Comment by jgord
4 days ago
Regardless of whether this particular mission is perfectly planned, this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement.
It is a noble endeavor - science, engineering and peaceful exploration hold the keys to our survival and prosperity.
It is also important psychologically to our survival - a reminder there is a bigger pie, that we can solve hard problems, that progress can be made, that competence and education counts, as does courage, and that we can work together for a common cause.
This is the best of America, and for a while we can be proud of the human race.
I think these space projects are great, can create much good will, and give people dangerous things to do that are worth risking the danger for. But war, inequality, and climate mismanagement are political problems that are not going to be solved (if they need to be solved) by science and engineering (the first two at least).
If AGI stages a hostile takeover of all the governments of the world would that count as a technological solution to war and inequality?
For that matter I suppose the terminator timeline also counts. Can't have war and inequality if you don't have humans.
They can absolutely be solved by science and engineering, people just need to stop being so fucking afraid to break the rules to do whats right.
What does inequality even mean? Everyone must be identical? The idea of removing inequality is dystopian.
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I hope it does. But every day that goes by I feel that the future is just going to be like what's shown in the expanse series
My personal take for a long time has been that the primary driver of most war today is boredom. War today is undertaken for entertainment. It's a special kind of entertainment that taps into deep brain stem circuits and provides a false but deeply resonating sense of purpose and meaning. When you hear that "people don't have a sense of meaning," it means their brain stem is not feeling the tribal loyalty emotions connected to warfare.
It would be cheaper to solve resource shortages in almost any other way. I don't really buy that explanation, at least for most wars. I think most wars today have roots that are far less rational.
Note that this applies IMO to all participants on all sides insofar as they had any role in starting or sustaining the war.
I think the primary drivers of war come from the top--powerful people motivated by greed and ego. Those are the spark that starts wars.
Boredom works from the bottom, providing fuel for wars in the form of soldiers. More specifically, young men in particular are easily appealed to by offering them a part in some great heroic endeavor, and a promise to mold them into someone whose manhood and courage may never again be questioned.
Of course, as many former soldiers have found out, you usually receive none of those things. The endeavor was bullshit, you were only a cog, and there is no badge of honor in the world that exempts you from the human experience of being made to feel small.
> My personal take for a long time has been that the primary driver of most war today is boredom. War today is undertaken for entertainment.
incredible claim, any research or evidence behind this?
Wildly disagree with that. I think the overwhelming majority of people want simple, peaceful existence, and that the 'lack of meaning' can be solved through deeper shared community goals and aspirations.
More prominent figures like Trump, Putin or al-Assad don't wage war out of boredom, but out of ego, or visions of a glorious future that only they can impart (which I guess is still ego).
I also think that the various regional conflicts in Africa are in no way driven by the fact that the various political groups are just sitting there with nothing to do.
That said, I do think that a 'common enemy' provides a great deal of focus to communities, as we're wired for it... but the definition of community (who is 'us') is largely malleable and entirely flexible. But it's only one way of providing that meaning.
I also think conflict is largely glorified through American media, which is aggressively pushed on a lot of the English speaking world. The videos of the SF soldiers talking about killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how cool it was with no remorse for the taking of life in a conflict that none of the local population asked for. Of the people I've talked to that have been through armed conflict (specifically Angola, and Serbia), and so strongly against conflict that the reactions are almost scary.
So no, I don't think conflicts are started or sustained out of a sense of boredom.
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I think this is skewed by your perception of how frequent wars actually are. If your idea of a typical war is Trump bombing Iran, well, I disagree with your assertion, but it's at least a colorable argument. But those kinds of wars between clearly defined states are actually incredibly rare.
Your typical war, however, looks more like the M23 rebels (backed by Rwanda, though they deny this) fighting the Congo state. Take a more expansive definition of war to include armed conflict in general, and the typical case looks more like the ELN in Colombia. Almost all of these kinds of conflicts can be fairly analyzed as fighting for control of resources, chiefly land and the people or the rents that can be derived from de facto control of that land.
I agree that its not rational, but it's also not boredom. Its simply stupidity and ignorance.
The expanse future isn't that bad - even at the start of the series we've already made it to the asteroid belt and Jupiter moons, and the civilization consists of several sovereign self-governed entities with individual entrepreneurship and private enterprise allowed. It means we didn't annihilate ourself in a nuclear war, nor our civilization collapsed into allways-fully-connected ant colony (or one global fascist/communist/religious regime).
Agreed it’s a tolerable vision, it could be worse. But it’s also a vision of humanity mostly living in enormous disenfranchised structural underclasses - corporate-authoritarianism in the asteroids and subsistence-UBI for all those unnecessary humans on Earth.
It’s a vision of incredible technological progress without any growth in our ability to justly and humanely govern ourselves or move past violent conflict.
I agree with GP this is our current trajectory. I’d live in that world and hope I’d get lucky, but what a disappointment if that’s all we can manage.
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uh I would argue that at the beginning of The Expanse things are middling to bad and at the end things are pretty fucking bad. The epilogue of the final book is the only thing that's unabashedly optimistic.
The main series takes place over about 30 years during which several billion people die system-wide as a result of various wars and terrorist attacks, and uncountably many die in the immediate aftermath of the finale. I love it but it's not really a feel-good story!
> this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war
Just a reminder that even the Utopia of the 23rd century and beyond envisioned by Gene Roddenberry for Star Trek - the Federation and Starfleet are still at their core military institutions. Even war was very much still a thing in his utopic vision, despite the fact that scarcity basically no longer exists so what hell was everyone fighting over anyway?
Starfleet is only a few steps removed from the regime in Heinlen’s Starship Troopers. At least Heinlen didn’t pretend that they were enlightened post-imperialists. He was honest about what it was.
Wasn't war on Earth not the issue but war with other species in the galaxy the issue? Sure, there were some sympathizers trying to sabotage peace, but that's because they wanted to continue warring.
There is the Maquis which are basically insurrectionists/terrorists and Starfleet also has Section 31 for doing wet work.
Sisko poisoned a planet’s atmosphere, allowed political assassinations and even Picard did things that could be considered questionable once or twice, even Kirk.
Earth is peaceful because well…in a show about exploring space nobody really wants to see conflicts on Earth (there are a few exceptions where it worked though). And they have enough big guns and secret assassins to keep up appearances.
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I hope so, but if this goes awry in any way, especially if – god forbid – they lose the crew, my fear is it’ll be a blow to the American hegemony that will be very hard to recover from. Orange man is bad, but I think something like that would add a whole other dimension to the US’s loss of face. I’m as anti-american as they come, but despite everything Pax Americana must be acknowledged and I shudder at the thought of it shattering.
Godspeed!
As far as I am concerned "Pax Americana" ended (if I understand what it means correctly) when they mixed up the best picture at the Oscars!
But may be things have improved since...
> Pax Americana must be acknowledged and I shudder at the thought of it shattering.
Shudder away! We've already had both Carney and the finance minister of Singapore essentially declare Pax Americana to have ended. Everybody else is just being polite.
[EDIT: prime minister of Singapore, not finance minister]
The prime minister of Singapore said something similar. It’s worth a watch, he is very well-spoken.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NXSI4cCm3BM
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Until nukes are going off, Pax Americana stands strong.
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> if – god forbid – they lose the crew, my fear is it’ll be a blow to the American hegemony that will be very hard to recover from
This has zero impact on American hegemony. That mission is being prosecuted in Iran and with respect to NATO.
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> this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement.
Is that irony or plain naiveness? historically and technically, conquest of space is inseparable from warfare. As for climate change, one can argue that technology is one of the primary driver: aviation alone is estimated to 4% of global temperature rise.
Energy use is the driver. Fossil fuels happen to be cheap. It's effectively a coincidence, nothing inherent to technological progress itself except insofar as something like aviation would never have been a commercial success without an exceedingly cheap, dense, and portable method of energy storage. Solar-syngas and solar-battery would have eventually gotten there but we'd all have been taking trains and ships for the past 80 years while riding electrified public transit.
Energy and tech are two sides of the same coin
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This is a new space race. From a geopolitical level, a nation that has a better presence on the moon will have a better strategic advantage.
What about the mineshaft gap though?
What about it makes you think it is important?
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I believe the biggest benefit of going to space, particularly in building space stations, is making humanity focused on building a bigger pie.
This is one step towards this. But once we can build (effectively) infinite land, we will be in true abundance.
I think it's rather the opposite. That space exploration can only possiblly inspire a nation when there is peace, prosperity and justice for all.
Did someone skip 1968-2026 in their history books?
On the contrary, Whitey on the Moon still rings true.
Yeah, that's the take I have been looking for a spot to drop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
I believe that folks in the US are, by a large margin, the most highly propagandized group of people in history. It's hard to watch stuff like this.
It's not that I don't understand that comparatively space exploration is small compared to the associated costs of the boots that might hit the ground today.
Space Force would disagree.
The talk of taking the Moon would belie.
Old is new again! :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Horizon
Next stop - defending the base with claymore sticks! :-)
https://www.sandboxx.us/news/featured/project-horizon-nukes-...
Well said. I'd be lying if I didn't get that little flutter inside watching the launch. It felt like "oh, there's still a flicker in the soul!"
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>Regardless of whether this particular mission is perfectly planned, this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement.
You watch too much Star Trek. This is precisely the kind of thing that will benefit the military industrial complex, enrich billionaires at the expense of everyone else, and justify the government raping natural resources like it's a little girl locked in a cage.
No one cares about space any more and no one engaging in space travel is doing so for science anymore. Those days, if they ever really existed, are over. NASA has been cleansed and gutted and purged of wrongthink and now only exists to further the cause of American propaganda and be parasitized by SpaceX and intelligence agencies.
I guess we should collectively give up on space. The people at NASA are all doing hard science for that notoriously bloated government salary.
We actually should. By "we" I mean just Americans, though.
Leave the hard science to cultures that still have an educated populace and a government that believes in it. Americans are going to need that money to fund the holy war in Iran over the next decade and to build out Trump's Epstein Memorial ballroom. All that gold filigree is expensive.
If I were a Real Scientist working for NASA I would have seen the writing on the wall and packed my bags for greener pastures once Elon let his pack of groyper skiddie goons slash the department's budget because there were too many brown people on the payroll.
The United States is no longer a serious nation worthy of scientific endeavor, and it won't be again for a very long time. The next person to set foot on the moon won't be an American. These are just the consequences of the choices the American voters have made.
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> this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement.
How do you figure? The previous Moon missions certainly didn't accomplish that.
The key phrase is "kind of thing". It certainly does matter what kinds of things we focus our attention on as a species. I think you would have to be quite cynical to think that progress in spaceflight over the past 60+ years hasn't had a positive impact.
> I think you would have to be quite cynical to think that progress in spaceflight over the past 60+ years hasn't had a positive impact.
Spaceflight aside, how exactly has humanity started to outgrow war, inequality, and climate mismanagement? Call me cynical, but I'm not seeing it.
Global rates of poverty are 83% lower than they were in 1969 when we landed on the moon.
So actually, millions of lives have massively benefited from science and technology. To be cynical in the face of all that is a personal take, not a reflection of the facts.
So landing on the moon triggered a reduction in global rates of poverty? do you have any research or citations for this claim?
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> Global rates of poverty are 83% lower than they were in 1969 when we landed on the moon.
Obvious post hoc fallacy
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You don't solve these problems in a single step, but notice how space imagery and analogies pop up every time people try to talk about peace, global problems, mutual empathy, understanding, etc. The Pale Blue Dot, images of Earth from orbit or the Moon, etc. Those are anchors in public consciousness, competing in memetic space with usual divisive, dystopian, hope-draining pictures and soundbites - we need more of them to improve on the big problems, and we absolutely would not have them if not for people actually flying to space.
Or, put differently, space exploration is one of the few things "feeding the right wolf" for humanity at large.
It's crazy to believe that people who believe in one holy book are killing people over another holy book in countries like (but certainly not limited to) Nigeria, while another country launches people to the moon.
But, alas, I agree with you. There's no way out but through I guess.
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> You don't solve these problems in a single step
Obviously, but there's no evidence that the previous Moon missions were a step toward solving the problems.
> notice how space imagery and analogies pop up every time people try to talk about peace, global problems, mutual empathy, understanding, etc.
You think these problems will be solved with... photos?
How many more photos do we need? Everyone has seen the photos already. I'm sure Putin and Trump have seen the photos of Earth.
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Sparked the environmental movement, to name but one major impact.
> > The previous Moon missions certainly didn't accomplish that.
> Sparked the environmental movement, to name but one major impact.
It...really didn't. There was a new wave with a different political orientation (less conservative/elite) in the environmental movement roughly contemporary to the space program from—the 1950s through the 1970s—but it was driven by a variety of human driven (nuclear testing, oil spills, etc.) environmental disasters combined with more modern media coverage that occurred in that time than by the space program itself.
I know there are people who try to ignore all that and pretend that the whole thing was just the Earthrise photo in 1968 but much of the development of the new character of the movement happened before Earthrise, and even what happened after generally clearly had other more important causes.
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Also wrt. "climate mismanagement", pretty much all tools we get to measure climate exist because of space program, and many require it to function.
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This is absurd. Have you heard of Rachel Carson's 1962 "Silent Spring"?
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> Regardless of whether this particular mission is perfectly planned, this is precisely the kind of thing that will help humanity outgrow the dark age of war, inequality and climate mismanagement.
More likely, it is precisely the kind of thing that will be managed specifically to keep people distracted, so that the people who have a near term benefit from the dark age of war, inequality, and climate mismanagement can continue realizing that benefit without interruption by people taking action right up until there is no one left to distract or benefit.
The engineering was done in the 70's and 80's. This rocket is built out of leftover shuttle hardware.
The exploration in this mission was done 50 years ago.
I fail to see how this mission is noble. It's biggest accomplishment is keeping the NASA beurocratic apparatus in tact.
This spectacle of a mission is precisely the kind of distraction which enables complacency and allows the "dark age of war" to remain dark.