6 ms·

I’d be happy if we just start with long term orbitals. Build structures in space nearby (say L5) and try obtain self sufficiency. Then build more and move them

I’d be happy if we just start with long term orbitals. Build structures in space nearby (say L5) and try obtain self sufficiency. Then build more and move them farther out. Once you can survive in the Oort Cloud, interstellar travel becomes just a matter of time. Any dreams of small ships and small populations colonizing planets are just dreams. Unless we develop magic replication technology that takes raw elements and builds compounds an atom at a time.

mistermann 3y ago
Oh God the hubris of humans. Here's an idea: how about we start with a (at least seemingly) much smaller task: can we even try to genuinely be concerned about the (physically) preventable deaths of millions of people each year? And note, I'm not even talking about doing something about it, I am deliberately setting the bar only at trying(!) to be concerned (though: genuine concern). Baby steps.
- mr_toad 3y ago
  Even if you re-directed all resources, all leisure, everything beyond bare minimum of survival into keeping as many people possible alive as long as possible, everyone will still die. So who’s to decide what we should sacrifice to keep others alive?
  - kombookcha 3y ago
    The above poster specifically wrote "physically preventable", so as an advocate for mass human sacrifice, how many do you think it'll take to make an experimental bouncy castle in space? Do you envision yourself as more of an Acceptable Human Sacrifice type, or Guy Who Enjoys The Bouncy Castle type?
    - M95D 3y ago
      "Physically preventable" is a moving target. The more resources are invested in preventing currently preventable deaths, the more farther away the target moves, because more and more causes of death become preventable. So, this is a false argument. There's no preventing all preventable deaths. Let me give you a different argument: what would it take to prevent absolutely ALL car-related deaths? Before you answer, be aware that even ambulances that mostly save lives sometimes cause deadly accidents. How many deaths would be prevented in the long term (let's take 2000 years, equal time period since Roman Empire until today) if we choose to go to space and accept a big increase in death risks for those pioneers, instead of preventing deaths on earth? How about this argument: How many improvements in medicine that make those deaths preventable today came from United States, Canada, South America or were funded by those states? If sailors from the middle ages didn't risk their lives to cross the ocean and discover America, would we have today's medicine, 500 years later? How many lives would have been lost without it?
      - kombookcha 3y ago
        Do you genuinely believe that when people say "we have very pressing issues about preventable human suffering", that they're saying "we should literally bring all forms of suffering to absolute zero before we do literally anything else"? Personally I simply don't know of anybody who actually hold that view, because it's obviously a nonsensical way to approach the issue. I do however keep seeing people strawman it into existence to dunk on it with the exact points you typed out here. What is being achieved by insisting that perfection is impossible, therefore we shouldn't try at all? Just the comfort of not having to think too hard about it?
        M95D 3y ago
        How else should anyone answer that? Whatever improvement are done (and you can't deny that there are continuous improvements), a person with that view will always find that "more" could be done. They don't actually say that they want perfection, but actually that's the same as always saying "more could be done".
        persolb 3y ago
        We are already preventing 99% of preventable deaths. As you say, most ‘preventable deaths’ we prevent just turn into a new later more creative preventable death. In many cities you can be homeless and have better mortality prevention than a medieval king. I don’t know how people think that we’ll draw a line somewhere clear. It is (and should always be) a moving target. I think most progress has this moving goalpost. Because of this, we need to multitask as a civilization. We can’t just focus on ‘safety is number 1’… because we’ll never do anything else.
        mistermann 3y ago
        > We are already preventing 99% of preventable deaths. How did you measure this?
        persolb 3y ago
  - mistermann 3y ago
    > Even if you re-directed all resources, all leisure, everything beyond bare minimum of survival into keeping as many people possible alive as long as possible, everyone will still die. True; similarly, even if everyone will still die, the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow is still ~20.1 miles per hour. Mother Nature has a cruel side to her, I do not deny it. > So who’s to decide what we should sacrifice to keep others alive? How about everyone decides?
- ben_w 3y ago
  The foundational idea of capitalism is that each person doing their own thing is automatically aligned with the betterment of us all. This is, strictly speaking, incorrect; but despite the many various examples of it going wrong, it has also been a major part of the overall increase in living standards since 95% of us ploughed fields for the other 5%. There are fewer people in abject poverty today than there were back then, not just as a percentage but as an absolute number. We live longer, childbearing is less dangerous and we have painkillers for it and other things, etc. It's not evenly distributed; but even though the system which was founded on even distribution failed harder than capitalism (IMO for the same reason capitalism isn't quite right: nobody really knew about game theory until Nash), we have still eliminated one disease entirely, and are close with some others.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    Very clever excuse, well done. I will add ~1% more cleverness: take capitalism, and make one small change: eliminate one(!) class of hypocrisy: convert our fake concern for the well being of other humans into the real thing: stop war, get a roof of some kind over every person's head, food of some sort into their bellies, and put some genuine effort into ensuring that this is substantively permanent. "Impossible, because {some meme magic}!" many will say, but I've heard there's a trick that can change this game we find ourselves in: stop speaking untruthfully. I'm a big fan of this challenge, because people (particularly smart people) like to criticize it for how simplistic or stupid it is, but I know something they don't: ~all Humans have some sort of an innate fear of non-untruthfulness, and while they'll confidently talk shit about the idea all day long, they never have the balls to actually try it.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      I wish that was "one small change". Evidence that it isn't: all of human history dating back well before we had writing. > I've heard there's a trick that can change this game we find ourselves in: stop speaking untruthfully. I, too, follow this one weird trick. Evidence that people who are willing to lie to my face get power by doing so: * Basically all politicians, but specifically Boris Johnson — people like me even saw and called out the lies at the time, and yet, there he was, being Prime Minister * Bernie Madoff, until he was finally caught * Sun Tzu, The Art of War The second you can argue is capitalism. The first? That's democracy. The third? You may not like warfare (I don't either), but it predates Capitalism and was also a big part of the Soviet world-view — this is the point at which Anarcho-Communists chime in to say "but in a post-Capitalist world there would be no need for guns", which is the same mistake Anarcho-Capitalists make: people with guns don't care that you're saying they don't need guns, and are also now taking as much of your stuff as they want.
numpad0 3y ago
I completely agree, and, also suggest we bring bunch of sub-scale models down to somewhere open on Earth, like middle of North America, African desert, Australia, off its coast, somewhere giant and flat. It will provide safe opportunity to master environmental control before testing in production, as well as means to supply habitable megastructures cheaply. Imagine a ~km wide cylinder just sticking up in Sahara, and inside it is New Shenzhen. Isn't that exciting!

mistermann 3y ago

Oh God the hubris of humans. Here's an idea: how about we start with a (at least seemingly) much smaller task: can we even try to genuinely be concerned about the (physically) preventable deaths of millions of people each year? And note, I'm not even talking about doing something about it, I am deliberately setting the bar only at trying(!) to be concerned (though: genuine concern). Baby steps.

mr_toad 3y ago
Even if you re-directed all resources, all leisure, everything beyond bare minimum of survival into keeping as many people possible alive as long as possible, everyone will still die. So who’s to decide what we should sacrifice to keep others alive?
- kombookcha 3y ago
  The above poster specifically wrote "physically preventable", so as an advocate for mass human sacrifice, how many do you think it'll take to make an experimental bouncy castle in space? Do you envision yourself as more of an Acceptable Human Sacrifice type, or Guy Who Enjoys The Bouncy Castle type?
  - M95D 3y ago
    "Physically preventable" is a moving target. The more resources are invested in preventing currently preventable deaths, the more farther away the target moves, because more and more causes of death become preventable. So, this is a false argument. There's no preventing all preventable deaths. Let me give you a different argument: what would it take to prevent absolutely ALL car-related deaths? Before you answer, be aware that even ambulances that mostly save lives sometimes cause deadly accidents. How many deaths would be prevented in the long term (let's take 2000 years, equal time period since Roman Empire until today) if we choose to go to space and accept a big increase in death risks for those pioneers, instead of preventing deaths on earth? How about this argument: How many improvements in medicine that make those deaths preventable today came from United States, Canada, South America or were funded by those states? If sailors from the middle ages didn't risk their lives to cross the ocean and discover America, would we have today's medicine, 500 years later? How many lives would have been lost without it?
    - kombookcha 3y ago
      Do you genuinely believe that when people say "we have very pressing issues about preventable human suffering", that they're saying "we should literally bring all forms of suffering to absolute zero before we do literally anything else"? Personally I simply don't know of anybody who actually hold that view, because it's obviously a nonsensical way to approach the issue. I do however keep seeing people strawman it into existence to dunk on it with the exact points you typed out here. What is being achieved by insisting that perfection is impossible, therefore we shouldn't try at all? Just the comfort of not having to think too hard about it?
      - M95D 3y ago
        How else should anyone answer that? Whatever improvement are done (and you can't deny that there are continuous improvements), a person with that view will always find that "more" could be done. They don't actually say that they want perfection, but actually that's the same as always saying "more could be done".
        persolb 3y ago
        We are already preventing 99% of preventable deaths. As you say, most ‘preventable deaths’ we prevent just turn into a new later more creative preventable death. In many cities you can be homeless and have better mortality prevention than a medieval king. I don’t know how people think that we’ll draw a line somewhere clear. It is (and should always be) a moving target. I think most progress has this moving goalpost. Because of this, we need to multitask as a civilization. We can’t just focus on ‘safety is number 1’… because we’ll never do anything else.
        mistermann 3y ago
        > We are already preventing 99% of preventable deaths. How did you measure this?
        persolb 3y ago
- mistermann 3y ago
  > Even if you re-directed all resources, all leisure, everything beyond bare minimum of survival into keeping as many people possible alive as long as possible, everyone will still die. True; similarly, even if everyone will still die, the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow is still ~20.1 miles per hour. Mother Nature has a cruel side to her, I do not deny it. > So who’s to decide what we should sacrifice to keep others alive? How about everyone decides?
ben_w 3y ago
The foundational idea of capitalism is that each person doing their own thing is automatically aligned with the betterment of us all. This is, strictly speaking, incorrect; but despite the many various examples of it going wrong, it has also been a major part of the overall increase in living standards since 95% of us ploughed fields for the other 5%. There are fewer people in abject poverty today than there were back then, not just as a percentage but as an absolute number. We live longer, childbearing is less dangerous and we have painkillers for it and other things, etc. It's not evenly distributed; but even though the system which was founded on even distribution failed harder than capitalism (IMO for the same reason capitalism isn't quite right: nobody really knew about game theory until Nash), we have still eliminated one disease entirely, and are close with some others.
- mistermann 3y ago
  Very clever excuse, well done. I will add ~1% more cleverness: take capitalism, and make one small change: eliminate one(!) class of hypocrisy: convert our fake concern for the well being of other humans into the real thing: stop war, get a roof of some kind over every person's head, food of some sort into their bellies, and put some genuine effort into ensuring that this is substantively permanent. "Impossible, because {some meme magic}!" many will say, but I've heard there's a trick that can change this game we find ourselves in: stop speaking untruthfully. I'm a big fan of this challenge, because people (particularly smart people) like to criticize it for how simplistic or stupid it is, but I know something they don't: ~all Humans have some sort of an innate fear of non-untruthfulness, and while they'll confidently talk shit about the idea all day long, they never have the balls to actually try it.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I wish that was "one small change". Evidence that it isn't: all of human history dating back well before we had writing. > I've heard there's a trick that can change this game we find ourselves in: stop speaking untruthfully. I, too, follow this one weird trick. Evidence that people who are willing to lie to my face get power by doing so: * Basically all politicians, but specifically Boris Johnson — people like me even saw and called out the lies at the time, and yet, there he was, being Prime Minister * Bernie Madoff, until he was finally caught * Sun Tzu, The Art of War The second you can argue is capitalism. The first? That's democracy. The third? You may not like warfare (I don't either), but it predates Capitalism and was also a big part of the Soviet world-view — this is the point at which Anarcho-Communists chime in to say "but in a post-Capitalist world there would be no need for guns", which is the same mistake Anarcho-Capitalists make: people with guns don't care that you're saying they don't need guns, and are also now taking as much of your stuff as they want.

numpad0 3y ago

I completely agree, and, also suggest we bring bunch of sub-scale models down to somewhere open on Earth, like middle of North America, African desert, Australia, off its coast, somewhere giant and flat. It will provide safe opportunity to master environmental control before testing in production, as well as means to supply habitable megastructures cheaply. Imagine a ~km wide cylinder just sticking up in Sahara, and inside it is New Shenzhen. Isn't that exciting!