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Even if life is found on Mars, the human race has lost it's right to celebrate. Every 3.6 seconds some child dies of starvation here on Earth. How many childre

Even if life is found on Mars, the human race has lost it's right to celebrate. Every 3.6 seconds some child dies of starvation here on Earth. How many children can you feed with $400,000,000+? http://goo.gl/s46ol http://goo.gl/s46ol

RKoutnik 13y ago
Bah. Such terrible logic. Truth is, we can do both. You're also mis-quoting your own source. http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20120716.gif http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20120716.gif
- ygmelnikova 13y ago
  Explain that to the mothers of the 5,000 children that have died of starvation in their mother's arms in the last 5 hours since this was posted. Maybe if you down vote this post enough, the problem will go away?
  - guylhem 13y ago
    It's not about the problem going away or not. Saving a life also increases cost, especially if the life you are saving is non productive (ie require food) Fact is, there will always be people dying on earth. It's sad. But why bother? Sending the human race to another planet, then maybe another galaxy, are long term projects, and it makes sense to care about that however. If it only required the sacrifice of 5,000 children, that would be a very cheap price to pay. It will certainly cost (as in opportunity costs - how the money could be used in different ways) many more lives. Yet you know what? It's a great deal. If we lose our only current planet, all of humanity goes down, including any possible future "children" one may imagine. How many people do you expect will have existed in 10,000 years from now (humanity is much older than that!), given our current population? (let's say no grow)? Round that to 5 billion per 100 year with an greatly overestimated lifespan of 100 years to ease our calculations. We have a lowball estimate of (10,000/100)*5b = 5 000 billion It would be quite a bargain to sacrifice a total of 5 billion to ensure a living of the 5 000 billion future humans that will exist... hell, even a 100 billion!! So yes, children are dying, it's sad, and your use of "saying that to the mothers" is a call to use sentimentalisms to obscure the facts. Yet the facts remain : having more than one habitable planet is a necessity to protect the continuous possibility of a thriving human race, in case of major disasters (at mass-extinction level).
    - ygmelnikova 13y ago
      You obviously have no children.
- mc-lovin 13y ago
  Actually the logic is quite sound. A dollar spent on the mars rover is a dollar not spent on poverty reduction. I do think that in the long run, spending on science and tech in general does prevent poverty, but it's not clear that the mars rover does so. It's very hard for people to face that in our global economy, it's very easy to save lives at very low (relative) cost and yet people and Western government choose not to by spending money on other things. But it's the truth. The cartoon you linked to is not logical. If I want to advocate spending on a particular thing, I have to at least be willing to hear counter-arguments so that I can actually convince people to spend money on it.
krasin 13y ago
This question was already answered in 1970: http://lettersofnote.tumblr.com/post/28831666763/why-explore-space http://lettersofnote.tumblr.com/post/28831666763/why-explore...

RKoutnik 13y ago

Bah. Such terrible logic. Truth is, we can do both. You're also mis-quoting your own source. http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20120716.gif http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20120716.gif

ygmelnikova 13y ago
Explain that to the mothers of the 5,000 children that have died of starvation in their mother's arms in the last 5 hours since this was posted. Maybe if you down vote this post enough, the problem will go away?
- guylhem 13y ago
  It's not about the problem going away or not. Saving a life also increases cost, especially if the life you are saving is non productive (ie require food) Fact is, there will always be people dying on earth. It's sad. But why bother? Sending the human race to another planet, then maybe another galaxy, are long term projects, and it makes sense to care about that however. If it only required the sacrifice of 5,000 children, that would be a very cheap price to pay. It will certainly cost (as in opportunity costs - how the money could be used in different ways) many more lives. Yet you know what? It's a great deal. If we lose our only current planet, all of humanity goes down, including any possible future "children" one may imagine. How many people do you expect will have existed in 10,000 years from now (humanity is much older than that!), given our current population? (let's say no grow)? Round that to 5 billion per 100 year with an greatly overestimated lifespan of 100 years to ease our calculations. We have a lowball estimate of (10,000/100)*5b = 5 000 billion It would be quite a bargain to sacrifice a total of 5 billion to ensure a living of the 5 000 billion future humans that will exist... hell, even a 100 billion!! So yes, children are dying, it's sad, and your use of "saying that to the mothers" is a call to use sentimentalisms to obscure the facts. Yet the facts remain : having more than one habitable planet is a necessity to protect the continuous possibility of a thriving human race, in case of major disasters (at mass-extinction level).
  - ygmelnikova 13y ago
    You obviously have no children.
mc-lovin 13y ago
Actually the logic is quite sound. A dollar spent on the mars rover is a dollar not spent on poverty reduction. I do think that in the long run, spending on science and tech in general does prevent poverty, but it's not clear that the mars rover does so. It's very hard for people to face that in our global economy, it's very easy to save lives at very low (relative) cost and yet people and Western government choose not to by spending money on other things. But it's the truth. The cartoon you linked to is not logical. If I want to advocate spending on a particular thing, I have to at least be willing to hear counter-arguments so that I can actually convince people to spend money on it.

krasin 13y ago

This question was already answered in 1970: http://lettersofnote.tumblr.com/post/28831666763/why-explore-space http://lettersofnote.tumblr.com/post/28831666763/why-explore...