkestner 4y ago
      Shh - don’t disturb the logical argument classifiers while they’re training.
      - api 4y ago
        Non-sequitur. Beep boop.
- phphphphp 4y ago
  academia doesn’t set cultural expectations. If the culturally influential people in the space sector are saying humanity is doomed on earth and our future is on Mars and other planets, that’s the message most people will take onboard. The article is written for people, not academia. Ask laypeople about Mars and you’ll get a representative insight into the Mars fantasy.
- adrianN 4y ago
  I think autonomy will take longer. We have pretty incredible manufacturing technology but it all requires long supply chains. Think about how difficult it is to make for example a lubed ball bearing and how many different specialties are needed to make it and maintain the infrastructure needed to make it. Replicating that on a different planet will take time.
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    I don't disagree about it taking longer, but wrangling our supply chain complexity problem is something that many are motivated to do here on Earth, so it's convenient that much of the work will get done independently of the colonization effort. I hope we'll converge on manufacturing infrastructure that depends on a somewhat constrained set of inputs. Not because we're designing for Mars, but because that's just good fault-tolerant design. Like maybe the plans call for steel but al that we have on hand is brass, and it's ok if this one is weaker, so we'll print it in brass: improvising to avoid logistic complexity. Turns out, that's what you'd need for mars too. You can't be ordering part numbers manufactured on earth all the time. Wherever possible you're probably better off just importing tungsten (or whatever) and machining it local, likely using the same machine that we do on Earth. I think this sort of periodic-table-of-manufacturing approach would also be necessary to make recycling work. Whatever we call recycling today, it's nothing compared to what we'll need on Mars.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  The only reason - for now - for people to go to / from Mars and the Moon is for scientific reasons or for money. I think the only way that trips to the moon or mars that will earn money is space tourism. I don't believe Mars will have any valuable resources, for example. Or even discovering them will require an improbable amount of investments (trillions). The last reason I can think of is political; the first major force to have a permanent presence on these bodies will have a big say in the future of said body.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    There could be one more reason: living on the frontier. It's not about discovering new materials, or technologies, or physical phenomena. It's about exploring new social contracts. Here on Earth we are stuck with whatever social arrangements we've developed over the millennia, we can tweak here and there, but we can't start with a blank slate. For me this would be the grand prize: figuring out better ways for people to live together.
    - adrianN 4y ago
      Since the current iteration of the space race is run by billionaires, the chances are pretty good that some kind of turbo-capitalism will be the social arrangement on the colonies.
      - fleventynine 4y ago
        The nice thing about frontiers is that there's enough space (and lack of oversight) to try new systems of government without upsetting "the establishment", which hasn't yet had centuries to ossify into an out-of-touch bureaucracy. When America was a frontier, this exploration yielded significant fruits...
        lapcat 4y ago
        > The nice thing about frontiers is that there's enough space (and lack of oversight) to try new systems of government This is a nice idea if the frontier is accessible by foot, horse, or boat. If the frontier is accessible only via corporate-owned spaceship, then the frontier will inevitably be a corporate-owned dictatorship.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
It's usually the other group that's doing a Motte and bailey here. The billionaires were and are actually quite specific and up-front with their space ideas. It's the media (traditional and social) that invents fantasies here, either to sell or discredit the ideas, depending on which way the wind is blowing. (As is the case here. We're in the middle of "let's tear down Elon Musk" phase right now, so the strawmen are getting impressively absurd.)

api 4y ago

This is a straw man. I still don’t hear anyone serious saying humanity will pick up and move to Mars or anywhere else. They say a very small number of humans (relative to the billions of us) may try to go to the Moon or Mars. That is conceivable. In our lifetimes I could picture basically McMurdo station on the Moon and some flights back and forth to Mars. I could picture a mostly autonomous settlement somewhere in 100 years.

bulgur 4y ago
[dead]
- hattmall 4y ago
  But why would a terraformed mars somehow be better than even a highly polluted earth? The only potentially legitimate reason for a move to Mars would be to get away from other people on earth.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    A desire to explore and settle a new frontier isn't legitime?
    - coldtea 4y ago
      Not so much. Populations look for new better frontiers, not merely new frontiers...
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      Desire is reasonable. Yet permanently settling Mars or beyond is unreasonable based on some fundamental physics.
      - adrianN 4y ago
        Which laws of physics prevent a permanent base on Mars?
        paulryanrogers 4y ago
        Gravity primarily and the lack of carbon on the surface. Also the lack of a magnetic field to maintain atmosphere and shield from radiation.
        adrianN 4y ago
        Mars has carbon in its atmosphere. I don't think we have the necessary data to say that Mars' lower gravity prevents long-term settlement. Mars has enough mass to keep an atmosphere for millions of years, but you probably want to mostly live underground for the foreseeable future.
        ben_w 4y ago
        Gravity can be solved the same way as on a space station (spinning), you just don't put the floors at the same angle because you're adding the constant vector from the mass to the frame of reference vector from being in a centrifuge. Artificial magnetic fields are easy. Sometimes we do them when we don't want them. Carbon is 1/3rd of the atmosphere (such as it is) by mass. Conveniently in solid form near the poles during Martian winter. I'm not sure it has nitrogen in any significant quantities, though…
        paulryanrogers 4y ago
        Spinning enough to produce usable gravity is non-trivial and building something like that in space requires overcoming Earth's own gravity well.
  - hoseja 4y ago
    , which is a great reason.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    We're well into the realm of arguing ridiculous scenarios, but in that vein: the Earth will 100% become thermally uninhabitable before Mars as the Sun turns towards being a red giant. There will be a period of time when a terraformed Mars would be more temperate than the Earth.
- chriswarbo 4y ago
  > The world is run by people who seriously think that we’ll have the means soon to terraform Mars (we won’t) This is the straw-man I was complaining about. Here's a direct quote from Musk, saying the exact opposite ( https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1329205209915154433 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1329205209915154433 ) "Terraforming will be too slow to be relevant in our lifetime. However, we can establish a human base there in our lifetime." > or at least put a million people there That's an incredibly different question (see the sibling comment about Motte and Bailey fallacies). A million people on Mars seems plausible, if we take "soon" to mean a century or two (Musk seems to have an incredibly optimisitic goal of 2050, but that still seems the right order of magnitude)
lapcat 4y ago
> This article is a straw man. This comment is a straw man. The author gave a link to what the "planning" entailed: https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-p... "‘Even at a million, you’re really assuming an incredible amount of productivity per person, because you would need to recreate the entire industrial base on Mars,’ he [Musk] said."
- YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
  >> That's a "motte & bailey" [0] type of argument. >> This is a straw man. >> This comment is a straw man. There isn't, but there should be, an HN guideline against throwing formal fallacies at each other instead of just saying what one disagrees with.
  - jkestner 4y ago
    Shh - don’t disturb the logical argument classifiers while they’re training.
    - api 4y ago
      Non-sequitur. Beep boop.
phphphphp 4y ago
academia doesn’t set cultural expectations. If the culturally influential people in the space sector are saying humanity is doomed on earth and our future is on Mars and other planets, that’s the message most people will take onboard. The article is written for people, not academia. Ask laypeople about Mars and you’ll get a representative insight into the Mars fantasy.
adrianN 4y ago
I think autonomy will take longer. We have pretty incredible manufacturing technology but it all requires long supply chains. Think about how difficult it is to make for example a lubed ball bearing and how many different specialties are needed to make it and maintain the infrastructure needed to make it. Replicating that on a different planet will take time.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  I don't disagree about it taking longer, but wrangling our supply chain complexity problem is something that many are motivated to do here on Earth, so it's convenient that much of the work will get done independently of the colonization effort. I hope we'll converge on manufacturing infrastructure that depends on a somewhat constrained set of inputs. Not because we're designing for Mars, but because that's just good fault-tolerant design. Like maybe the plans call for steel but al that we have on hand is brass, and it's ok if this one is weaker, so we'll print it in brass: improvising to avoid logistic complexity. Turns out, that's what you'd need for mars too. You can't be ordering part numbers manufactured on earth all the time. Wherever possible you're probably better off just importing tungsten (or whatever) and machining it local, likely using the same machine that we do on Earth. I think this sort of periodic-table-of-manufacturing approach would also be necessary to make recycling work. Whatever we call recycling today, it's nothing compared to what we'll need on Mars.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
The only reason - for now - for people to go to / from Mars and the Moon is for scientific reasons or for money. I think the only way that trips to the moon or mars that will earn money is space tourism. I don't believe Mars will have any valuable resources, for example. Or even discovering them will require an improbable amount of investments (trillions). The last reason I can think of is political; the first major force to have a permanent presence on these bodies will have a big say in the future of said body.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  There could be one more reason: living on the frontier. It's not about discovering new materials, or technologies, or physical phenomena. It's about exploring new social contracts. Here on Earth we are stuck with whatever social arrangements we've developed over the millennia, we can tweak here and there, but we can't start with a blank slate. For me this would be the grand prize: figuring out better ways for people to live together.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Since the current iteration of the space race is run by billionaires, the chances are pretty good that some kind of turbo-capitalism will be the social arrangement on the colonies.
    - fleventynine 4y ago
      The nice thing about frontiers is that there's enough space (and lack of oversight) to try new systems of government without upsetting "the establishment", which hasn't yet had centuries to ossify into an out-of-touch bureaucracy. When America was a frontier, this exploration yielded significant fruits...
      - lapcat 4y ago
        > The nice thing about frontiers is that there's enough space (and lack of oversight) to try new systems of government This is a nice idea if the frontier is accessible by foot, horse, or boat. If the frontier is accessible only via corporate-owned spaceship, then the frontier will inevitably be a corporate-owned dictatorship.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

It's usually the other group that's doing a Motte and bailey here. The billionaires were and are actually quite specific and up-front with their space ideas. It's the media (traditional and social) that invents fantasies here, either to sell or discredit the ideas, depending on which way the wind is blowing. (As is the case here. We're in the middle of "let's tear down Elon Musk" phase right now, so the strawmen are getting impressively absurd.)