4 ms·

The cold war having gone by the tipping point was also a very large factor. This tied into the moonrace, and the spin off innovations from that. As a side note

The cold war having gone by the tipping point was also a very large factor. This tied into the moonrace, and the spin off innovations from that. As a side note, It has always annoyed me that there's a loud contingent of people that object to human space travel on the basis it's not the most efficient way to conduct science, because that is not the point of it. It is a signal of intent, throwing the baton far into the future and hoping to reach it and somehow making it, with innumerable side benefits. What we've lost is the entire will for moonshots, and no one in society is engaged in anything like it. Sometimes I'm an ultra libertarian too, but I suspect the reason Thiel wouldn't follow this reasoning is purely on the basis of who was doing the spending in that era.

api 12y ago
> It has always annoyed me that there's a loud contingent of people that object to human space travel on the basis it's not the most efficient way to conduct science... Sometimes I actually blame Skepticism. I'm not talking about skepticism mind you, but Skepticism-- the capital-S variety that became so popular in science starting in the 1970s as a reaction against things like the new age and the resurgence of religious fundamentalism. Rather than an attempt to keep the candle of science burning, I've started seeing Skeptics as another manifestation of the general turn toward superstition that occurred on or around this time. Theirs is the superstition of the known-- the belief that that which is not presently understood cannot possibly exist. Skepticism also usually fellow-travels with the kind of deep conservatism you're talking about. Head over to Skeptic boards and you'll see that the general opinion is anti-manned-space-flight for exactly the reasons you state-- it's not the most science for the buck, etc. It also usually fellow-travels with eco-doomerism for the simple reason that no comprehensive solutions to our current energy problems are known therefore they cannot possibly exist. (That which is not known can't possibly exist, remember?) Skepticism raised a generation of scientists whose first instinct is to tear things down and narrow the range of possibility. My personal big overarching theory on the dark age of the 70s is that there was a broad shift toward conservatism and fundamentalism across the entire spectrum of human thought: right and left, scientific and mystical, etc. As for why I'm not sure, but I suspect that fear was a big part of it. Lovecraft said it best: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" That's exactly what I think happened: we fled from the deadly light into a whole grab bag of comforting, pessimistic, conservative absolutisms. Apocalyptic fiction is so popular for the same reason-- people find it comforting in a weird way. If we're all doomed then at least we know what the outcome will be... unlike more optimistic visions of the future that end with black voids like "the singularity," human genetic metamorphosis, alien contact, the birth of AI or other post-human intelligence, etc. I think there's a part of us that finds the unknown more terrifying than death and that secretly hopes that WWIII or ecological collapse will save us from the great unknown outcome of progress and exploration. If I had to stick a marker in the ground, I'd place it at the moment everyone saw that earth rise shot: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/946xvariable_height/public/images/297755main_GPN-2001-000009_full.jpg http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/946xvariable_... See any gods in there? See anything that cares about us? Nope. All I see is a tiny grain of sand in an endless black void of nothingness. We are basically dust mites living on that grain of sand. This photo basically proves that we know very little about where we are, where we come from, and where we are going. People looked at that picture and said it was beautiful and inspiring, but secretly somewhere deep inside I wonder if the reaction wasn't metaphysical horror... Stare at it for a while... you'll see it.
- possibilistic 12y ago
  Blaming skepticism is an interesting point and makes me wonder. What about the publishing culture? Does it map more closely to incrementalism, or is it just that the surface area of the problem space has grown too vast for the human mind to generally see the bigger picture? Should empiricism be changed to allow fuzziness and uncertainty within the process? Scientific truth seems like a problem space similar to those amenable to metaheuristics. We don't know the form of the optimal / most true model. I'm not positing this for physics. Mainly systems biology and big data fields.
  - fidotron 12y ago
    I certainly do think the publishing culture has become broken. There is no doubt in my mind that if Einstein appeared in this environment he'd have been labelled a crackpot and it would have taken fifty years or more before anyone even began to take him seriously. The fact we now have a global network of entities competing for funding from relatively narrow sources means that those that deviate rapidly get weeded out. There is at least the perception that prior to about 1990 different institutions could be quite divergent with their views on particular ideas, violently disagree, but both still pursue research in their unique directions. The world seems far more homogeneous today.
- tedks 12y ago
  >See any gods in there? I see billions.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >See any gods in there? See anything that cares about us? Nope. All I see is a tiny grain of sand in an endless black void of nothingness. We are basically dust mites living on that grain of sand. This photo basically proves that we know very little about where we are, where we come from, and where we are going. People looked at that picture and said it was beautiful and inspiring, but secretly somewhere deep inside I wonder if the reaction wasn't metaphysical horror... >Stare at it for a while... you'll see it. I'm just not seeing it. Instead, this one favorite song starts playing in my mind (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p5OyLFQLCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p5OyLFQLCc). I see a species many of whom ignorantly believe that the world is only a few thousand years old, and yet who have not the slightest idea how young they truly are, and how far they have to grow up. I see sad, pessimistic depressives who grew up in darkness for so long that only the tiniest minority have any idea what light actually is or looks like. And yet they struggle for every day and every tiniest gain! And each step of struggle, each plateau where a man falls tired, becomes the starting point where his successor begins and climbs yet higher! Every man climbs and climbs and will keep climbing until climbing through the heavens themselves! These creatures contemplate their history and see it as either a line or a circle, but only the tiniest few have yet grasped that the path their race walks on is a spiral: turning endlessly around to recapitulate what came before, but always greater than ever before! They fight and build endlessly even though they have no coherent idea why or wherefore! Think of where the human race comes from and consider everything they've accomplished, and think of all they will soon do. Think of the utterly insignificant timescale of it all, from the astrophysical and geological perspectives, and thus think of the unbelievable speed with which these people think and move! Dust mites? Fear the empty black? Never! These are the finest, bravest, and wisest beings yet produced in this universe, who are forced to turn to their boundless imagination to find works exceeding their own! (Yes, I know what the above sounds like. I still endorse it. On a good day.)
mendort 12y ago
The end of the cold war also meant the end of battling propagandas between east and west. Maybe what we're feeling is a result of no one telling us stories any more, and not a result of any real change.
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
* It has always annoyed me that there's a loud contingent of people that object to human space travel on the basis it's not the most efficient way to conduct science, because that is not the point of it. It is a signal of intent, throwing the baton far into the future and hoping to reach it and somehow making it, with innumerable side benefits. What we've lost is the entire will for moonshots, and no one in society is engaged in anything like it.* Disagree completely. I am firmly in the camp against manned space travel however I am also firmly in the camp of "moonshots" when it comes to things that have value for their stated purpose. See the problem with manned spacetravel is that, at it's core it is not an immediately valuable end. It will always be only a means to some other end. It's not like "science" in that it is a repeatable process that covers many domains - if you are doing manned spaceflight then the goal is basically "lets drive around." Given the scale of problems we have on terra, manned spaceflight is actually pretty silly - hence why it took a pissing contest WAR to get us to go drive around on the moon.

api 12y ago

> It has always annoyed me that there's a loud contingent of people that object to human space travel on the basis it's not the most efficient way to conduct science... Sometimes I actually blame Skepticism. I'm not talking about skepticism mind you, but Skepticism-- the capital-S variety that became so popular in science starting in the 1970s as a reaction against things like the new age and the resurgence of religious fundamentalism. Rather than an attempt to keep the candle of science burning, I've started seeing Skeptics as another manifestation of the general turn toward superstition that occurred on or around this time. Theirs is the superstition of the known-- the belief that that which is not presently understood cannot possibly exist. Skepticism also usually fellow-travels with the kind of deep conservatism you're talking about. Head over to Skeptic boards and you'll see that the general opinion is anti-manned-space-flight for exactly the reasons you state-- it's not the most science for the buck, etc. It also usually fellow-travels with eco-doomerism for the simple reason that no comprehensive solutions to our current energy problems are known therefore they cannot possibly exist. (That which is not known can't possibly exist, remember?) Skepticism raised a generation of scientists whose first instinct is to tear things down and narrow the range of possibility. My personal big overarching theory on the dark age of the 70s is that there was a broad shift toward conservatism and fundamentalism across the entire spectrum of human thought: right and left, scientific and mystical, etc. As for why I'm not sure, but I suspect that fear was a big part of it. Lovecraft said it best: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" That's exactly what I think happened: we fled from the deadly light into a whole grab bag of comforting, pessimistic, conservative absolutisms. Apocalyptic fiction is so popular for the same reason-- people find it comforting in a weird way. If we're all doomed then at least we know what the outcome will be... unlike more optimistic visions of the future that end with black voids like "the singularity," human genetic metamorphosis, alien contact, the birth of AI or other post-human intelligence, etc. I think there's a part of us that finds the unknown more terrifying than death and that secretly hopes that WWIII or ecological collapse will save us from the great unknown outcome of progress and exploration. If I had to stick a marker in the ground, I'd place it at the moment everyone saw that earth rise shot: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/946xvariable_height/public/images/297755main_GPN-2001-000009_full.jpg http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/946xvariable_... See any gods in there? See anything that cares about us? Nope. All I see is a tiny grain of sand in an endless black void of nothingness. We are basically dust mites living on that grain of sand. This photo basically proves that we know very little about where we are, where we come from, and where we are going. People looked at that picture and said it was beautiful and inspiring, but secretly somewhere deep inside I wonder if the reaction wasn't metaphysical horror... Stare at it for a while... you'll see it.

possibilistic 12y ago
Blaming skepticism is an interesting point and makes me wonder. What about the publishing culture? Does it map more closely to incrementalism, or is it just that the surface area of the problem space has grown too vast for the human mind to generally see the bigger picture? Should empiricism be changed to allow fuzziness and uncertainty within the process? Scientific truth seems like a problem space similar to those amenable to metaheuristics. We don't know the form of the optimal / most true model. I'm not positing this for physics. Mainly systems biology and big data fields.
- fidotron 12y ago
  I certainly do think the publishing culture has become broken. There is no doubt in my mind that if Einstein appeared in this environment he'd have been labelled a crackpot and it would have taken fifty years or more before anyone even began to take him seriously. The fact we now have a global network of entities competing for funding from relatively narrow sources means that those that deviate rapidly get weeded out. There is at least the perception that prior to about 1990 different institutions could be quite divergent with their views on particular ideas, violently disagree, but both still pursue research in their unique directions. The world seems far more homogeneous today.
tedks 12y ago
>See any gods in there? I see billions.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>See any gods in there? See anything that cares about us? Nope. All I see is a tiny grain of sand in an endless black void of nothingness. We are basically dust mites living on that grain of sand. This photo basically proves that we know very little about where we are, where we come from, and where we are going. People looked at that picture and said it was beautiful and inspiring, but secretly somewhere deep inside I wonder if the reaction wasn't metaphysical horror... >Stare at it for a while... you'll see it. I'm just not seeing it. Instead, this one favorite song starts playing in my mind (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p5OyLFQLCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p5OyLFQLCc). I see a species many of whom ignorantly believe that the world is only a few thousand years old, and yet who have not the slightest idea how young they truly are, and how far they have to grow up. I see sad, pessimistic depressives who grew up in darkness for so long that only the tiniest minority have any idea what light actually is or looks like. And yet they struggle for every day and every tiniest gain! And each step of struggle, each plateau where a man falls tired, becomes the starting point where his successor begins and climbs yet higher! Every man climbs and climbs and will keep climbing until climbing through the heavens themselves! These creatures contemplate their history and see it as either a line or a circle, but only the tiniest few have yet grasped that the path their race walks on is a spiral: turning endlessly around to recapitulate what came before, but always greater than ever before! They fight and build endlessly even though they have no coherent idea why or wherefore! Think of where the human race comes from and consider everything they've accomplished, and think of all they will soon do. Think of the utterly insignificant timescale of it all, from the astrophysical and geological perspectives, and thus think of the unbelievable speed with which these people think and move! Dust mites? Fear the empty black? Never! These are the finest, bravest, and wisest beings yet produced in this universe, who are forced to turn to their boundless imagination to find works exceeding their own! (Yes, I know what the above sounds like. I still endorse it. On a good day.)

mendort 12y ago

The end of the cold war also meant the end of battling propagandas between east and west. Maybe what we're feeling is a result of no one telling us stories any more, and not a result of any real change.

AndrewKemendo 12y ago

* It has always annoyed me that there's a loud contingent of people that object to human space travel on the basis it's not the most efficient way to conduct science, because that is not the point of it. It is a signal of intent, throwing the baton far into the future and hoping to reach it and somehow making it, with innumerable side benefits. What we've lost is the entire will for moonshots, and no one in society is engaged in anything like it.* Disagree completely. I am firmly in the camp against manned space travel however I am also firmly in the camp of "moonshots" when it comes to things that have value for their stated purpose. See the problem with manned spacetravel is that, at it's core it is not an immediately valuable end. It will always be only a means to some other end. It's not like "science" in that it is a repeatable process that covers many domains - if you are doing manned spaceflight then the goal is basically "lets drive around." Given the scale of problems we have on terra, manned spaceflight is actually pretty silly - hence why it took a pissing contest WAR to get us to go drive around on the moon.