[RD] Pessimism about Mars

[Timsup2nothin]

ty

but they're not the first to become lunar inhabitants, in the movie The Martian Matt Damon's character used his poop to fertilize his potato crop... Well, apparently the astronauts landing on the Moon didn't bring their poop back with them so the bacteria and bugs in our guts got left behind. They probably didn't survive, but as Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park, life will find a way.

Hmmmm...note that in the movie as soon as the breakdown exposed said poop fertilizer to actual Mars conditions there was instant death to all and sundry. I'm thinking that micro-organisms adapted to living in comfy human guts most likely croaked immediately. These tardigrades, OTOH, are quite something.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

@El_Machinae
How do we even go about qualifying life to know that the suffering inherent in it outweighs the good things? Animals clearly derive pleasure from certain activities and I'd even wager that they tend to default to a 'happy' state much more readily than humans who can self reflective, stew on things and be fearful of the future. I'm just not buying the argument that life is inherently suffering and that therefore it should not be spread.

 

[El_Machinae]

Why should consent be a factor for non-sapient life?

Because you are proposing that their pleasure is worth their pain. It's an assumption, but it's not built on anything. You cannot do that without building some type of mental ratio model. And then you are put into the position of dealing with your own biases.

Tell me, before this conversation, had you just assumed that creating new wild ecosystems was just obviously morally permissible?

 

[Mouthwash]

Hmmmm...note that in the movie as soon as the breakdown exposed said poop fertilizer to actual Mars conditions there was instant death to all and sundry. I'm thinking that micro-organisms adapted to living in comfy human guts most likely croaked immediately. These tardigrades, OTOH, are quite something.

Unfortunately for them, they cannot perform photosynthesis and are still going to need liquid water.

Because you are proposing that their pleasure is worth their pain. It's an assumption, but it's not built on anything. You cannot do that without building some type of mental ratio model. And then you are put into the position of dealing with your own biases.

I think there's a good case that human bias makes suffering seem stronger to us.

Tell me, before this conversation, had you just assumed that creating new wild ecosystems was just obviously morally permissible?

I was well aware of the counterarguments.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Unfortunately for them, they cannot perform photosynthesis and are still going to need liquid water.

Well, eventually. There doesn't seem to be any solid data on how long they can survive in their dehydrated state.

 

[El_Machinae]

@El_Machinae
How do we even go about qualifying life to know that the suffering inherent in it outweighs the good things?

I don't have the answer there. I'm pointing out that a lot of people's baseline is natural savageness. They are thinking wild ecosystems for Mars.

But, given the option, you would not subject any loved animal to the Natural suffering that wild animals experience. As well, ecosystems we create are something we've done intentionally. Regardless of any pleasure, as the willful creator of the scenario, you are 100% morally responsible for any unnecessary suffering that happened. As well, the motivation for doing this is human flourishing.

Another entity is being forced to suffer for your benefit. And unlike the ecosystem which is Earth, this is new creation. Done on purpose

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The alternative is eventual extinction of all known life in the universe.

 

[El_Machinae]

The alternative is eventual extinction of all known life in the universe.

Only if you throw in the idea that you're allowed to control whether other people breed.

There is no moral onus to propagate non-sapient life, except insofar as it benefits other already existing life. A happy dog is not an inherent goodness, because there is no entity qualified tell you that it was good. The sentience experiencing the happiness cannot formulate the question of whether it was worth it.

 

[Mouthwash]

Well, eventually. There doesn't seem to be any solid data on how long they can survive in their dehydrated state.

Wouldn't matter even if it were forever. Liquid water can't exist on the Moon's surface unless we build an atmosphere and artificially heat it up, and at that point there isn't much purpose in keeping things in a natural state.

But, given the option, you would not subject any loved animal to the Natural suffering that wild animals experience.

Perhaps you're thinking of cats and dogs, which evolved to exist alongside humans. For a truly wild species, it might be cruelty to keep them from a natural life, pain and all.

As well, ecosystems we create are something we've done intentionally. Regardless of any pleasure, as the willful creator of the scenario, you are 100% morally responsible for any unnecessary suffering that happened.

We're partially responsible (not a consequentialist, remember), and that goes for contentment and happiness as well, which you keep ignoring.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Wouldn't matter even if it were forever. Liquid water can't exist on the Moon's surface unless we build an atmosphere and artificially heat it up, and at that point there isn't much purpose in keeping things in a natural state.

Why are you in such a tizzy about this? Does it have anything to do with the nationality of the company being questioned regarding their inadvertent contamination of the moon?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Liquid water can't exist on the Moon's surface unless we build an atmosphere and artificially heat it up

Just to quibble - if you gave the moon an atmosphere, you would not have to warm it up. The Moon is in the goldilocks zone along with the Earth and the Sun will keep it plenty warm without any other intervention once there is an atmosphere there. The specifics of the atmosphere will play a big role though, so that may have to be managed to an extent.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Only if you throw in the idea that you're allowed to control whether other people breed.

There is no moral onus to propagate non-sapient life, except insofar as it benefits other already existing life

I don't equate forcing people to breed with creating an ecosystem.

I do think there is a moral onus to propagate non-sapient life because I don't think it should be allowed to be extinguished forever. I see good and value in life itself and worth spreading. We are rapidly approaching a point where we can do nothing and thereby let everything die eventually or do something so it won't. Doing nothing is a choice with its own moral implications.

 

[Mouthwash]

Just to quibble - if you gave the moon an atmosphere, you would not have to warm it up. The Moon is in the goldilocks zone along with the Earth and the Sun will keep it plenty warm without any other intervention once there is an atmosphere there. The specifics of the atmosphere will play a big role though, so that may have to be managed to an extent.

Wouldn't the atmosphere be much thinner than Earth's?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Depends. Water has a pretty wide band of pressures where it's happy to be liquid at reasonable temperatures.

 

[Berzerker]

Would it be possible for subsurface lunar ice to form liquid water as the surface warms above?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yeah probably. Some scientist think this happens on Mars right now in spots. (the low pressure at the surface makes it boil off when exposed though)

 

[r16]

tardigrades are taking over the moon

https://www.wired.com/story/a-crashed-israeli-lunar-lander-spilled-tardigrades-on-the-moon/

so , that's true . Now that otherwise my post would be :

oh my , oh my . Yesterday's newspaper claims Israelis intentionally placed lifeforms on their lunar probe . Something called water bears and ı don't have the slightest idea what they are . But am prying to Allah that they are not some sort of a parasite . Intention is stated to save "Life" if something happens to Life on Earth . Making Israel the first country to colonize a celestial object . You know , under the unfailing leadership of Bibi Netanyahu .

but of course that has nothing to do with the way it was shot down .

though ı don't understand why it has come up to the point of whether could ı really date that Martian chick or not ; considering there could be NO humans up there is the essential claim of the thread or whatever . When you get past the achievement of the "Jewish State" .

P.S. That affairs of the bed will be much livelier on Mars is a selling point for condos there , to be built by UAE , if somebody ever takes UAE there ; do not fall for the sales pitch ; Nigerian Prince who needs your asistance is much safer a bet . Yeah , am the closest person that will you all that it ain't so , having heard it from people who know .

and surely ı will blame the Stuntwoman , who else' fault this can be ?

 

[Lexicus]

Wouldn't the atmosphere be much thinner than Earth's?

Depends. Water has a pretty wide band of pressures where it's happy to be liquid at reasonable temperatures.

As I understand things we can't really just give the Moon an atmosphere in a one-off event, we would have to inject gases continuously at a faster rate than they escape. Because the moon has little gravity and no magnetic field the rate of gas escaping from it, just from natural drift plus being hit by solar particles, is very high.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The rate it would lose atmosphere is on the scale of tens of thousands up to millions of years. Yes, you'd have to continually replace it and it would escape faster than an artificial atmosphere on Mars (due to lower mass and closer proximity to the Sun) but it'd still happen on timescales beyond human experience.

NASA already frets over the de-spoiling the lunar environment caused by very small landers, for example. Well, they protested when the Chinese first landed there but of course don't seem to have any issues with the landers of other countries, much less their own.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Off-topic -
@Lexicus your comments on how evolved insects might be classified got me thinking about how we currently classify species. Right now it's mostly done using physical characteristics - this species has this bone in this shape, this other species instead has this other bone, etc (for macroscopic creatures at least).

I think in the near future, classification will switch over to be entirely gene-based for current species and then be applied retroactively to extinct species as technologies improve. Like how I said growing chloroform and chitin are just not in the animal genome toolkit, I think scientists will get better and better at identifying key genes that differentiate between species. Obviously this is straight forward with live animals but I think we'll soon be able to do it for fossils as well. We're already finding that the application of the right chemical cocktails can strip rocks from fossils and expose trace amounts of soft tissues. Of course, soft tissues is not DNA and DNA has a short half life which means it's mostly destroyed by time and the process of fossilization.

But as with radioactive particles, the DNA is not really completely wiped out by time, it just asymptotically reaches trace amounts very close to zero. And if you have a big enough source material (say the thigh bone of a stegosaurus), there should be enough DNA in the material to piece together a genome, if you have the right tool kit. Right now, contamination is one of the biggest hurdles for recovering DNA from fossils but pretty soon we're going to have virus-sized machines capable of going in and finding DNA without the contamination problem. And while that DNA is going to be all spliced up and essentially gibberish, with our growing AI prowess, I think we'll also have computer algorithms that can sort it out around the same time we have nanomachines.

tl;dr: Jurassic Park CONFIRMED