Hacker News Reader

Comment by danblick | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of Astro Teller's recent article:

http://qz.com/536483/why-its-compeltely-ridiculous-to-think-...

"""...we live on a planet that is perfect for us, and we seem to be unable to prevent ourselves from making it less and less habitable. We’re like a bunch of teenagers destroying our parents’ mansion in one long, crazy party, figuring that our backup plan is to run into the forest and build our own house. We’ll worry about how to get food and a good sound system later. Proponents of Mars colonization talk about “terraforming” Mars to make it more like Earth, but in the meantime, we’re “marsforming” Earth by making our atmosphere poisonous and annihilating our natural resources. We are also well on our way to making Earth one big desert, just like Mars."""

View on HN

"Proponents of Mars colonization talk about “terraforming” Mars to make it more like Earth, but in the meantime, we’re “marsforming” Earth"

I never thought about that before, but this is definitely a way to speed up anything - literally change the destination reference to look more like the the piece in work.

Western governments seem to think that economic growth is absolutely necessary. Dunno why. But obviously that isn't sustainable for much longer on our current planet.

And the rest of the world would rather try to reach the same standard of living than voluntarily suffer more to save the planet for the western elites.

If Musk is able to do it, then he will beat all the governments from Earth. However, I expect to see a lot of politics in this. It's just too an important of an issue to remain uncontrolled.

I dunno, maybe we should work on our social decision making process as well, not just on technology. Progress is a function of both and we seem to be leaving the social one behind.

Maybe we should be working to transition to a kind of direct democracy, or a more evolved form with the help of technology. Leaving all the power in the hands of a few doesn't seem to do much good in the long run...

Or maybe we should count on Elon to do this as well, as he promised, once he becomes king of Mars...

The problem is not the kind of democracy, those are just definitions. Is that people don't care (not about their privacy, not about earth, not about anything). And sincerely why should I care? I'm going to die in 50/60 years. I exploit others as much as I can then farewell.

working a managerial role?

So you say, if they behave like cattle, I shall behave like the wolf. Fair enough, there may be some justice in that, but the predator behaviour is the one that brough us where we are in the first place. It's true that it' also the one that gave us our intelligence.

The thing is that one may expect that intelligence would change things, but apparently it doesn't. It's just another tool on the predator's toolbelt. But somehow I just can't settle with this, it seams there should be a middle way..

Astro Teller has every opportunity to make significant advances, but risks nothing and achieves nothing.

Elon Musk is the complete opposite.

I think the former really has no right to say anything about the latter.

I think Teller really ought to blame the system and leaders who can actually change environmental policies rather than, you know, our whole species.

Teller may believe that the system and our leaders are just a reflection of us as a society? After all, it's society as a whole that allowed the system and our leaders to be put into power in the first place.

You make it sound like we've been destroying environment only lately and with current political systems.

Humans have been wrecking havoc various environments ever since Neolithic. Although there's no definitive proof, there are strong suggestions that they were at least contributing to the disappearance of the Mega-fauna, for instance.

Examples of small human settlements in small islands are very characteristic, IMHO. Everywhere it happened, endemic birds where usually eradicated very quickly.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recently_extinct_birds

You were doing pretty well until that Maori culture comment. In their elimination of a species, are they really that different to man anywhere else?

Fair enough. Edited.

Well the systems and their leaders come from the species, not from ether - and remain there because the species seems unable, for the moment, to decide to change them.

The root problem of all is that we discount too much the future, so we don't value enough the long-term effects of anything (votes, policies, environment, etc.). This is something instinctive and natural to us as humans, and it takes us a lot of mental effort to be rational to the e.g. LessWrong et al. ideals, to the point that we can't be indefinitely rational, just for brief moments of attention. Our irrationalities govern us.

This is indeed a fault of the whole species.

If you look into international politics and even the financial elite, the will to change and adapt green policies is there, more so than in the general public.

Which is exactly the problem. Nobody is going to follow a leader preventing them from buying 7 different iPhones even though you probably only needed one.

Which is a simplification, but the middle class is completely dependent on economic growth. Both as consumers, but mainly as workers.

I think there is a lot of hope for change though, I mean, automation is going to make 60% of the current workforce obsolete over the next 20 years. With that comes a need for change.

Can they? Or are they just sock puppets? Irresponsibility abstracted?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com