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Comment by _gd3l | Hacker News Reader

Why don't we focus on the shit here first?

I'm sorry, but I just get frustrate with all these wondrous predictions that always seem to be about 30-50 years in the future. Short enough away to be enticing, but long enough away where no one making these predictions will really he held accountable for their ridiculousness.

It just seems that every single generation a) has some "new threat" for "how the world will end" and b) has some technological vision that ends up being way overestimated.

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We can do both. Hell, even Elon Musk can do both; he also runs Tesla Motors, which makes electric cars on Earth.

Also, I notice that people are much more likely to condemn space development as frivolous than they are to criticize, say, football or whittling. Does that seem like a double standard to you, too?

Football and whittling are sustainably self-funding.

Football isn't a productive enterprise, regardless of how much money it can extract from the wider economy. Going to mars will most likely result in a large array of new tech which will find unrelated uses on Earth. Think of it like a way to buy a big burst of creativity.

OK, I'll bite. Define "productive enterprise".

You're not left with anything new at the end of a football game.

You have recordings and accounts of the game that can be published or resold, and potentially fond memories of an enjoyable experience. The same criticism could be made of live theatre or concerts. Is the presence of physical artfacts after the fact your criteria for a "productive enterprise"? How do you reconcile this value judgment with the fact that experiences, rather than possessions, tend to be a bigger factor in human happiness?

It's very hard to justify that something is "frivolous" or "non-productive" when it contributes materially to the happiness of a lot of people. People can deeply enjoy football, it can strengthen family and community bonds or just make for a fun evening. We don't live in a bleak dystopian society where we do nothing all day but provide for each other's physical needs. Football is no more frivolous or non-productive than easily most of the economy.

Yeah, I get all that, and I'm a fan of movies, theatre, and even the occasional football game. But I think that entertainment in general is less worthy than anything that moves knowledge and understanding forward. To your original comment, it's a bad idea to try to derive something's true worth from its profitability, especially in the short term.

I wasn't trying to derive anything's "true worth"--I was just saying that football is self-sustaining.

And actually, movies and professional sports have advanced our understanding and technology a great deal, be it by advancing camera and computer imaging technologies or by advancing our medical knowledge by giving us more experience dealing with certain types of injuries. The competitive nature of professional sports also gives us insights into the most effective ways to train, condition, and give nutrition to the human body.

OK, you just seemed to be saying that those things were better because they could support themselves financially.

I don't think they're on the same order of magnitude in terms of knowledge gained - those are mature industries, space travel isn't anywhere near, so the gains should be much more dramatic and broadly applicable.

No, the main thing is that self-sustaining enterprises aren't up for public debate, so there's no reason anyone would criticize them as frivolous. Whereas anything that needs public funding, like space travel historically has, is automatically subject to a debate about its worthiness.

Sure there is - I know people who would call those things frivolous. Football consumes a serious outlay of energy for comparatively little lasting benefit. It's not scrutinized as often as things that are funded with taxes, but that doesn't save it from frivolity. Anyway, we're probably arguing past each other. I see taxpayer funded science of all sorts as being more worthy than most things, because I view scientific discovery as the foundation of the country's economic competitiveness. Most things seem frivolous by comparison.

But doesn't most economic production and most scientific discovery ultimately serve frivolous ends anyway?

Maybe, but some of it helps ensure the continued survival of the species, which is about the least frivolous thing possible.

So is SpaceX. Their rockets are changing the economics of space launch already--they are several factors cheaper per pound to orbit than their competitors.

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