Comment by zoeysmithe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zoeysmithe | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

We'd find thousands of "volunteers" for blood sports, but we disallow them. Letting misguided people, the poor, the unwell, etc sign up for capitalist-backed suicide ventures is extremely unethical.

Once allowed, the corrupting influence of money would take over. People would be guilted into this by family for sponserships and such.

Not that long ago a woman received a huge forehead tattoo for an online casino as a PR stunt. They paid hew a few thousand for this stunt. She said she needed the money for her kids.

I don't think you're fully understanding how many desperate people out there would sign up for this or be forced into this against their will under the dishonest guise of "volunteering."

Look at the near revolt of the early space programs for example both Soviet and Western, with astronauts and engineers demanding safety measures and more personal control of the spacecraft after high profile "dog eat dog" philosophy failures that killed and injured many. We've already been through this. It doesn't work.

Lastly, a lot of engineers might walk away from the job for ethical concerns because they dont want to build suicide machines. Look at how MD's refuse to be part of state executions in the USA, thus leaving a cottage industry of a fairly incompetent execution industry. Your best people would walk away from SpaceX, Boeing, etc if tasked with making suicide machines for vulnerable people. People have ethics and not all subscribe to bottom-tier "dog eat dog" capitalism "volunteerism," but instead are educated to know what that means and how that's historically abused our most vulnerable.

Our most vulnerable populations wouldn't be of any interest as crew members of a spacecraft. They're the ones who wouldn't get to go at all.

The point of a crew wouldn't be to demonstrate human safety, but rather to do things automation can't currently do (e.g. improvise solutions based on a deep and broad background of general knowledge + specific training coupled with high basic intellect, in austere environments under great personal stress). People like that don't get their foreheads tattooed for money.

>Not that long ago a woman received a huge forehead tattoo for an online casino as a PR stunt. They paid hew a few thousand for this stunt. She said she needed the money for her kids.

Would her kids have been better off if she couldn't get that money?

We have for example test pilots who take high risks for their job without the slippery slope problems you describe so I don’t think that doing something similar for a Mars mission is impossible.

I think there's a fundamental difference in what people and society allow between these two scenarios:

1. There are jobs that are risky.

2. When your air runs out at Mars take this suicide pill because we're not funding a round trip.

The latter is a huge deviation from what is acceptable.

> a huge deviation from what is acceptable.

The question is acceptable to whom. There are pastimes that are risky such as rock climbing, Formula 1 racing, and many others. Would you ban those too? If not then you must accept that there are degrees of risk that are acceptable to some and not to others. Assuming that the decision is genuinely made without any kind of coercion why should society dictate what risks people can take?

As has been pointed out elsewhere on this topic the poor and ill educated won't be offered these opportunities anyway so that kind of implicit coercion does not apply.

> you must accept that there are degrees of risk that are acceptable to some and not to others

Someone who accepts the 'risk' of certain death on the mission doesn't seem to me to be the sort of person you want as your companion on a dangerous voyage. And if you're planning to found a colony, you want all sorts; not just nerds, scientists and technicians.

> Someone who accepts the 'risk' of certain death on the mission doesn't seem to me to be the sort of person you want as your companion on a dangerous voyage.

That is EXACTLY the person I want around, because I know they can be relied on even in dangerous situations. You, on the other hand, who thinks that someone who does not fear death would be a bad companion on such a mission, would likely piss himself in face of actual danger.

Someone who's afraid of death on a suicide mission is a danger to the mission and, thus, to myself. When you want to found a colony, you need strong men and smart men, best when each man covers both.

You definitely just want nerds, scientists, doctors and technicians, because they get the shit done.

This isn't a hollywood movie.

> because I know they can be relied on even in dangerous situations

Why do you think such people are reliable?

For clarity, I'm not afraid to die. For exactly that reason, I think I'd be an unreliable companion on a dangerous mission. For my companion, I'd want someone who thought they had at at least as much to lose as me. If you want to head off to Mars with Rambo at the controls, that's up to you.

If you want to found a colony that is all scientists and technicians, because you don't think ordinary people "get things done", good luck with your colony. Pumping sewage, helping people in mental distress? Sure, leave it all to technicians; after all, we'll filter them for mentail susceptibility before they leave. We're good at finding nutters before they go nuts, aren't we? Well, no.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com