He uses that attention and focus in ways that benefit the world at large. Like helping build more ethical AI's, or getting people to Mars. There's nothing wrong with that IMHO.
Elon really needs to focus on the energy and transportation thing that he really is good at.
* which ethical AI would that be?
* how many people has elon sent to mars now?
elon has marketed an image to people, one of a tony stark-like figure, that might do or say the wrong thing at the time, but who truly wants to make everything better.
the reality is that, whilst perhaps not a conman (although i find my opinion of him leaning to that end more each day), he’s definitely just another profit-driven business man, with little to no regard of the people around him. and probably a sociopath.
bill gates has done (a lot) more for humanity. and i’m not particularly fond of him, either.
There’s absolutely no guarantee he’s on the right track. Humans expanding away from Earth is as likely as us being able to rewrite the speed of light.
There’s no rewriting the fundamentals of reality. One really bad day and Mars colony is wiped out. How much damage we do here before getting there is a real concern.
Please, go on. I want to hear more about how thermodynamics can be waved away for “just an engineering project.”
This is what I mean. Obsession and success with engineering has titillated people to the point of blind faith. Externalities do not exist in their conceptual void. It’s become akin to unfalsifiable religious belief.
If humanity doesn't spend the resources on spreading humanity throughout the universe, then the resources will be spent on disposable plastic toys that fill landfills. It's not as if an edenic utopia is being despoiled for this boondoggle. Our environment isn't in its precarious state because of too much space travel. We're debating over the disposition of a tiny fraction of our dwindling material resources, negligible in the grand scheme.
> I want to hear more about how thermodynamics can be waved away for “just an engineering project.”
If we have a limited period before climate doomsday, then we'd better get cracking on space travel before it's too late.