Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

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Well, what about things that are low-likelihood but have happened in the past?

In every single one of those cases, including the Cretaceous–Paleogene asteroid situation, you would be better off on earth than on mars as it is today by a mile.

Building a giant anti-asteroid system, or a mine-shaft system (a la Dr. Strangelove) would be infinitely better and cheaper solutions to the asteroid problem than MOVING TO MARS.

There have been pandemics in the past - Black Plague anyone - and we seem to have recovered fine. Earth based global warming is a joke compared to the atmoshpheric CO2 density of mars (95%!) - the fact that global warming is always brought up as a case to go to mars is proof positive that no one has really thought this stuff through.

I'm all for exploration and big shot dreams and stuff, but lets stop with the delusion that moving even one person to a completely uninhabitable place - as in almost anywhere on earth would be easier to live in, including under the ocean - 140,000,000 miles away is a practical idea.

and all that new science and technology and trade and opportunity for international collaboration.

As someone building future technology I call bullshit on the "spin-off" argument as a reason for doing something. The idea that "maybe some practical technology will come from it" is not a good reason to do anything. Using that logic we should be perpetually at war as nothing has moved technology further and faster than war.

Let's downshift.

> In every single one of those cases, including the Cretaceous–Paleogene asteroid situation, you would be better off on earth than on mars as it is today by a mile.

In that hypothetical, Earth is what's hit by such an event. Let's say you have a self-sufficient colony of Mars of around 10,000 people. Let's say a civilization-destroying and mass-dying event happens on Earth. Would you be better off on Mars or on Earth? That's the argument that was constructed; that's the value of such an option if it did exist. A conditional, hypothetical argument, but whatever.

> but lets stop with the delusion that moving even one person to a completely uninhabitable place - as in almost anywhere on earth would be easier to live in, including under the ocean - 140,000,000 miles away is a practical idea.

Not arguing that we have all the tech already, thus making it a practical idea today. But arguing that if it did exist, you would be better off than if it didn't.

Also, not arguing for terraforming Mars or anything like that. Enclosed habitats of some kind, perhaps.

Not arguing for not also developing the ability to live in extreme environments on Earth (like in the ocean).

> The idea that "maybe some practical technology will come from it" is not a good reason to do anything. Using that logic we should be perpetually at war as nothing has moved technology further and faster than war.

Green field, long shot projects don't have a good reason to be worth doing?

Not arguing 'hey, drop everything and work on this project'. Also, not arguing 'there are no direct technological benefits of X, but look at these positive after effects'. I was specifically mentioning that beyond the fact that a backup is valuable, there are other direct benefits of the attempt to build such a backup. There's the industry that might develop around it and all of that economic benefit, new technology and science in not just the stuff needed to survive on Mars but also to transport materials to Mars and cheaper launch of materials into LEO and safe transport of humans over perhaps even a dozen light minutes.

>Would you be better off on Mars or on Earth?

I think I answered this already, but yes, again by far. If for no other reason than not needing a controlled environment to live. Like I can go outside without protective gear on.

>But arguing that if it did exist, you would be better off than if it didn't.

My point is that, even if we did have the technology you would still be worse off. There is a reason nobody who isn't a scientist lives in Antarctica.

>Green field, long shot projects don't have a good reason to be worth doing?

That's not what I said. I think those exist (AGI, Fusion, Asteroid mining) and have a good cost/benefit ratio. I see no practical upside to send human flesh to Mars or any planet or moon for that matter. Either as an exploration tool or as some kind of existential "backup." Send robots.

Seriously, you'd pick a planet undergoing a mass dying rather than one with all the support you need to live independently? Make a cot in a firestorm?

And sure if you wanna assume the same tech as that used by us in Antarctica right now and somehow make an equivalence between that and a hypothetical self sufficient colony and all of the attendant tech.

I see lots of obvious upsides, as stated before. It's quite clear that there's massive upsides to sending people to Mars and working towards a self sufficient colony there. Namely, redundancy of civilization and the obvious economic and tech impact. Of course you should pursue this colony.

Yes, I would rather be on a planet that has something left after a mass dying and a known history of it's growth cycles than a planet that has NOTHING LIVING ON IT to start with. Not really sure how else to say this, so I won't say it anymore.

Of course it does in that example. 10,000 people living self sufficiently.

Enjoy the fiery death while the others go on living, then.

> In that hypothetical, Earth is what's hit by such an event. Let's say you have a self-sufficient colony of Mars of around 10,000 people. Let's say a civilization-destroying and mass-dying event happens on Earth. Would you be better off on Mars or on Earth? That's the argument that was constructed; that's the value of such an option if it did exist. A conditional, hypothetical argument, but whatever.

Er, I think that was the point, right? Take your hypothetical self-sufficient Mars colony, and build it on Earth instead-- underground, say. For far cheaper, you can have far more people living there, and even after an extinction-level event they will live on a more habitable planet than Mars.

How do they survive a mass dying?

That sounds like a contradiction in terms. How does a Mars colony survive event X? An isolated population in an engineered ecosystem on Earth survives X with higher probability.

I'll even make a positive case for Earth being safer: Out of events which could destroy even a physically isolated, rad-hardened population, all of the most probable would also eradicate life on Mars. The most probable of those are deliberate actions by a malevolent entity, such as in a hard-takeoff UAI scenario.

In such an event, your only hope for long-term survival is to hide, and hidden is one thing an offworld colony can never be.

Mars colony survives a mass dying in this hypothetical by not being the target planet of the mass dying.

Of course, you have threats that can impact both. Improvement by degrees is still beneficial though. Even though a backup is not useful for this type of risk, in the original hypothetical it is useful.

Also, of course you can switch the hypothetical around and consider Mars getting hit by the mass dying event. But we're talking about the value of having a backup and considering low likelihood situations where having that backup shows its existential benefit.

Eh, I feel like we're just talking past each other at this point. Just to clarify exactly what my position is:

We posit that it makes sense to have a "backup": A physically isolated, self-sufficient ecosystem in which human civilization might continue independently. We can decide to put this backup in a distant gravity well, and call it a "colony". Or, we could decide to put it somewhere very, very safe on Earth, and maybe call it a "bunker".

My stance is that bunkers are universally preferable to colonies, at least for the foreseeable future of human technology: the bunker survives the same extinction events that the colony survives, and the inhabitants of the bunker have a better shot at rebuilding afterwards.

Reading between the lines, you seem to be supposing some event which destroys the bunker by definition. That would certainly suck for humanity, but it's answered by my most recent post: If there are human-extinction events the (Earth+)bunker wouldn't survive, there are dramatically more such events the (Earth+)colony wouldn't survive. So existentially, on the balance of probabilities, you are better served by building bunkers rather than colonies.

Mind you, I'm not saying there's no point in a colony; at some point, if you already have a dozen or a hundred bunkers, the marginal utility justifies the expense. And of course there are lots of reasons, both practical and sentimental, why we might want to go to Mars. It's just x-risk ain't a very good one.

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