3 ms·

In arguing against others' excessive optimism, IMO you've slid into excessive pessimism, which is just as much of a fallacy. If you're going to be this reductiv

by sho 2y ago

In arguing against others' excessive optimism, IMO you've slid into excessive pessimism, which is just as much of a fallacy. If you're going to be this reductive about it, why don't you plant a flag on a hill somewhere and tell me what ISN'T a "colossal waste of time and money kept alive primarily by stupid romanticism"? Of course everything you said is technically true. All research and exploration is a colossal waste of time and money right up until it suddenly isn't. You can say this about basically every scientific development ever. And yet, some of those bets paid off, and here we are. Playing the cynic is always easy and always safe. But a cynic never invented anything, and cynics don't move the world forward. I'm glad people are pushing the frontiers, even if for now it looks like "a colossal waste of time and money kept alive primarily by stupid romanticism".

thefaux 2y ago
Reason is found in the balance between idealism and skepticism.
- sho 2y ago
  Yes, spot on. I don't think I'm that much of an idealist, but you've got to have at least some idealism or no-one would ever do anything. And as for the "fools wasting their money", let me invoke the great George Bernard Shaw: > "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Hizonner 2y ago
> what ISN'T a "colossal waste of time and money kept alive primarily by stupid romanticism"? Something that will achieve its stated goals? Something whose stated goals are something other than that thing itself (and the thing itself will be only very peripherally experienced by almost everybody involved)? Something where, when you ask people what they're trying to achieve, you get something other than a series of straight up false claims that they've obviously avoided looking into deeply, plus a bunch of incoherent drivel about the "spirit of exploration"? Something like a space telescope produces something more than just experience in building space telescopes. Comsats have a use beyond building comsats. So would manufacturing, if the applications weren't trumped up silliness that vastly exaggerates the value of the space environment... but you don't need people for that and you don't build the factory before you have an ACTUAL profitable product in mind. Crewed space flight, as presently done, only teaches you how to do crewed space flight... and do it in a way that's not going to scale. And it's not even yielding a lot of really new insight into that any more. It is NOT going to advance the goal of having large space colonies[^1]. It's NOT going to advance the goal of being able to do any significant amount of science or industry in space. It's just tourism, and for 99.99999 percent of the people supporting it, it'll be vicarious tourism. Tourism doesn't have zero value, but it has low enough value that it's reasonable to expect the people actually going to pay for the entire program personally... which they cannot do. If you actually wanted to colonize the whole galaxy or whatever, you'd dump your resources into bioengineering something human-like that was better suited to space, and/or into robotics. You would not bother to actually send the results into space until you had something worth testing. Which would be at least decades away even if you diverted all the resources being dumped into ratholes like space stations. And would have just a few wee social and ethical problems. [^1]: Nor would having large space colonies advance the goal of preventing human extinction. Among other huge problems, even if you could colonize the whole galaxy, the things that would arrive wouldn't be recognizably human or probably even much like humans.
- sho 2y ago
  You've actually pointed out the fatal flaw in your own argument: > you'd dump your resources into bioengineering something human-like that was better suited to space, and/or into robotics And how do you even know what to bio-engineer before you know what the effects on humans in space are? How can you test what robots work in space without humans, at least at first? Your argument is basically a circular chicken-and-egg dead end where you don't want to do anything until you can do it properly, but you have no idea what "properly" even is because you haven't tried to do it, repeat. > don't build the factory before you have an ACTUAL profitable product in mind Yeah, but you build a mockup. You do some trial versions. You test things out, run some experiments, see what's possible. That's the phase we're in. Have some patience. Geeze, I don't know what you're so animated about. The ISS isn't even that expensive.

by sho 2y ago

thefaux 2y ago

Reason is found in the balance between idealism and skepticism.

sho 2y ago
Yes, spot on. I don't think I'm that much of an idealist, but you've got to have at least some idealism or no-one would ever do anything. And as for the "fools wasting their money", let me invoke the great George Bernard Shaw: > "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Hizonner 2y ago

> what ISN'T a "colossal waste of time and money kept alive primarily by stupid romanticism"? Something that will achieve its stated goals? Something whose stated goals are something other than that thing itself (and the thing itself will be only very peripherally experienced by almost everybody involved)? Something where, when you ask people what they're trying to achieve, you get something other than a series of straight up false claims that they've obviously avoided looking into deeply, plus a bunch of incoherent drivel about the "spirit of exploration"? Something like a space telescope produces something more than just experience in building space telescopes. Comsats have a use beyond building comsats. So would manufacturing, if the applications weren't trumped up silliness that vastly exaggerates the value of the space environment... but you don't need people for that and you don't build the factory before you have an ACTUAL profitable product in mind. Crewed space flight, as presently done, only teaches you how to do crewed space flight... and do it in a way that's not going to scale. And it's not even yielding a lot of really new insight into that any more. It is NOT going to advance the goal of having large space colonies[^1]. It's NOT going to advance the goal of being able to do any significant amount of science or industry in space. It's just tourism, and for 99.99999 percent of the people supporting it, it'll be vicarious tourism. Tourism doesn't have zero value, but it has low enough value that it's reasonable to expect the people actually going to pay for the entire program personally... which they cannot do. If you actually wanted to colonize the whole galaxy or whatever, you'd dump your resources into bioengineering something human-like that was better suited to space, and/or into robotics. You would not bother to actually send the results into space until you had something worth testing. Which would be at least decades away even if you diverted all the resources being dumped into ratholes like space stations. And would have just a few wee social and ethical problems. [^1]: Nor would having large space colonies advance the goal of preventing human extinction. Among other huge problems, even if you could colonize the whole galaxy, the things that would arrive wouldn't be recognizably human or probably even much like humans.

sho 2y ago
You've actually pointed out the fatal flaw in your own argument: > you'd dump your resources into bioengineering something human-like that was better suited to space, and/or into robotics And how do you even know what to bio-engineer before you know what the effects on humans in space are? How can you test what robots work in space without humans, at least at first? Your argument is basically a circular chicken-and-egg dead end where you don't want to do anything until you can do it properly, but you have no idea what "properly" even is because you haven't tried to do it, repeat. > don't build the factory before you have an ACTUAL profitable product in mind Yeah, but you build a mockup. You do some trial versions. You test things out, run some experiments, see what's possible. That's the phase we're in. Have some patience. Geeze, I don't know what you're so animated about. The ISS isn't even that expensive.