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I used to get excited for these kinds of news, and from a science perspective, this is very cool. On the other hand, as we get closer to colonize other planets

I used to get excited for these kinds of news, and from a science perspective, this is very cool. On the other hand, as we get closer to colonize other planets, or at least try to plan for this end, I get depressed more and more. We're enough burden for a single planet, and definitely too much for a solar system. Honestly, no, I don't want more humans around.

volemo 2y ago
I understand the premise that the humanity is a burden for the Earth (though I disagree — we only make the conditions worse for ourselves, “The planet is fine; the people are fucked!”), but how could we possibly be a burden to a barren wasteland like Mars?
- palata 2y ago
  > although I don’t agree: we only make the conditions worse for ourselves, “The planet is fine; the people are fucked Except that we are measurably living in a mass extinction. Most species are dying, except for us (at the moment). So I disagree: we make the conditions worse for all species. The climate change that we are measuring now is happening a lot faster than the one that got the dinosaurs (and most big animals) extinct. 96% of animals on Earth are cattle, living in the conditions we know. I am not sure we can say "we don't have any impact on other species".
  - volemo 2y ago
    Sure we cause a mass extinction, I’m not saying “we don’t have any impact on other species”. My point still stands, the nature doesn’t care, this isn’t the first extinction and I bet won’t be the last. However, you didn’t address my main question: how can we be a burden to a red wasteland?
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      The nature doesn't care yet, but it showed that it might, and it will if we don't stop abusing the ecosystem. Ah, at worst, all humanity will go extinct. Which doesn't matter much at the grand scale. It'll be exciting for the next ones, if the planet is left in a state to allow another such evolution, or somebody else likes the colors and wants to visit for a couple of revolutions around the Sol. > how can we be a burden to a red wasteland? We are not sure that it's a red wasteland. We think that life has a single foundation and will evolve from that one. Maybe it had a similar ecosystem before, and tons of bacteria are in hiatus. Maybe there's something else underground. Maybe there are other living organisms which we can't detect. I don't think that Mars has worms which might eat us for snacks and giggles, but I'm not sure that it's devoid of life completely, either. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
      - palata 2y ago
        > Ah, at worst, all humanity will go extinct. To be honest, I don't care so much about humanity going extinct in 500 years. But somehow I care about me or my children dying at an early age because we as a species don't manage to not screw up our lives.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > I care about me or my children dying at an early age because we as a species don't manage to not screw up our lives The only near-term total human extinction risks are cosmological. We don’t have the ability to wipe ourselves out with even nukes, just wipe out modern civilisation. (And that would require someone going out of their way to nuke e.g. Oceania and South America.)
        palata 2y ago
        Think about that: the dinosaurs did not die because of the impact of the asteroid, but because of the climate change that followed. Fun fact: that climate change was a lot slower than the one we are measuring now. A lot.
    - palata 2y ago
      > how can we be a burden to a red wasteland? I couldn't care less about mars, to be honest. My problem is that some use it as (an absurd) justification to commoditise space. SpaceX is hurting the climate by making it cheap to send lots of rockets.
      - volemo 2y ago
        Ehm, do you claim space exploration cases a meaningful impact on the global climate in a world built on burning fossil fuel, refining iron ore, making almost everything out of mostly non recycled plastic, and eating cows and chickens? ._.
        palata 2y ago
        Subsidising (with a whole lot of money) technologies that make the situation worse instead of subsidising changes that would make society more resilient most definitely has an impact. You want to say "oh, actually, we've seen that 99% of our emissions was due to our production of trackpads, so the solution is to stop using trackpads and all is well"? Let me tell you that the problem is a lot harder than that. We need to work on everything everywhere.
  - jeffhuys 2y ago
    > we make the conditions worse for all species That's your deduction. We should correlate the "dying" to other times in the last millions/billions of years where the temperature rose tis "quickly". I really feel humans think they change way more than they do.
    - palata 2y ago
      > That's your deduction It's not. > I really feel humans think they change way more than they do. In 2025 this is either extremely uninformed or super dumb. Start reading, maybe.
      - jeffhuys 2y ago
        I wish we could discuss this in a more professional manner. I might be informed by sources that contradict the sources you read. That doesn't mean I'm wrong, or you're wrong, but it would be nice to just discuss this as humans. I do understand that this is a sensitive subject to some, so I apologize for any distress I seem to have caused.
        palata 2y ago
        > That doesn't mean I'm wrong, or you're wrong There are things where the scientific consensus is so big that even if you "disagree" with it (whatever that means), you have to assume that you are wrong until you prove you aren't. Maybe gravity doesn't exist, maybe we live in the Matrix. But for all intents and purposes, gravity does exist. If you disagree, you're wrong unless you come with evidence that shakes the scientific consensus. I mean evidence, not a mere belief that maybe gravity doesn't exist because you've read it somewhere. If you don't believe that we humans are the cause of the biodiversity loss and climate change, today, you're wrong. And if you can't recognise that... well join a Flat Earther convention and have fun there, I don't have time for this here.
      - subjectsigma 2y ago
        Ah, the classic “Anyone smart thinks exactly like I do, so you must be dumb.” I read his comment as an admission that nature is currently too wonderful and complicated for us to understand or control, not an assertion that global warming isn’t real or whatever you think he said. Humans created global warming and mass extinctions and it seems like the best way to stop it is to get more smart and dedicated humans, which aren’t rare but are uncommon. You better start hoping we pop out more people
palata 2y ago
I also used to get excited, and this is very cool science. But same here: we have enough problems trying to survive on Earth, we should focus our great talents on that. > as we get closer to colonize other planets We won't colonise mars, and we definitely won't go further than the solar system. Just look at the distances, it's completely absurd.
- preciousoo 2y ago
  "We" wont, until some generation figures it out
- lovelearning 2y ago
  I genuinely feel getting off this planet is also one of the solutions to some problems just like getting away from one's country or kingdom has always been a solution. Why do you feel we can't colonize Mars? Or perhaps any of the asteroids? Perhaps not in this century but do you feel it'll never happen?
  - palata 2y ago
    > Why do you feel we can't colonize Mars? Depends on what you call "colonising". We may be able to send a few humans there, just for the sake of doing something super costly and completely useless. We as a species won't independently survive there. We, as a species, are on the verge of collapsing on Earth, which has all the conditions needed for life. We literally are failing to survive on Earth. Why the hell would we put resources into sending a few people to mars? > Perhaps not in this century but do you feel it'll never happen? The way we are going now, long before next century we will be in a place where a large portion of Earth (around the equator) is unlivable. As in, without life support we won't be able to survive outside. It's cute to think about colonising other planets, but at some point we should have priorities.
    - krisoft 2y ago
      > We, as a species, are on the verge of collapsing on Earth, Humanity is not on the verge of collapsing on Earth. Not even close. There is billions of us and our number is going up. Even with the worts climate change predictions the threat is not that we will all die, but that some of the places where we live now becomes uninhabitable and that our descendants will have a worse time living in the future. > We literally are failing to survive on Earth. That's literally not true.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
weberer 2y ago
This post was written by a rogue AI

volemo 2y ago

I understand the premise that the humanity is a burden for the Earth (though I disagree — we only make the conditions worse for ourselves, “The planet is fine; the people are fucked!”), but how could we possibly be a burden to a barren wasteland like Mars?

palata 2y ago
> although I don’t agree: we only make the conditions worse for ourselves, “The planet is fine; the people are fucked Except that we are measurably living in a mass extinction. Most species are dying, except for us (at the moment). So I disagree: we make the conditions worse for all species. The climate change that we are measuring now is happening a lot faster than the one that got the dinosaurs (and most big animals) extinct. 96% of animals on Earth are cattle, living in the conditions we know. I am not sure we can say "we don't have any impact on other species".
- volemo 2y ago
  Sure we cause a mass extinction, I’m not saying “we don’t have any impact on other species”. My point still stands, the nature doesn’t care, this isn’t the first extinction and I bet won’t be the last. However, you didn’t address my main question: how can we be a burden to a red wasteland?
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    The nature doesn't care yet, but it showed that it might, and it will if we don't stop abusing the ecosystem. Ah, at worst, all humanity will go extinct. Which doesn't matter much at the grand scale. It'll be exciting for the next ones, if the planet is left in a state to allow another such evolution, or somebody else likes the colors and wants to visit for a couple of revolutions around the Sol. > how can we be a burden to a red wasteland? We are not sure that it's a red wasteland. We think that life has a single foundation and will evolve from that one. Maybe it had a similar ecosystem before, and tons of bacteria are in hiatus. Maybe there's something else underground. Maybe there are other living organisms which we can't detect. I don't think that Mars has worms which might eat us for snacks and giggles, but I'm not sure that it's devoid of life completely, either. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
    - palata 2y ago
      > Ah, at worst, all humanity will go extinct. To be honest, I don't care so much about humanity going extinct in 500 years. But somehow I care about me or my children dying at an early age because we as a species don't manage to not screw up our lives.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > I care about me or my children dying at an early age because we as a species don't manage to not screw up our lives The only near-term total human extinction risks are cosmological. We don’t have the ability to wipe ourselves out with even nukes, just wipe out modern civilisation. (And that would require someone going out of their way to nuke e.g. Oceania and South America.)
        palata 2y ago
        Think about that: the dinosaurs did not die because of the impact of the asteroid, but because of the climate change that followed. Fun fact: that climate change was a lot slower than the one we are measuring now. A lot.
  - palata 2y ago
    > how can we be a burden to a red wasteland? I couldn't care less about mars, to be honest. My problem is that some use it as (an absurd) justification to commoditise space. SpaceX is hurting the climate by making it cheap to send lots of rockets.
    - volemo 2y ago
      Ehm, do you claim space exploration cases a meaningful impact on the global climate in a world built on burning fossil fuel, refining iron ore, making almost everything out of mostly non recycled plastic, and eating cows and chickens? ._.
      - palata 2y ago
        Subsidising (with a whole lot of money) technologies that make the situation worse instead of subsidising changes that would make society more resilient most definitely has an impact. You want to say "oh, actually, we've seen that 99% of our emissions was due to our production of trackpads, so the solution is to stop using trackpads and all is well"? Let me tell you that the problem is a lot harder than that. We need to work on everything everywhere.
- jeffhuys 2y ago
  > we make the conditions worse for all species That's your deduction. We should correlate the "dying" to other times in the last millions/billions of years where the temperature rose tis "quickly". I really feel humans think they change way more than they do.
  - palata 2y ago
    > That's your deduction It's not. > I really feel humans think they change way more than they do. In 2025 this is either extremely uninformed or super dumb. Start reading, maybe.
    - jeffhuys 2y ago
      I wish we could discuss this in a more professional manner. I might be informed by sources that contradict the sources you read. That doesn't mean I'm wrong, or you're wrong, but it would be nice to just discuss this as humans. I do understand that this is a sensitive subject to some, so I apologize for any distress I seem to have caused.
      - palata 2y ago
        > That doesn't mean I'm wrong, or you're wrong There are things where the scientific consensus is so big that even if you "disagree" with it (whatever that means), you have to assume that you are wrong until you prove you aren't. Maybe gravity doesn't exist, maybe we live in the Matrix. But for all intents and purposes, gravity does exist. If you disagree, you're wrong unless you come with evidence that shakes the scientific consensus. I mean evidence, not a mere belief that maybe gravity doesn't exist because you've read it somewhere. If you don't believe that we humans are the cause of the biodiversity loss and climate change, today, you're wrong. And if you can't recognise that... well join a Flat Earther convention and have fun there, I don't have time for this here.
    - subjectsigma 2y ago
      Ah, the classic “Anyone smart thinks exactly like I do, so you must be dumb.” I read his comment as an admission that nature is currently too wonderful and complicated for us to understand or control, not an assertion that global warming isn’t real or whatever you think he said. Humans created global warming and mass extinctions and it seems like the best way to stop it is to get more smart and dedicated humans, which aren’t rare but are uncommon. You better start hoping we pop out more people

palata 2y ago

I also used to get excited, and this is very cool science. But same here: we have enough problems trying to survive on Earth, we should focus our great talents on that. > as we get closer to colonize other planets We won't colonise mars, and we definitely won't go further than the solar system. Just look at the distances, it's completely absurd.

preciousoo 2y ago
"We" wont, until some generation figures it out
lovelearning 2y ago
I genuinely feel getting off this planet is also one of the solutions to some problems just like getting away from one's country or kingdom has always been a solution. Why do you feel we can't colonize Mars? Or perhaps any of the asteroids? Perhaps not in this century but do you feel it'll never happen?
- palata 2y ago
  > Why do you feel we can't colonize Mars? Depends on what you call "colonising". We may be able to send a few humans there, just for the sake of doing something super costly and completely useless. We as a species won't independently survive there. We, as a species, are on the verge of collapsing on Earth, which has all the conditions needed for life. We literally are failing to survive on Earth. Why the hell would we put resources into sending a few people to mars? > Perhaps not in this century but do you feel it'll never happen? The way we are going now, long before next century we will be in a place where a large portion of Earth (around the equator) is unlivable. As in, without life support we won't be able to survive outside. It's cute to think about colonising other planets, but at some point we should have priorities.
  - krisoft 2y ago
    > We, as a species, are on the verge of collapsing on Earth, Humanity is not on the verge of collapsing on Earth. Not even close. There is billions of us and our number is going up. Even with the worts climate change predictions the threat is not that we will all die, but that some of the places where we live now becomes uninhabitable and that our descendants will have a worse time living in the future. > We literally are failing to survive on Earth. That's literally not true.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

weberer 2y ago

This post was written by a rogue AI