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1glitch0 posted:People make fun of the guy, but he has a very good point. We might just not be worth expanding as a species Before you go too far down that line of thinking, I want you to pause and ponder two questions: "Would I say the same about other species on earth?" and "Is humanity unique among other species?" If the answer to either of these questions is "No", and you still think that life on earth is precious, then there's a contradiction here. And if you don't think life on earth is precious, well, then why do anything? May as well just commit suicide.
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Jul 14, 2019 00:49
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DrSunshine posted:Before you go too far down that line of thinking, I want you to pause and ponder two questions: "Would I say the same about other species on earth?" and "Is humanity unique among other species?" There's no contradiction if his answers are "No" and "Yes, uniquely poo poo"
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Jul 14, 2019 00:58
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1glitch0 posted:People make fun of the guy, but he has a very good point. We might just not be worth expanding as a species. We might (probably) cause more ill than good. We've polluted the planet beyond the point of no return, the second we were able to get into orbit we started polluting that with space junk. Hell, Amazon wants to send up 3,000 satellites soon. Anything we've been able to touch from the moon to Mars we've just left poo poo on. If life exists somewhere like Europa then humanity somehow getting to Europa is probably the worst case scenario for life on Europa. On the other hand, a bunch of space trash on uninhabited rocks doesn't hurt anyone.
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Jul 14, 2019 01:07
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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dex_sda posted:There's no contradiction if his answers are "No" and "Yes, uniquely poo poo" High five for saving me the trouble! Also, once dolphins or elephants develop their own space program I can evaluate their progression as a species and come to an opinion on if I think it would be wise for them to start exposing the universe to themselves.
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Jul 14, 2019 01:09
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suck my woke dick posted:On the other hand, a bunch of space trash on uninhabited rocks doesn't hurt anyone. Do we know Mars is uninhabited? And what happens when we leave space trash on the first planet which IS inhabited that we don't realize it's inhabited and infect the locals with something? Even if it's small basic life. And we gently caress it up. I'm just not sure what we're bringing to the table where we shouldn't be using extreme caution and this isn't a species known for extreme caution.
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Jul 14, 2019 01:16
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Infecting aliens with diseases or aliens infecting us is probably not very likely for the same reason you aren't going to catch Dutch elm disease any time soon.
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Jul 14, 2019 01:22
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1glitch0 posted:High five for saving me the trouble! But how do you know that? There's no guarantee that something else will evolve in a few million years that will be able to develop a space program. What if humanity is the only species on earth that ever manages to do it? Say humans vanished from the world tomorrow, and nothing - not some descendant of elephants or whales or chimps - nothing ever does it again. Life continues as it always has for the past 500 million years or so, reproducing and evolving, and then as the sun gets hotter, plants will be unable to cope and the whole planetary ecosystem collapses. Then, after another billion years or so, the sun will swallow the earth and even bacteria will be gone. What will the point of any of it be? How can this be a good thing that you look forward to? All of the suffering, all of the evolution, all of the work that people have done to try to protect one species or another, all of it -- none of it will have mattered.
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Jul 14, 2019 01:25
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DrSunshine posted:But how do you know that? There's no guarantee that something else will evolve in a few million years that will be able to develop a space program. What if humanity is the only species on earth that ever manages to do it? Say humans vanished from the world tomorrow, and nothing - not some descendant of elephants or whales or chimps - nothing ever does it again. Life continues as it always has for the past 500 million years or so, reproducing and evolving, and then as the sun gets hotter, plants will be unable to cope and the whole planetary ecosystem collapses. Then, after another billion years or so, the sun will swallow the earth and even bacteria will be gone. Even if we manage to 'save' things, there is an universal (literally) limit of how long this can keep going on. Eventually, the universe is gonna reach death of one kind of another - entropy is merciless. Does that change whether things matter? Does the timeframe we manage to continue make it matter more or less? These are rhetorical questions, of course. In philosophy, the examination of these led to existentialism. Your mistake is assuming a) things have a point, and b) that things not having a point is bad (as evidenced by your 'might as well commit suicide if nothing matters'). In a nutshell, just because someone's a nihilist and believes nothing matters doesn't mean that person then abandons their life. Instead, it leaves them free to find their own meaning. It's actually very liberating to reach this conclusion, and be able to pursue your own interests, experiences and ideals as your raison d'etre. Perhaps your meaning is to continue this as long as we can. That's fine. 1glitch0's meaning seems to be that humanity isn't good for other lifeforms around, and while he (probably) enjoys his life and tries to do good he thinks it might be better for the collective us to peter out to obscurity - even if intelligence in this corner of the universe goes with us. That's also fine, from an existentialistic, nihilistic standpoint. But you're arguing past each other, because your idea of value is different. dex_sda fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Jul 14, 2019 |
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Jul 14, 2019 01:37
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What about this. The universe has no life other than our own and whats on earth. By developing space travel, we can preserve *all* like on Earth, across the cosmos, like Noah's Ark. If the Great Filter is behind us, then its likely far enough behind us that maybe trees and bushes and ants, and fish simply just don't exist anywhere else. Ergo, space exploration is a net good, because of how much more life of all kinds that will continue to exist. The ethics of like, if its okay to release cats and dogs and burmese pythons in some other planets ecosystem can wait until we actually discover the existence of such. Like I assume some of these posters believe genocide is bad, why do they support genocide of everyone? I don't think people in the third world appreciate having their cultures being eliminated forever because of the poor decisions of white people?
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Jul 14, 2019 01:54
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"Humanity doesn't deserve to travel into space" is just a doubling down on the standard complaint that space travel should not be attempted until every possible wrong is righted on Earth. It's dumb and should not be taken seriously, because it's not put forth in good faith.
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Jul 14, 2019 04:35
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I actually do think critiquing our current system of resource allocation that's leading towards Billionaires playing with rockets to make them horny while we ignore the climate catastrophe is actually a critique that can be made in good faith. Then again, I think Gil Scott-Heron was in good faith too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
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Jul 14, 2019 04:53
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Truely once we end the Apollo program once and for all racism will end.
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Jul 14, 2019 05:02
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Trabisnikof posted:I actually do think critiquing our current system of resource allocation that's leading towards Billionaires playing with rockets to make them horny while we ignore the climate catastrophe is actually a critique that can be made in good faith. In my belief, we should focus on surviving and repairing from the climate crisis in order to explore and colonize space. Absolutely we should be making some investments into robot probes and SETI and stuff - basic science is very important, but the overarching focus of society should be to making sure that we and as many life forms as possible survive the abrupt climate change. My basic belief is that all the good things that leftists advocate for - UBI, socialism, anti-racism, anti-discrimination, environmental protection, fully automated luxury communism, etc. - are prerequisites to a society that can peacefully explore the universe. Therefore, if we want to ensure that we're not annihilated by a random space catastrophe, or simply obliterated by the natural evolution of the sun, it's incumbent upon us to work towards all those goals.
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Jul 14, 2019 05:12
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Truely once we end the Apollo program once and for all racism will end. Good luck with the singularity for whites only
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Jul 14, 2019 05:33
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Unoriginal Name posted:Good luck with the singularity for whites only Like literally, they ended apollo and slashed NASA's budget by 90%. How did cutting science do anything for racism? How would cutting science budgets ever do anything for that? America spends more on star wars media than it does on actual space ships, what posible metric could someone look at society and say "too many spaceships, that's our problem"
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Jul 14, 2019 05:36
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Unoriginal Name posted:Good luck with the singularity for whites only How does everyone dying help non-whites? Trabisnikof posted:I actually do think critiquing our current system of resource allocation that's leading towards Billionaires playing with rockets to make them horny while we ignore the climate catastrophe is actually a critique that can be made in good faith. Which is why there should be a UN space organization funded collectively by the UN member states with most of the burden by the Permanent Security Council members and the extended temporary members. I'm not arguing that privately funded space exploration is good, especially when it mostly free rides off of publicly funded research that made it possible for a profit. The state should be massively be funded it as a collective, collaborative international effort; with a significant part of that effort dedicated to studying and combating climate change. DrSunshine posted:In my belief, we should focus on surviving and repairing from the climate crisis in order to explore and colonize space. Absolutely we should be making some investments into robot probes and SETI and stuff - basic science is very important, but the overarching focus of society should be to making sure that we and as many life forms as possible survive the abrupt climate change. My basic belief is that all the good things that leftists advocate for - UBI, socialism, anti-racism, anti-discrimination, environmental protection, fully automated luxury communism, etc. - are prerequisites to a society that can peacefully explore the universe. Therefore, if we want to ensure that we're not annihilated by a random space catastrophe, or simply obliterated by the natural evolution of the sun, it's incumbent upon us to work towards all those goals. My beef with this is it concedes too much ground to what is nearly entirely a bad faith argument to begin. Both goals can be taken on at the same time.
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Jul 14, 2019 05:44
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Trabisnikof posted:I actually do think critiquing our current system of resource allocation that's leading towards Billionaires playing with rockets to make them horny while we ignore the climate catastrophe is actually a critique that can be made in good faith.
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Jul 14, 2019 06:47
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DrSunshine posted:In my belief, we should focus on surviving and repairing from the climate crisis in order to explore and colonize space. Absolutely we should be making some investments into robot probes and SETI and stuff - basic science is very important, but the overarching focus of society should be to making sure that we and as many life forms as possible survive the abrupt climate change. My basic belief is that all the good things that leftists advocate for - UBI, socialism, anti-racism, anti-discrimination, environmental protection, fully automated luxury communism, etc. - are prerequisites to a society that can peacefully explore the universe. Therefore, if we want to ensure that we're not annihilated by a random space catastrophe, or simply obliterated by the natural evolution of the sun, it's incumbent upon us to work towards all those goals. Hard disagree. I feel we as a species should learn to outgrow our primitive need to grow and spread our seed at any cost. When I compare it to the mentality of a cancer cell, I mean it: a cancer cell seeks to consume resources and grow and spread at any costs, even if it means the ultimate death of its host and itself. Everything you just said sounds like that to me. We learn to be content with our boundaries here on Eden, we can end the unsustainable drive to consume ever more resources. We can learn to find equilibrium. But if we get out into space, especially with the explicit goal of spreading ourselves as much as possible? Then we're essentially dooming our species to who knows how long of an existence spent seeking more resources to consume. That sounds horrible to me. And if an asteroid or nuclear war or whatever does end our civilization here on Earth? Then it was just our time to go. All that has a beginning must have an end, the laws of thermodynamics dictate it. Earth is our cradle; I believe it should also be our tomb. I'm at peace with that idea. I hope you someday can be, too.
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Jul 14, 2019 07:00
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I'm perfectly fine with the cradle of humanity being your grave.
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Jul 14, 2019 07:02
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Won't someone think of the innocent rocks? What will they do is someone steps on them??? All humans are cancer who might consume these noble collections of lifeleas matter - edglord kerning chameleon, 2019
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Jul 14, 2019 09:31
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Kerning Chameleon posted:Hard disagree. I feel we as a species should learn to outgrow our primitive need to grow and spread our seed at any cost. When I compare it to the mentality of a cancer cell, I mean it: a cancer cell seeks to consume resources and grow and spread at any costs, even if it means the ultimate death of its host and itself. Everything you just said sounds like that to me. I don't know what you had to go through but i hope you can heal some day. 
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Jul 14, 2019 11:03
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Kerning Chameleon posted:Hard disagree. I feel we as a species should learn to outgrow our primitive need to grow and spread our seed at any cost. When I compare it to the mentality of a cancer cell, I mean it: a cancer cell seeks to consume resources and grow and spread at any costs, even if it means the ultimate death of its host and itself. Everything you just said sounds like that to me. Growing and spreading and consuming resources until depletion (or until feedback through predation/disease/... lower your reproductive rate) are universal among known life. I would ask whether you're in favour of global nuclear war, but it's almost certain that enough rock bacteria will survive to eventually evolve complex life again, some of which could conceivably attempt to build rockets. Therefore, I interpret your position as advocating the construction of giant thrusters to push the Earth into the Sun. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Jul 14, 2019 |
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Jul 14, 2019 13:24
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ashpanash posted:Yes, I suspect that life coming from Earth-like planets will probably be carbon-based. That's begging the question, though. What about potential life from other circumstances? What about life that evolved on the surface of a neutron star, Hi I'm the lifeform that evolved up on a loving neutron star. I'm 2 millimeters tall, made entirely out of neutrons somehow and my body temperature is roughly a million degrees kelvin AMA.
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Jul 14, 2019 13:26
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Trabisnikof posted:I actually do think critiquing our current system of resource allocation that's leading towards Billionaires playing with rockets to make them horny while we ignore the climate catastrophe is actually a critique that can be made in good faith. I can understand the crux of the critique, but it's hard to take too seriously. "We as a society should not attempt ______ until we overthrow capitalism, establish a global utopia, and terraform the planet" is a pretty high bar, and not actually specific to space travel. And to my mind, space offers better opportunities for achieving those sorts of goals (asteroid mining, solar power generation, satellite infrastructure, planetary colonization, international cooperation, etc.) than anything on Earth (where the main obstacles are largely intransigent political and socioeconomic power structures, rather than technical challenges). More to the point, global public spending on space travel has always been very low - estimates place it at about $4 per person each year - it's hardly standing in the way of any social or environmental remediation programs. Kaal fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Jul 14, 2019 |
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Jul 14, 2019 14:54
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Kaal posted:the main obstacles are largely intransigent political and socioeconomic power structures, rather than technical challenges Yes.
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Jul 14, 2019 15:00
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Kerning Chameleon posted:Hard disagree. I feel we as a species should learn to outgrow our primitive need to grow and spread our seed at any cost. When I compare it to the mentality of a cancer cell, I mean it: a cancer cell seeks to consume resources and grow and spread at any costs, even if it means the ultimate death of its host and itself. Everything you just said sounds like that to me. This isn't ethically, morally, or logically, you're decision to make or your place to judge. It's also contradictory. We more or less already expanded across the entire surface of the globe and live everywhere conveniently habitable for us, and though geoengineering made things mostly uninhabitable barely habitable at great expense. If we have, by definition, already expanded for the sake of expansion, and then in your words "learned to make do with our resources in a sustainable way" then why can't we expand a little further, a few extra planets, and learn to use those sustainable *and* now also have redundancy? I get your probably just a terrible troll but at least try to be logically consistent. Like you're against (us) humans, expanding because ostensibly we displace or consume resources used by other life, but your fine with all life, human and otherwise, all dying? The idea that your insisting on that there is a natural "ending time" for our species is just wholly inconsistent with your first principles; if one species of ants, displaces and exterminates and out-competes another species of ants, you'd be fine with this; this is a contradiction.
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Jul 14, 2019 16:22
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It just comes from this absurd stance that "Let the world burn" is a considered philosophical position rather than a juvenile act of lashing out against "the system". I wouldn't spill too much ink over it.
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Jul 14, 2019 17:38
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Axetrain posted:Hi I'm the lifeform that evolved up on a loving neutron star. I'm 2 millimeters tall, made entirely out of neutrons somehow and my body temperature is roughly a million degrees kelvin AMA.
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Jul 14, 2019 18:09
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There's no reason to think that creatures made out of neutronium could exist. That's the realm of science fiction. What we DO know is that carbon compounds are abundant, readily synthesised de novo in reducing atmosphere conditions, and have generating life before because we're products of that process. Ergo, the life forms we will encounter will likely be carbon-water based because if the ubiquity of those compounds and their proven ability to support life. So why circle jerk about living rocks or self-replicating eddie currents in solar winds when we should be looking for liquid water and carbon compounds?
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Jul 14, 2019 19:06
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mycomancy posted:There's no reason to think that creatures made out of neutronium could exist. That's the realm of science fiction. Looking for them how?
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Jul 14, 2019 20:18
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Looking for them how? Remote viewing.
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Jul 14, 2019 20:40
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If you are willing to read "Whitey on the Moon" as being about public attention, focus and empathy, it makes perfect sense.Axetrain posted:Hi I'm the lifeform that evolved up on a loving neutron star. I'm 2 millimeters tall, made entirely out of neutrons somehow and my body temperature is roughly a million degrees kelvin AMA.
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Jul 14, 2019 20:54
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lllllllllllllllllll posted:If you are willing to read "Whitey on the Moon" as being about public attention, focus and empathy, it makes perfect sense. It's extremely clearly saying "how can we be the richest and most advanced country on earth and have our people still live in this much poverty and oppression", it's not like, a budget plan where he is proposing that racism is caused by nasa.
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Jul 14, 2019 21:01
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mycomancy posted:There's no reason to think that creatures made out of neutronium could exist. That's the realm of science fiction. Yeah, I agree with this. Like okay, we can't positively rule out other sorts of life forms, but from everything we do seem to know they seem really improbable. Fun to imagine in fiction of course.
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Jul 14, 2019 21:24
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Stoner Sloth posted:Yeah, I agree with this. Like okay, we can't positively rule out other sorts of life forms, but from everything we do seem to know they seem really improbable. At our level of technology I think we would say the same about our form of life if we weren’t looking right at it. No one would take serious the idea of a human brain if we didn’t see they existed. Its based on a million unlikely sounding speculative ideas (except we have them and can look and see they work)
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Jul 14, 2019 23:11
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:At our level of technology I think we would say the same about our form of life if we weren’t looking right at it. No one would take serious the idea of a human brain if we didn’t see they existed. Its based on a million unlikely sounding speculative ideas (except we have them and can look and see they work) This post is the dumbest OOCC post I've ever read.
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Jul 14, 2019 23:31
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mycomancy posted:This post is the dumbest OOCC post I've ever read. other than the fact we can easily pick up living things and see they exist nothing about our current level of technology indicates the level of nanotech engineering that goes into life is even remotely possible.
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Jul 14, 2019 23:41
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:other than the fact we can easily pick up living things and see they exist nothing about our current level of technology indicates the level of nanotech engineering that goes into life is even remotely possible. I take it back. This one is the dumbest OOCC post I've ever read. Holy poo poo dude you're so loving dense I wonder if you're not some sort of poorly coded neural net that some goon scientist developed and is training by posting on the forums.
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Jul 14, 2019 23:44
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mycomancy posted:I take it back. How is it dumb? Are you saying that it's just so obvious that a thing like a cell is physically possible and that everyone would just know that across the universe? We have been studying them for hundreds of years and we still can't make anything like them. A scientist from a planet without cells or brains would understand the chemical reactions but the idea "you can make a polymer out of carbon atoms" to 'you could make a cat out of this" is a big jump that isn't particularly obvious and takes a ton of leaps of logic on how any of that would work.
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Jul 15, 2019 00:01
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:How is it dumb? Are you saying that it's just so obvious that a thing like a cell is physically possible and that everyone would just know that across the universe? We have been studying them for hundreds of years and we still can't make anything like them. A scientist from a planet without cells or brains would understand the chemical reactions but the idea "you can make a polymer out of carbon atoms" to 'you could make a cat out of this" is a big jump that isn't particularly obvious and takes a ton of leaps of logic on how any of that would work. I wouldn't call it dumb really, but I wouldn't agree with it either. I would say that yes, yes given what we know the formation of cells is obviously physically possible. A basic cell-like vesicle form easily enough in water due to molecules that are hydrophillic on one end and hydrophobic on the other. Autocatalytic RNA exists and can 'reproduce' from available nucleotides (which can form spontaneously due to carbon chemistry) and can indeed 'mutate' so that the best 'reproducing' RNA has an advantage and becomes more common that other RNA. The basic building blocks of life from lipids, sugars, amino acids and nucleotides all form readily and often spontaneously even in space. Like we might not expect carbon based life if it was completely outside of our experience but we understand the mechanisms and reasons behind it enough to see that it's clearly possible in principle and we'd have examples of complex carbon chemistry to the extent that it'd be way less surprising than silicon, gallium, lead or tin based life let alone anything more exotic. Put it this way, silicon based life is the most probable 'exotic' life form based on our current levels of understanding and even that's got so many issues because silicon forms weaker bonds than carbon usually except when forming giant lattices without sufficient variation to make anything much more interesting than rocks. Like even silane, the equivalent to methane, spontaneously combusts in most plausible environments. Sure there are peculiar conditions in which slightly more complex chemistry of silicon could possibly emerge but in general it doesn't readily form things much longer than 3 silicon atom chains. Compare this with carbon and DNA strands that in humans are about 2 meters long. Also most of those exotic conditions suitable for stable, interesting silicon chemistry involve extreme cold to help stabilize the silicon based molecules that would make pretty much every other function of life harder and most chemical reactions very slow. e: Guessing I'm wrong about some of this, particularly having read back over some older posts but it still seems really unlikely that silicon could do the job of carbon without some really weird and specific set up. Stoner Sloth fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Jul 15, 2019 |
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Jul 15, 2019 00:14
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