To be fair, you and I along with everyone else alive is the result of winning the sperm Olympics. The odds of getting to the uterus end zone is slim to none. Any non zero probability of getting to Mars and extending our collective existence is worth a shot.
That said, I do agree that it should be further down the list of humanity's priorities. Coincidently you're not the first person that has described a planet as a life boat. I watched a TED Talk years ago and the lady giving the talk said "Making Mars our backup planet is like the captain of the Titanic telling us the party is on the life boat".
Thanks, Ed, for weighing in. Unfortunately, I disagree strongly with pretty much every claim you make.
There is no sperm Olympics. If you flip a coin and it comes up tails, it didn't "overcome the odds" to win. It was either going to be heads or tails. It was tails. Flip it again and get a different result. Same sperm, different day — almost certainly a different winner. The sperm just swim. It's what they do. It's not like one of them is thinking, "Oh, no! Bob's ahead of me. Must. Swim. Harder." They are not "competing" in the sense that athletes do.
And there is no relationship between coitus and creating a livable and sustainable habitat for humans on Mars anyway, except that if we attempt the latter, we definitely will get fucked. It's an absurd analogy. Attempting to go to Mars will not help to extend our existence; it will help to end it. We will be wasting time, effort, and resources on a pipe dream while needs on Earth go unmet. But worse, that pipe dream provides an escape hatch to allow dreamers to avoid acting because "we're going to Mars".
But when attempting to defend the indefensible, false analogies abound. My favorite was the person who compared "colonizing" (he meant settling) Mars to the "colonization" (he meant conquest) of the "Americas". Because sailing a few thousand miles across an ocean through temperate breathable air to a land flush with everything humans need to survive and flourish is exactly like traveling through high radiation and vacuum for 50+ million kilometers to try to make a go in a frozen, airless environment entirely inhospitable to any kind of life, right? There is no analogy here.
These false analogies and apparent compromises suggesting that we move Mars "further down the list of humanity's priorities" are really just desperate efforts to keep the pipe dream alive. Who gets to decide this anyway? Do the billion or so hungry children in "underdeveloped" countries get a vote, or just superrich white Americans?
The best thing we can do is go all in on Earth. Survival or bust. That you are having such a hard time letting go of the Mars dream suggests that your belief in it is emotional, not rational. Understandable, but we no longer have time for dreaming. It's do or die. Literally.
But I'm not trying to persuade you. This response is for the bystanders whose minds are still open. I know that nothing will change the minds of the science-fantasy folks because their belief is not rational, but emotional. Facts don't matter at all. There will never be enough of them to change the minds (or behavior) of those whose belief is essentially a religion rather than a carefully reasoned argument.
FWIW I'm open minded as far as the whole Mars exploration goes. It's highly unlikely that I'll live long enough to see humans successfully terraform Mars and make it habitable. And even if by some miraculous feat it did come true, I have no intention of going to another planet. Also Maciej Cegłowski agrees with you: https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm.
From reading some of your other posts it seems like a rough summary of your position is: Shit is FUBAR, tech is becoming more and more of a net-negative, what we need is maturity, mass adoption of zero-waste lifestyle and redistribution of wealth.
Where we disagree is, while there are many downsides to technology I think tech needs to be part of the solution. The things you've mentioned aren't enough to get us out of this mess.
For example, The Ocean Cleanup project is developing technology to clean up the plastics floating in the ocean. Obviously effort is required by everyone to mitigate the dumping of plastics in the ocean in the first place but better tech used to clean up existing waste will help.
Several years ago I came across this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz9zl8t3UPU. Biggest takeaway from it for me was phosphorous is essential for life and is a finite resource. Unlike oil and fossil fuels, there are no alternatives. Therefore it's vital that people are trying to engineer more efficient plants to use less of it.
Off the top of my head those are some of the examples that I could think of.
The issue is, Ed, that all these essays, videos, etc. are biased. They beg the question by starting with what you claim here with zero evidence to back it up: namely, that we must have tech to survive.
The rebuttal to that is, hmm, 250,000 years of low tech survival. It is a common rationalization made by technophiles that we need X to fix the problem that X caused. But no explanation of how that will work as more X has always, without exception, resulted in exacerbating the problem.
And all of these arguments avoid admitting the many conditions that they take for granted. For example, that we will continue to manufacture plastics. That we will continue to grossly overpopulate the Earth with eight-plus billion humans. That nature needs our help to clean up our mess (it doesn't).
But the biggest problem in all this is the incredibly hubristic and narcissistic assumption of dominion: that the Earth exists to be exploited by homo sapiens. The argument is not about to whom the Earth belongs: that much is assumed. That we have displaced virtually every other species on Earth and have eliminated all the wilderness (even the word reveals our mindset) is the truth that cannot be told.
What right do we have to control all of the Earth's surface and exploit it for our benefit? What right do we have to "conquer" the stars? Is this not the imperial mindset writ large? Is it not anti-nature? In fact, it is the dogma of the technophile religion (and several other religions as well): this is our planet and even our galaxy (see Star Trek, etc.) to do with as we wish.
But don't worry. Nothing I say is going to change a thing. We will return to the Pleistocene "model" whether we like it or not — if we survive at all. Nature will see to it. And that is as certain as that the sun will rise again tomorrow. I'm just positioning myself to say "I told you so".
It seems that you've shifted from anti tech to a more anti human perspective. We'll just have to agree to disagree if you believe that human intelligence, and the technological advances that have come from it are bad for the planet, therefore the Earth and its other inhabitants are better off without us.
We're all doomed to die. That much is guaranteed. Yes it's just a matter of time before we return to the Pleistocene "model", but your position seems kind of pointless. If there was a human-level extinction event tomorrow I doubt anyone would care you told them so beforehand tbf.
That said every person has a right to prolong their existence (it's literally in our DNA) and the continued collective existence of humanity in general. At the end of the day we're living creatures. Most living creatures are prolonging their existence at the expense of other species. I disagree that when we do it it's unnatural and goes against nature fundamentally speaking. In terms of you questioning our right to control all of the Earth's surface and exploit it, like it or not we are the stewards of life on this planet. Given that we haven't yet found life outside of Earth, this extends to life in the universe (at least for now). We don't have a right to exploit, but we do have responsibility to intervene. Our intelligence gives us the ability to have a more sophisticated ethical framework than "Kill or be killed" so we have more agency.
I don't know if you remember this, but when you invited me to your place, we spoke about your cat Pris and I also showed you a picture of my cat on my phone. Now an argument can be made that breeding cats into a well mannered Ragdolls like Pris is unnatural and goes against Darwinian natural selection. Cats and dogs also eat meat so systematically killing of other animals is required to sustain the lives of so many pets. Should we release all the cats and dogs back into the wild and let nature run it's course? Kill the majority of pets and introduce the rest back into nature? Personally I'd rather see the cost of lab meat get decreased with technological advances so that we can have indoor cats and not purposely have to create any unnecessary animal suffering. Same goes for ourselves. Maybe lab meat will have unintended consequences but as a meat eater myself I'm definitely for being able to have our meat cakes and eat it too.
I see several problems with your argument to go back to pre-industrial (I'm assuming this is how far back you want us to go technologically speaking) life and just let nature run its course.
1. It's unrealistic. Very few people will buy into this.
2. You're underestimating how shit life was in the past. The vast majority of people were commoners and peasants, doing mundane manual work just to survive. I've been to the forbidden city in Beijing, part of the tour we saw the emperor's living quarters. It was just some dark and dank little room. Most people in the developed world have access to things that past emperors/kings could only dream of. You're probably taking basic things like warm tap water, electrical lights for granted. People died from infections from wounds all the time.
It is true that we are winning at the game of life too much. There are many species that have become the losers to our gains and have died out. This is not sustainable in the long run and our "wins" will ultimately cause us to become extinct as well. Therefore some drastic changes need to take place. As politically incorrect as this sounds I want there to be an international one child policy. Forced sterilisation is harsh, obviously but it's a lesser of the two evils compared to the alternative... Also international treaties on bioengineering and, AI development should be in place too. I'm definitely receptive towards a simple living life-style. I've been looking at ways I can reduce waste. I just think there are better ways than anarcho-primitivism to solve the problems we're facing. I'd much rather vote for policies that'll buy us more time and have civilization transition into a anarcho-techno society where everyone can live in a comfortable self-sustaining homes.
Oh, sorry, Ed. I thought it was clear from the start that we disagree. I am not arguing here, just trying to clarify. I see that I have still not made myself clear.
Many of the polemics on this site are not explicitly about "tech" but are about larger issues viewed through the lens of tech. It's the Cantankerous CODER, after all.
But I am neither anti-tech nor anti-human, although I'm not surprised that you took that from my comments. Modern humans have become so accustomed to the tribal beliefs in tech, progress, etc. — our religion — that it is very difficult to think outside that box: the Overton Window.
I am against infantilism and for adulthood. Adults, as I've explained elsewhere, are mature humans who do the right thing. Every time. Not because they are forcing themselves to, or because they fear punishment, but because they understand that it is the RIGHT THING. Why would they do anything else? It's as natural to them as breathing.
They would no more do the wrong thing than stick a fork in their own eye.
Adults are not driven by their base impulses. They have matured beyond that and understand that acting on those impulses will only bring pain and destruction. They think before they act, and act with empathy and kindness.
We live in a world of infants. Everywhere you turn, all you see is infantile behavior: lying, cheating, stealing, raping, torturing, murder — we just can't seem to get enough of it. Not only do we do it, we celebrate it in our media. We brag about it! It is everywhere.
And our so-called "leaders" are the worst. Look around.
I like tech, especially high tech, but high tech in the hands of infants is a sure recipe for catastrophe. And that's what we see happening now. Utter, unmitigated catastrophe.
I am not anti-human. I want humans to stick around. I don't want us to destroy ourselves. But if we're going to destroy all life on Earth, then I'd rather see us go first. That said, I remain convinced that we can change and evolve and mature, even as I am convinced that we will choose not to.
My comment about saying "I told you so" was facetious. Obviously, if we kill ourselves then I won't be around either. So that was a joke. Not that I am actually interested in saying "I told you so".
I don't think that human intelligence (if it exists) is "bad for the planet". I think that human intelligence and tech is deadly for humans and all life on Earth IF it is not accompanied by human wisdom. But that requires us to grow up.
There is too much in your reply for me to respond to adequately, so I won't try. But I will take issue with your claim that we are "winning at the game of life too much". Doesn't that depend on how you define winning?
The dinosaurs survived on Earth for hundreds of millions of years (and live on in birds and reptiles) and it took one or more asteroids to end their reign. We have been around for between a quarter million and two and a half million years depending on how you define us, and we are killing ourselves.
In my view, seeing this as a competition between us and other species is delusional. I prefer to think in terms of longevity and spiritual/moral evolution. Shouldn't the point of conscious awareness be to provide a moral aspect to otherwise amoral nature?
And in those terms, we are failing miserably. Stupidest species ever! But apparently, few of us are embarrassed by that, and fewer still are trying to change it. I guess everyone else is happy just to say, "Well, we sure showed them wolves what's what!"
Well I'm glad you haven't lost hope for humans. I must admit the pro/anti dichotomy is a sign of rampant tribalism in today's culture and I'm guilty of it too.
In terms of winning or losing my point is we've pretty much broken out of the circle of life. There are very few living organisms that pose a threat to our well-being, except for of course us ourselves. As such, some drastic measures are needed. Maybe I'm being alarmist but that's what I believe.
It is true that the definition of "winning" matters. I wholeheartedly agree that longevity is what's important. I'm not spiritual person so can't really comment on spiritual evolution. Morality cycles between improvement and decay, we are probably going through a downturn, but in general throughout history it's been headed in the right direction.
I'm reminded of a movie starring Matt Damon called "Downsizing" I don't know if you've seen it. It's a comedy-drama-fantasy (not science fiction!). The premise of the movie is that a scientist invents a way to turn people irreversibly small to about five inches tall and this becomes the solution to overpopulation, global warming etc. The movie is meh but there's a line in the movie where the scientist says "Not a very successful species, these homo sapiens, even with such great intelligence. Barely 200,000 years. Alligators have survived 200 million years with the brain the size of a walnut!"
To be fair, you and I along with everyone else alive is the result of winning the sperm Olympics. The odds of getting to the uterus end zone is slim to none. Any non zero probability of getting to Mars and extending our collective existence is worth a shot.
That said, I do agree that it should be further down the list of humanity's priorities. Coincidently you're not the first person that has described a planet as a life boat. I watched a TED Talk years ago and the lady giving the talk said "Making Mars our backup planet is like the captain of the Titanic telling us the party is on the life boat".
Thanks, Ed, for weighing in. Unfortunately, I disagree strongly with pretty much every claim you make.
There is no sperm Olympics. If you flip a coin and it comes up tails, it didn't "overcome the odds" to win. It was either going to be heads or tails. It was tails. Flip it again and get a different result. Same sperm, different day — almost certainly a different winner. The sperm just swim. It's what they do. It's not like one of them is thinking, "Oh, no! Bob's ahead of me. Must. Swim. Harder." They are not "competing" in the sense that athletes do.
And there is no relationship between coitus and creating a livable and sustainable habitat for humans on Mars anyway, except that if we attempt the latter, we definitely will get fucked. It's an absurd analogy. Attempting to go to Mars will not help to extend our existence; it will help to end it. We will be wasting time, effort, and resources on a pipe dream while needs on Earth go unmet. But worse, that pipe dream provides an escape hatch to allow dreamers to avoid acting because "we're going to Mars".
But when attempting to defend the indefensible, false analogies abound. My favorite was the person who compared "colonizing" (he meant settling) Mars to the "colonization" (he meant conquest) of the "Americas". Because sailing a few thousand miles across an ocean through temperate breathable air to a land flush with everything humans need to survive and flourish is exactly like traveling through high radiation and vacuum for 50+ million kilometers to try to make a go in a frozen, airless environment entirely inhospitable to any kind of life, right? There is no analogy here.
These false analogies and apparent compromises suggesting that we move Mars "further down the list of humanity's priorities" are really just desperate efforts to keep the pipe dream alive. Who gets to decide this anyway? Do the billion or so hungry children in "underdeveloped" countries get a vote, or just superrich white Americans?
The best thing we can do is go all in on Earth. Survival or bust. That you are having such a hard time letting go of the Mars dream suggests that your belief in it is emotional, not rational. Understandable, but we no longer have time for dreaming. It's do or die. Literally.
But I'm not trying to persuade you. This response is for the bystanders whose minds are still open. I know that nothing will change the minds of the science-fantasy folks because their belief is not rational, but emotional. Facts don't matter at all. There will never be enough of them to change the minds (or behavior) of those whose belief is essentially a religion rather than a carefully reasoned argument.
Fair point on the sperm Olympics analogy.
FWIW I'm open minded as far as the whole Mars exploration goes. It's highly unlikely that I'll live long enough to see humans successfully terraform Mars and make it habitable. And even if by some miraculous feat it did come true, I have no intention of going to another planet. Also Maciej Cegłowski agrees with you: https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm.
From reading some of your other posts it seems like a rough summary of your position is: Shit is FUBAR, tech is becoming more and more of a net-negative, what we need is maturity, mass adoption of zero-waste lifestyle and redistribution of wealth.
Where we disagree is, while there are many downsides to technology I think tech needs to be part of the solution. The things you've mentioned aren't enough to get us out of this mess.
For example, The Ocean Cleanup project is developing technology to clean up the plastics floating in the ocean. Obviously effort is required by everyone to mitigate the dumping of plastics in the ocean in the first place but better tech used to clean up existing waste will help.
Several years ago I came across this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz9zl8t3UPU. Biggest takeaway from it for me was phosphorous is essential for life and is a finite resource. Unlike oil and fossil fuels, there are no alternatives. Therefore it's vital that people are trying to engineer more efficient plants to use less of it.
Off the top of my head those are some of the examples that I could think of.
The issue is, Ed, that all these essays, videos, etc. are biased. They beg the question by starting with what you claim here with zero evidence to back it up: namely, that we must have tech to survive.
The rebuttal to that is, hmm, 250,000 years of low tech survival. It is a common rationalization made by technophiles that we need X to fix the problem that X caused. But no explanation of how that will work as more X has always, without exception, resulted in exacerbating the problem.
And all of these arguments avoid admitting the many conditions that they take for granted. For example, that we will continue to manufacture plastics. That we will continue to grossly overpopulate the Earth with eight-plus billion humans. That nature needs our help to clean up our mess (it doesn't).
But the biggest problem in all this is the incredibly hubristic and narcissistic assumption of dominion: that the Earth exists to be exploited by homo sapiens. The argument is not about to whom the Earth belongs: that much is assumed. That we have displaced virtually every other species on Earth and have eliminated all the wilderness (even the word reveals our mindset) is the truth that cannot be told.
What right do we have to control all of the Earth's surface and exploit it for our benefit? What right do we have to "conquer" the stars? Is this not the imperial mindset writ large? Is it not anti-nature? In fact, it is the dogma of the technophile religion (and several other religions as well): this is our planet and even our galaxy (see Star Trek, etc.) to do with as we wish.
But don't worry. Nothing I say is going to change a thing. We will return to the Pleistocene "model" whether we like it or not — if we survive at all. Nature will see to it. And that is as certain as that the sun will rise again tomorrow. I'm just positioning myself to say "I told you so".
It seems that you've shifted from anti tech to a more anti human perspective. We'll just have to agree to disagree if you believe that human intelligence, and the technological advances that have come from it are bad for the planet, therefore the Earth and its other inhabitants are better off without us.
We're all doomed to die. That much is guaranteed. Yes it's just a matter of time before we return to the Pleistocene "model", but your position seems kind of pointless. If there was a human-level extinction event tomorrow I doubt anyone would care you told them so beforehand tbf.
That said every person has a right to prolong their existence (it's literally in our DNA) and the continued collective existence of humanity in general. At the end of the day we're living creatures. Most living creatures are prolonging their existence at the expense of other species. I disagree that when we do it it's unnatural and goes against nature fundamentally speaking. In terms of you questioning our right to control all of the Earth's surface and exploit it, like it or not we are the stewards of life on this planet. Given that we haven't yet found life outside of Earth, this extends to life in the universe (at least for now). We don't have a right to exploit, but we do have responsibility to intervene. Our intelligence gives us the ability to have a more sophisticated ethical framework than "Kill or be killed" so we have more agency.
I don't know if you remember this, but when you invited me to your place, we spoke about your cat Pris and I also showed you a picture of my cat on my phone. Now an argument can be made that breeding cats into a well mannered Ragdolls like Pris is unnatural and goes against Darwinian natural selection. Cats and dogs also eat meat so systematically killing of other animals is required to sustain the lives of so many pets. Should we release all the cats and dogs back into the wild and let nature run it's course? Kill the majority of pets and introduce the rest back into nature? Personally I'd rather see the cost of lab meat get decreased with technological advances so that we can have indoor cats and not purposely have to create any unnecessary animal suffering. Same goes for ourselves. Maybe lab meat will have unintended consequences but as a meat eater myself I'm definitely for being able to have our meat cakes and eat it too.
I see several problems with your argument to go back to pre-industrial (I'm assuming this is how far back you want us to go technologically speaking) life and just let nature run its course.
1. It's unrealistic. Very few people will buy into this.
2. You're underestimating how shit life was in the past. The vast majority of people were commoners and peasants, doing mundane manual work just to survive. I've been to the forbidden city in Beijing, part of the tour we saw the emperor's living quarters. It was just some dark and dank little room. Most people in the developed world have access to things that past emperors/kings could only dream of. You're probably taking basic things like warm tap water, electrical lights for granted. People died from infections from wounds all the time.
It is true that we are winning at the game of life too much. There are many species that have become the losers to our gains and have died out. This is not sustainable in the long run and our "wins" will ultimately cause us to become extinct as well. Therefore some drastic changes need to take place. As politically incorrect as this sounds I want there to be an international one child policy. Forced sterilisation is harsh, obviously but it's a lesser of the two evils compared to the alternative... Also international treaties on bioengineering and, AI development should be in place too. I'm definitely receptive towards a simple living life-style. I've been looking at ways I can reduce waste. I just think there are better ways than anarcho-primitivism to solve the problems we're facing. I'd much rather vote for policies that'll buy us more time and have civilization transition into a anarcho-techno society where everyone can live in a comfortable self-sustaining homes.
Oh, sorry, Ed. I thought it was clear from the start that we disagree. I am not arguing here, just trying to clarify. I see that I have still not made myself clear.
Many of the polemics on this site are not explicitly about "tech" but are about larger issues viewed through the lens of tech. It's the Cantankerous CODER, after all.
But I am neither anti-tech nor anti-human, although I'm not surprised that you took that from my comments. Modern humans have become so accustomed to the tribal beliefs in tech, progress, etc. — our religion — that it is very difficult to think outside that box: the Overton Window.
I am against infantilism and for adulthood. Adults, as I've explained elsewhere, are mature humans who do the right thing. Every time. Not because they are forcing themselves to, or because they fear punishment, but because they understand that it is the RIGHT THING. Why would they do anything else? It's as natural to them as breathing.
They would no more do the wrong thing than stick a fork in their own eye.
Adults are not driven by their base impulses. They have matured beyond that and understand that acting on those impulses will only bring pain and destruction. They think before they act, and act with empathy and kindness.
We live in a world of infants. Everywhere you turn, all you see is infantile behavior: lying, cheating, stealing, raping, torturing, murder — we just can't seem to get enough of it. Not only do we do it, we celebrate it in our media. We brag about it! It is everywhere.
And our so-called "leaders" are the worst. Look around.
I like tech, especially high tech, but high tech in the hands of infants is a sure recipe for catastrophe. And that's what we see happening now. Utter, unmitigated catastrophe.
I am not anti-human. I want humans to stick around. I don't want us to destroy ourselves. But if we're going to destroy all life on Earth, then I'd rather see us go first. That said, I remain convinced that we can change and evolve and mature, even as I am convinced that we will choose not to.
My comment about saying "I told you so" was facetious. Obviously, if we kill ourselves then I won't be around either. So that was a joke. Not that I am actually interested in saying "I told you so".
I don't think that human intelligence (if it exists) is "bad for the planet". I think that human intelligence and tech is deadly for humans and all life on Earth IF it is not accompanied by human wisdom. But that requires us to grow up.
There is too much in your reply for me to respond to adequately, so I won't try. But I will take issue with your claim that we are "winning at the game of life too much". Doesn't that depend on how you define winning?
The dinosaurs survived on Earth for hundreds of millions of years (and live on in birds and reptiles) and it took one or more asteroids to end their reign. We have been around for between a quarter million and two and a half million years depending on how you define us, and we are killing ourselves.
In my view, seeing this as a competition between us and other species is delusional. I prefer to think in terms of longevity and spiritual/moral evolution. Shouldn't the point of conscious awareness be to provide a moral aspect to otherwise amoral nature?
And in those terms, we are failing miserably. Stupidest species ever! But apparently, few of us are embarrassed by that, and fewer still are trying to change it. I guess everyone else is happy just to say, "Well, we sure showed them wolves what's what!"
How sad.
Well I'm glad you haven't lost hope for humans. I must admit the pro/anti dichotomy is a sign of rampant tribalism in today's culture and I'm guilty of it too.
In terms of winning or losing my point is we've pretty much broken out of the circle of life. There are very few living organisms that pose a threat to our well-being, except for of course us ourselves. As such, some drastic measures are needed. Maybe I'm being alarmist but that's what I believe.
It is true that the definition of "winning" matters. I wholeheartedly agree that longevity is what's important. I'm not spiritual person so can't really comment on spiritual evolution. Morality cycles between improvement and decay, we are probably going through a downturn, but in general throughout history it's been headed in the right direction.
I'm reminded of a movie starring Matt Damon called "Downsizing" I don't know if you've seen it. It's a comedy-drama-fantasy (not science fiction!). The premise of the movie is that a scientist invents a way to turn people irreversibly small to about five inches tall and this becomes the solution to overpopulation, global warming etc. The movie is meh but there's a line in the movie where the scientist says "Not a very successful species, these homo sapiens, even with such great intelligence. Barely 200,000 years. Alligators have survived 200 million years with the brain the size of a walnut!"