5 ms·

The point is to improve existential odds. What about non-human threats, like asteroid hits, pandemics, etc? And even with largely human-caused threats, a Mars

by gnarmis 11y ago

The point is to improve existential odds. What about non-human threats, like asteroid hits, pandemics, etc? And even with largely human-caused threats, a Mars colony would improve existential odds. An improvement by degrees is still an improvement. If I have a Time Machine backup of my computer, it's still better for me to get another backup some other way, maybe another external drive I store in a different part of the house, or a web based service. The fact that the second backup is not a cure-all and instant-solution to all my data-security concerns is alright because it's still an improvement by degrees over the previous situation. A backup of the biosphere is still better than not having it.

jcranmer 11y ago
Perhaps. But that misses the largest issue with extraplanetary colonization: we don't have the technology to make a self-sustaining Martian colony at present. If the colony isn't self-sustaining, then all it means is that in the case of extinction-level disaster, some humans get to die a few years later.
- gridspy 11y ago
  The best way to get a full featured anything is to start with a Minimum Viable Product and improve it by degrees. It's much easier to start with a dependent colony and slowly solve the dependency problems until it is actually independent. The earlier you start, the earlier it becomes feature complete.
  - UweSchmidt 11y ago
    Or, just a thought, we just wait 100 years (which is nothing on a cosmological, time-between-asteriods scale) and see what tech we have then. Did Scott's and Amundsen's trips actually improve any technology that enables us now to have boring research stations at the southpole? It seems that the general scientific and economic progress just happened to also produce the means, as well as the reason to go there again.
    - adamnemecek 11y ago
      Yeah, there's no way that we'd just haphazardly stumble into tech that would get us to Mars. You have to have a concentrated push for it, similar to the push required to get to the Moon.
  - Cushman 11y ago
    Yeah, I'm not buying that. If your goal is to have a cache of humanity that survives x-risk scenarios, a dependent Mars colony is by definition not MVP because it is not V. For the enormous cost of building a human habitat in a distant gravity well, you've succeeded in protecting exactly 0 people against 0% of x-risk scenarios. That sounds like exactly the sort of overinvestment in unproductive technology that MVP theory is designed to prevent.
- gnarmis 11y ago
  We don't at present, yeah. That's a challenge. But it makes sense to have a goal to create a self-sustaining colony of humans (and plants/microbes/etc) on a different planet. Imagine that it did exist. It would be valuable to have, right? Having such a goal and working towards it and developing the technology along the way looks like a coherent and valuable activity to me. It's not that I'm denying that it can't be done on Wednesday or in the next 5 years. But yeah, it looks challenging.
nickbauman 11y ago
Considering our ability to terra-form earth has been consistently anti-successful (we only seem to be able to turn fertile parts of our own planet into that which more closely resembles Mars), perhaps we should focus on saving our own planet from ourselves first?
- lugg 11y ago
  Considering our 7 billion inhabitants, perhaps devoting a mere couple thousand of us to this pursuit isn't something to nitpick at?
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    Considering the small number of highly skilled, highly trained, highly capable people there are this population ratio comparison is not meaningful. If those people are working on "colonizing" Mars they won't be available for saving earth.
    - gnarmis 11y ago
      There are multiple companies and governments targeting space technology, like sending manned missions and providing infra for cheap launch into LEO. And there are already many efforts to improve existential risk right here on Earth. What's a better population comparison? It'd be instructive to estimate this. But regardless, if you're one in a million, there's like 7 thousand of you. And there's many actors on the stage. But it does spark a useful debate, good point. I would bet according to my uncertainty. If I was donating expertise or money, I'd supply fractional amounts relative to my own consideration of how valuable each endeavor is. It's not all-in.
AndrewKemendo 11y ago
>The point is to improve existential odds. Think about what you are saying. Something has to happen to the earth which completely wipes out the terrestrial atmosphere, changes our gravity significantly and makes the earth over 100 degrees cooler on average. Now you have the SAME atmosphere as Mars - but at least you already have a few tractors to work with. I don't think there exists in theory a planetary event, short of the sun going supernova, that would make it cheaper to move to mars than to rebuild on earth. The whole thing is lunacy in my opinion - and that's saying something as I am a transhumanist. [1] http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/mars111.php http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/mars111.php
- gnarmis 11y ago
  Well, what about things that are low-likelihood but have happened in the past? For example, the asteroid impact ~65 m. years ago. There's other relatively higher likelihood events that could cause modern civilization to collapse, like pandemics, runaway global warming, etc. You don't need an asteroid impact to destroy modern civilization, so the list of threats is longer -- any threat that kills billions, or causes critical failure of institutions (an extremely destructive global war), or destroys the ability to build large scale, stable civilizations. It isn't just about lives either, it's about protecting the institutions that are a critical part of modern civilization and that requires protecting lives plus other stuff, so it's even more fragile. Anyway, it's not like I'm considering 'moving to Mars' against 'staying on Earth and rebuilding'. You could totally rebuild on Earth and also have a separate colony on Mars that's self sufficient and not affected by the same disaster. I'm saying you could gain an ability to survive threats that you couldn't otherwise if you stayed only on Earth. If something destroyed modern civilization on Earth, well guess what, if you have a self sufficient colony on Mars, modern civilization would not have been completely destroyed. There's other benefits too. Developing tech to survive independently on another planet, ability to transport non-trivial materials to another planet, getting access to the nearby material wealth (autonomous asteroid mining perhaps? spit balling), and all that new science and technology and trade and opportunity for international collaboration. There's positive value in setting something like this up.
  - 11y ago

by gnarmis 11y ago

jcranmer 11y ago

Perhaps. But that misses the largest issue with extraplanetary colonization: we don't have the technology to make a self-sustaining Martian colony at present. If the colony isn't self-sustaining, then all it means is that in the case of extinction-level disaster, some humans get to die a few years later.

gridspy 11y ago
The best way to get a full featured anything is to start with a Minimum Viable Product and improve it by degrees. It's much easier to start with a dependent colony and slowly solve the dependency problems until it is actually independent. The earlier you start, the earlier it becomes feature complete.
- UweSchmidt 11y ago
  Or, just a thought, we just wait 100 years (which is nothing on a cosmological, time-between-asteriods scale) and see what tech we have then. Did Scott's and Amundsen's trips actually improve any technology that enables us now to have boring research stations at the southpole? It seems that the general scientific and economic progress just happened to also produce the means, as well as the reason to go there again.
  - adamnemecek 11y ago
    Yeah, there's no way that we'd just haphazardly stumble into tech that would get us to Mars. You have to have a concentrated push for it, similar to the push required to get to the Moon.
- Cushman 11y ago
  Yeah, I'm not buying that. If your goal is to have a cache of humanity that survives x-risk scenarios, a dependent Mars colony is by definition not MVP because it is not V. For the enormous cost of building a human habitat in a distant gravity well, you've succeeded in protecting exactly 0 people against 0% of x-risk scenarios. That sounds like exactly the sort of overinvestment in unproductive technology that MVP theory is designed to prevent.
gnarmis 11y ago
We don't at present, yeah. That's a challenge. But it makes sense to have a goal to create a self-sustaining colony of humans (and plants/microbes/etc) on a different planet. Imagine that it did exist. It would be valuable to have, right? Having such a goal and working towards it and developing the technology along the way looks like a coherent and valuable activity to me. It's not that I'm denying that it can't be done on Wednesday or in the next 5 years. But yeah, it looks challenging.

nickbauman 11y ago

Considering our ability to terra-form earth has been consistently anti-successful (we only seem to be able to turn fertile parts of our own planet into that which more closely resembles Mars), perhaps we should focus on saving our own planet from ourselves first?

lugg 11y ago
Considering our 7 billion inhabitants, perhaps devoting a mere couple thousand of us to this pursuit isn't something to nitpick at?
- nickbauman 11y ago
  Considering the small number of highly skilled, highly trained, highly capable people there are this population ratio comparison is not meaningful. If those people are working on "colonizing" Mars they won't be available for saving earth.
  - gnarmis 11y ago
    There are multiple companies and governments targeting space technology, like sending manned missions and providing infra for cheap launch into LEO. And there are already many efforts to improve existential risk right here on Earth. What's a better population comparison? It'd be instructive to estimate this. But regardless, if you're one in a million, there's like 7 thousand of you. And there's many actors on the stage. But it does spark a useful debate, good point. I would bet according to my uncertainty. If I was donating expertise or money, I'd supply fractional amounts relative to my own consideration of how valuable each endeavor is. It's not all-in.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago

>The point is to improve existential odds. Think about what you are saying. Something has to happen to the earth which completely wipes out the terrestrial atmosphere, changes our gravity significantly and makes the earth over 100 degrees cooler on average. Now you have the SAME atmosphere as Mars - but at least you already have a few tractors to work with. I don't think there exists in theory a planetary event, short of the sun going supernova, that would make it cheaper to move to mars than to rebuild on earth. The whole thing is lunacy in my opinion - and that's saying something as I am a transhumanist. [1] http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/mars111.php http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/mars111.php

gnarmis 11y ago
Well, what about things that are low-likelihood but have happened in the past? For example, the asteroid impact ~65 m. years ago. There's other relatively higher likelihood events that could cause modern civilization to collapse, like pandemics, runaway global warming, etc. You don't need an asteroid impact to destroy modern civilization, so the list of threats is longer -- any threat that kills billions, or causes critical failure of institutions (an extremely destructive global war), or destroys the ability to build large scale, stable civilizations. It isn't just about lives either, it's about protecting the institutions that are a critical part of modern civilization and that requires protecting lives plus other stuff, so it's even more fragile. Anyway, it's not like I'm considering 'moving to Mars' against 'staying on Earth and rebuilding'. You could totally rebuild on Earth and also have a separate colony on Mars that's self sufficient and not affected by the same disaster. I'm saying you could gain an ability to survive threats that you couldn't otherwise if you stayed only on Earth. If something destroyed modern civilization on Earth, well guess what, if you have a self sufficient colony on Mars, modern civilization would not have been completely destroyed. There's other benefits too. Developing tech to survive independently on another planet, ability to transport non-trivial materials to another planet, getting access to the nearby material wealth (autonomous asteroid mining perhaps? spit balling), and all that new science and technology and trade and opportunity for international collaboration. There's positive value in setting something like this up.
- 11y ago