Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

I think the discussion of the kinds of risks Mars might act as a hedge against are being trivialised a bit. It's not all just about asteroids. Elon has researched this pretty thoroughly. If you want to really understand what he's talking about look up Nick Bostrom, but here are a few.

* a nanotechnology disaster

* Implementation of technologies that enable a global super-stable oppressive state.

* An AI disaster along the lines of a paper clip optimiser

* An AI or augmented intelligence that deprecates all lesser intelligences.

* The film version of I Robot.

* Biotech plague.

* Regression to a stable social and biological state optimising for lower intelligence or stagnation.

The way I think about this is that it's not just a backup. It's also deliberately introduced variation in environment and social structures that variegated Hunan civilization. Well develop technologies and social structures we wouldn't otherwise have that might help mitigate some of these risks. Semi-isolated from Earth, it would be at least partially protected from many of these threats. Of course, it could introduce new threats, but the isolation would work to protect Earth to some extent in that eventuality.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_catastro...

> a nanotechnology disaster

This would also likely to affect mars.

> Implementation of technologies that enable a global super-stable oppressive state.

And what prevents them from just sending a few nukes to mars?

>An AI disaster along the lines of a paper clip optimiser

Mars and earth are going to share some form of a network, an AI disaster on earth is not likely to be contained to earth and vise versa.

>An AI or augmented intelligence that deprecates all lesser intelligences.

Same as the above, also what prevents that AI from building spaceships and exterminating the humans on mars?

>The film version of I Robot.

Again what prevents them from building spaceships of their own?

> Biotech plague.

Plagues cross oceans they can cross interstellar space also, it's unlikely that any sort of natural/unintentional release could be contained in an era in which interplanetary travel is a common occurrence, especially if people would seek refuge on Mars, and there is nothing stopping some death cult that releases a bioengineered plague intentionally from infecting mars also.

>Regression to a stable social and biological state optimising for lower intelligence or stagnation.

Again nothing about Mars implicitly provide protection against the stagnation of human culture or knowledge.

The point is simply any large scale disaster would either not be contained to a single planet, or would still leave earth a considerably more habitable place than Mars.

None of these reasons are of course a reason why we shouldn't go to Mars.

Mars is just the first step. The more environments we habitate (ceres, europa, titan, venus etc), the less the probability that they would all be affected by a disaster.

I addressed this in my post.

> Semi-isolated from Earth, it would be at least partially protected from many of these threats.

It introduces a significant time and space gap, a firewall between Part of human civilization and the rest of it. It's not a guaranteed solution, but I think it could give us a much better chance. I'll counter your line of challeng - how do you know for certain it won't help mitigate any of these risks?

You also seem not to have noticed my argument concerning introducing a source of variegation into our civilization that might help us cope with some of these threats better.

Nick Bostrom's research costs £6.99. It is not a research, it is a quick way to make money while the window of opportunity is still open by doing cargo cult science.

I am yet to hear a decent argument about how AI will wipe out the earth. It starts to belong to the same category as politics, nobody knows what they are talking about, but everyone has an opinion. Even the so called "smarts". I remember there were news about Stephen Hawking being concerned about AI, if you watched his interview, he literally pointed his software to the "Existential risk from artificial general intelligence" wikipedia page and read the abstract... Elon Musk started by comparing AI danger to "The Terminator" scenario. Seriously a f* movie? How about we don't go to Mars because of the "Alien" movie? Now he says that "not all scenarios are benign..." - no shit, Scotty.

> I am yet to hear a decent argument about how AI will wipe out the earth.

I ask AI how to create a biological virus that would kill every human on the planet that's encrypted enough other AI would not be able to cure it in time.

I think you are on to something. You should really consider publishing this, just don't forget to add some graphs and equations. Hell, screw that, just package it as a book and start selling it for £6.99 a pop.

You seem to be somewhat confused. Bostrom is a philosopher, not a scientist.

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