The Argument Against Terraforming Mars (2016)
cosmos.nautil.us
cosmos.nautil.us
One man's hubris is another's whole raison d'être of humanity. I suppose the reference to Icarus is a good one here, because I wholeheartedly agree with Randall Munroe: "But I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.".
I can understand appeals to aesthetics. I can understand pointing out generic irresponsibility of humans in aggregate. But hubris? The strong drive to adapt the world to what we see fit is literally what separates us from animals.
talk about hubris.
The story of Icarus, written by a human within his own world view, is part of our collective history. The events in the story not being real has no relevance at all on its philosophical implications.
Sorry, using a collection of meaningless words to justify thoughts or actions is irrational.
To go back to the original point, I've never understood the problem with 'hubris', it's not as if we have evidence for something or someone taking offence and then taking it out on us. There's no reason to believe we wouldn't be able to terraform a planet eventually. Even if we do screwup a couple of times, there's enough resources in the solar system to try again a bunch of times once/if we can get to them.
There's something to be said for a human locust swarm over the milkyway. Just imagine one day in the future having an internet connection between earth and mars. For some reason imagining operating those links is even more exiting to me than the original colonization (which I'd partake in given half the chance). How would be deal with the immense latency? How would facebook or google sync their datacenters? Once a day? A private uplink with 30m lag? What?
Any action we take is irrational at its root. If you remove emotions, there's no compelling rational reason to do anything or favor one action over the other. In that case, a person can very well decide to reject Icarus as being meaningless, but they will not be able to remove all such meaningless thoughts from the way they live their lives, or even a small fraction of the stories they live by.
There will always be numerous narratives and mental models of varying accuracy that will determine our choices and actions. Anything from a sense of our own self and memories, to beliefs in some exterior entity or cause, to even abstract thoughts about the world itself that we came up with or received from others. On this basis, we use reason to move towards our goals but the goals themselves are still irrational.
Icarus itself isn't even a bad story, as far as tales go. There are several examples in human history where our ambition and drive caused enormous suffering. Looking at the twentieth century or even the last six thousand years can make you wonder whether it wouldn't have been better for us to stay in small tribes until the Sun burns the planet to a crisp. Is the current and marginally less awful world worth all the misery that came before it? Hard to say for sure, even if I do fully agree that we should be as hubristic as possible in today's circumstances. It's too late to go back so we must move forward.
Now, we can use a real world example like car accidents as traveling 35+ MPH is unsafe. But, now the counter arguments are obvious because in the real world there are trade offs and meaningful stories are more open to interpretation.
So, if you look at it as a metaphor then bringing it up is just saying: Hubris is bad, because hubris is bad. Which adds nothing to someones argument.
Obviously not, because the meaning of story lies in how things work in the context of the story.
Only if the general point (devoid of storytelling flourishes) was invalid it would invalidate the story as a cautionary tale.
But the general point still holds as general advice: "Avoid extremes" [1].
[1] https://thetaoofwealth.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/lessons-for-...
By this logic, mathematics discovered for curiousity would not have applications, something which is not at all true. Number theory is just one example. There are many others like using 'imaginary' numbers used for solving polynomial eqns, later becomes basic to engineering.
Sorry, but the story of Icarus is loaded with meaning, a meaning which has been examined, discussed, and argued about for two millennia by some of the greatest thinkers.
Most of myth, just like cautionary tales and proverbs, is meaning concentrated. It is an observation/insight/point made into story.
It's your comment that rather seems devoid of meaning, seeing that humans have been able since forever to construct stories, metaphors, and examples from both real and non-real-world-events to convey particular ideas, concepts and worries.
There would be nothing silly to "using the plot line of The Walking Dead to justify" one's self if it works for making their point.
What would be silly would be if someone conflated Icarus or the Walking Dead plotline for something that actually happened. But nobody does that -- they recognize it for what it is, a metaphor, and are able to see the point being made, regardless of if there are wax wings or zombies in real life.
So, unless you have very firm evidence the tale may have be out before the moral.
As to using the walking dead to make a point, think this through a little more. Because it's pure circular reasoning. A is true because of A.
But there might be a time in not so distant future where you (or your successors) might really wish this was the case!
To have something to work with here a description of hubris from wikipedia: "In its ancient Greek context, it typically describes behavior that defies the norms of behavior or challenges the gods, and which in turn brings about the downfall, or nemesis, of the perpetrator of hubris." [1]
The "gods" are the "people who know better" and you shall trust them. Otherwise you will get hurt.
I think you always read the story as a story of hubris, just without using that exact word.
You are saying animals does not have the drive to adapt the world to what they see fit?
I would say that the bigger differentiator is that human beings can, to an extent, control their drives.
Isn't the haste to abandon earth and colonize other worlds just like a panic response of an animal that finds it's resting place on fire? I mean, it is not going to see if the fire can be quenched, it is just going to take off..
That said, the current crop of space entrepreneurs seem to care more about long-term survival of our species in case of cataclysmic events not necessarily of human making - e.g. asteroid impacts.
The true moral is "do not exceed the design flight envelope on the maiden flight of experimental aircraft". Pretty sensible advice.
Is a lump of rock more aesthetically pleasing than a statue?
It assumes that whatever the end result of terraforming is, will be less aesthetically pleasing than the current vista. This is clearly a flawed assumption. There's no evidence that it is true.
Aesthetics is also subjective. Some people prefer deserts, some people prefer beaches, some people prefer forests. If you prefer deserts, I guess terraforming Mars will be an aesthetic loss. If you prefer any other form of terrain, then it'll be a win.
My take is that we should go out there, exploiting resources as needed, yet adapting to the environment through technological means. Even if we could terraform Mars, we would still have to adapt in order to go beyond that planet since there is nowhere else within reach that is remotely similar to either planet. Even if you could imagine a sci-fi future where the stars are within reach, chances are that a good portion of the habitable planets will have life of some form. That would raise more serious ethical issues than the subjectivity of beauty.
We don't really know how long terraforming Mars would take, but it's conceivable that it could take as few as a few centuries, especially given the advance of tech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars#Protectin...
(some scientists say it could be done with current tech)
What else needs a complete overhaul?
On the grandest scale, we could take CO2 from Venus and hydrogen from Saturn or Jupiter. The logistics aren't exactly straightforward, but the quantities available are immense.
The idea is that shielding Mars from the solar wind would allow out-gassing to rebuild the Martian atmosphere.
Now, hear me out here but have you considered Venus?
Cons:
Runaway greenhouse effect, sulfuric acid clouds, crazy hot, etc
Very long days (1 year = 1.92 Venus days)
Nearer to sun => better solar energy collection
Nearly the same gravity as Earth (0.8-ish)
Lower delta-v to get there from Earth (someone double check my math on that)
Once you've got it cooled down, you're a lot of the way there. Bleed off some of that atmosphere (hey, maybe Mars could use it?), get some plants converting CO2 into O2.
It's ludicrous, I know, but I find most conversations about terraforming are. The only real advantage that Mars has is that we could live there while we work on it. Venus, not so much.
It's not clear whether Venus or Mars is an easier target for colonization--that's just a sign of how hard it would be to build a colony on anything that's not Earth.
Actually, despite my above pro-Venus talk, Mars is still an easier option. I wound up on a wiki-spiral just now reading about options for Venus- turns out plants would not work for converting that CO2. The process for CO2 conversion needs Hydrogen- and Venus has none.
We'd need some kind of trade-triangle between Mars, Venus and Jupiter, dumping CO2 from Venus to Mars, then moving H from Jupiter to Venus. We need to find some product Mars has that Jupiter wants, then we'd have it figured out.
This is slightly tangential, but I think it's important to point out that Mars is more than a survival shelter.
The point of colonizing Mars is to preserve human civilization, not merely our species. Civilization is a higher level emergent thing that can only exist in large prosperous groups of humans. Almost nothing could actually kill the human species, but tons of stuff could end civilization. A self sustaining Mars guarantees our continued social and technological advance.
I don't think it would be nuclear though. Nuclear bombs are delicate devices, the only reason they work on Earth is because they hit too fast to intercept.
Interplanetary war will have at least 1 month long trips between the two planets unless we see some insane tech breakthroughs. A war fleet would be pretty easy to spot and blast out of the sky, as would any missiles launched planet to planet. Hitting something at the insane speeds of ICBMs becomes much easier when you have days to aim.
Worse, the attacker may feel they can use something like that while shooting down any responses.
The general premise of the series is: If you were sent over to Mars with a group of others, who is there to stop you all from creating your own vision for the place instead, if armed with the tools to make it happen? If you have the capability to make your own world as you want it, would you obey the orders of those all the way on earth, or would you make the world in your own image? And what do you do if you choose to craft your mars in one way but others in the group disagree and have the same motivation and are armed with the same tools for their vision instead?
Each character in the series represents and carries out the different possibilities to these questions, and you see the consequences play out over hundreds of years.
Of course, it's also a bad idea to create conditions on Earth where human life is made more difficult or unpleasant. However, we are also part of nature, and other elements of the natural world are only useful in so far as they meet some human need, even if it's just the satisfaction you get from treating another species in a kind way.
Heck, it's not even clear whether leaving nature untouched is actually ethical, considering the form it currently has. As we speak, thousands of beings are violently being killed and eaten by their predators, even with humans out of the equation. The cycle has continued this way for aeons, and only because random events made life evolve in this specific way, with a nervous system that produces suffering.
I care more about hedging against an asteroid strike than I do about the natural beauty of a planet that no one's even seen up close.
>The decision to terraform Mars would also exhibit hubris.
Speaking of hubris: if we terraform Mars, people are going to want to climb Olympus Mons. Perhaps the volcano would acquire a reputation and body count similar to Everest.
Obviously the future holds great potential for lifesaving technology, but at the same time there's always purists. After all, the people who have climbed Everest probably wouldn't have if there wasn't any danger involved.
I imagine much of the danger would depend upon the finer details of how the Mars was terraformed. Namely sea level, atmospheric composition, and anything else that affects weather at altitude.
Would reaching the summit even be possible without oxygen? It wouldn't be on Earth at that height, but I've no idea if that holds for a terraformed atmosphere on another planet.
The stronger argument is: look at what we've done to Earth, and it's obvious that we don't know yet how to make a planet better.
The "my genes made me do it" argument is no less flawed in a discussion about terraforming than one about what to order at McDonald's.
At worst you would be wasting dead matter on a useless endeavor while ideally you discover more interesting things down the road. Seems like a decent tradeoff.
Granted, "global" isn't the same as "species" - but in practice, and forever there is communication between members, they are identical (have the same referent).
According to NASA [0] that's a once in a million year sort of event which, given how behaviourally modern [1] humans have only existed for about 50000 years, is nothing more than a strawman for terraforming.
Had 2 100-year floods, the first 2 springs I owned it.
It provides us everything.
However, it's a bit like a parent abusing their child. The kid owes everything it has to their progenitor, but it's questionable whether their existence is worth something to begin with. Even without a frame of reference, I believe you can make the judgment that something is in fact harsh. The very fact that we can conceive of asking this question makes it a possibility. In an easier world we might not even consider it at all.
'Another reason for believing that terraforming would involve hubris is to consider how we treat Earth, a place we might call our “proper place” or “home.” If we think of our home as a place which nurtures us and in which we grow to maturity, then a case could be made that until we learn to treat our own planet better, any attempt to reshape another planet and call it our “home” would be hubristic.'
Whenever we apply technology people talk progress. Intuitively I would say that progress implies a destination and that progress is about getting closer to it. But can we really say we're making progress if we do not know the destination: how should people live together? When we agree to terraform Mars we do so in the belief that it's a good idea. But 'good' implies an answer to the question. It's very interesting to try to find these implicit answers and see if we can turn them into an explicit answer. Maybe then we'll find that often technology looks like progress, while it's not getting us closer at all.
I definitely think it's important to learn to coexist with our fellow humans, as well as other life forms, here on earth, but / and it will be hard to do that if we all catch fire and die.
> "The beauty of Mars exists in the human mind. Without the human presence it is just a collection of atoms, no different than any other random speck of matter in the universe. It’s we who understand it, and we who give it meaning. […] The lack of life here, and the lack of any finding in fifty years of the SETI program, indicates that life is rare, and intelligent life even rarer. And yet the whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life. We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. […] If there are lakes, or forests, or glaciers, how does that diminish Mars’s beauty? I don’t think it does. I think it only enhances it. It adds life, the most beautiful system of all." - Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
Right now we can't.
If we start approaching a state where we can, other arguments become important. Until then it's similar to an argument against bringing people back from the dead.
However, I do think Terraforming Mars could be a bad idea. Technology-wise it is unclear it's easier than transforming human ourselves (say cybernetics).
The current atmosphere weighs about 25 terratonnes[1] and MAVEN estimated solar wind is removing 100 grams/sec[2]. That's an annual loss rate of 0.12 parts per billion (10e-10). A thicker atmosphere might strip more quickly, but we only want to thicken it by 2 orders of magnitude. Even if the loss fraction increases quadratically with pressure at 0m altitude, that gets you 10e-6, a millionth o your atmosphere per year, or about 1% every 10,000 years.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars
[2]: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-mission-reveals-spee...
Nature is brutal and ugly from an ethical standpoint. Eat or be eaten. Poison, trap, munch, crunch. --And one does not generally observe moral behavior among animals, one does not observe 'selfless' acts of compassion to other species. Con-specifics can be the target of some 'selfless' acts, but in fairly limited scopes.
The only reasons we look at nature and see harmony and beauty are 1)we enjoy patterns 2) we enjoy colors 3)not many things eat us anymore.
(* New evidence may come up in future to contradict this, and that might require a change in the plans depending on the form that Martian life takes and how widespread it is)
The problem is, that the writer of such a piece, after completing it- turns around to a humanity hungry for a next, risky, feet. So hungry in fact, it would vote for a mad man to axe the risk avoider caste.
So our writer turns around and exclaims "Sorry, no big feets available today, maybe you all should relax and come back for a nth-chance tomorrow."
Now, where else to turn too? Those claiming to be pro-risky steps? Mostly company cronys, who marketing crowned with "bold moves High-Performers" but who got where they are, by constant small incremental steps, and putting up arbitrary expensive obsticles behind them, to keep a little privacy.
Imagine sheparding a asteroid with a tug-drone from the belt into moon-orbit, how much this price winning inbred hunting-dog-show would wail to avoid the chase, while those with nothing too lose and everything to gain, would be busy drilling in a high-rad, zero-g environment.
This is why we got Trump, and will get Trump again, Incarnation after Incarnation, because this species always voted pro-risk once the mamoth was eaten.