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Comment by jononomo | Hacker News Reader

Here are four things I've been certain of for my entire life and become more certain of with every passing day:

1. We will never go to Mars (and it is an insult to my intelligence to try to argue otherwise).

2. Computers are never going to gain consciousness.

3. The Multiverse is the stupidist load of horse*h&t to have ever entered anyone's mind. Only unserious thinkers take the idea of the Multiverse seriously.

4. There is no materialist explanation for the existence of life, and the existence of life is the only interesting question in existence since it forms the foundation for the existence of every other question.

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This entire list is wildly wrong.

1) Humans will go to Mars if for literally no other reason that “to do it first”

2) Is there something special about meat computers called brains or your definition of “consciousness” that precludes this?

3) The multiverse is a mathematical solution to quantum mechanics, what’s your serious thinker alternative?

4) Depends on what question you’re asking, but instead you’re blithely vague. Questions of “why” are not in the realm of empiricism, but questions of “how” might be.

1) "Go to" as in "visit" like we did for the Moon or "go to" as in stay there?

3) No, the multiverse in an "interpretation" of QM, it isn't a solution, it brings no additional facts. So per Occam razor..

Multiverse was a typo. They meant "metaverse".

>2) Is there something special about meat computers called brains or your definition of “consciousness” that precludes this?

This statement contains so many false assumptions.

For starters, there is much more to consciousness than just the brain... when has there ever been a brain in isolation that was conscious?

And we also don't know how the brain (and the rest of the organism/environment) create consciousness.

Amen. Funny how Peter Thiel parlays something that was obvious to many, if not most, people outside the SV echo chamber into some sort of new insight…

Why won't we go to Mars (ever)? You may be sceptical of it happening in the next 100 years but very confident in it happening in the next 500 years, it is a very strong claim to argue that it will never happen in the broader context of increasing global wealth and massive improvements in space/energy technologies.

We may place humans on Mars for periods of time, perhaps even lengthy periods but the idea of an alternate earth is in fact ludicrous. We seem to have a hard time just managing the planet we're on.

Why is it ludicrous - do you have a specific issue that you object too? How is living on Mars very different from e.g. the international space station or conditions in a nuclear sub in terms of human habitats? The other bits seem relatively easier than the problem of getting people to the planet. In general I think arguments of the form "it can't be done soon because of resource constraints" are very weak - there are plenty of examples of people making such arguments and being proven wrong a couple of decades later.

I would change 4. to “there is no materialistic explanation for existence” since we have a pretty accurate (as far as we can tell) explanation for how we got to life once stars started exploding and forming the necessary elements for life. Maybe I’m quibbling though.

We do not have a "pretty accurate" explanation for how we got to life once stars started exploding. In fact, we have no idea whatsoever and the more we learn the more infinitely intractable the problem appears. We're moving further away from an answer as our understanding grows, not closer.

I should have been clearer - the hypothesis of abiogenesis provides an accurate explanation for the origins of life from non-life and is accepted by the vast majority if non-religious biologists as the most likely explanation for how life started… and, for what it’s worth, there is absolutely no evidence for any other explanation.

The Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated that organic material can result from inorganic material in 1952; the abiogenesis hypothesis has only grown stronger since then, not weaker. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller–Urey_experiment

1) dunno, I hope we will

2) if we can throughly understand our own brains we can perhaps emulate them in various other media?

3) you mean many world's hypothesis? I guess it's not very relevant for most people

4) I think there are materialist explanations for life, they are getting more convincing I think. As in we could eventually model scenarios in which chemical processes lead to self perpetuating processes that resemble primitive life and can evolve into life

> Computers are never going to gain consciousness

The problem with "consciousness" is that is really hard to define. Until we can measure for it, I agree that computers will never be it.

Personally I think we will have machines that are very smart, that can perform many of the mental tasks that a human can, but will be almost alien in the way they think. But that's ok. They should remain tools that allow us to solve hard problems.

I think we might "go to Mars" in the same way that we went to the moon. But yeah, there's nothing good out there for humans.

I think robots are a better use of space exploration money. The cost of one human mission could send swarms of robots, with way more science getting done.

This. Unless there is some economic reason to go to Mars, it will remain a place of scientific curiosity. Just like Antarctica, we will not be colonising Mars.

4 is an interesting point. My curious brain often wonders over it. Frustrating as it is, you're probably right. Can you even imagine what would happen if somehow we came to really, foolproof know the answer? I imagine an absolute calamity as religion falters(assuming it wasn't a religious answer, that is), people lack will, perhaps crime and suicides rise?

I can only speak from the Christian perspective. The only people to have their beliefs challenged would be fundamentalists, which represent a minority of Christians. The Bible says God is responsible for creating life, it doesn't give detail on how He did it. Christians have played important roles in understanding the "how" of things like the Big Bang and genetics.

Thanks for your perspective. It's an interesting question/problem. Even if I'm to accept a big bang or anything else, it just leads to more questions. Like who created the ingredients that could cause said bang, etc. I know it's often explained away by science, but it seems one could say 'well, what created those components' for infinity. So any suitable answer would have to start at the very very beginning, and in a way a layperson could understand. No assumptions, no handwavy 'it just did'. Same if it were God/a god. How did that come to be?

I think OP is right in that it will never realistically happen.

As we've seen these last couple of years, people presented with foolproof evidence will just continue believing whatever they believe.

We have foolproof evidence that life could not possibly have arisen through random chance but apparently nothing can dislodge the narrative that it must have.

We've already been to Mars

I guess they mean humans on mars?

SHOULD we go to Mars? Where do you stand on that?

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