Utopia Talk / Politics / James Webb Telescope

murder Member	Mon Jan 03 15:06:33 Is already having issues. Something caused a 2 day delay in tensioning the sunshield. It was supposedly started today, and is expected to take several days. And now the date for the next step (secondary mirror deployment) is "to be determined". But not to worry, we only spent $10 billion and a quarter of century on it.
Nekran Member	Mon Jan 03 15:57:53 Nothing's gone wrong afaik. The deployment steps were spaced out so they could be flexible. They decided to do some tests regarding its behavior in actual outer space and tensioning has started now. I'm superexcited about this thing and been following it closely. 10 billion is nothing compared to what this thing could teach humanity.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon Jan 03 18:48:04 We should be putting at least 1 trillion USD towards space exploration annually.
murder Member	Mon Jan 03 18:48:51 Why?
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon Jan 03 19:13:32 Because the people who run this place are fucking stupid.
Nekran Member	Mon Jan 03 23:34:46 To learn about the universe we live in?
Rugian Member	Mon Jan 03 23:39:37 Murder would rather spend the money on leftist pet causes like giving free crack to the homeless and legalizing gay marriage in Sub-Saharan Africa.
smart dude Member	Mon Jan 03 23:46:08 A quick Google search reveals nothing but articles about how well the mission is going. Don't know what murder is blathering about.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 04 05:19:33 Nim: I think the reverse once space x starship is running. While I think the potential demand for starship is limited - I don't think manned missions are going to explode demand - what it does do is completely remove all the constraints that have driven NASA's space missions. All that effort is based on a $ spent on R&D effort yielding more than a $ of reduced launch cost - or is otherwise a fundamental requirement for the project to be possible at all. When launch costs and fairing space cease to be constraints, that opens up huge opportunities. This has huge implications: much of the R&D costs and delays with something like James Webb is that the entire thing is weight and space optimised - and use bespoke materials to do that, and bespoke logistics and manufacturing tail for those materials. What do space missions look like when you can use off-the-shelf components? What does it mean when you can validate components lifecycle by simply putting them into orbit? NASA looks very obsolete in some ways - they will have a lot of people with very niche project management and R&D skills that may now be obsolete - the best way to catalyse a change is actually to tighten budgets.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 04 05:21:49 Lets say a moon buggy: it doesn't need to be a specialised designed and built from the ground up. Maybe it's a Nissan Leaf stripped down to it's chassis, re-fitted with with vacuum compatible lubricants/plastics.
murder Member	Tue Jan 04 05:22:03 "To learn about the universe we live in?" How about spending that money to learn about the universe we live in ... a little closer to home? Like you know ... the planet we actually live on and will be bound to for the duration of our existence? Or maybe spend it on practical matters like improving people's lives while we're all still here. "Murder would rather spend the money on leftist pet causes like giving free crack to the homeless and legalizing gay marriage in Sub-Saharan Africa." I don't support the first and have no interest in spending a dime to secure the second.
murder Member	Tue Jan 04 05:23:16 "A quick Google search reveals nothing but articles about how well the mission is going. Don't know what murder is blathering about." If only the mission had a Twitter account to keep people up to date on the goings on ... http://twitter.com/NASAWebb
murder Member	Tue Jan 04 05:24:27 NASA Webb Telescope @NASAWebb We successfully deployed #NASAWebb’s port sunshield mid-boom, which pulls out our 5 sunshield layers. While scheduled for earlier today, our team paused to confirm the sunshield cover had fully rolled up: https://go.nasa.gov/3pL07Tn #UnfoldTheUniverse 7:29 PM · Dec 31, 2021 http://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1477074540081692680
murder Member	Tue Jan 04 05:25:25 NASA Webb Telescope @NASAWebb When switches did not trigger to indicate the sunshield covers were rolled up, team members used temperature data & gyroscope sensors to confirm that they had. This analysis took extra time, but allowed the team to move forward. #UnfoldTheUniverse 7:29 PM · Dec 31, 2021 http://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1477074542241763330
murder Member	Tue Jan 04 05:26:21 NASA Webb Telescope @NASAWebb To ensure that #NASAWebb is in prime condition for its next major step, our team has decided to focus today on learning more about how Webb behaves in space. Sunshield tensioning has been moved to no earlier than tomorrow, Jan. 3. https://go.nasa.gov/3eJewsP #UnfoldTheUniverse 1:59 PM · Jan 2, 2022 http://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1477716175161372678
murder Member	Tue Jan 04 05:27:58 There is also a website where you can follow along ... http://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html The deployment is several days behind schedule. That doesn't mean that in the end everything won't function properly, but it does mean that there have already been glitches.
Nekran Member	Tue Jan 04 06:26:56 "How about spending that money to learn about the universe we live in ... a little closer to home? Like you know ... the planet we actually live on and will be bound to for the duration of our existence?" The 2 are hardly mutually exclusive. Also learning about the rest of the universe will teach us a lot about our own planet as well. It's a short sighted comment. "Or maybe spend it on practical matters like improving people's lives while we're all still here." Once again, the knowledge gained likely will improve people's lives. You're being very shortsighted here. Much like people not seeing the point about messing about with electricity back in the day, gaining knowledge about the world and the universe we live in has intrinsic value and repays us manifold over in ways we can't always fathom at the moment when the initial discoveries are being made. Nobody thought quantum mechanics or general relativity would lead to all of the amazing technologies that rely on these theories today. The pursuit of knowledge for knwledge's sake has easily been the best investment humanity has made. "The deployment is several days behind schedule. That doesn't mean that in the end everything won't function properly, but it does mean that there have already been glitches." A deployment that consciously left gaps between stages so that they could be flexible. Everyone involved would've gleefully signed for the current state of things to be as it is. The negative tone of the OP really is very uncalled for. I mean... that thing is going to observe the universe for us from over a million miles out. We will (hopefully, if all goes well) witness the formation of galaxies as they happened over 13 billion years ago. We will peer through the cosmic dust into places hitherto hidden to us. We will learn so much more about the planets in other planetary systems. How could these things not excite you more than... a less than 1% increase in US benefit payments in 2021? Do you really think that would be a better investment in the long run? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's a lot of allocating of funds that could happen way better. But this is one budget I would most certainly increase, rather than decrease. For the good of everybody.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 04 06:53:54 Seb Building colonies on the Moon and Mars are going to be expensive. Researching new propulsion, throwing money into physics to see if we can open worm holes. Be creative my man!
murder Member	Tue Jan 04 07:54:47 "The 2 are hardly mutually exclusive. Also learning about the rest of the universe will teach us a lot about our own planet as well. It's a short sighted comment." You can't spend the same dollar in two places. "Once again, the knowledge gained likely will improve people's lives. You're being very shortsighted here." That's a sales pitch, not reality. "Nobody thought quantum mechanics or general relativity would lead to all of the amazing technologies that rely on these theories today. The pursuit of knowledge for knwledge's sake has easily been the best investment humanity has made." No I'm pretty sure that agriculture and medicine and infrastructure were all better investments and contributed more to quality of life. I'm old enough to remember when no one owned a pc, or had a cell phone let alone a smart phone, and there was no internet or GPS. We got along fine. Stepping over the homeless to launch a telescope into space is nothing more than not giving a damn. "A deployment that consciously left gaps between stages so that they could be flexible. Everyone involved would've gleefully signed for the current state of things to be as it is. The negative tone of the OP really is very uncalled for." There was a schedule for deployment. Tensioning of the sunshield was supposed to be completed by day 8 or 9 (I forget which), and now it has started on day 11 and won't be complete for days. That's a delay, and the delay was due to glitches. I'm not making it up. "We will (hopefully, if all goes well) witness the formation of galaxies as they happened over 13 billion years ago. We will peer through the cosmic dust into places hitherto hidden to us. We will learn so much more about the planets in other planetary systems. How could these things not excite you more than... a less than 1% increase in US benefit payments in 2021?" Because people are hungry and need shelter and healthcare? I don't even know how to respond to that. Spending billions exploring space when we're not even meeting everyone's needs right here just screams "We need to invest this money so that some day the wealthy can find a new home once we've exhausted this rock." "Do you really think that would be a better investment in the long run?" I don't know that there's going to be a long run, so I'm not going to worry about that. Humanity could be long gone in 1000 years. Feed the hungry. One of the people you save from a life of crime may be the one who makes the next great discovery that advances human civilization. Hell, educate them while you're at it.
Nekran Member	Tue Jan 04 08:12:27 "No I'm pretty sure that agriculture and medicine and infrastructure were all better investments and contributed more to quality of life." If agriculture was a good idea is very debatable... Furthermore you think medicine would be where it is today if it wasn't for people persuing knowledge just for the sake of knowledge? "I don't know that there's going to be a long run, so I'm not going to worry about that. Humanity could be long gone in 1000 years." You don't know if you'll be alive tomorrow or not, but I'm assuming you live like you will be. What a silly argument. "Hell, educate them while you're at it." There would be mightily few to educate them about if it were up to people like you, apparently. I mean... I'm a socialist. I'm all for making sure people live in the best possible circumstances. But the idea that spending money on science like this isn't worthy until all 7 billion of us are well off is nothing short of shortsighted insanity.
murder Member	Tue Jan 04 08:31:57 "I mean... I'm a socialist. I'm all for making sure people live in the best possible circumstances." I'm not. I'm for providing the poor with the basics and opportunities. I'm for good policy, not socialism. This is the bizarre mentality that I encounter every time I argue with a right-winger. They think that caring for the poor is socialism. It's not. Socialism is what happens when you don't. The best protection for a happy capitalist society where Elon Musk can't stack cash and stock options to the moon or mars is to take care of the poor so that they don't rise up and take what you won't give them ... and take everything else in the process. "But the idea that spending money on science like this isn't worthy until all 7 billion of us are well off is nothing short of shortsighted insanity." It's not insane, it's the only policy that makes sense. But quite frankly there are entire swaths of humanity that I don't give a fuck about. I'm talking about the US.
Nekran Member	Tue Jan 04 08:50:36 Eh... everything's a spectrum. Unbridled capitalism is a disaster, as is pure communism. Using the terms at all is its own problem, really... Wherever you are on this spectrum though, you really lose my trust when you're not in support of the advancement of science. To see what great things humanity has achieved thanks to only such a small fraction of our means allocated towards it. To argue reducing this fraction even more completely baffles me. And to then be a nationalist as well... that the wellbeing of only the people living inside some imaginary lines on a map is more important to you than the advancement of human knwoledge is completely incomprehensible to me.
murder Member	Tue Jan 04 09:05:27 "Wherever you are on this spectrum though, you really lose my trust when you're not in support of the advancement of science." I'm all for the advancement of science. But science is a big space. I'd rather focus on practical stuff. "And to then be a nationalist as well... that the wellbeing of only the people living inside some imaginary lines on a map is more important to you than the advancement of human knwoledge is completely incomprehensible to me." If there's advancements to be made from staring into the distant past, then the nerds should fund it privately. Of course nobody really believes that, so taxpayers get stuck with the bill. There's plenty of human knowledge to be advanced on this rock.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 04 12:25:23 Murder It simply does not occur to people like you that some of the problems on this planet are unsolvable and inherent to the fact that there are too many different factions with diametrically opposing and conflicting visions for a good life and society. Have you ever though about what you could do if you got to build a society with like minded people?
murder Member	Tue Jan 04 12:32:05 "Have you ever though about what you could do if you got to build a society with like minded people?" I could be all by myself. :o)
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 04 12:42:51 Well there you go, but there is no amount of money or science that is going to fix irreconcilable aspects of the dozens and dozens of competing and conflicting ideologies and fault lines. In fact most of the technological progress of the last 3 decades have only compounded and amplified them. ¨ You are living on the same planet in 2022 where there is a group called the Taliban that go around forcing musicians to demolish their own instrument. Have you forgotten about Trump? You think that shit is over?
Sam Adams Member	Tue Jan 04 20:16:12 Nimatzo iChihuaha Mon Jan 03 18:48:04 We should be putting at least 1 trillion USD towards space exploration annually. Correct.
murder Member	Tue Jan 04 20:28:38 We must discover alien life so we can start killing them.
jergul large member	Wed Jan 05 04:45:47 Murder I despise lifeboat strategies, but I favour scientific endeavors. Remember that religion's monopoly on truth ended because we literally started looking at stars. But for the rest. Fix earth, then think about hotels on mars.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed Jan 05 06:39:24 "I despise lifeboat strategies" Then you don't understand risk management. Though I do respect your willingness to go down with the ship, it is admirable. We just don't all want to go down with you captain. Someone has to survive to write books and poems about these acts of bravery :) There are of course multiple reasons, as with most endeavors, that make them worthwhile and valuable.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed Jan 05 06:46:02 My reason is more comparable with a divorce.
murder Member	Wed Jan 05 10:46:44 "Fix earth, then think about hotels on mars." Any lifeboats would just end up orbiting the earth anyway.
jergul large member	Wed Jan 05 11:51:01 Nimi The analogy is having the crew on deck making a lifeboat instead of steering the vessel. The lifeboat might be useful after you crash into something, but why not just steer the boat instead? Far easier and far more likely to give a good outcome.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed Jan 05 11:55:57 It's not a good analogy, it is a simplification that breaks down very early. There is not boat, there is no vessel and no lifeboats. There is no _one_ steering anything. It is just much better to talk about things as they are in this case.
murder Member	Wed Jan 05 12:01:07 The telescope is now almost 2/3 of the way to L2.
murder Member	Wed Jan 05 12:01:25 https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html
murder Member	Wed Jan 05 12:01:44 http://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html *cough* :o)
Nekran Member	Mon Jan 10 01:05:25 And it is fully deployed :D
murder Member	Mon Jan 10 06:29:29 Yep. And > than 78% of the way to L2.
Seb Member	Mon Jan 10 06:32:32 Nim: "Then you don't understand risk management." Oh contraire, I think he does. The problem with lifeboat strategies is that it only benefits people on the lifeboat - or the vague principle that it is better that some humans exist somewhere. From the perspective of an immortal programme manager in the sky managing human species as a project - sure. But from someone invested in actual people alive today and their descendants of most of them; colonising the mars does not mitigate risk to life on earth and existing human civilisation, and as a risk mitigation for the continuity of the human species it diverts resources from avoiding risks to earth based civilisations becoming issues, and managing those issues.
Nekran Member	Mon Jan 10 06:36:01 10 days of testing the mirror segment positioning still planned before arrival at L2 though. And then for like 5 months of calibration... the mind truly boggles. I've never in my life been as excited for a space mission as for this one :D
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon Jan 10 07:11:13 Seb There is no life boat strategy.
Seb Member	Mon Jan 10 07:17:33 Nim: I think some billionaires do - not all space related - and I suspect it is in part a motivation for e.g. Musk - not necessarily personal but in more grandiose terms. But there are people thinking personal lifeboat: there was a fantastic article I read from a futurologist who thought he was being hired for a private ted talk and found himself into a private conference/seminar put together by several billionaires looking at how to survive societal collapse.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon Jan 10 07:20:16 Interesting.
Seb Member	Mon Jan 10 09:59:27 Nim: The payoff for that story was he looked around the room towards the end and said something like "but collectively, the wealth in this room and the amount you are willing to invest to safeguard yourself would probably do more to protect you if you invested it in tackling the route causes" I'll see if I can find it - it was a year or more ago.
Seb Member	Mon Jan 10 10:05:26 It was a different retelling of this event in this article. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/23/tech-industry-wealth-futurism-transhumanism-singularity
Seb Member	Mon Jan 10 10:11:15 The problem with space is that space launch is terrible for the environment from a greenhouse perspective. So even stuff like "lets put heavy industry in space" is pretty awful unless we can do away with rockets. Even using synthetic fuels from non-fossil carbon result in nasty stuff being deposited in parts of the atmospheric column that cause bad effects. We need to reserve rockets for people, and use magnets and rail guns for physical stuff if the goal is some kind of genuine space faring civilisation integrated with a terrestrial economy.
Seb Member	Mon Jan 10 10:11:38 Plus, heat management is a bitch in space.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon Jan 10 11:32:24 "We need to reserve rockets for people, and use magnets and rail guns for physical stuff if the goal is some kind of genuine space faring civilisation integrated with a terrestrial economy." Great, put a trillion USD a year to research that stuff and space elevators, new propulsion and whatever else we need. I was just kidding though I don't find that kind of cynical speculations about the motivations of billionaires interesting nor concerning that it presents alternative costs that would doom earth. The kind of progress in space faring we are talking about would cover a lot of ground and fulfill many purposes. At least the billionaires are trying to get it done. This is more the plot of a kinda ok movie that is trying too hard.
Seb Member	Mon Jan 10 12:10:08 A trillion spent on fixing climate change and other issues would be better I think. Solve energy and you've solved space.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon Jan 10 12:31:18 "Solve energy and you've solved space." Not just space, you have solved "everything". Well this is one of the most productive thing you have said so far :) Make it 2 trillion dollars then! There are so many useless activities going on presenting low hanging alternative costs. Now here is the real cynic, the truth is we will probably destroy this place and still not have a life boat or have solved energy or anything. But we can dream :)
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Mon Jan 10 14:07:01 There is something that probably doesn't come through so clearly. For me, someone who does not believe in supernatural beings or find comfort and meaning in bronze age myths, the planets and stars is a direction, the idea of space exploration and colonization provides meaning and a sense of greater purpose, I'm not alone. The stuff out there is beautiful, awe inspiring, they make me feel small, but leaping into the frontier would make us be giants. We need that, maybe now more than ever, because those bronze age myths are not gone and to the extent that they are are, they have been replaced by modern day stupidity. We need something, like a colony on the moon that we can see from earth as a testament to the greatness of human ingenuity and science, right up there in the sky. I think we are fucked without a science driven purpose. Honestly, "global warming" while a problem we have to solve, is destructive and fear driven in its' message, it fuels anxiety and it certainly is not the stuff that dreams are made of. We need stuff to fuel our dreams. What is that worth?
Seb Member	Mon Jan 10 16:14:18 Nim: I thought that too - but fixing the planet is just as awesome a manifest destiny type thing as the stars. If we can't make life work here, we'll find nothing in the stars when we get there.
Habebe Member	Mon Jan 10 16:52:17 Seb, "The problem with lifeboat strategies is that it only benefits people on the lifeboat - or the vague principle that it is better that some humans exist somewhere." I think that is short sighted.Look at the early US colonies. The first few waves of people much like going to Mars sort ofnget the short end of the stick, its the multitudes later that really benefited. I don't see a big difference. Space exploration and it's related off shoots have great promise, look at mining possibilities as one example not to mention the ability to colonize new planets. I think your offering a false dichotomy in that somenof the best data we have about climate change comes from satellites that we learned to create/use through our space programs.
Seb Member	Mon Jan 10 17:33:19 Habebe: "I don't see a big difference." Colonising America wasn't a lifeboat strategy, it was economic expansion with a clear resource benefit to the colonising power: raw materials were imported back in exchange for goods exported out. Ok, try this: imagine that the reason for sending the colonists was because of a plague spread by rats. Sending the colonist meant some people got away with no rats, and no plague, and would survive. Everyone in Europe dies out. How did colonising America benefit any of the Europeans funding the colonisation programme? It didn't. They died. They might have been better off funding rat extermination programmes. Space exploration offers some possibility of economic benefits eventually. However in the short term: 1. every other planet in the solar system is more inhospitable than the most inhospitable continent on this planet and is vastly more expensive to live in and be a massive consumer of resources with no return to the Earth economy for the foreseeable future. 2. Nobody has yet come up with a compelling natural resource you can extract and send back to earth that has a positive NPV and would benefit from humans going out there - asteroid mining might have legs but is best and most cheaply done with robots. 3. The distances involved make trade difficult. In age of sail, it took 6 weeks to cross the Atlantic. It takes 7-9 months to get to Mars with various launch windows separated by years. 4. Rocket technology means any movement of significant mass of raw materials involves destroying the ozone layer (over the equator) and driving global warming. Alternative technologies are indistinguishable from WMD (e.g. mass drivers moving tens of thousands of tonnes worth of material to and from orbit). There may be niche industries that work well in space - but they need to involve high value for low mass in the product: e.g. mining incredibly valuable minerals and metals, producing novel materials that require weightless environments, things that require very high quality vacuum or can only be found in space.
murder Member	Mon Jan 10 18:07:49 "The kind of progress in space faring we are talking about would cover a lot of ground and fulfill many purposes. At least the billionaires are trying to get it done. This is more the plot of a kinda ok movie that is trying too hard." There is nothing of note being done. Everything is focused on more and farther. So far more has been achieved by littering LEO with thousands of satellites ... which is soon to be tens of thousands of satellites ... and then I suppose hundreds of thousands of satellites. Farther is still pending. In fact all this new energy still hasn't replicated was accomplished decades ago. I'm not even impressed in a low expectations kind of way. Launch something that can catch up to Voyager 1... then tell me how much we're advancing with all this spacefaring. How hard could it be? It's been nearly half a century. Or maybe something easier if we want to take tiny baby steps. Create a system that can go fix the James Webb Telescope if it needs repair like we did with Hubble decades ago.
Habebe Member	Mon Jan 10 20:22:25 Seb, "Colonising America wasn't a lifeboat strategy, it was economic expansion with a clear resource benefit to the colonising power: raw materials were imported back in exchange for goods exported out." It was different things to different people. There was a clearer direct economic benefit, true. But there are clear economic benefits to space travel. "Everyone in Europe dies out. How did colonising America benefit any of the Europeans funding the colonisation programme? It didn't. They died." And when two world wars ravaged Europe, Americans faired much better because they were an ocean away from the bulk of the fighting.Sounds like it worked out pretty good as a lifeboat in that context. "The distances involved make trade difficult. In age of sail, it took 6 weeks to cross the Atlantic. It takes 7-9 months to get to Mars with various launch windows separated by years." And now crossing the Atlantic can be done much faster, because we worked at it. The space shuttle cost a billion per luanch. Now IIRC its about 66 million. These are not unreasonable time frames. As for niche industries, military tech alone makes it a worthwhile investment. GPS, internet, and abilities like knowing if something is gonna crash into US have large mass appeal and are dropping exploration costs ALOT. It's a long term investment more than a short one, but even now space exploration is the reason we live in the modern world we live in.
Habebe Member	Mon Jan 10 21:44:22 Also, I think its a little short sighted to not count Marx's position and gravity as a spurce of income. No you can't sell its position but for mining trips it could be a game changer. The raw material your cold Anglo heart desires is out there, in insane quantities. Also we would be essentially creating real estate.That and again the expertise gained from colonisizing a planet is nothing to scoff at, just really long term.
Habebe Member	Mon Jan 10 21:44:23 Also, I think its a little short sighted to not count Marx's position and gravity as a spurce of income. No you can't sell its position but for mining trips it could be a game changer. The raw material your cold Anglo heart desires is out there, in insane quantities. Also we would be essentially creating real estate.That and again the expertise gained from colonisizing a planet is nothing to scoff at, just really long term.
murder Member	Mon Jan 10 22:22:03 "The space shuttle cost a billion per launch. Now IIRC its about 66 million." For the Falcon 9? Yes. The Delta IV ~ $165 million The Atlas V ~ $120 million
murder Member	Mon Jan 10 22:44:15 "In recent military launch contracts, the Air Force awarded SpaceX about $95 million per launch – as the national security nature of the missions come with additional requirements for the company." http://www...on-dollars-less-to-insure.html
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 02:02:10 Seb "I thought that too - but fixing the planet is just as awesome a manifest destiny type thing as the stars. If we can't make life work here, we'll find nothing in the stars when we get there." You don't really know what you are talking about. There are tons of people in your country (and elsewhere), who couldn't make life work where they came from, but are doing just great now when they left. It is as I said earlier to murder, it does not cross your mind that the reason things are not working out is because of the all the fucking idiots who make life difficult, nay impossible. Divorce, not a life boat, that applies to the American colonies as well, a lot of people fled from the _Europeans_ not plagues and wars, but the fucking idiots in Europe.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 11 03:45:47 Nim: " There are tons of people in your country (and elsewhere), who couldn't make life work where they came from, but are doing just great now when they left. " I'm not sure that's a reasonable comparison - but in any case I mean "If human civilisation can't make life work on Earth due to our inability to construct sustainable systems, then we are not going to be able to make it work in space"
Seb Member	Tue Jan 11 03:57:06 I suspect you cannot escape from idiots, and life in space is going to be even less tolerant of people "doing their own thing" as there are so many more constraints and the failure modes far more unforgiving.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 04:02:58 They are very reasonable if you understand that the how and why are different questions. We can agree that the how of speace colonization poses interesting technical challanges (where earthly migration does not), overcoming them is as I said the stuff of dreams and constructive and beneficial to all of humanity for multiple reasons tangible and non-tangible. However what I have been responding to, is the cynically (and speculative) misconstrued why question (life boats), which you are presenting as part of a false dichotomy of alternative costs. I think the billionaires would agree with what I am saying in private, the real impending disaster they want to get away from is, as always, people. That is how terrifying stupid people are, we rather take our chances in the cold vacuum of space. "then we are not going to be able to make it work in space" Probably because your definition of "work" is evolutionary meaningless and does not take into account what kinds of societies people can build if they get to build with like minded people. And then a few hundreds later that does not "work" and we keep migrating to new places. That is life and stuff "works".
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 04:04:27 "I suspect you cannot escape from idiots" The universe is a big place. Solve energy, then you solve space and the idiot problem as well.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 04:27:26 There is a wanderlust coded into our DNA that life on this planet until fairly recently afforded us in abundance and acted as a safety valve against rampant conflict. Not having this option is unnatural, as in this is how we evolved. Being forced to live with or near people you have little in common with is the ultimate cause of all conflicts. Yes *ultimate*, because we have inherently different values and proclivities that are not reconcilable with each other and many times in direct conflict. Making it "work on earth" is far more an idealist fiction than my science fiction dreams of colonizing other solar systems :P
jergul large member	Tue Jan 11 04:53:37 Nimi We will be back to Roman Empire population levels in a few hundred years on current western birth-death rates. Perhaps as many as 500 years as we move towards clinical immortality. Far less than the 73000 years NASA estimates it will take to get to the nearest potentially habitable planet.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 11 04:55:22 Nim: "Probably because your definition of "work" is evolutionary meaningless and does not take into account what kinds of societies people can build if they get to build with like minded people. And then a few hundreds later that does not "work" and we keep migrating to new places. That is life and stuff "works"" One need only look at the failure of various attempts to establish like minded "utopias" during the 18th and 19th centuries and today - every time people try to build "societies" that try to skip around the need to tolerate diversity of thoughts and values; they often collapse under their own contradictions. I think most of the current societal problems are not so much technical but about prioritisation and governance and cannot be escaped either by a technical fix or by attempting to isolate from dissent. Even a first generation that somehow manages to be homogenous in mindset and values will not remain so after a generation. And subject to group think. Utopianism is fun, but I maintain, the most interesting and important challenge for humanity over the next century is figuring out how to wipe out civilisation on earth or dramatically reduce the quality of life by trashing the Earths eco-systems. IF we can't do that, I don't think the prospects are good for any long term attempts to colonise space: the same underlying problems will manifest in far less forgiving circumstances than the world that we are biologically adapted to.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 05:04:54 "One need only look at the failure of various attempts to establish like minded "utopias" during the 18th and 19th centuries and today" Failing is part of evolving. "I think most of the current societal problems are not so much technical" That is the entire premise of what I am saying and I explained it, it has to do with who we are as individuals and how evolved as a specie. "Utopianism is fun" There is nothing utopian in what I am saying, accepting failures along the way and the fact that "work" is a continuous never ending ever spreading process. Again you miss the point, by not understand the process I am describing, instead looking for my personal end goal.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 05:17:37 See seb? Jergul at least understands what I am saying, he does not babble on for the sake of it :) His response is actually a valid counter argument to what I am saying instead of the utopia strawman you keep (re)using. Jergul 500 years is a long time and it assumes many things that I am not willing to assume or think we really have any reasons to assume. Like less people could simply mean more land and resources in the hands of fewer people, not that it frees up space for new national and social experiments and more wanderlust. Knowing our specie I would say that is highly unlikely, assuming we have not killed ourselves off. But ultimately this is too far into the future to speculate and my position is more about getting down with the why and solving the how here and now. It is as much an emotional outlet as it is a practical project.
murder Member	Tue Jan 11 05:47:54 "It is as I said earlier to murder, it does not cross your mind that the reason things are not working out is because of the all the fucking idiots who make life difficult, nay impossible. Divorce, not a life boat, that applies to the American colonies as well, a lot of people fled from the _Europeans_ not plagues and wars, but the fucking idiots in Europe." It does cross my mind. But genocide is cheaper. "I think the billionaires would agree with what I am saying in private, the real impending disaster they want to get away from is, as always, people. That is how terrifying stupid people are, we rather take our chances in the cold vacuum of space." The problem is that their money is no good on Mars. They are only wealthy on this planet and relative to the other inhabitants of this planet. If they go to Mars, they are going to have to clean their own shitter. "There is a wanderlust coded into our DNA that life on this planet until fairly recently afforded us in abundance and acted as a safety valve against rampant conflict. Not having this option is unnatural, as in this is how we evolved. Being forced to live with or near people you have little in common with is the ultimate cause of all conflicts." This is simply not accurate. When there was room to spread out, people chose to live together because life in the wilderness is only romantic in works of fiction. If you got away from the idiots, the animals or disease or loneliness/depression would get you. "One need only look at the failure of various attempts to establish like minded "utopias" during the 18th and 19th centuries and today - every time people try to build "societies" that try to skip around the need to tolerate diversity of thoughts and values; they often collapse under their own contradictions." Also it would be easier to just build a giant floating platform and live on the ocean with likeminded individuals. They could build out as they grow.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 05:54:15 Seb Just to make it clear for you, despite knowing that in a few weeks you will bring this up again. Just as a bookmark for future reference that I explained it for you. The things I am saying rest on the premise that you yourself just explained, that most utopias will fail and that social and political stability is a matter of time before it unravels! Yet you are the one with the fictional and naive idea that "we need to make it work on earth". The things I am saying are not of a technical nature, but of human nature. Meanwhile the things you list about quality of life and ecosystems, these can reasonably be described as technical challenges! The ultimate source of it you already mentioned "solve energy" and I added then you have solved "everything". I purposefully put that in quotes, because while almost everything lives downstream of energy, the human nature that produces ideas anti-thetical to each other, does now. What I want is to recreate the environmental conditions that we evolved in where we could just keep moving away from the "idiots" (a subjective and changing definition if that was not clear) and start new "utopias". Our specie needs to chase rainbows and build utopias, that is coded into our DNA trough the hundreds of thousand of years it took to conquer this planet. And ever since we have no been able to do that every now and then we try to burn it all down so we can "build it back better". The eschatology of the major ideologies are not a cosmic coincidence, they coincide perfectly with the rise of civilization and centralized hegemony.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 06:01:40 Murder "It does cross my mind. But genocide is cheaper." Nimatzo "then we try to burn it all down so we can "build it back better"." lol I know murder, this is what I am trying to explain for seb, genocide IS cheaper.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 11 06:25:56 Nim: " The things I am saying are not of a technical nature, but of human nature. Meanwhile the things you list about quality of life and ecosystems, these can reasonably be described as technical challenges!" Oh I completely disagree. These are not technical challenges. With the technology we have we could mitigate much of the negative impact we have. It is about deployment of that technology and the distribution of cost and effort, and the prioritisation of investment etc. These are societal and governance problems - not technology. "Solve energy" was a slightly tongue in cheek way of saying - find some wonderful, low cost, non-polluting energy technology. solving energy will not necessarily solve Earths problems, because it is almost certainly going to be used to continue practices and behaviours that perpetuate other problems. Yes, we need to chase rainbows and utopias, I'm saying there is plenty of scope for doing that down here. The choice of space as a venue is an expression for trying to escape the hard parts required to build these utopias as transitory circumstantial obstacles - but we cannot escape them - they are societal problems that emerge from humans cognitive failings.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 11 06:28:46 Nim: " this is what I am trying to explain for seb, genocide IS cheaper." Typical example of the kind of cognitive failure I'm talking about. It is cheaper only if you ascribe no value to a lot of people's lives, a high value to yours. If you did not do that, you would find that killing billions of people has an extraordinarily high cost.
murder Member	Tue Jan 11 07:03:36 "It is cheaper only if you ascribe no value to a lot of people's lives..." I ascribe negative value to a lot of people's lives.
Nekran Member	Tue Jan 11 07:12:56 Can't you guys just enjoy this wonderful telescope we've been able to put out there instead of bickering and arguing about who should genocide who?
murder Member	Tue Jan 11 07:18:42 It's going to be months before we can see anything ... so no. :o)
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 07:27:54 "Oh I completely disagree." You can disagree all you like with one half of what I said, but the things you list, contrary to the human nature I describe are closer to being technical problems. If you solve energy, which is a technical problem, a lot of those problems like global warming, destruction of eco systems, poverty etc. simply vanish. Honestly, it is far easier to invent some magical source of energy than to get the major powers of the world to pull in the same direction. "solving energy will not necessarily solve Earths problems" "Everything" is down stream of energy, it is a fact. Civilization and the humans within it require energy. Solve energy, as in bring the cost near zero and make it clean and you can do all kinds of fantastic things. "I'm saying there is plenty of scope for doing that down here." By all means chase your dreams, but don't smear your cynical utopia strawmen on the dreams of others. Most of this thread you have spent not even understanding what I am saying! "Typical example of the kind of cognitive failure I'm talking about." That is the cognitive failure *I* am talking about that exists on this planet and that neither governance nor technology is going to solve. Murder just put it in so many words. "If you did not do that" Yea if people were not fucking idiots, then a lot of things, if cold fusion was real, if we could travel faster than light. Yes I think your IF proposition is about as possible as those things :) But *reality* is that people are and have been doing that and there is NO end in sight. Dude you are living in 2022 on the same planet as people who think bronze age goat herders figured out the meaning to life. Better yet, on the same planet as western born and raised people like murder. I enjoy these observable facts about as little as you, I just have accepted that reality and internalized the futility. So from where I stand you are the one with the utopia dream that somehow we are going to make it work here on earth with these people. So I guess between the two of us, we agree we are pretty much fucked?
Seb Member	Tue Jan 11 08:10:52 Nim: "a lot of those problems like global warming, destruction of eco systems, poverty etc. simply vanish" I don't think so really - e.g. you can use that cheap energy to greatly speed up logging in the Amazon and use all that lovely, cheap wood and raise cows there instead - there's always externalities. As you say, everything's down stream of energy and a corollary of Jevons' paradox is that when energy gets cheaper everything gets cheaper and we consume more. If an economic actor places the value of something at zero, they continue to do so, and will take the margin in externalising a cost - and because they can do more the harm of the externality will be greater. A miracle energy solution would offer the *potential* to fix lots of problems... if you choose to place value on fixing those problems and/or take an opportunity cost of not doing something else with that cheap energy. At best it might relax some of the political and social constraints preventing us solving these problems with our existing technology. The reason that Europe has higher life expectancy and health outcomes and lower inequality than the US isn't due to better tech - it's because we place value on certain things and use governance to force them to be delivered. "That is the cognitive failure *I* am talking about that exists on this planet and that neither governance" You say that, but improvements in governance and social norms has actually made mass violence against civilian populations less frequent and less tolerant. So I see grounds for optimism. I guess I am less pessimistic than you about what we can do to improve the human condition; and skeptical that space offers a practical route to escape.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 09:20:56 "You can use that cheap energy to greatly speed up logging in the Amazon and use all that lovely, cheap wood and raise cows there instead - there's always externalities." Lab grown meat and hydroponics are already technical solutions to these problems. And I will bet you that those technologies will solve those problems befeore the governments of the world learn to tell their ass from the hands :) "gets cheaper and we consume more" It depends on who you are as an individual, I see increasing number of people disillusioned and consumption overloaded by this development. The new meta (pun intended) are experiences not more stuff. And those vast networks that make the metaverse of alternatve universes and realities that supplies those experiences require energy, not cutting down the Amazons. Another example is the recycling of old products, say eletronics, it requires energy, meaning it is only economially fesible provided the energy that is required to recycle them costs less than the cost of extracting virgin material. Ever increasing complexity in products = a lot of energy consumed to put it together. "At best it might relax" That is really, really, the best outcome you can hope for and rational part of my argument. Though I don't underestimate the symbolic value of a Lunar base visible with the naked eye looking down on earth. "but improvements in governance and social norms has actually mass violence against civilian populations less frequent and less tolerant." Zoom out on the time axis and then it isn't really indicative of a long term trend and you see corrections taking place all the time between periods of peace and tranquility. This example is from Eric Weistein, you can point to a forest and say we have not had a forest fire in this forest for over a 100 years. You can look at that and think wow, what a great thing, or realize that when a forest fire inevitable does take place it will be quite the sight. Like trees and forest fires our inherent potential for violence has not changed. People like to blame the carnage of the 21th century on technology alone, but reality is that without ideologies to motivate people to engage in it, it is difficult to imagine us talking about "the crimes" of the Nazis, Mao, Soviet Union, The Khmer Rouge, Young Turks, etc. There is an underlying human phenomena that is complex and a lot of the emergent behavior is highly problematic and fuel for pessimism yes. But I think ultimately this is how we were raised, so to speak, by this planet. We were not raised to be rational and see the world for what it is, we were raised to survive. This is why I am not so optimistic to what Jergul said, because it assumes that the survivors in that scenario 500 years from now are people with ideas that we would largely approve of. It is far more likely that it will be lineages who did whatever it took to survive, including a lot of organized violence, people who would say "genocide is cheaper".
murder Member	Tue Jan 11 09:35:55 "Dude you are living in 2022 ... on the same planet as western born and raised people like murder." Yeah but there are also bad people. But seriously if it's escape for the less stupid portion of the human race that you seek, then natural selection should eventually take care of that. And you sure as hell won't find it on a rock that humans haven't evolved to thrive on. People trying to would just prove that they are the dumb ones. I don't know who the first settler on Mars will be, but I can guarantee that his/her traveling companion will be Darwin.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 10:53:22 Murder Bad people never view themselves as bad people, they think their prescription of "genocide" makes the world a better place. In fact they don't even call it genocide, but a cleansing, purification or a culling of some undesirable group of people.
jergul large member	Tue Jan 11 10:55:12 Nimi We have trouble maintaining our cultural landscape now. Trees are taking over what was grazeland a few decades ago. My utopian vision has us living in highly urbanized settings because we like our artisan *stuff*, with wilderness retreats we go to in very small groups many times a year. You know, to look at tigers. At that point, your wilderness could be a settlement on Mars you visit several times over the course of a very long lifespan. A variation of the theme "getting away from the hustle". Some crazy-assed collectives might send off colony ships with frozen embryos and cuddly androids programmed to raise them. The rest of us will frown at the ethics of that, but at least we can admire the idea of a different civilization setting up elsewhere in some 10s of thousands of years. Different because cultures diverge over time and our cuddly androids will be somewhat frozen in time. Something like so.
jergul large member	Tue Jan 11 11:00:26 Incidentally, 300 million answers your energy challenge with today's technology.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 11:14:01 Jergul And I get that I don't want to stand in your way, but that isn't me and I assume a lot of people with me. I can express in a different way, people go to sunny retreats during winter and charge their batteries as the expression goes, but when I do that and I come back after 2 days I more depressed than before I left, I am not exaggerating. Those things that I need from the environment be it sunshine, nature, stars in the sky, I need it in micro-doses every day running in the background. So I traded the artisan stuff like Asian and Indian food on delievary 24/7 and instead we have a dinner night out every once in a while :) To each their own little slice of utopia!
jergul large member	Tue Jan 11 11:19:14 That is fine. Have your city cabin that you can visit many times a year instead. At least some decades. I suspect variation will be what people want.
Sam Adams Member	Tue Jan 11 11:23:40 "Can't you guys just enjoy this wonderful telescope we've been able to put out there instead of bickering and arguing about who should genocide who?" I bet this telescope has a really cool lens. Like, we should probably focus that shit on mecca and melt it.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 11 11:37:39 Nim: Yeah we have hydroponics, and yet we continue to source most of our agriculture with soil depleting intensive agriculture because it is cheaper. Technical solutions are not solutions until they are implemented, and how they are implemented and who benefits are all functions of how we organise and govern society - like I said we have technical solutions now - the issue is actually more one of governance. "It depends on who you are as an individual, I see increasing number of people disillusioned and consumption overloaded by this development" You are a major advocate of crypto technologies that require massive overconsumption of electricity and hardware to achieve things that could be done far more efficiently, which to say is valuable because of your preference that it be done decentralised. I hate to break it to you but that's an enormous consumption footprint. Experiences have a consumptive element. Often a large one. Then there's space flight itself! But this isn't about individuals, statistically that's the trend. Efficiency and reduced energy costs just generate consumption - what we need are mechanisms that value non-renewable resources and environment and human wellbeing and factor them in and not let their degradation be externalised. "Though I don't underestimate the symbolic value of a Lunar base visible with the naked eye looking down on earth." I wonder what it would symbolise to different people. "Zoom out on the time axis and then it isn't really indicative of a long term trend and you see corrections taking place all the time between periods of peace and tranquility" You call see the trend for less violence and more governance over about a 600 year long period that makes me think things like normalisation against genocide is part of a broad trend. "It is far more likely that it will be lineages who did whatever it took to survive" Humanity seems to have been selected for social and cooperation in ever larger groups.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 12:23:26 "Yeah we have hydroponics, and yet we continue to source most of our agriculture with soil depleting intensive agriculture because it is cheaper." I am not the one here making the "it is cheaper" argument, that would be murder. Though I don't see how making things cheaper isn't a tehcnology issue or one that involved energy. Manufacturing hydro equipment in perticular the nutrients require energy, it is a more advanced way though of farming and I think apart from being cheaper, it is a 10 000 year old tradition. Hydro is not as accesible. "Technical solutions are not solutions until they are implemented, and how they are implemented and who benefits are all functions of how we organise and govern society - like I said we have technical solutions now - the issue is actually more one of governance." It's not always an either/or thing if we are being truthful. "You are a major advocate of crypto technologies that require massive overconsumption of electricity and hardware to achieve things that could be done far more efficiently, which to say is valuable because of your preference that it be done decentralised." I interpreted what you said as consuming more stuff, since the previous example was cutting down the Amazon for farm land. I have consistently said that higher consumption of energy isn't a concearn and agreed with the sentiment "solve energy". But this was obvious from what I wrote: "The new meta (pun intended) are experiences not more stuff. And those vast networks that make the metaverse of alternatve universes and realities that supplies those experiences require energy, not cutting down the Amazons." I have no problems with more energy consumption, provided that energy is clean and gives me something valuable like metaverses, decentralized finance, hydroponics nutrients etc. I went on and said the recycling also requires energy and the more complex the product (e.g electronics) the harder (more energy consuming) it is to recycle it. The sentiment is still the same. Trade consumption of stuff for energy. "You call see the trend for less violence and more governance over about a 600 year long period that makes me think things like normalisation against genocide is part of a broad trend." ? The khmer Rogue were in the 70's friend, we don't even have to go that far geographically or chronologically, Kosovo and Bosnia were in the 90, Rwanda and Saddams campaign against the Kurds as well. The last century was the most genocidal by far as technology and ideology turned out to be a bloody covenant. Genocides happened before that, but they were physically limited. Technology is constantly lower the threshold for getting your hands on things that can cause mass death and destruction. "Humanity seems to have been selected for social and cooperation in ever larger groups." Indeed, but this is not contrary to what I said. Cooperation is a very broad term that includes everything from building infrastructure to committing genocide.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 11 12:40:24 Nim: "Though I don't see how making things cheaper isn't a tehcnology issue or one that involved energy." Because it is about choices between options, where both options are made cheaper by energy - but the costs of one option are external to the person with agency. I.e. the fact we keep doing the dumb thing (e.g. cutting down the last tree on Easter Island or whatever) will likely never be alleviated by technology - we will simply use the technology to cut down the last tree for even less cost and reap the profit margin instead - because the cost of not having trees any more is felt across the board, but the profit from cutting it down is concentrated. This is what I mean: we actually have technological solutions for climate change now. We could have built a lot of nuclear power stations in the 1990s. The reason we didn't was poor politics, poor fiscal/financial policy and bad choices. And even as renewables become cheaper than coal, in some places coal plants will continue to operate because nobody wants to realise the cost to towns or entire regions economically dependent on coal mining. Infact, some people will take a paycut to make coal cheaper and keep it viable, because the alternative is long term unemployment. These are all social problems and while technology can be part of a solution, it is rarely the solution, and the absence of a better technology is rarely the actual cause of the problem. "have consistently said that higher consumption of energy isn't a concearn" Well, it obviously is at the moment - as energy is far from "solved". I mean, we have examples of people bringing back mothballed power stations as a cheap way of powering mining farms - for example. But even if energy were magically solved - the hardware powering all of this is all from minerals dug out of the ground etc. etc. - it's all consumptive in the end. The average lifetime of electronics on which all this stuff runs is a few years - and little of it is recycled. "The khmer Rogue were in the 70's friend" And what does that prove? You should have seen what happened in the 30 years war! There's plenty of studies - as a civilisation, humanity has been getting *less* violent and blood soaked for hundreds of years. That doesn't mean nasty stuff doesn't happen - it does of course - it's just less frequent. And a great part of that is the increasing trend to social "technologies" for better governance. Things like the nation state, democracy, international laws etc.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Jan 11 13:20:18 "Because it is about choices between options, where both options are made cheaper by energy - but the costs of one option are external to the person with agency." But I agree with you to some degree, I am not proposing we dismantle governance, the same way you think I rely on technology to solve "all problems" (wink wink I don't) you come off as believing central governments will solve all problems. You probably don't, so the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. "The reason we didn't was poor politics, poor fiscal/financial policy and bad choices." And so when if I say government isn't going to solve x or y and when I say some of these problems are inherent to the (political) system and incentives... Is is wildly different now? Is the trajectory of these things even going in the right direction? You answer all these question in the next paragraph about the failure around energy and global warming, no. Unless you have a radical new way of doing governance, it is just repeating the same process expecting different results. Hence the sentiment of taking my chances in the vacuum of space. "These are all social problems" I don't know what you mean by "social problems", but the things you described are not the result of one aspect of our condition. "Well, it obviously is at the moment" And you described that as the result of political failure in the 90's and the solution is apparently more of the same despite no signs of improvement in the process. "But even if energy were magically solved - the hardware powering all of this is all from minerals dug out of the ground etc. etc. - it's all consumptive in the end" Recycling require energy, the more complex and refined the product the more energy it requires. There are conceptual ideas about atomic separators that would require immense amounts of energy. The answer is always more energy :) "And what does that prove? You should have seen what happened in the 30 years war!" The point was that with Jergul's example we have to assume a lot of things about how us stone age people (designed to survive rather than act rationally) who 3 decades ago committed genocides in Bosnia, Iraq and Rwanda (3 continents) were going to reduce our populations numbers and live in peace with nature and each other. We have to assume that those people got there peacefully cooperation and not just the ones who simply survived a series of conflicts and violence. The competing poles that exist in this world with different ideologies, cultures and objectives are not going anywhere. 500 years is a long long time given these conditions. "There's plenty of studies" We propose a methodology to look at violence in particular, and other aspects of quantitative historiography in general, in a way compatible with statistical inference, which needs to accommodate the fat-tailedness of the data and the unreliability of the reports of conflicts. We investigate the theses of “long peace” and drop in violence and find that these are statistically invalid and resulting from flawed and naive methodologies, incompatible with fat tails and non-robust to minor changes in data formatting and methodologies. There is no statistical basis to claim that “times are different” owing to the long inter-arrival times between conflicts; there is no basis to discuss any “trend”, and no scientific basis for narratives about change in risk. We describe naive empiricism under fat tails. We also establish that violence has a “true mean” that is underestimated in the track record. This is a historiographical adaptation of the results in Cirillo and Taleb (2016). http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/violencenobelsymposium.pdf
nhill Member	Tue Jan 11 13:27:21 > The average lifetime of electronics on which all this stuff runs is a few years - and little of it is recycled. It is 'recycled' now thanks to crypto. Most of the big miners I know are still using their hardware from 6+ years ago (when mining first became slightly profitable). Crypto gives utility to old video cards as long as they still run, and video cards are built high quality enough to run for at least 6 years straight, most likely more. The secondary market for 5+ year old video cards used to be non-existent. Now it is thriving. You can sell a 6 year old card for the same price you bought it, thanks to crypto! Amazing how the efficiencies of crypto economies are making people's lives better all around the world and we have stuffy old Seb here, one who often postures as a champion of the people, wanting to take it away.
Seb Member	Tue Jan 11 14:58:41 Nim: "You come off as believing central governments will solve all problems." I think that may be because you conflate governance with "central government" - that is only one governance model. Within governance I include things like the market etc. I.e. "how decisions are made or emerge". You need lots of independent institutions - but ultimately you can only reconcile various conflicting demands within a society without a democratic process and government to give that expression. There is a tendency to view government as a purely coercive force that needs to be got rid of or strictly limited - this view tends to be strongest in demographics who have wealth and power because left to their own devices, they can be free to do what they want without compromise irrespective of the consequences it has on others. But that is actually the whole point of having a government - a mechanism for society compromises. Yeah, it's not working now - hence the desire to change these systems. Fleeing into the vacuum of space seems to me no respite - if we haven't worked out how to sort out harmonious and responsible collective decision making on earth, I suspect the same is going to be true in space, but in a much more precarious environment. And in the mean time I don't want to see too much resources thrown into manned space colonisation for the few when they could be deployed on fixing the problems on earth for the many. "We propose a methodology to look at violence in particular" Like I said, there are plenty of studies. Note the *data* shows a reduction in war violence - Taleb and Cirillio's argument here is that this may be - essentially - a fluke. The study shows only that they cannot reject the null hypothesis of no trend - that's not the same as rejecting the hypothesis of a trend. But there is more to the belief that violence and lethality of war has declined over time than mere statistics. We can point to very definitive causal effects that tend to lend more weight to a trend decline driven by adoption of stronger rules and governance of inter-principality conflict that prevents violence, and how wars are conducted when they do. Note, these all require hard work and effort - they aren't automatic.
Habebe Member	Tue Jan 11 15:01:12 Murder, And even the Atlas V has reduced its nominal rate alot. I'm not really sure what your arguing, we both agree luanch costs and KG launch costs have been steadily dropping.
murder Member	Tue Jan 11 16:50:34 "Bad people never view themselves as bad people, they think their prescription of "genocide" makes the world a better place." No, bad people try to take advantage of others. For example selling vapor to others. Like Trump. They feel that it's OK because they personally benefit. They either don't bother to or are incapable of considering how those other people might be hurt. Wanting to rid the world of people who hurt innocents, the vulnerable, the marginalized ... that's strictly white hat stuff.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Jan 13 04:35:55 "Yeah, it's not working now - hence the desire to change these systems." We share the same the desire, which you know I thought was explicitly clear when I have endlessly talked about problems inherent to the current iterations of core systems and institutions of our societies and the global order. For whatever reason you have only managed to tire me out by construing what I am saying as "tech bro Utopia" or a utopia of any kind of my own design. I hope it is clear now that nothing I am saying is aiming for any singular kind of utopia, that it is based on the premise that there dozens and dozens of competing utopias and this reality of our condition will create conflicts, because the utopias can not be reconciled on an ideological level. "Fleeing into the vacuum of space seems to me no respite" It is tongue in cheek for expressing frustration with the way this planet has been structured and at times trying to make the people I am talking with understand what I am saying. "if we haven't worked out how to sort out harmonious and responsible collective decision making on earth" There is that massive if again :) "I suspect the same is going to be true in space, but in a much more precarious environment." As I said the best I hope for is to simply off load pressure. The trend is not congruent with your if statement and even you agree that homogeneity will unravel after a few generations. Anyway, this is the dream, that it is is worthwhile to fuel the wanderlust and that this idea fills a god sized hole with a hopeful and constructive message. Unlike the deleterious, anxiety driven quest, the most extremes manifestations of it are extinction rebellion kind of stuff, anti-natalist, anti-human movements that basically think we should kill ourselves. Not saying that is your message but juxtaposing with the other extreme you laid out. Those things I mention are far more explicitly as I describe them unlike speculations that billionaires are building life boats, that require a high degree of cynical speculation. Greta Thunberg's "I want you to panic" speech, climate anxiety, Extinction rebellion, do not. So I think Elon Musk's message is inherently more positive. Notwithstanding the reality of us needing to deal with these problems, they are not inherently positive in their message. "Like I said, there are plenty of studies." There is no good reason to think we are inherently less prone to violence or that the risk of mass violence has decreased. The paper I post points out the flaws in the plenty of studies that claim things are better. The most publicized is a favorite Evolutionary psychologist of mine Steven Pinker and his book The Better angels of our nature. It is dangerous to believe that things are safer than they are, I think that at least is uncontroversial. You came in sideways into a larger - decade spanning - debate me and Jergul are having that is the confluence of a bunch of things relating to our species past, present and future. And the contents here loop back to all those topics. I am reminded specifically about things Jergul have said about the future being female and aborting men, because men are violent and such, which is true men are far more aggressive and violent than women. Well unless everyone in the world does that (which most definitely will never happen), what do you think will happen? If a single culture does not, then through violence they will dominate everyone else. And that is the root problem with these ideas, they emerge in places where the fecundity is low and the people are low in aggression and violence, the places where you need these ideas the least. Did everyone catch the total 180 china did on population control when it realized it would lose its' demographic leverage? That is how the world works, even if something is a "good idea" on paper you have to play the game according to whatever complex web of incentives that are presented. What good does it do then that Sweden and Norway go carbon neutral and have low birth rates? I asked a similar question to our freedumb friends admonishing Chinas authoritarian policies during the early days of the pandemic. What good will it have been that Murica was so free and put people on the moon if a black death level pandemic would wiped their civilization off the face of the earth? The future isn't female friends nor does it belong to those that are willing to lower their energy footprint or those that live in the societies with the most freedoms, it belongs to whom ever is willing to do whatever it takes to be there in the future. The game is still the exact same game as it was in the stone age, we just have really powerful tools to kill each other with and really "sophisticated" systems, which essentially means they are fragile and can be manipulated by hackers in Russia or other cultures who most certainly are not entertaining the idea that the future is female, or aborting men or that violence does not have a place in their plans to survive to the future. And when people read these things I am saying, they generally get angry and think they are reflective of my values, rather than descriptions of reality.
Seb Member	Thu Jan 13 06:10:42 Nim: "what I am saying as "tech bro Utopia"" If you recall, I described specifically that some people have a vision for a "tech bro utopia" - by which I in essence mean that somehow there is a mechanistic approach to addressing the messy problem of people not actually agreeing with each other, or even agreeing on the meaning of the agreement, or what should happen under extenuating circumstances. The fact that contracts can be disputed in court is a feature, not a bug. "There is that massive if again :)" Well, you don't exactly dispute it! "Those things I mention are far more explicitly as I describe them unlike speculations that billionaires are building life boats," Er, 1. Many absolutely are, that is beyond doubt. 2. The way Elon Musk talks about the need and motivation for colonising Mars is absolutely about the need to preserve humanity against crises - and the point isn't "grr, nasty billionaires trying to insulate themselves against crises" - it is a question that from a civilizational point of view whether such a life-boat has any value at all. It is akin to the teleporter problem: "If a teleporter can create an exact and indistinguishable replica of me on the other side of the planet that involves the destruction of me where I am now - does it make sense to get into the teleporter or should I use an aeroplane?". "If a single culture does not, then through violence they will dominate everyone else." I don't think that follows at all. It's overly simplistic. The history of civilisation is that the more organised culture - not the more violent culture - is often the one that wins.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Jan 13 06:35:34 "If you recall" What I recall is that you have brought up this strawman responding to me on the wide range of issues relating to organizing this world and the problems we face. "Well, you don't exactly dispute it!" ? Everything I have written from our inherent potential for violence, ideological differences, the global power game and incentives forcing the hand of major powers to act in their self interest rather than some greater good, disputes this massive "if we all just learn get along". I previously said this if is about as possiible as cold fusion. Can you imagine, IF we had cold fusion? "Many absolutely are, that is beyond doubt." None of these people will ever set foot on Mars, let alone use whatever we manage to build as a life boat. "absolutely about the need to preserve humanity against crises" It is one of the reasons, yes. As I said early on no grand project is motivated by any single thing. It is more about the way there rather than the destination itself at this point. "I don't think that follows at all. It's overly simplistic. The history of civilisation is that the more organised culture - not the more violent culture - is often the one that wins." The point didn't fully come through then. The implication is that the societies that have too little or close to zero capacity for violence will be dominated by those that have more. The framing is that there are two extremes, not just one. You have to appreciate the very extreme example of selective abortions of men as a concept to make the world less violent. It wasn't me that came up with it :)
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