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Sometimes it seems like some people have a pathological need to be a doomer about any human activity. See also: "Kessler syndrome" doomerism about LEO satellit

Sometimes it seems like some people have a pathological need to be a doomer about any human activity. See also: "Kessler syndrome" doomerism about LEO satellites, the debris of which would only be a concern for a few years.

bilsbie 3y ago
Almost every technology gets assigned its own existential crisis. I’m not sure what that’s about. (I trace it all back to Jurassic park. It trained an entire generation to be afraid of technology.)
- palata 3y ago
  > It trained an entire generation to be afraid of technology. Apparently not enough, given where we're headed.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    It's still weird to me how quickly and completely discourse around privacy on the internet shifted from "who are these scary anonymous internet people in chat rooms and why you shouldn't tell them anything" to "routinely publicly post just about everything about your life"
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  I grew up watching Jurassic Park, and the main takeaway was technology is amazing, but many people will abuse it to get what they want without any regard for potential devastating consequences, often ignoring any logical argument against it if they've already found a path towards profitability.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    I think the book is better, it stresses the gap between innovation (particularly driven by startup capitalism) and government regulation. Per the book, when scientists are driven by a profit motive they have an incentive to be secretive to keep their competitors in the dark, and naturally, also keep government regulators in the dark. This mirrors a common observation on HN, that American tech startups profit by finding ways around traditional regulation (Amazon getting around local sales tax, Uber getting around taxi medallion systems, electric scooter rental deploying into cities faster than their sidewalk clutter can be regulated, etc.)
- thfuran 3y ago
  You must be thinking of Terminator.
TomSwirly 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Do you have some specific refutation to the arguments made in this article? Otherwise, it's unclear what the value of your comment is - you could literally make it about any claim of any side effect of any technology!
- willy_k 3y ago
  Doesn’t come off as shallow or a dismissal of the work. Maybe tangential, but OP is just voicing their disapproval of the common tendency to dismiss new ideas, often motivated by fear or stubbornness rather than a real and unsolvable problem with the idea. The comment is critical, and at worst it implies the article fell into an unfortunate pattern. > You could literally make it about any claim of any side effect of any technology! Agreed. Edit: after RTFA, I definitely get how both OP’s and my comment could be seen as unnecessary.
dragonelite 3y ago
Mega constellations could prevent other nations from entering space just by blocking launch windows or hell equip them with energy or kinetic weapons a group can block off space for others..
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > Mega constellations could prevent other nations from entering space just by blocking launch windows I suspect that the reason stuff like this gets traction is because of the current crop of satellite visualizations. Most of them make it look like Earth is absolutely blanketed in satellites. But that's primarily a pixel size limitation - it's not possible to show how small satellites actually are in a reasonably sized image. If you think about it logically - there are a couple thousand cars in orbit: what percent of the surface does that cover? Not much - that doesn't even cover much of a 2nd tier city. And they have very predictable trajectories. In short, yes - it's theoretically possible. But not a realistic concern. Especially with current launch prices. One of the only reasons Starlink is so big is because SpaceX gets to launch at cost instead of at market price.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  E.g. Brilliant Pebbles, many thousands of kinetic interceptors in LEO to deny space to the enemy. But using it would be WW3; we'd have bigger things to worry about then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles
mlindner 3y ago
Indeed. Problems are things to be solved, not a reason to put up blockers preventing things from happening. Kessler syndrome is even greatly misunderstood because of movies like Gravity. People think of it as one satellite getting kicked over and then there's a sudden chain reaction of satellite after satellite being destroyed in the time span of hours/days. When in fact it's likely that Kessler syndrome is probably already happening, but it's hard to tell. The solution is to pass new laws on satellite disposal so the problem doesn't get worse and over time figure out methods to dispose of what's up there. The most important things to get rid of are the very large debris as those can act as nexuses for further debris generation as they're "worn away" by other particulate dust debris and micrometeorites.
- palata 3y ago
  > Problems are things to be solved, not a reason to put up blockers preventing things from happening. Unless the problem is that those things are happening, in which case the solution is to put up blockers...
  - mlindner 3y ago
    Not really what I was saying. I'm talking about being obstructionist for the sake of being obstructionist, primarily focused around appeals to nature and digging for reasons that can be used as an excuse to justify the appeal to nature. If the end result of your thinking is "this has too many bad effects so we can never do this entire category of thing" then you've gone off the cliff. The solution is to fix the bad side effects while continuing the beneficial thing rather than saying you can't do anything at all.
    - haswell 3y ago
      Is anyone talking about being obstructionist for the sake of being obstructionist? This seems like a straw man. The article raises concerns and calls for more studies.
trescenzi 3y ago
Is this article saying we shouldn’t use mega constellations? It’s a rather dry presentation of napkin math. As other comments have said if this is a genuine issue then we can solve it. There is value in investigating the downside of technology because it helps us address problems before they occur. Of the the more famous modern example is CFCs and The Montreal Protocol. There was a genuine risk to all life on earth found via similar science, we got together and agreed on a solution plus we still have whipped cream in a can and refrigerators. There is a fundamental difference between doomerism and investigating potential risk. Of course we should avoid doomerism but saying “hey guys this might be an issue let’s think about it a bit” is an important part of technological advancement.

bilsbie 3y ago

Almost every technology gets assigned its own existential crisis. I’m not sure what that’s about. (I trace it all back to Jurassic park. It trained an entire generation to be afraid of technology.)

palata 3y ago
> It trained an entire generation to be afraid of technology. Apparently not enough, given where we're headed.
- thfuran 3y ago
  It's still weird to me how quickly and completely discourse around privacy on the internet shifted from "who are these scary anonymous internet people in chat rooms and why you shouldn't tell them anything" to "routinely publicly post just about everything about your life"
geerlingguy 3y ago
I grew up watching Jurassic Park, and the main takeaway was technology is amazing, but many people will abuse it to get what they want without any regard for potential devastating consequences, often ignoring any logical argument against it if they've already found a path towards profitability.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  I think the book is better, it stresses the gap between innovation (particularly driven by startup capitalism) and government regulation. Per the book, when scientists are driven by a profit motive they have an incentive to be secretive to keep their competitors in the dark, and naturally, also keep government regulators in the dark. This mirrors a common observation on HN, that American tech startups profit by finding ways around traditional regulation (Amazon getting around local sales tax, Uber getting around taxi medallion systems, electric scooter rental deploying into cities faster than their sidewalk clutter can be regulated, etc.)
thfuran 3y ago
You must be thinking of Terminator.

TomSwirly 3y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Do you have some specific refutation to the arguments made in this article? Otherwise, it's unclear what the value of your comment is - you could literally make it about any claim of any side effect of any technology!

willy_k 3y ago
Doesn’t come off as shallow or a dismissal of the work. Maybe tangential, but OP is just voicing their disapproval of the common tendency to dismiss new ideas, often motivated by fear or stubbornness rather than a real and unsolvable problem with the idea. The comment is critical, and at worst it implies the article fell into an unfortunate pattern. > You could literally make it about any claim of any side effect of any technology! Agreed. Edit: after RTFA, I definitely get how both OP’s and my comment could be seen as unnecessary.

dragonelite 3y ago

Mega constellations could prevent other nations from entering space just by blocking launch windows or hell equip them with energy or kinetic weapons a group can block off space for others..

nordsieck 3y ago
> Mega constellations could prevent other nations from entering space just by blocking launch windows I suspect that the reason stuff like this gets traction is because of the current crop of satellite visualizations. Most of them make it look like Earth is absolutely blanketed in satellites. But that's primarily a pixel size limitation - it's not possible to show how small satellites actually are in a reasonably sized image. If you think about it logically - there are a couple thousand cars in orbit: what percent of the surface does that cover? Not much - that doesn't even cover much of a 2nd tier city. And they have very predictable trajectories. In short, yes - it's theoretically possible. But not a realistic concern. Especially with current launch prices. One of the only reasons Starlink is so big is because SpaceX gets to launch at cost instead of at market price.
lupusreal 3y ago
E.g. Brilliant Pebbles, many thousands of kinetic interceptors in LEO to deny space to the enemy. But using it would be WW3; we'd have bigger things to worry about then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles

mlindner 3y ago

Indeed. Problems are things to be solved, not a reason to put up blockers preventing things from happening. Kessler syndrome is even greatly misunderstood because of movies like Gravity. People think of it as one satellite getting kicked over and then there's a sudden chain reaction of satellite after satellite being destroyed in the time span of hours/days. When in fact it's likely that Kessler syndrome is probably already happening, but it's hard to tell. The solution is to pass new laws on satellite disposal so the problem doesn't get worse and over time figure out methods to dispose of what's up there. The most important things to get rid of are the very large debris as those can act as nexuses for further debris generation as they're "worn away" by other particulate dust debris and micrometeorites.

palata 3y ago
> Problems are things to be solved, not a reason to put up blockers preventing things from happening. Unless the problem is that those things are happening, in which case the solution is to put up blockers...
- mlindner 3y ago
  Not really what I was saying. I'm talking about being obstructionist for the sake of being obstructionist, primarily focused around appeals to nature and digging for reasons that can be used as an excuse to justify the appeal to nature. If the end result of your thinking is "this has too many bad effects so we can never do this entire category of thing" then you've gone off the cliff. The solution is to fix the bad side effects while continuing the beneficial thing rather than saying you can't do anything at all.
  - haswell 3y ago
    Is anyone talking about being obstructionist for the sake of being obstructionist? This seems like a straw man. The article raises concerns and calls for more studies.

trescenzi 3y ago

Is this article saying we shouldn’t use mega constellations? It’s a rather dry presentation of napkin math. As other comments have said if this is a genuine issue then we can solve it. There is value in investigating the downside of technology because it helps us address problems before they occur. Of the the more famous modern example is CFCs and The Montreal Protocol. There was a genuine risk to all life on earth found via similar science, we got together and agreed on a solution plus we still have whipped cream in a can and refrigerators. There is a fundamental difference between doomerism and investigating potential risk. Of course we should avoid doomerism but saying “hey guys this might be an issue let’s think about it a bit” is an important part of technological advancement.