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Comment by riverlong | Hacker News Reader

I'll assure you I am trying to do my best on that front.

I spend a lot of time listening to people who are being screwed. Trying to move the needle on polarization and climate change. On one hand, those are important movements. On the other hand, this is fixing problems we've brought upon ourselves -- it's maintenance. Plugging leaks in a moving ship.

It's probably more important/responsible to plug leaks than to day-dream about Mars, but part of me is wondering at what point we'll ever be done plugging leaks and have the time for big, groundbreaking innovations. Certainly the last few years have felt more like we've been running in neutral (both in terms of society/tech) than anything else.

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We don't control the climate and we may never control it.

It's amazing the downvotes I get from such an obvious statement. It's true. The earth is round and we don't control the solar input, the oceanic cycles like the AMO, ENSO, PDO, NAO, etc, the cloud cover albedo of the planet is largely out of our control...the volcanism and deep sea geothermal venting is completely out of our control...etc etc. Before you click downvote, ask yourself how much you actually understand about the subject and go learn more if you care about it. Go deep. Stay skeptical.

> The earth is round and we don't control the solar input, the oceanic cycles like the AMO, ENSO, PDO, NAO, etc, the cloud cover albedo of the planet is largely out of our control...the volcanism and deep sea geothermal venting is completely out of our control...etc etc

It is funny how many phenomenas have an influence on the climate, and yet there is only one phenomena [0] that explain how the low troposphere is warming while the stratosphere is cooling, and its not part of this list. Do you have a take on this too? And also orders of magnitudes are key here, but you have to go deep and stay skeptical to get that.

[0] Actually two, but we are sure the second had no influence in the last 20 years at least.

Only one? You've made the claim. Now show the proof.

> It's probably more important/responsible to plug leaks than to day-dream about Mars, but part of me is wondering at what point we'll ever be done plugging leaks and have the time for big, groundbreaking innovations.

We never have and we never will. The two can be done in tandem, but not sequentially.

When we went to the moon, there were plenty of leaks being plugged. It was a worse society and world back then. Violent crime was higher. Racism was worse. Public health was worse. Famines were a thing. Civil liberties overall was worse. Treatment of the out crowd (e.g. at work) was worse.

There are plenty of leaks to plug, but this should not be a barrier to lofty goals.

The world in general, and the US in particular, has accumulated too many problems to make meaningful forward progress. The ship is in credible fear of sinking. Leak plugging is going to distract from navigation, at least until we can be sure the next generation will have a ship to sail.

Didn't America's civil rights as well as communism fear/wars, population explosion fear, and nuclear holocaust fear, happen in a time absolutely brimming with technological marvels like nuclear power, space travel, and the first computers, not to mention general technological utopia thinking? I don't see why you can't have both. Maybe stop worrying about the politics and get more enthusiastic about Mars colonies or machine learning or whatever.

I don't think plugging leaks is what is required.

The entire basis of the current system is corrupt.

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