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Comment by jcgrillo | Hacker News Reader

We "just" need to figure out the terraforming problem then we can all move to Mars and be interplanetary explorers. Imagine how cool it would be to have corporate leaders who had vision--environmentally friendly automobiles, cheap space travel, etc.--without the clammy snake oil grifter bullshit. Reality is cool AF. The things that are actually achievable are amazing. We don't need to spout nonsense to do great things. We don't need "AGI" (whatever that might be) to do neat things with machine learning. The Jetsons is a cartoon. Trying to make it real is dumb.

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The Mars obsession absolutely blows me away. Like, he's obviously read KSR's Red Mars. He's obviously aware of the conditions out there. Mars is a fuckin' bummer. It is absolutely hostile to human life. Sure, we'll land people there, and maybe set up some sort of station if we really want to throw a few trillion dollars away from actual problems here on earth... but it's not going to be pleasant. Not anytime, ever. The gravity sucks. The dust and fines suck. The storms suck. And last for months. The temperatures suck. There's no "outside". There's no trivial way to generate power at scale. There's no magnetosphere, so you'll get cancer. The soil is poisonous.

Elon's stuck with this 12-year-old-boy absurdity about "becoming interplanetary to save the species" as if Mars could ever be a practical lifeboat when we inevitably drive the planet into the ground or a meteor hits. It's... absurd, puerile fantasy.

I think there's value in space exploration even for its own sake, but I think it's utterly idiotic to think that we're going to realistically be able to terraform Mars in the next century if ever.

Even if I do think it's worth exploring space, including Mars, I think it's silly to assume that it's going to be a way to guarantee the permanence of humanity.

This is precisely my point. Folly. (But the knock-on effects of the space race and exploration and on and on are valid and I'm a big space fan... it's just that caging it as some sort of potential lifeboat beggars belief.

Doing such seemingly impossible things have been what humans have been doing. The tech developed for Mars would definitely influence our Earth society. Hard to say how and when, but it has been historically the case. I think instead of spending billions on election influence campaign, spending that on Mars has a better impact to society.

That’s the point. Don’t listen, keep trying and you can achieve anything. Rich people are either bored or stupid so you will get money eventually.

>he's obviously read KSR's Red Mars

If he had, he was clearly not paying attention to the social and economic message of the book.

The guy owns a rocket company and still hasn't even been to LEO. Katy Perry has spent more time in space than Elon.

Mars isn't happening, at least not on his watch.

The funniest part is that the Mars Trilogy is hella optimistic about the tech needed to get and live there.

An interview with a Silicon Valley big shot finally explained this.

The concept is that you can convince smart people to work extra hard for you by selling them the story that no-no-no, they’re not merely tweaking some dystopian algorithm to sell Chinese plastic crap to people, they’re saving the world.

Once you recognise this pattern, you’ll see it everywhere: Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and Elon all do it.

Hence the “AI safety” rhetoric. Those CEOs will gladly take the safeties off and make an army of Terminators to sell to the highest bidder! The safety talk is for their employees, to convince them to work like slaves to “save the world”.

we need AGI and robot so people can leave chore in house to a robot

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