[RD] Pessimism about Mars

[Imaus]

Every couple of years, the same **** pops up. And every couple of years, my response is the same: throw it out.

It's all cherry picked to be as menacing and gloomy as possible. We see it in travelling, that apparently we're just going to cruise in deep space for the longest amount of time to soak up all the rads and bone entropy like we're tanning on a beach, to the acidity or bareness of Martian soil, or some other thing. It's all hogwash. Talk to me about the effects on crews doing the best, shortest missions which we'll actually undertake. Talk to me about living in controlled, underground bases and bunkers, because that's what we're going to do. Talk to me about ISRU and nuclear power on Mars, because that's what we're going to do. Talk to me about the transitional period where we're supplying Mars and doing experiments on self-sufficiency and up to the time Mars can support itself, because that's definitely one of the first things we're going to gun for.

We're not going to crawl to Mars and immediately pop out unshielded cloth tents. All of these articles can shove their fearmonging clickbait up their arses and quiet down until the real hard data comes in from real hard missions, that's my view of it. Call me stubborn or ignorant, but that's basically been my position since 2014 against the naysayers against interplanetary travel or other planetary habitation. I got exasperated and said "We're going to do it and just see from the ground and not some computer or math slide you've pruned to grow your way".

The biggest hurdle is the 1/3 gravity thing and you know what? We're going to just have to suck it up. We're going to have to take it. We're going to change. The people who'll live on Mars, the people who are going to be born there, and the Moon, and Space, and elsewhere, they're not going to be up to 1g par and standards and strength. Some might try, and have 1g habitats and spinning buildings (another solution no one talks about in these fearmongering articles because it flies over their heads. I'm not even talking about 1g ships, but habitats on the ground or in space) and what not, but it won't last forever. They're going to get weaker there, because we're basically giants on a giant world moving out to a system with smaller rocks. Comes with the cards we were given.

They're eventually going to form new types and breeds of humanity, and 1g will be uncomfortable for them. Just like 1/3 or 1/16th or whatever x/x g will be uncomfortable for us. And we're just going to have to suck it up and take it because that's what diversifying and expanding out to new niches and habitats entail: changes.

 

[Mouthwash]

It's not meaningless.
Turning a barren world into a beautiful forested wilderness has no suffering. As soon as you introduce a population of mice, you've introduced suffering. As you've noted, a poorly designed ecosystem will result in much more suffering than a well-designed one. But remember what the current suffering is when the world was still barren: it's zero.

You might be suffering some type of naturalistic fallacy. That there's a spread of 'normal' under which it's okay to create new life. That's all it is, an appeal to a naturalistic heuristic.

I don't understand why you think *only* suffering comes into the calculus here.

 

[r16]

just passing by and ı had read some article , this guy Mendelev or whatever that originated the periodic table was a fierce opponent of biological explanation for oil and ı had read similar stuff in the 1990s ,too .

and gravity has a way of doing bad things to people who ignore it . This is an essential problem .

 

[yung.carl.jung]

One advantage of the Dunning-Kruger Effect is that I can recycle old posts.

This is exactly what I was getting at, thank you so much for these insightful quotes. I personally haven't formed an opinion yet -- I am unsure whether life outweighs suffering, and whether an ethical decision can even possibly be made -- but even notwithstanding all these "ifs", I have another proposition for you:

Is a life without suffering even a life as we know it? and, furthermore: Is suffering as a negation not necessary for any kind of happiness or joy in the first place? those are two things I am inherently convinced of, I truly believe there can be no happy life without suffering, for happiness without its counterpart will always devolve into sterility, and that is arguably worse than suffering.

An ecosystem without carnivores would produce tremendous suffering, being constantly just under the Malthusian threshold for collapse. Even if it didn't start out that way, adaptation to a predator-free environment would be rapid.

but one could, in theory, devise a system that does not need carnivores in order to stay stable is what El_Mac was arguing, and you missed his point by a mile

A meaningless statement. That suffering rises in proportion to rising happiness and health.

It's the opposite of meaningless actually, it's a true statement and one with heavy implications.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I don't understand why you think *only* suffering comes into the calculus here.

the fundamental question at play here is: does (potential) happiness ever outweigh (guaranteed) suffering? we know that many people, and to some extent even animals, have the capacity to feel good, to be physically well, to be in a positive mental state, whatever you want to define it as. but happiness is not a necessary part of life, some people or animals sadly never get to experience happiness. but suffering on the other hand is almost a guarantee -- life is suffering, says not only the Dhukka, but even Jordan Peterson -- so you are faced with the difficult question:

Is it morally permissible to put into existance millions, billions of conscious beings that are guaranteed to suffer, with the only net-gain being their (and our) happiness and experience?

As @El_Machinae correctly puts, it would be just as feasible to create a world -- on a different planet or somewhere -- that is full of non-conscious or barely-conscious life, which would likely not entail any suffering.

 

[El_Machinae]

I don't understand why you think *only* suffering comes into the calculus here.

I don't. I just don't dismiss it out of hand. The modern instinct is that the level of suffering found within a natural ecosystem is acceptable. But it's just a naturalistic assumption. Also, while we have this moral discussion, we are trapped in an ecosystem that has to balance many factors. Sustainability, animal suffering, human prosperity, Etc. Animal suffering on Earth already existed before we had to figure out how to husband it.

On Earth, we accept what is. And then we throw in some human selfishness as well. We have natural ecosystems, and then we have industrialized Meat Farms where the animal suffering is mainly considered in terms of nutrient productivity. Anyone you talk to about this issue, chances are, believes that God designed the natural world to be as cruel as it is while at the same time supporting industrialized meat. Like it or not, but that's where the discussion implicitly starts in most people's heads.

Everything changes when you're the Creator. I would agree that a terraformed Mars is better for human flourishing. But the calculus of how much new animal suffering is tolerable for a marginal improvement in human flourishing is not easy. And I don't want us to fall to simple naturalism

Remember, we have peers that would see no problem in expanding our industrialized livestock production to the stars. Because people like steak. And if you objected, they would respond with dissonance

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I don't think living in shielded, cramped, underground, environments is necessarily as completely unworkable as the OP suggests. We already have submarines and the ISS where people live in similar conditions for extended periods. Plus in order to even get to Mars in the first place you'd have to be the type of person who can put up with that. Yes you're not going to be able to spend all that much time jumping around on the surface, but that's not necessarily a deal breaker.

Although I suppose it does raise the question of what the point of going there in the first place is if you only get to live in a sealed box that might as well just be on the Moon or in Earth orbit, or even Antarctica, but that's another thing entirely.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I don't think living in shielded, cramped, underground, environments is necessarily as completely unworkable as the OP suggests. We already have submarines and the ISS where people live in similar conditions for extended periods. Plus in order to even get to Mars in the first place you'd have to be the type of person who can put up with that. Yes you're not going to be able to spend all that much time jumping around on the surface, but that's not necessarily a deal breaker.

Although I suppose it does raise the question of what the point of going there in the first place is if you only get to live in a sealed box that might as well just be on the Moon or in Earth orbit, or even Antarctica, but that's another thing entirely.

Any colonisation that takes place certainly won't bear much resemblance to its earth equivalent.
The physical work will be done by robots, the colonies will have to be as self-sufficient as possible, almost from the go.
Its going to need engineers, biologists etc, not hardy pioneer types and certainly not celebrity businessmen who think it might be fun.

 

[Lexicus]

The crucial question is still what is the actual point of going to live on Mars though. I'm not convinced by the manifest-destiny type arguments, by the argument that it's our duty to spread life around, or even really by the argument that we need a backup in case something happens to Earth. Our priority should be figuring out how to have a sustainable civilization on the Earth and protecting it from threats that aren't just us (e.g impacts with comets or asteroids).

 

[warpus]

These are really serious issues and I'm upset (but not surprised) that none of them have ever caught my notice before now.

But they have caught the notice of the people planning this stuff at SpaceX and NASA and wherever else. I mean, surely the people planning these missions have had this on their radars for years. It'd be like planning a trip across the atlantic without thinking about how to feed your crew or what to build the boat out of. Doesn't seem to me that the people solving the engineering marvels like reusable rocketry are incompetent enough to not think of this stuff years ago.

Giant arcologies in space will probably be capable of creating a near-Earthlike environment

Uhh yeah maybe in 300 years we'll have giant arcologies in space. What makes you think we are anywhere close to building something like this and populating it? Have you even seen the biggest thing we've been able to build in space, and how much it cost?

 

[El_Machinae]

In my experience, Terraforming Mars takes about 11-13 generations after the first building gets purchased. Less time if the United Nations is participating

 

[Mouthwash]

But they have caught the notice of the people planning this stuff at SpaceX and NASA and wherever else. I mean, surely the people planning these missions have had this on their radars for years. It'd be like planning a trip across the atlantic without thinking about how to feed your crew or what to build the boat out of. Doesn't seem to me that the people solving the engineering marvels like reusable rocketry are incompetent enough to not think of this stuff years ago.

People like that have boundless confidence in technological advancement. I don't.

Uhh yeah maybe in 300 years we'll have giant arcologies in space. What makes you think we are anywhere close to building something like this and populating it? Have you even seen the biggest thing we've been able to build in space, and how much it cost?

Yes, in 300 years. I was talking long-term myself.

 

[warpus]

People like that have boundless confidence in technological advancement. I don't.

I don't think anybody does, tbh.

You think they're blindly working on this, hoping it all works out in the end? They have timetables and estimates in place. They must have ideas about how to solve most if not all of these problems.

Yes, in 300 years. I was talking long-term myself.

By that time we will already have settlements on other planets, so I don't really understand the point. If we instead play an "isolationist" role and ignore space.. then such structures in space will never be built. We need the experience of doing stuff in space in order to do cooler and bigger stuff in space.

 

[Mouthwash]

By that time we will already have settlements on other planets, so I don't really understand the point. If we instead play an "isolationist" role and ignore space.. then such structures in space will never be built. We need the experience of doing stuff in space in order to do cooler and bigger stuff in space.

I'm not saying that there won't be any colonization of planets, only that controlled environments might ultimately prove more popular than the capriciousness and alienness of planetary environments.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Remember, we have piers that would see no problem in expanding our industrialized livestock production to the stars. Because people like steak. And if you objected, they would respond with dissonance

I would hope by the time we colonize Mars, most of our meat production will be done with cultures or plant substitutes. People will bring pets and animal necessary to maintain artificial environments. I think animal-free ecosystems are a long way off, further than Mars colonization. And in the end, what animals people are going to bring are going to be up to the people that bring them, not you or I.

But they have caught the notice of the people planning this stuff at SpaceX and NASA and wherever else.

SpaceX is focused almost entirely on the short-term problems, like how to get people to Mars and survive the radiation of an inevitable solar storm during the trip. They don't have the bandwidth to put much effort into the more esoteric problems that only come with long-term habitation of Mars. NASA does a bit of studying of the longer-term problems but only really on the margins right now.

 

[Kozmos]

It's not meaningless.
Turning a barren world into a beautiful forested wilderness has no suffering. As soon as you introduce a population of mice, you've introduced suffering. As you've noted, a poorly designed ecosystem will result in much more suffering than a well-designed one. But remember what the current suffering is when the world was still barren: it's zero.

You might be suffering some type of naturalistic fallacy. That there's a spread of 'normal' under which it's okay to create new life. That's all it is, an appeal to a naturalistic heuristic.

Umm so you have a problem with conscious existence then. Suffering is unavoidable. What do they call it preference lack or something to that effect.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Biological thinking is infinitely more complex than computer thinking.

Nothing about human beings is "infinite".

Computer screens are only one way they can screw with us. Humans will never become sheep in sensory cages; some facet of our natures will always revolt against it (see, for instance, how the virtualization of news and media leads to greater engagement in politics and the outside world, even in unhealthy ways).

There have been many things that "human beings would never do" in the past. As we near the era of gene editing being common, I'd be hesitant to bank on "human nature" being the same thing in 400 years as it is now.

 

[El_Machinae]

Umm so you have a problem with conscious existence then. Suffering is unavoidable. What do they call it preference lack or something to that effect.

Suffering is unavoidable, but it's also not. I'm not saying anything about consciousness, I'm talking about the deliberate creation of trillions of organisms that will suffer more than they need to. With humans, we have already have a series of implicit scales where we balance the pain of someone's existence vs the benefit of them having existed. With animals, given the lack of sapience, a difference series of scales is certainly discussable.

 

[warpus]

SpaceX is focused almost entirely on the short-term problems, like how to get people to Mars and survive the radiation of an inevitable solar storm during the trip. They don't have the bandwidth to put much effort into the more esoteric problems that only come with long-term habitation of Mars. NASA does a bit of studying of the longer-term problems but only really on the margins right now.

Isn't spaceX currently trying to figure out how to best set up fuel factories on the surface of Mars? I also seem to remember that Musk seemed to think that they would have all issues sorted out by the time the first people arrive there. Of course everything is according to "Musk time", but it seems like they wouldn't be planning to send people unless they were also working on all other associated issues of keeping those people alive.

I'm not saying that there won't be any colonization of planets, only that controlled environments might ultimately prove more popular than the capriciousness and alienness of planetary environments.

Ahh.. I disagree. I think we are too ambitious and too curious as a species to never walk and live on planetary bodies like Mars. If we survive long enough, it will happen, IMO

People like that have boundless confidence in technological advancement. I don't.

Do they, though? They're just engineers. They are given a task to solve and they sit there and figure it out. I don't think any of them have "boundless confidence" in anything. When those first people landed on the moon I don't think any of the engineers working on that project had "boundless confidence" either. They were just given problems to solve, and they ended up solving them. Seems like a pragmatic bunch to me, and not just a bunch of dreamers with crazy ideas or whatever

 

[Mouthwash]

Nothing about human beings is "infinite".

It's an expression.

There have been many things that "human beings would never do" in the past. As we near the era of gene editing being common, I'd be hesitant to bank on "human nature" being the same thing in 400 years as it is now.

Traditionalists have almost always been right. Gene editing is pseudoscience.