Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

> The decision to terraform Mars would also exhibit hubris. Often understood as an “excessive pride before the gods,” hubris has ancient roots and is perhaps best epitomized by the fabled Icarus, whose wings of wax and feathers melted when he got too close to the sun in his attempt to reach heaven.

One man's hubris is another's whole raison d'être of humanity. I suppose the reference to Icarus is a good one here, because I wholeheartedly agree with Randall Munroe: "But I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.".

I can understand appeals to aesthetics. I can understand pointing out generic irresponsibility of humans in aggregate. But hubris? The strong drive to adapt the world to what we see fit is literally what separates us from animals.

View on HN

Let's not forget that Daedelus, with careful engineering and aeronautical prudence, successfully designed and constructed a set of personal wings and flew them 70 miles to safety and freedom. I think that's really the larger story.

The true moral is "do not exceed the design flight envelope on the maiden flight of experimental aircraft". Pretty sensible advice.

that's also the original moral.

Even that is giving the author a free pass. Because, using a story that did not happen like Icarus to justify your world view is hubris. Building stuff on the other hand is just engineering.

> Because, using a story that did not happen like Icarus to justify your world view is hubris.

The story of Icarus, written by a human within his own world view, is part of our collective history. The events in the story not being real has no relevance at all on its philosophical implications.

The events in the story are physically impossible. But still, using the plot line of The Walking Dead to justify yourself feels silly, but somehow old story's are given a free pass.

Sorry, using a collection of meaningless words to justify thoughts or actions is irrational.

Exactly, it's fine to make a point with a story, but it should not provide justification only clarity.

To go back to the original point, I've never understood the problem with 'hubris', it's not as if we have evidence for something or someone taking offence and then taking it out on us. There's no reason to believe we wouldn't be able to terraform a planet eventually. Even if we do screwup a couple of times, there's enough resources in the solar system to try again a bunch of times once/if we can get to them.

There's something to be said for a human locust swarm over the milkyway. Just imagine one day in the future having an internet connection between earth and mars. For some reason imagining operating those links is even more exiting to me than the original colonization (which I'd partake in given half the chance). How would be deal with the immense latency? How would facebook or google sync their datacenters? Once a day? A private uplink with 30m lag? What?

They'd place the conservatives on one planet and the liberals on the other. With filter bubbles being fully separated, they can shard the database :-P

>Sorry, using a collection of meaningless words to justify thoughts or actions is irrational.

Any action we take is irrational at its root. If you remove emotions, there's no compelling rational reason to do anything or favor one action over the other. In that case, a person can very well decide to reject Icarus as being meaningless, but they will not be able to remove all such meaningless thoughts from the way they live their lives, or even a small fraction of the stories they live by.

There will always be numerous narratives and mental models of varying accuracy that will determine our choices and actions. Anything from a sense of our own self and memories, to beliefs in some exterior entity or cause, to even abstract thoughts about the world itself that we came up with or received from others. On this basis, we use reason to move towards our goals but the goals themselves are still irrational.

Icarus itself isn't even a bad story, as far as tales go. There are several examples in human history where our ambition and drive caused enormous suffering. Looking at the twentieth century or even the last six thousand years can make you wonder whether it wouldn't have been better for us to stay in small tribes until the Sun burns the planet to a crisp. Is the current and marginally less awful world worth all the misery that came before it? Hard to say for sure, even if I do fully agree that we should be as hubristic as possible in today's circumstances. It's too late to go back so we must move forward.

Except such stories are meaningless because they are random in nature. Unlike in the Icarus story, air gets colder with altitude so does that suddenly reverse the meaning of the story?

Now, we can use a real world example like car accidents as traveling 35+ MPH is unsafe. But, now the counter arguments are obvious because in the real world there are trade offs and meaningful stories are more open to interpretation.

I don't know why people take the Icarus story at face value instead of seeing it as a colorful metaphor. I'm not sure how the Greeks considered their own stories but it seems doubtful they would believe them in as literal a sense as the monotheists who succeeded them.

As an abstraction it does not demonstrate hubris being bad. You can say it's discouraged in a culture with slaves etc. But, again that does not mean it's actually bad just not a norm for a very different culture. You can find plenty of stories that use it as a plot device, but the world does not work on narrative causality making that rather meaningless.

So, if you look at it as a metaphor then bringing it up is just saying: Hubris is bad, because hubris is bad. Which adds nothing to someones argument.

I see what you mean. I interpreted a little differently, as another poster here mentioned in the sense of "avoiding extremes" or overconfidence in general. So all in all a rather basic notion that people are familiar with from culture, historical events or their own life experience but dressed up in a way that ticks a lot of satisfying mental boxes. But if you interpret it in the way you mentioned then I agree that it's not very useful.

>Except such stories are meaningless because they are random in nature. Unlike in the Icarus story, air gets colder with altitude so does that suddenly reverse the meaning of the story?

Obviously not, because the meaning of story lies in how things work in the context of the story.

Only if the general point (devoid of storytelling flourishes) was invalid it would invalidate the story as a cautionary tale.

But the general point still holds as general advice: "Avoid extremes" [1].

[1] https://thetaoofwealth.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/lessons-for-...

Dismissing most of the world's heritage, because one is a literalist, is what is irrational.

By this logic, mathematics discovered for curiousity would not have applications, something which is not at all true. Number theory is just one example. There are many others like using 'imaginary' numbers used for solving polynomial eqns, later becomes basic to engineering.

>The events in the story are physically impossible. But still, using the plot line of The Walking Dead to justify yourself feels silly, but somehow old story's are given a free pass. Sorry, using a collection of meaningless words to justify thoughts or actions is irrational.

Sorry, but the story of Icarus is loaded with meaning, a meaning which has been examined, discussed, and argued about for two millennia by some of the greatest thinkers.

Most of myth, just like cautionary tales and proverbs, is meaning concentrated. It is an observation/insight/point made into story.

It's your comment that rather seems devoid of meaning, seeing that humans have been able since forever to construct stories, metaphors, and examples from both real and non-real-world-events to convey particular ideas, concepts and worries.

There would be nothing silly to "using the plot line of The Walking Dead to justify" one's self if it works for making their point.

What would be silly would be if someone conflated Icarus or the Walking Dead plotline for something that actually happened. But nobody does that -- they recognize it for what it is, a metaphor, and are able to see the point being made, regardless of if there are wax wings or zombies in real life.

In a modern context it may seem like nobody could ever have believed Icarus, but that's unlikely. People look back on the 'great' thinkers for what they got right and ignore thinks like a great logician comparing volcanoes to the bowel movements of animals. Consider all of the outrageous things people firmly believe in a religious context (not pointing fingers there is plenty of things to go around even if you exclude whatever your personal faith is.)

So, unless you have very firm evidence the tale may have be out before the moral.

As to using the walking dead to make a point, think this through a little more. Because it's pure circular reasoning. A is true because of A.

All life modifies its environment one way or another. We do so in greater magnitude that's all. And often irresponsible modifications. Abstract reasoning (mostly) sets us somewhat apart from the rest of animals. Nothing special as far as it goes.

> The strong drive to adapt the world to what we see fit is literally what separates us from animals...

You are saying animals does not have the drive to adapt the world to what they see fit?

I would say that the bigger differentiator is that human beings can, to an extent, control their drives.

I think the difference in quantity here creates a whole new quality - both in terms of doing the adapting and in what it means to imagine a different world state than we see.

Ok. But I stand by my point that controlling our drives and using intelligence to override what it tells us to do,is what that really differentiates us from other animals.

Isn't the haste to abandon earth and colonize other worlds just like a panic response of an animal that finds it's resting place on fire? I mean, it is not going to see if the fire can be quenched, it is just going to take off..

You have an interesting point here. Personally I do sometimes wonder if sci-fi movies depicting space travel don't make people feel it's much closer a reality than it really is, thus making them care less for our planet because "if shit hits the fan, we'll surely find another one".

That said, the current crop of space entrepreneurs seem to care more about long-term survival of our species in case of cataclysmic events not necessarily of human making - e.g. asteroid impacts.

I just realized I've never read Icarus' story as a story of hubris. To me it simply read as a "trust people who know better" exactly like little red riding hood, or the "don't cry wolf" one. I feel cut out of the world know.

Actually "trust people who know better" could be an interesting description of the moral of hubris.

To have something to work with here a description of hubris from wikipedia: "In its ancient Greek context, it typically describes behavior that defies the norms of behavior or challenges the gods, and which in turn brings about the downfall, or nemesis, of the perpetrator of hubris." [1]

The "gods" are the "people who know better" and you shall trust them. Otherwise you will get hurt.

I think you always read the story as a story of hubris, just without using that exact word.

[1] -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris

Agreed. Stupid cars and airplanes! Should have never stopped using horses!

You joke.

But there might be a time in not so distant future where you (or your successors) might really wish this was the case!

Or coal plants or cow farms, I see your point.

I don't understand the appeal to aesthetics at all.

Is a lump of rock more aesthetically pleasing than a statue?

It assumes that whatever the end result of terraforming is, will be less aesthetically pleasing than the current vista. This is clearly a flawed assumption. There's no evidence that it is true.

Aesthetics is also subjective. Some people prefer deserts, some people prefer beaches, some people prefer forests. If you prefer deserts, I guess terraforming Mars will be an aesthetic loss. If you prefer any other form of terrain, then it'll be a win.

> what separates us from animals.

talk about hubris.

Lack of hubris does not imply lack of self-esteem.

i sai talk about hubris, not lack of it

The irony of Icarus here is too strong to ignore: we will literally be flying further away from the sun.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com