We went to the Moon as a bit of Cold War posturing, to plant the American flag and demonstrate superiority over Soviets. After that was accomplished, we lost interest.
You know what's really hard? Solving longstanding social issues. How about we try that instead.
Let's solve the hardest social issue first: the crab bucket mentality that you exemplify that is so pervasive in society. The idea that anyone attempting something exceptional necessarily beggars all of the rest of us and should be cut down to size.
Nonetheless, it's true, is it not, that government budgets are not unlimited, and economic tradeoffs have to be made? Of course the government can engage in deficit spending, but that raises additional problems, creates another tradeoff.
There are literal beggars in the United States. What are we doing about that problem, and couldn't we do more, spend more? What exactly are you willing to sacrifice, which worthy causes, in order to achieve your very specific exceptional thing?
It's interesting that Kennedy did not choose to cure cancer, for example. That's a hard thing, isn't it? Though I've heard that LLMs may do it any day now.
> Yes, it's an unfathomably difficult and complex project that should not be in any way underestimated. Realistically, it will take many decades at minimum and probably in excess of a century.
I think you've vastly underestimated the difficulty and the timeline, ironically. It's unrealistic to use the words "decades" or "a century". On the contrary, that's the delusion.
Consider: more than 50 years after putting a few people on the Moon very briefly, we're no closer to a colony on the Moon. And rocket technology won't help at all. Among the problems: the Moon has very little gravity, and we can't handwave like Q, "just change the gravitational constant of the universe."
I is lot less question of can we, but should we. The amount of time and resources needed are most likely so extreme that most other use cases would be better.
Sometimes it make lot of sense not to even try. I mean technically we could save a few lives in northern countries during winter by heating all roads in such a way that there is no ice or snow... Doable maybe... But not worth trying...
We have limited resources, and every investment is a tradeoff. We can play with rockets, but how does SpaceX solve the problem of humans living with much less gravity than Earth, for example? It seems to me that this is a vastly greater problem than traveling to another celestial body.
Has anyone ever conceived a child off the Earth, much less given birth or raised one? Don’t talk to me about space colonies until we’ve done that.
We regularly expend vastly more resources on things that are far more frivolous and questionable than anything related to spaceflight has ever been, but nobody bats an eye about any of that.
As for the problems, we solve them like we always have: one at a time. Additionally, some of these things haven't even yet been studied to the extent necessary to take a crack at solving them. Taking the humans in microgravity problem as an example, we know it's a problem but have done precious little in figuring out things like exactly where the minimum threshold sits for gravity, whether simulated gravity via centrifugal force is adequate, etc.
I do think that SpaceX is jumping the gun a bit. I'd rather take it a touch more slowly and first do things like put a centrifugal space station in orbit to perform studies on. That said, after how crewed spaceflight beyond earth's orbit came to a screeching halt with the end of the Apollo program, it feels like a miracle to be getting anything.
> figuring out things like exactly where the minimum threshold sits for gravity
Now there exists some evidence about that threshold.
Experiments with mice on the ISS have shown that at least for them a third of the terrestrial gravity is necessary for avoiding severe health problems and two thirds of terrestrial gravity is the threshold necessary for avoiding all health problems.
That means that even the gravity at the surface of Mars is likely to be insufficient for avoiding all health problems.
This does not mean that travel through the Solar System or life on Mars or on the Moon are impossible, but it means that for any of these it is necessary to use rotation to provide artificial gravity for the spaces where humans will spend most of the time.
This will increase costs for spaceships or for surface bases, but technically it is a relatively easy problem to solve in comparison with the efficient recycling of all materials.
> We regularly expend vastly more resources on things that are far more frivolous and questionable than anything related to spaceflight has ever been, but nobody bats an eye about any of that.
This statement is too hand-wavy, and I doubt that "nobody" bats an eye. Do you have specific examples?
Also, there's no reason why overspending in some areas should be redirected to the space program rather than to vital, underfunded problems on Earth. Again, it's always a tradeoff.
How much do you think is spent on Golf every year world wide? 100 Billion? 200?
I'm probably as skeptical as most about a Martian colony - to my mind it's 100's of years but will almost certainly happen in that time frame. That said the amount that's being spent on it happening today seems about right.
I would also say that the money being spent now is working at engineering problems. Most (All?) of the vital underfunded problems on Earth that you allude to are political problems. I'm not saying money can't solve them but they are way more complicated.
> How much do you think is spent on Golf every year world wide? 100 Billion? 200?
I don't know. Too much, probably. Certainly there's too much land devoted to golf courses. However, "humans should not spend money on leisure activities" would not be a serious proposal. Should we never enjoy life? I suspect that even people who are hungry and homeless also aspire to enjoy leisure activities in addition to having food and shelter.
If we could go to Mars only by abolishing fun then to hell with Mars.
> I'm probably as skeptical as most about a Martian colony - to my mind it's 100's of years but will almost certainly happen in that time frame.
The classic example is military spending. It's astronomical and in the US, higher than any other type, and much of that is owed to the cronyism in the military-industrial complex, regulatory capture by contractors, and endless chains of subcontractors with each link in the chain pocketing cash. The Pentagon can't even pass an audit.
Many things could be funded if that were cleaned up, and even if none of that cash goes towards space it reduces pressure to further cut existing funding toward it which would still be a massive win.
No, because you said, "nobody bats an eye about any of that", which is not even remotely true of military spending.
It's worth noting that the Apollo space program was controversial in its day, simultaneous with prominent civil rights movements, because it was felt that the government was ignoring the economic problems of minorities, for instance, in order to put white guys on the Moon and play golf.
> No, because you said, "nobody bats an eye about any of that", which is not even remotely true of military spending.
I mean, it must not be taken that seriously because little has been done to change it. Instead, just about everything else gets constantly gets chipped away at to significant fanfare.
And yes I'm aware of the controversy that surrounded the Apollo program and to a large degree empathize, but even at that point in time we probably could've found a way to walk and chew bubblegum if we really wanted it.
If you throw yourself off a cliff because only defeatists accept that they can't fly by flapping their arms, you aren't brave taking chances, you're committing suicide.
By the same token "we don't want to be defeated" isn't a good reason to create a planetary exploration timeline driven by false urgency. Mars isn't going anywhere.
There's a difference between something being extremely difficult and it being actually impossible.
And yes, Mars is not going anywhere, but the same cannot so confidently be said about our ability to get there. Our species has been capable of spaceflight for a tiny fraction of our existence and there is plenty of precedent for catastrophic loss of knowledge and capability.
Mars is not a safeguard against Earth going to hell, even in the most extreme Mars fantasies you don't end up with something independent of Earth for an indefinite period of time. We're also more than capable of exploring our Solar System in immense detail without sending people or colonists. Our greatest achievements on Mars have involved rovers, and frankly suggest that as a planet it has little to recommend it.
tl;dr There is no reality in which it's easier or more reliable to "back up the species elsewhere" than it is to act in our interests here. That doesn't imply shutting ourselves off from space, but it means treating it more like the deep ocean where rovers and drones are simply a better fit for such hostile environments. I'm hopeful that will change someday, but anyone who's thinking in terms of decades doesn't understand the scope and depth of the problem.
My recommendation is to read some of the books and articles suggested in this thread before imposing your wishes on reality.
As noted in the original post, I don't really buy into the "backup" theory so much. It's more that it would be a shame to have gained the ability to put people in space and then lose it having done practically nothing with it.
> I'm hopeful that will change someday
And part of my point is that these things don't just magically change on their own, but because a lot of smart people are actively working on changing them. Absent those efforts, the status quo remains.
If you're banking on "we will lose the knowledge to put people on Mars" as the reason for going to Mars, what exactly is the purpose of putting people on Mars? In this knowledge-loss scenario, we will lose any knowledge gained from putting people on Mars, and also if there are any people still on Mars they will all die when their support systems on Earth collapse.
I'm not banking on anything and I'm not even really that focused on Mars specifically. Mars is just a good first step in establishing self-sustenance outside of Earth's gravity well, feeding into the goal of greater spacefaring capabilities.
In the case that we don't lose our ability to get into space, cool, development in that field gets a bit of an earlier start. If we knock ourselves back into the Stone Age, well, at least we can say we tried our best in that small window of time. The worst outcome is losing the ability without having even tried.
Although fact checking is essential, I doubt that it will make a difference here. It clearly doesn’t make a difference in politics or religion. Much of the enthusiasm for Mars colonization is based on science fiction rather than science fact, childhood dreams not adult practicality.
I think it’s important to hold Mars enthusiasts to specific timelines. What will humanity do in a hundred thousand years, or a million years, if it survives that long? Who knows. Humanity hasn’t even had agriculture for that long. The relevant question is, what will humanity do with regards to Mars within the coming decades? Let's be honest: nothing much. Elon Musk had made predictions about the future that have already passed and proven false. How many times will you allow him to kick the can down the road before you stop believing lies? Let’s also stop pretending that launching some rockets now will somehow prepare for the hundred-thousand-year future. The best way to get to that future is to preserve the only currently habitable ecosystem in the solar system, by immediately stopping pollution and global warming on Earth. Sadly, Musk is financially backing politicians who are doing the opposite.
If you think an education can be reduced to simply-stated aphorisms you can follow, you're missing the point. If that's all there was, you wouldn't need to spend years in school.
It's like thinking you can become a tennis player by watching a single instructional video. There's no substitute for doing the work. The result is the skilled person.
It's interesting that you seemingly want to erase the humans from the humanities in order to distill the "insights".
I thought the humanities were supposed to train you to better express and share ideas? Seems like a major failure if they can't communicate to those outside their field.
> I thought the humanities were supposed to train you to better express and share ideas?
Of course. But that applies to ideas broadly, whatever you happen to be working on.
Whereas the OP apparently wants something like a top 10 list of brilliant humanities insights, which is a misunderstanding of what students are learning: skills, not atomistic facts.
Even in the sciences, students are learning skills, not just facts and equations. The key is the ability to use them, and that takes a lot of practice. The result is a skilled scientist, not a container of facts.
I don't think so. Is the OP not asking for some kind of simple universal aphorism? On the contrary, I think that the OP is making a straw man out of the humanities.
The usefulness to tech of those trained in the humanities is not to apply a few "brilliant" insights but rather to apply their "ordinary" but trained insights every day to ordinary tasks. In a meeting, you might say, "That's a good idea, Chris", but it would be so specific to the task that you couldn't state it as a "brilliant humanities insight". What you want is someone who "thinks different", as the saying goes.
This is not intended as an insult to Marshall McLuhan. It would be an insult to reduce his work to a pithy quote. As I said, there's no substitute for doing the work. One has to study his work, not just grab excerpts.
As a former philosophy PhD student, I don't think it's good career advice. My philosophy degrees got me precisely zero jobs in tech. Nobody cares.
The best career decision I ever made wasn't studying philosophy; it was starting my own business. I hired myself, because nobody else would, and now I don't have to worry about layoffs, job interviews, or all the other employer BS.
An anecdote from the book "Steve Jobs in Exile" I just read: at the beginning of one product announcement, Jobs told the audience that he was a little nervous, but his coworkers said that he was never nervous for keynotes. It was pure manipulation.
He doesn't actually answer the question until over 25 seconds have passed!
He takes a sip of water, sits in silence, the crowd starts heckling. Jobs gives a small quip to buy time. Sits in silence again. It's an eternity on stage.
There were what I would graciously call zealots who were adamant Apple had to build on OpenDoc to break Microsoft’s nascent monopoly with Office. When Jobs adequately cancelled all efforts on OpenDoc under the very correct vision that you can’t ship OpenDoc in a shrink wrap package, those zealots were furious.
I assume the coworkers were talking about the practice talks, since we are as good judges of the real talks as the coworkers are, the talks being publicly available.
Or are you saying that they claimed he was nervous before the talks or backstage, but that the nerves went away once he stepped onstage? If so, why would he need to manipulate his coworkers into thinking he's nervous?
Or are you saying that he was nervous during the talks in a way that couldn't be captured by the cameras or the audience? In which case again - manipulation wouldn't have worked.
Or am I missing something?
EDIT: It seems I misread the original comment - he actually told the audience he was nervous. I'd love to know which product announcement that was and see it for myself. I'm still not sure how a coworker would be able to know what he was feeling any better than the audience did.
> > I'm still not sure how a coworker would be able to know what he was feeling any better than the audience did.
> Because his coworkers had known him for years, worked through many product announcements with him, and the audience did not?
I'm skeptical. There are video interviews from that era (I think) where he appears very nervous on camera, asking repeatedly if "we're on", self-interrupting and asking for a second try to attempt an answer, taking lots of sips of water, etc. I'd have to try to find the video.
EDIT: here it is, his first TV appearance (1978), he is extremely nervous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODMJE6lDbY. So it doesn't contradict the anecdote from the NeXT era, but certainly seems like he got used to the job rather than simply being some kind of psychopath/manipulator.
Sounds like an interesting book though, I'll check it out.
Obviously lying to people you know is generally unhealthy but when you are putting on a performance to an audience I don’t judge so harshly. Of course I imagine he did both.
I'm sure the pause is something he rehearsed at some point, but I've watched a few of his Q&As where he's done it. If I recall, he was even doing it in the 90s (the Q&A I'm thinking of is the one where he picks up a chair and pretends to use it as a shield). So while I'm sure it was something he originally rehearsed, it undoubtedly just became a habit of his over time.
> Hackenburg found that models trained to become more persuasive also ended up being less truthful.
> Even in Hackenburg’s recent preprint, Claude spouted numerous inaccuracies and falsehoods
> when Hackenburg ran his competition of coached elite debaters and AI, there was one way he could bring AI down to human levels of persuasiveness: by forcing it to write human-length messages at human writing speed.
> they found that an AI could talk people into conspiracy theories, and that the magnitude of their increase in belief was roughly the same as that of the decrease in belief after talking to a debunking bot.
We went to the Moon as a bit of Cold War posturing, to plant the American flag and demonstrate superiority over Soviets. After that was accomplished, we lost interest.
You know what's really hard? Solving longstanding social issues. How about we try that instead.
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