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Comment by namaemuta | Hacker News Reader

What a short-sighted attitude. Colonizing Mars opens the door to a lot of advances in many, many fields. At first it will be difficult and expensive as it has happened with every new advance in the past. Precisely because of it, people will think of ideas to improve all the process and related problems. And presenting those new problems that we aren't facing now can lead to solutions that could be used in other common areas that we are used to and are kind of stuck.

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Sounds vague.

I’d say do like bill gates and put the billions directly into worthwhile causes instead instead of suggesting the trickle down will be unquantified but amazing.

I'd say let's do both; let's try every approach, in rational proportions.

There is likely an optimal ratio of spending between humanitarian causes and existential risks. What is it? Is this ratio, and others that have the potential for shaping the future of humanity, openly discussed somewhere?

If so, where?

Bill Gates is funding some humanitarian ventures without thinking to the next decades externalities it has. 100% feel good and PR actions, yet questionable in the grand scheme of things.

Externalities such as?

One externality I have seen mentioned goes as follows: fewer childhood malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africa mean more unemployed or under-employed young men being tempted to cross the Mediterranean, exacerbating political tensions in North Africa and Europe. But obviously, if you are a philanthropist and saving every human life is your chief concern, then such thinking can seem repugnant.

In the long term, reducing infant mortality consistently leads to a reduction in the number of children per mother.

Because it's impossible for jobs to exist in Africa?

Can you give some examples please? I'd be particularly interested in ways colonizing Mars would help us solve the serious problems we already have like bigotry, inequality, the climate catastrophe...

Mars is significantly less hospitable than either the summit of Mt Everest or Antarctica; by developing the necessary tech to colonise Mars, you could re-populate the Earth after any environmental catastrophe short of the planet being physically dismantled.

One more immediate benefit is that the ability to refuel on Mars is identical to the ability to take CO2 out of the air and turn it into (un)natural gas.

Doesn’t do much for bigotry or inequality though.

It's not about Earth, it's about the humans on it. Being able to repopulate Earth after they all died isn't all that helpful.

Then it seems beneficial to have some somewhere else

No, not at all. That doesn't benefit the people who died.

Well you said it's not helpful because everyone would be dead, this response seems like moving the goalpost, also do you think these people will be born mostly on Mars?

No, I'm not moving any goalposts. Nothing is helpful for dead people as they're dead.

If some of these people first moved to Mars and later back, obviously it helps them.

Then they basically escaped. That is not solving a problem, it's giving up and pathetic.

For a start, people having a problem with our current society on earth can build a life away from it. Have you ever noticed racists yearning for "their own" homeland? With a self-sustaining colony on mars, the tech should be available for them to build one. I'd love reading about their attempt to govern something independent with no one else to blame.

Many people also like having bigger goals to strive for, and this one might cause less conflict than those wanting to reorganize society in whatever direction.

At the same time I also hardly see it hurting us. The cash is certainly better spend that way than putting another few billions into entertainment, cosmetics or the likes.

But yes, the direct impact on your own backyard will be limited, if that is all you care about.

Your average racist is not wealthy enough to spend trillions of dollars to find a new place for themselves.

And I’ve yet to see racist ideology that says “OK guys, we got some invaders here, time to pack and look for a new place for us, they won”.

We've got plenty of land on Earth that we don't exactly consider habitable but still beats Mars. That is not why sending our racists to Mars is a ludicrous idea.

> this one might cause less conflict than those wanting to reorganize society in whatever direction.

Is that the "go to North Korea/Chile/Somalia" argument on steroids?

The difference is that all the unhabitable land on Earth is still nominally owned by someone, and human society has committed itself to treating these claims of ownership with a lot of respect. Modulo a few famous and very small exceptions, even stretches of hundreds of square kilometres of empty desert far inland belong to some country and building an earthbound sovereign "Mars base" there will quickly result in missiles and dudes with guns raining down on you with the full backing of the international community.

Hardly anyone who suggests that the racists move to Somalia believes that the racists, after doing so, should be free to take over the place and rule over, displace or genocide the Somalis. Conversely, if this offer were actually on the table, I'm sure plenty of racists would step up to take it.

The ability to build a Mars colony is not the same as the ability to seastead, but there is some overlap. I suspect that the 2/3rds of this planet currently treated as international waters would become habitable on a similar schedule as a Mars colony.

Not that I have any reason to believe racists can be convinced to go away no matter where or how appealing the destination is. If anything, I would expect the contrary.

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