Stephen Hawking: Human Survival Depends on Space Exploration | Hacker News Reader

Stephen Hawking: Human Survival Depends on Space Exploration

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Hawking is wrong. The population isn't "growing exponentially". In fact, it's set to level off mid-century and start decreasing. We're not going to just keep growing like bacteria until we all die.

Having said that, let me say a large extinction event is certainly possible - we may have barely dodged one in the late 1800s:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/has-the-earth-come-close-to-...

But to plan for something like that we would be better off tunneling into the earth than trying to colonize Mars. The other planets will never be hospitable to human life, and there's no point in bothering with them until we have the technology we need to make the colonies independent. We're a long, long way from that, and sending more rockets to the moon doesn't get us any closer.

In fact, it's set to level off mid-century and start decreasing.

Have these kind of predictions ever worked out?

Last time I checked there would always be an unanticipated war or invention to ruin the beautiful projections...

Do elaborate on how war or inventions will make more babies?

It's something I've certainly thought about quite a bit and would love to study more in the future, but the parent post was correct: The population in developed countries will be declining if there are no significant changes in how life longevity or increased birthrates (which can be affected by a lot of factors).

For more information:

Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Scott Burns (2004). The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America's Economic Future'. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-11286. Description and chapter-preview links, p. vii.

The Age Curve: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&#...

Do elaborate on how war or inventions will make more babies?

Well, wars probably remove babies, same for the invention of the anti-baby pill. IIRC neither the wars nor the pill were predicted in the 1900s, just like we can't predict what will happen before the end of this century.

Some big asteroid impact might just end our population concerns for good. Or perhaps we defeat aging with bio-tech. Or designer-babies become so popular that everyone even in developed countries suddenly wants five.

I'm not saying any of that will happen. I'm just wary of predictions reaching more than half a century into the future. After all: We're having this discussion on a medium that nobody 50 years ago would have imagined to exist (outside of SciFi books).

The US "baby boom" following World War II leaps to mind, when we prospered while our economic rivals were recovering from major infrastructure damage. As does the "green revolution" when the world postponed widespread famine through heavy adoption of artificial fertilizers and pesticides and the best known farming tactics.

Well, of course anything is possible. But it's just as likely the population will already be dropping when we expect it to be merely leveling off. One thing is certain, though - the rate of population growth is slowing, and has been for some time.

In terms of a major war or invention, the way I see it these things are more likely to decrease the world population instead of increasing it.

Better off linking the original article; the site you link takes some liberties: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27264/

Keep in mind that if any subtype of the population is growing exponentially, then the whole population will also grow exponentially in the asymptote. I'd be hesitant to disagree with Hawking on this.

Not me. I'm always amazed at the things otherwise brilliant people say when they're out of their area of expertise. There was a reason we didn't reach Erlich's 20 billion by the year 2000, even though we could probably grow enough food to support that many.

We're not going to have the technology to make other planets habitable until we have a pressing need to develop it. So no, we shouldn't wait for that.

Well, okay. But by that logic we won't go to other planets unless we have a pressing need, so the whole argument is moot.

Like I said, if your interest is preserving the human race you can can get a lot more bang for your buck by digging into the earth. No matter what's going on at the surface at least you'll have the kind of gravity humans physiology has evolved to expect.

But what about sunshine? Just kidding.

It would be more fruitful to build land on sea first. If the point here is overpopulation.

Sure, if your worry is elbow room. But when people say we don't want to "put all our eggs in one basket" they're typically including things like nuclear war, killer asteroids, and gamma ray bursts.

Yeah, I was referring more to the eggs/basket issue. Beyond that, though, I think there's a lot more to be gained from colonizing worlds than digging into the earth. One is pushing outward, the other is retreating inward, and is very much a dead end.

You sure? In the long term, like that an academic like Hawking probably had in mind, population definitely has been increasing exponentially: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth first chart.

The population is "set to level off"? How are you certain Or not:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population first chart.

Estimates vary. But you can't be any more certain that our numbers will start to decline any moreso than Hawking is that they we'll continue to multiply.

The first derivative is important here. Look at the chart labeled "growth rate of world population".

Space exploration is like selling off your stocks during a tech bubble: it's obvious it needs to happen sometime, but it's really hard to figure out when the right time is. Unfortunately, that means for-profit organizations underinvest. This is one of those cases where it really does make sense for government to encourage the sector with investment, although it seems like X-prize-type systems might work better than NASA-type systems.

Unless we learn to live harmoniously with each other on this planet, why should we expand to other planets ? To perpetuate the same cycle of justified violence on ourselves and everything else? Look what happened to the Native Americans and all other indigenous populations, cultures, countries, when people brainwashed by a culture of greed and religiously, scientifically (eugenics), and more recently 'humanitarianlly' justified violence got in there to take their resources.

Is this way of life worth preserving? Maybe there is something better, maybe a self-sustaining, thriving way of life that is in harmony with nature and doesn't need continuous conquering, colonization, resource raping and pillaging in order to be maintained would be worth exploring first, before we think about jumping ship?

Maybe all this apocalyptic stuff is all BS, and it is just a sign we need to change something in the way we live, rather than we need to jump ship?

The problem is some people would like us to not change at all, or to change such that they can maintain or even increase their power and privileges (see carbon tax scam). This is where the problem lies.

The only thing we need right now is to wake up and separate wheat from chaff, inquire into ourselves, find our own truth of who we are and what we are doing here, and reject all theories imposed by any so called 'authority'.

Forget about space exploration for now, it's just another distraction.

Inner (and outer) truth is what we need right now.

Your comment sounds like a wordier version of "we should stop exploring space and solve all the problems on Earth." It doesn't sound any more compelling when you use more words to say it. We can continue to push our boundaries while working on improving things.

Nope, I'm not saying anyhting against space exploration. On the contrary. I actually did work as a contractor for NASA, and it was a dream of mine to work there. But I do have a problem with going there as an escape from the mess we can't face at home, and to rob and pillage some more - a pattern so common to our culture.

thriving way of life that is in harmony with nature

What do you mean by that? Nature, red in tooth and claw, and all that.

I agree with Hawking. But we need to understand why space exploration isn't happening and what's being done about it.

Space exploration is different from earlier forms of exploration because the technological and financial requirements are a couple orders of magnitude higher than they have ever been. Also, we have yet to find natural resources up in space which would justify the expense of mining them.

That's why it isn't happening at the pace some people expected after Apollo.

But with the latest developments in orbital tourism, and a world population that's generally wealthier than it's ever been, tech and financial huddles will fall in time.

Unfortunately colonization with conventional spaceflight is not realistic. It would be far easier and exponentially cheaper to try to colonize the dessert than any moon or planet in our solar system.

However, if we can figure out a way to travel very quickly without the use of fossil fuels than things start to get interesting.

Even at the speed of light the closest potential planets we could colonize at 4.5 years away. Now think about communication. Telling your parent's "hi" would take 4.5 years in either direction, even if we could ensure the signal gets back.

However, I believe a large global and unrealistic goal such as space colonization would help people to get along.

"People are like dung. When they're all together they smell really bad, but if you spread them out they fertilize the land." Forgot who the author of that quote was..

I've heard this about money - "Money is like manure. If you spread it around it does a lot of good. But if you pile it up in one place it stinks like hell."

See http://www.quotecosmos.com/quotes/27137/view.

Talk is cheap. We are pretty clear on what is required for space exploration on that level. How about he stops talking about it and instead comes up with the physics required for such endeavors:

  - Hyper drive/Warp drive or any other faster-than-light drives.
  - Shield generators providing the equivalent of 100km of atmosphere.
  - Sub-space communication devices or some other faster-than-light communication technology.
  - Inertial dampeners. IE gravity/anti-gravity generators.
  - Fuel and power generating devices to run the above technology.

and so on

A feasible cold-sleep system would solve a lot of these. As it means it matters a lot less how long it takes to get somewhere.

I was reading "A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge the other day, and his portrayal of that was pretty good. Basically on a long trip the crew cycles being awake and "on watch". So there are always some people awake to deal with problems, but everyone only has to expend a year or two of their lifespan on the trip. (As an aside, great book)

Other than Mars, any future humans living on any "M" class planets that we discover will be one-way, multi-generational trips. Unless we can travel instantaneously throughout the universe, exploration is pretty pointless since it'll literally take decades (in each direction) to communicate with our colonies, never mind bringing resources back to Earth.

Either we're never leaving, a few brave souls leave, or we're all leaving. Really there's little incentive to leave unless the rest of your life, and your grandchildren's, and their children's lives are that much better off aboard a space ship than they are on Earth.

Hawking also recently stated that if we ever met "aliens" they would almost certainly be aggressive toward us, which I disagree with. Hawking definitely doesn't give much credit to the human race, or any other potentially intelligent life forms.

Unless instantaneous travel is possible (which it probably is, but not anytime soon), us and any other form of intelligent life in the universe are in the same boat.

As a whole civilization is getting better. We are becoming less violent, less aggressive and more educated then ever.

As the author of freakanomics says "Its amazing statistically how many people 'Do the right thing.'".

Its also discouraging how Hawking does not back any of this with charts or numbers or something that would be convincing. I have to wonder if Hawking's agenda and outlook are from his own "selfish desires".

Certainly there are more achievable options then the immense challenges of space. Like underground infrastructure or mass gene therapy that allows immense intelligence for all (think Limitless for all).

Also have you noticed that most "dynasties" do not go out like a light switch. Its a very slow decline. Examples: Romans, Ottoman Empire, the Dinosaurs various music artists and athletic teams.

I am betting that humanity will end in a slow boring decline.

I'd like to cheer for Hawking's position, but I find the opposing view really convincing:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high...

The problem with making predictions about a complex system (nonlinear system) like human civilization is that there are so many factors and variables that can affect the trajectory that accurate prediction is virtually impossible. You would think that, of all people, a physicist would appreciate that and thus refrain from making strong claims about the future trajectory of such a system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

http://necsi.edu/research/overview/prediction.html

It is a great worry for me, that we have stopped looking out into the space with the kind of fascination that we used to.

Unfortunately, most of the world's wealth and technology is somehow taking (pushing) us to our own end. With Nuclear weapons seeing ever more proliferation and irreversible climate change knocking on our doors, I feel that we might just not end up with enough time to save ourselves from Mass extinction.

Good (but long) video of why NASA's goal should be colonization.

http://vimeo.com/24260744

Constellation should be restarted.

Is his new TV show worth watching?

No. If we can't make it work here on earth, where we have everything we need, how are we going to make it work somewhere else? Before going into the galaxy, we have to fix ourselves and our society. And we can do it.

> Before going into the galaxy, we have to fix ourselves and our society

Space exploration, i.e. NASA, takes up 0.6% of the federal budget, and decreasing. The Great Society programs, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, take up 54% and increasing.

So, be happy: as a society, we've decided that an extra 1% on grandma's pension is worth more than a Moon colony and humans on Mars (quite likely to have been achieved with double the space exploration budget).

You've made an interesting point, but budget is a very poor measure of effort. Grandpa's pension mostly circulates on Earth, while NASA budget throws extremely hard to design and produce stuff into space.

Not really - a lot of the technology that NASA builds ends up being used in other areas, from materials science to computer engineering.

Land exploration lead to having many different kingdoms, which scaled wars up from inter-tribal wars to inter-kingdom wars. Later, world wars.

Space exploration will scale wars up from inter-continental world wars, to inter-world wars, which are much more massive.

Right now I'm sitting in Portugal, Europe, typing this on a laptop which was designed in America and manufactured in China. And we're not at war with one another at the moment. I believe there may have been a few consequences to exploration that were far nicer than war, trade chief among them.

Not only that, if we've become advanced enough to finally decide we should genuinely spend our efforts on exploring space, by then perhaps a humanistic consciousness could have emerged rendering war irrelevant.

Sure, there are times of peace, and there are times of war.

But history tells us there likely will be wars.

Interplanetary warfare would be extremely resource intensive. You can't very easily occupy a planet.

Just getting an army from one planet to another would be ruinously expensive. Also, without some big leap in propulsion technology it's going to take something like a year for the invasion force to arrive. That gives the defender a whole lot of time to think about how he's going to respond and prepare accordingly.

Good point: The attacker loses the element of surprise and must maintain very long supply lines!

False. Humans are, by default, gonna fuck shit up. I don't care what planet we end up on. We're going to destroy ourselves before the lack of resources destroys us. That's just me tho.

The point being, space expansion would prevent the sudden eradication of the human technological culture. Politicians, warmongers, prophets and priests will continue to fuck things up, but distributed redundancy means not everything is destroyed at once.

I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted.

Anyways, who says Earth created "Politicians, warmongers, prophets and priests, etc.."? Kids fight among themselves without any of these lovely things to help them. As does everything in the living world.

You're being downvoted because you missed the point and continue to do so. Nobody said that earth created those things, or that going into space would somehow make us more compassionate. The point is that being spread out across interplanetary distances reduces the need for bad people to take truly drastic measures, and mitigates the damage that any particular disaster can do. Even if we a madman managed to blow up the entire world, as long as he can't do so to every world that humans are inhabiting simultaneously, humanity will live on.

...which is exactly why we need to spread out. Dont put all the eggs in the same basket, etc.

On the other side, while we're on one planet we can fix ourself. But once spread across the stars ... wars, fanatical religions, police states, etc. may stay with us forever.

> we can fix ourself

looking at the history of the human race, it seems unlikely we'll ever "fix ourself".

> wars, fanatical religions, police states, etc. may stay with us forever.

if anything i believe the wars, fanatical religions will stay with us forever since they're a part of human nature. regardless of which planet we're on.

Civilization changes human nature. The same way our civilization produces dogs, caws, sheep, etc. it also changed us into a less aggressive, more cooperative being with way way way higher self control.

EDIT: I can give you countless examples. Compare the human reactions in developing countries with those of say a London native. You'll see that just a few centuries of life in big cities have given Englishmen incredible manners and self control.

Oh yes, we saw that over the summer.

A good point. The question then is "does civilization change human nature itself or just the contract between members of said society?" Extreme circumstances seem to break the social contract of a civilization and reveal that human nature didn't change much if at all.

>looking at the history of the human race, it seems unlikely we'll ever "fix ourself".

I disagree. We're barely a couple thousand years away from mass crucifixion as a legitimate punishment by civilizations that were considered advanced for their time. We're only a couple hundred years away from legitimized slavery as the norm.

There are probably some human flaws that will never go away unless we deliberately engineer them from our biology. Even so, if you look at history there's been a massive trend towards improvement. Even if our flaws today seem insurmountable, I think history shows a solid track record of improvement.

Unfortunately, if you look at things that have happened in Africa and the Middle East, you'll see we aren't thousands or even hundreds of years removed from those things. People are still sold and stoning still happens (don't know about crucifixion).

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