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Comment by SubiculumCode | Hacker News Reader

The universe is big. There is energy everywhere.

Meanwhile, the Earth is not, and we still primarily use fossil fuels.

But maybe someday we'll have terraformed Venus and Mars, and found a way to travel those light years. Probably not this century, though.

Long-term survival could be the sort of problem that requires people to think about it for 100-500 years beyond kindergarten. Moreover, societies here on Earth could benefit from people caring more about the impact they will have beyond their (currently) inevitable death in 0-100 years.

It could actually be beneficial to the planet. If today's politicians knew that climate changes, social inequalities and water shortages would actually affect them in their lifetime, they might reconsider the short term benefits of accepting donations from harmful lobbyists.

In other words, it could redefine "short term".

All our current research rates might be dramatically improved if our best scientists don't die all the time.

Conversely, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." -- Max Planck

(Usually paraphrased as "Science advances one funeral at a time.")

This is an over used crutch. Any truth in it comes mostly from a tendency to fund senior researchers over junior ones.

The earth was big. There is oil everywhere.

Unless we can come up with some sweet carbon sequestration tech, that's actually a liability.

I guess the trick is to mix bamboo with cacti and a gene to produce longterm anti-fungals and seed the deserts.

Source? That sounds pretty neat.

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