WILL technology save us for reals?

[Aimless]

For many, many years now Catholics have been reassuring us men and othergendered of science that our concerns about the future are so unfounded as to be minigallodomestic in nature. They claim TECHNOLOGY will SAVE us from the doom of rapid celestial descent. Just LOOK at everything that has happened since Thomas Malthus lived and died, they cheer!

Well I just did and I note that we are STILL not particularly close to getting mankind off of this increasingly unreliable sitting-duck of a planet.

How will technology save us in the long term if we don't LET it??!

BAH

[RandBlade]

We don't need to get off this rock, which is far more reliable than any other rock.

[Steely Glint]

Apparently, they don't teach spreading risk at Economics School.

[RandBlade]

Am curious how if other people are on another planet that reduces my risk, please explain.

[Aimless]

Apparently, they don't teach spreading risk at Economics School.

They do, but only when it comes to important things like stocks. It's funny 'cause economists also know that humans are just wired to be stupid in this way. you'd think that insight would be put to use by convincing people to not be stupid but of course not.

Am curious how if other people are on another planet that reduces my risk, please explain.

an excellent example of how we're wired to only think of our own immediate fates exclusively with respect to familiar threats.

[Ominous Gamer]

We don't need to get off this rock, which is far more reliable than any other rock.

Anyone else consider this response kinda funny considering Rand's previous position on proactively acting againist Earth's global warming problem?

my risk

Ah, theres the self-centered explanation I was expecting.

[Nessus]

Three cheers for Randroidism

[RandBlade]

Last I checked, us=me + others. If someone has a different definition then please answer it.

If you want a selfless answer there are over 6billion people on 'this rock'. If this rock gets destroyed then how are 'we' saved if there's a Mr and Mrs Robinson elsewhere?

[Nessus]

There are no words

[Aimless]

Last I checked, us=me + others.

Yes, until you die. After that it's just others. How many years away is that d'you reckon?

[Aimless]

If you want a selfless answer there are over 6billion people on 'this rock'. If this rock gets destroyed then how are 'we' saved if there's a Mr and Mrs Robinson elsewhere?

We will make sure Mr. & Mrs. Robinson take with them a USB drive with a backup of all our forum posts

[RandBlade]

I've not seen any serious replies yet besides mine. Extraplanetary colonisation will do nothing to save Earth or anyone on it. Using technology to defeat problems on Earth will 'save us', not moving a few people elsewhere.

[Aimless]

I've not seen any serious replies yet besides mine. Extraplanetary colonisation will do nothing to save Earth or anyone on it.

"Us" as in the human species

btw i note that we still don't seem to have any good options for eg. averting disaster in the form of comets or meteors that may strike us right her on earth

[Nessus]

It's a good job his company has that discount straw-man deal going on

[Aimless]

I also note that we STILL haven't cured malaria, and we are continuing to fuck up our oceans and everything therein

[Nessus]

hurf durf globe will support 600 billion people by 2020, your statistics are lies, everything will be okay citizen, have some turkey

[Aimless]

I mean, I get it, solidarity with our here-and-now brothers and sisters, sure... but many of them are getting royally fucked right here and right now. Clearly there is some sort of fishy pattern here.


One wonders, what is the price of human civilisation??

[Steely Glint]

Randblade,

If you had kids, would you give a shit about them?

[Aimless]

He would, and so would Dreadnaught (about his own kids I mean), but perhaps that is the scope of innate human concern (may stretch to grandkids and even great grandkids when we have deteriorated sufficiently in autonomy/health/social status/activity/loving).

But there it is. We want to leave OUR kids MONEY (and some other stuff that all end up tied to money), and how can we do that if the Malaria-busters take it all away?

[Aimless]

I'd like to take a moment to clarify that, while it's fun to josh with RB, my main wondring is this: what hope does technology have of saving us (pick your definition) when we and the reality we've constructed work against technology and its goodness??

How the hell are we calculating our risks and benefits when it comes to the big things??

[RandBlade]

Since I'm apparently so selfish and my views are messed up please can those who think that 'well be saved' if Earth and over 6 billion people are destroyed but a few colonists escape elsewhere please explain.

[wiggin]

I think there's definitely a bit of a disconnect here. No matter how you run the numbers, short of a physics-defying miracle (a la planet-to-planet wormhole travel) the bulk of humanity is always going to be on planet Earth - at least for the foreseeable future*. If you're concerned about the survival of the human race, then yes, you can diversify your risk some by spread the population around a few star systems (or even galaxies), albeit at rather astronomical cost (far more than the cost of adequately managing our star system). If you're concerned about the people who make up the human race, though, colonizing other planets will have little impact on them - the vast majority of us will still be on Earth, and we're likely to get next to no economic or scientific benefit from an extrasolar colony.

Don't get me wrong - I love the idea of exploring the cosmos. It's just that short of an unforeseen technological advancement that brings about cheap FTL travel, there's really no reasonable way to do it. Colonizing another planet in our solar system is not only unlikely to be able to support a self-sustaining human population (at least for quite some time), but also fails to account for solar system-wide risks.

Given these realities, it's likely that we should look at the low hanging fruit of reducing our risk by making our planet safer, better managed, and more sustainable. There are obviously many competing approaches on how to actually do this, but that seems to be the most logical approach.

* Our population increases at about 200-250k a day. That means that you'd need to export millions of people a year to even make a dent in the numbers.

[Lebanese Dragon]

Obviously you fools are using two different definitins of us, and we.

We the human race.

Or are talking we the people alive right now...

for #1 yes we need to get off this rock for the reason Steely glint stated (Spreading risk, to increase odds of survival, and we know for certain this planet will not sustain us forever).

for us right now.. we don't have to do anything! Barring a nuclear war we'll likely be alright.

[Steely Glint]

It really depends on how long your planning horizon is. Off world colonies will take many centuries to become self-sustaining worlds in their own right, so I suppose the idea is to get them started off as soon as we can so that they're viable earlier. Assume a disaster renders earth uninhabitable in Space Year 3000. Assume an off-world colony will take 500 years to be self-sustaining, with support an investment from earth. This means that, in order to preserve the human race, we should have the first off-world colonies started by Space Year 2500. But Space Randblade from 2500 will still be wanting to know why we should spend money on something that won't bare fruit for another 500 Space Years. Space Randblade is an shortsighted idiot, and should be ignored.

If you're concerned about the people who make up the human race, though, colonizing other planets will have little impact on them - the vast majority of us will still be on Earth, and we're likely to get next to no economic or scientific benefit from an extrasolar colony.

Well, you're kind of assuming that the Hypothetical Space Disaster is just going to eradicate all of us earthlings in one fell swoop, like an attack of the Deathstar. In actuality, this hypothetical disaster would merely render the earth less habitable, and gradually reduce the population. Suppose something happens which knocks out a large chunk of the earth's arable land, like a super volcano eruption or asteroid impact. This doesn't wipe out the human race, be it does condemn us to a few hundred years of starvation, war and misery and a drastic downward adjustment in the population and a regression to a medieval standard of living. However if we have, for example, space farms, it's the off world colonies that are supporting continued life on earth.

Colonizing another planet in our solar system is not only unlikely to be able to support a self-sustaining human population (at least for quite some time), but also fails to account for solar system-wide risks.

Well, I think artificial habitats like O'Neill Cylinders are more likely than actual colonization of planets.

[Lebanese Dragon]

Space Randblade is an shortsighted idiot, and should be ignored

Listen you fool. He's either doing one of two things. Being incredibly selfish and realizing space rand blade won't be alive at that time, (in 500 years) so who gives a damn, or B.) he's using a different definition of us, and he's not referring to preserving the human species (his kids kids kids et.c. or his sisters kids, his distant future relative, those people), but rather talking about saving those currently on earth today, which terraforming will not help us! Us as in the people alive right now.

[wiggin]

It really depends on how long your planning horizon is. Off world colonies will take many centuries to become self-sustaining worlds in their own right, so I suppose the idea is to get them started off as soon as we can so that they're viable earlier. Assume a disaster renders earth uninhabitable in Space Year 3000. Assume an off-world colony will take 500 years to be self-sustaining, with support an investment from earth. This means that, in order to preserve the human race, we should have the first off-world colonies started by Space Year 2500. But Space Randblade from 2500 will still be wanting to know why we should spend money on something that won't bare fruit for another 500 Space Years. Space Randblade is an shortsighted idiot, and should be ignored.

Your numbers are off by orders of magnitude. To an extent the Qeng Ho adage is right - no reasonably sized assemblage of ships can bring a self-sustaining high technology with them (i.e. they can't bring their own shipyards with them). The investment necessary to do this in any reasonably amount of time (less than 10k years?) is prohibitively high. It cost us tens of billions of dollars to get a few people on the moon for a few days, and it cost about $150 billion to put a tiny structure in low earth orbit (the ISS). Imagine the cost of constructing and outfitting a colony ship with enough technology and people to recreate our civilization in another solar system with a potentially unknown and hostile environment.

I recently read an interesting discussion by some economists who were trying to estimate the bare minimum of humans needed to support our current level of development. The numbers ranged around a bit, but a minimum of their estimates was around one hundred million people. Even with labor saving technology thrown in, you're not going to get anywhere near that level any time soon on a new planet (moving that many people is simply impossible on any reasonable time frame), so it means either regular supply ships or starting off the colony on a much lower technology level and allowing for organic growth (if it's even possible to find a sufficiently hospitable planet that wouldn't require self-sustaining high technology to survive on). Either option is high risk and high expense and takes a very long time to get to work. Even assuming some pretty big advances in energy and propulsion technology, we're talking about a minimum travel time of decades between Earth and the colony, possibly more like centuries. Keeping supply and communication lines open would be largely futile.

I'm not saying it's something we shouldn't ever do - maybe we will at some point in the future have adequate technology to address the concerns I raise - but the issues Minx alludes to that threaten our planet are here now, and we do have adequate technological solutions to address many of them. Why not focus on the easy stuff and let more robust technologies to develop rather than throwing resources at a project that would consume the entire world's productivity for an unknown amount of time and not even necessarily work?

Well, you're kind of assuming that the Hypothetical Space Disaster is just going to eradicate all of us earthlings in one fell swoop, like an attack of the Deathstar. In actuality, this hypothetical disaster would merely render the earth less habitable, and gradually reduce the population. Suppose something happens which knocks out a large chunk of the earth's arable land, like a super volcano eruption or asteroid impact. This doesn't wipe out the human race, be it does condemn us to a few hundred years of starvation, war and misery and a drastic downward adjustment in the population and a regression to a medieval standard of living. However if we have, for example, space farms, it's the off world colonies that are supporting continued life on earth.

See my previous point about transportation problems. Even a Mars colony (if it could magically have enough food to export to Earth) couldn't possibly ship more than a miniscule fraction of our food consumption. Anything short of a science fiction method of space travel isn't going to hack it, and even then you'd need a pretty ridiculously large fleet of ships.

The point is that barring some unforeseen transportation technology there is no practical way for offworld colonies to have significant interactions with Earth or some form of mutual codependence. If you realize that, the only worthwhile reason for an extrasolar colony would be to save some remnant of the human race in the event of an extinction level event on Earth, albeit at enormous cost. I don't think that risk/reward analysis is worth it given our very pressing matters close to home.

Well, I think artificial habitats like O'Neill Cylinders are more likely than actual colonization of planets.

And you think you can make these self-sustaining - or even suppliers of Earth? I find it highly unlikely.

[Steely Glint]

I don't understand why you're using the fact that this undertaking will take a very long time to get going as a reason to delay starting it.

[wiggin]

I don't understand why you're using the fact that this undertaking will take a very long time to get going as a reason to delay starting it.

Uh, no, I think it's unrealistically long on any reasonable time scale, and actually impossible given current technology. Furthermore, given the sheer amount of resources necessary for such a project (say, the entire industrial output of the world for several centuries at a minimum), it seems that the resources could be better used elsewhere.

I guess my underlying point is that the distances are so great and the technical challenges so insurmountable that it's not even clear that a colonization effort would succeed, even with the stupendous use of resources. I can reasonably see colonizing something like Mars, albeit at great cost and little benefit. But something extrasolar? I can't see how such a sustained effort would be feasible. (Of course, if you're okay with a low tech agrarian society and you can find a suitable planet within a few dozen light years, then things are a little easier, but even then your odds of success are pretty low - and I'm very skeptical we can find a suitable planet.)

Maybe, someday, the technology will exist that will make my doubts much less significant. In such a case, I can see the argument for colonization. Right now, though, it's an awful policy choice.

[Nessus]

Imagine the cost of constructing and outfitting a colony ship with enough technology and people to recreate our civilization in another solar system with a potentially unknown and hostile environment.

One and a half Iraq wars? Maybe a full two?

Anyway, relativity is the reason no one is ever going to cough up the dough for it. The only realistic technological option we have right now is that nuclear bomb accelerator, and those ships would be going near-c with enough time in acceleration to cause hundreds, thousands of years to pass down here. Now that society doesn't believe in the Pharaoh anymore, I don't see anyone wasting their money on that. I'd rather start terraforming Mars.

Regardless, the people going out there would have to spend a long time setting up a situation where their children could have children whose children then might be enough to create a society about on par with our own, a pretty thankless task. Mars would be so much easier in that regard as well. And so long as humanity is interested in its own existence, we should put at least some eggs in another basket; a lot of civilization-ending disasters need not wipe out all our infrastructure, future off-world archaeologists could recreate some discoveries and achievements of the mother planet. Or whatever.

And the real technological salvation we need is the energy one, plus possibly the biological ones that enable us to feed seventeen thousand billion people just as well as we are fed now, or whatever it is that Randy's PR people are promising his constituents

[RandBlade]

It really depends on how long your planning horizon is. Off world colonies will take many centuries to become self-sustaining worlds in their own right, so I suppose the idea is to get them started off as soon as we can so that they're viable earlier. Assume a disaster renders earth uninhabitable in Space Year 3000. Assume an off-world colony will take 500 years to be self-sustaining, with support an investment from earth. This means that, in order to preserve the human race, we should have the first off-world colonies started by Space Year 2500. But Space Randblade from 2500 will still be wanting to know why we should spend money on something that won't bare fruit for another 500 Space Years. Space Randblade is an shortsighted idiot, and should be ignored.

We are not some sort of borg collective, potentially saving "the human race" 500 years from now is so close to meaningless as to barely register. Potentially "saving the human race" tomorrow is pretty meaningless if it means the deaths of over 6bn but 100 survive.

How about saving all those now? How about curing malaria, cholera, AIDS, famine, cancer ...

We have no evidence that 500 years from now there will be a disaster, and even if there was what you're proposing would not prevent it. If an asteroid from space were going to destroy the Earth then having a few colonists out in space won't save it - finding a way to save the Earth from said asteroid would make more sense.

Besides which, given the exponential growth of science 500 years from now at this rate we'll look pretty primitive so said disaster won't be saved by us. That's like someone from the 1400's trying to improve cavalry techniques to prevent WWII.

Barring the Sun going supernova there is nothing science points to that will destroy the Earth, so preventing, adapting to and solving problems here > sending a few elsewhere.

Well, you're kind of assuming that the Hypothetical Space Disaster is just going to eradicate all of us earthlings in one fell swoop, like an attack of the Deathstar. In actuality, this hypothetical disaster would merely render the earth less habitable, and gradually reduce the population. Suppose something happens which knocks out a large chunk of the earth's arable land, like a super volcano eruption or asteroid impact. This doesn't wipe out the human race, be it does condemn us to a few hundred years of starvation, war and misery and a drastic downward adjustment in the population and a regression to a medieval standard of living. However if we have, for example, space farms, it's the off world colonies that are supporting continued life on earth.

Except that even in that scenario there isn't a single known planet that would support life better than here on Earth. Furthermore without FTL travel the idea of off-world farms supporting us is impossible.

I don't understand why you're using the fact that this undertaking will take a very long time to get going as a reason to delay starting it.

Because we have real problems now, not fake problems in the future?
Because we don't have the tech to start?
Because tech is improving so we can do it better, more reliable and cheaper in the future?

One and a half Iraq wars? Maybe a full two?

For real? We couldn't start colonising Mars for that cost let alone another solar system. Even if we could it would do nothing to save the Earth.

And so long as humanity is interested in its own existence, we should put at least some eggs in another basket;

I don't think it is, not in the science fiction way you're talking about. Society is interested in its own existance, not the existance of those hundreds of years from now in Mars. No realistic disaster could make Earth as uninhabitable as Mars anyway.

a lot of civilization-ending disasters need not wipe out all our infrastructure, future off-world archaeologists could recreate some discoveries and achievements of the mother planet. Or whatever.

So what? Preventing civilisation-ending disaster > that.

And the real technological salvation we need is the energy one, plus possibly the biological ones that enable us to feed seventeen thousand billion people just as well as we are fed now, or whatever it is that Randy's PR people are promising his constituents

Which again if we had the tech to support ourselves on Mars we'd far more have the tech to support ourselves on Earth.

It is amusing to hear how you find the idea of Mars colonisation plausible, but 17bn on Earth implausible. The latter is far, far more credible.

I like the idea of space colonisation, I'd start with getting people to live on the Moon far sooner than Mars though. But without sci-fi solutions like hyperdrive/stargates etc its never a solution to life's problems on Earth.