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Comment by Cushman | Hacker News Reader

For me, at least, it's only a small part of a greater question: Why do anything that robots do better and cheaper?

It seems to me that the best thing for us as a species is to let robots that do the things robots are good at, like translating in physical space, moving objects, manipulating matter, et cetera, and let humans spend their time doing the things that humans are good at: art, culture, coming up with novel behaviors for robots.

You get excited about exploration-- that's great. I get excited about post-scarcity. Because that will mean that everyone gets to do what they're excited about.

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No matter how hard they try you can't live on Mars via a robot. Ultimately it's about adventure, experience, and colonization. Robots are great for science, but there's more to space exploration than just science.

Edit: There will come a time in the near future, probably by 2050 but certainly before 2100, when the idea of "space" evaporates away. Space is just a place. Mars is just a place. It's just as much a place as the street right outside your doorway or the grocery store just down the road. It's a place we can visit, experience, and a place where we can live. Once people start living off of Earth I think that artificial barrier will come down and people will begin accepting the idea that the Earth is just a part of the Universe. We have come to split up the Universe into two parts: the Earth, and everywhere else. But this is a false dichotomy due only to the particulars of history, there is only one Universe.

They said that last century. We put a man on the moon. We haven't been back in decades, at least thirty years.

The USSR planned on sending a man to mars to live, and die there. It was feasible during the cold war, and we still haven't done anything about it.

The difference now is it is no longer just governments looking into space, but rather the private sector. That will drive things at a pace that hasn't been seen in space exploration yet (SpaceX is a great glimpse into it though!).

I upvoted you even though I disagree with your conclusion.

"Why do anything that robots do better and cheaper?"

That is a question that is going to be very very interesting in the rapidly approaching future. Robotics is really a game changer. It has already changed out lives for the better and will only continue to do so. The answer to "Should robots do this?" should always be a resounding "Yes.", where it serves to improve our lives.

However I refuse to continue that answer with "...and humans should not." Some of us feel comfortable that our particular niche is safe from obsolescence. What those people are good at and what they want to do happen to overlap.. at the present. But what of the people for whom that is no longer the case? Should they, in a post-scarcity society, be denied the opportunity to do what they want to do?

Let robots do what they're good at. Get to Mars, build a base, and begin mining. Then let humans do what they are good at: live.

I do not propose forbidding robots from doing anything.

I say let humans do what they are good at... and what they desire to do. If they want robots to help them or precede them, wonderful.

Yeah I was backing up your point. Robots can do almost anything, but they cannot live human lives. Let robots do the dirty, dangerous work of making Mars livable for humans, then let humans do the living.

Ah yes, exactly my thoughts then.

Robots are currently unable to be autonomous in any meaningful way. They still have a limited ability to perceive because computer vision is not good yet. They lack the ability to act sensibly in novel environments. Building such robots is the holy grail of AI, and it'll take a while before they are built.

It's not either/or.

Research from a distance at first. Telescopes, and so on.

Send robots after that. Let them dip their toes in the water first.

Finally, send people where it makes sense.

I guess I feel that space is so huge and has so much stuff in it that any progress in exploring it brings us closer to post-scarcity, whether it's humans or robots or both. Humans on Mars will always be able to respond to things much faster than humans on Earth monitoring robots on Mars, for one.

> It seems to me that the best thing for us as a species is to let robots that do the things robots are good at, like translating in physical space, moving objects, manipulating matter, et cetera

But I like walking around. I don't need or want a robot to do that for me. I am more than my brain; I am also my body.

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