How to destroy the earth | Hacker News Reader

How to destroy the earth

qntm.org

77 pointsjoss8235 comments

I loved this. If someone created a geeky analogue to Maxim magazine and filled it with articles like this on a monthly basis, it'd be a real hit.

wired?

You know, I was thinking about that as I was typing my original comment. But no, not Wired.

I think it's close, but there's some difference in tone that'd be needed, though I can't quite put my finger on it at the moment.

Swagger.

I think you're right. :)

Wired doesn't have girls posing in lingerie.

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:u5ST-mAOJe1sjM:http://two...

Posted small 'cause I'm not clicking the original at work.

Reminds me of one of George Carlin's show where he talks about how humans destroy planet earth. The earth is built to last, and will be there even if humanity is long gone.

The problem with that entertaining quip is that when people talk about protecting mother earth they don't actually believe we're going to kill it.

They're specifically talking about preserving things we like about its current state: things we are perfectly capable of utterly destroying; places we've demonstrated our ability to render inhospitable.

So you don't really refute the argument by pointing out that the Earth will endure, or that some degenerate mutant strain of humanity might be able to scratch a pre-civilization existence out of radioactive slag.

The problem with that entertaining quip is that when people talk about protecting mother earth they don't actually believe we're going to kill it.

Sure, but then we aren't really talking about saving the earth at all - we're talking about saving ourselves and the things we happen to like, need, or find aesthetically pleasing. It's a purely selfish motivation which is why we like to anthropomorphize the planet itself and pretend we're concerned for something more than just ourselves. "Mother earth" couldn't care less about being saved because "she" is a big rock in space, which doesn't have feelings[1].

that some degenerate mutant strain of humanity might be able to scratch a pre-civilization existence

Hey now, we were just a degenerate mutant strain at one point too. There's no reason to think that some other mutation that survives our eventual extinction would not mature over a few million years to become a much more intelligent, peaceful and benign civilization.

1. I guess it's possible the earth does have feelings, but if so it doesn't seem likely it would care one way or the other about us.

Not if there are certain things that are truly beautiful and good and will never occur again if we destroy them. Those things are worth saving, and that's not being anthropomorphic.

By definition, if you think they are truly beautiful and good, you have made a judjgement, and thus are being self serving in attempting to save them.

Hmm, why must all judgments be self serving? For instance, if a soldier thinks it is the right/good/noble/beautiful thing to jump on a grenade, I fail to see how that is self serving by any normal definition.

Plus, many artists and other geniuses live horrible lives by evolutionary standards, all for the sake of something they consider beautiful and transcendent.

Finally, most people will report a subjective sense of self-transcendence when contemplating beauty and moral goodness. If we want to fly in the face of common experience we can say this is all selfish, but at that point it looks more like you're bending the data to fit your worldview instead of letting the data change your worldview.

Carlin makes that distinction, actually. The bit is about how "save the planet" is the wrong slogan and that the goal is really just to save humans.

Carlin's specific bit was about marketing, but the meme took on a life of its own as a simple refutation of environmentalism.

How many times have you heard some chuckle over "save the planet" and then open an honest debate about an environmental policy? At least in my experience, when someone points "the earth will be fine", it's typically followed with a simple example of some natural phenomena that exerts more one-time ecological stress than a given societal issue and then they're done. They're using that idea to argue their position.

Is that a challenge?

s/even if/when/

From the section, "Things which will not destroy the earth":

Gay marriage.

Well, theoretically this could result in destruction by less-plausible method number eight: "Destroyed by God".

(Of course, so could anything else, what with the ways of God being impenetrable to Man and so forth, so it's probably safest to just keep doing whatever it was you were already doing since apparently He was cool with that.)

Step 1: Procure an Iludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.

Step 2: Make sure there are no meddlesome rabbits on your planet...

If you follow the link to the advisory board you will see they confirmed the earth was destroyed last year.

There's a comments section to discuss the topic.

His fictional methods disappointingly lacked the Vogon method.

No they didn't. You just didn't read far enough down the page. http://qntm.org/?fictional#sec2, second item listed.

Weird. I swear I ctrl-F'ed that page for Vogon.

"Number of times the Earth has been destroyed: 1"

I was expecting this to reference the event that created the moon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis

Check out Episode 50 of 'The Universe' -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Universe_%28TV_series%29#Se...

I'm pretty sure my cat has a plan for this. Good thing I keep him in the house.

i love this guy's scifi, too.

http://qntm.org/?fiction

i first found the ed stories through scifi.reddit.com

For some possible solutions to Fermi's paradox, this can easily be solved. We just build e.g. radar stations which output lots of MWs and get someone's attention... :-)

That's listed as item 9 in this section: http://qntm.org/?destroy#sec5

Right you are (it was without a title line, so I missed it).

Also, my way of putting it was much scarier, since we have already built lots of radar stations. :-)

Meh. You could roast everything on the surface with the energy of several large impactors. This would use orders of magnitude less energy than most of the methods described, and still kill every living thing on the surface. (As in everything on the surface is engulfed by molten rock, tidal waves, pressure blasts, and everyone dies in the space of a few hours.)

Lesson: leave the Earth's orbit alone, and just massively disrupt the biosphere.

The objective here is to destroy the Earth, as specified in the article. Sure, there are lots of ways to kill everything on the planet, but it'll still be there when you're done.

If I've already roasted/pulverized/drowned everyone, who's going to complain?

And if a tree falls in the forest, will anyone hear it? As has been said the goal is destroy the earth. Not to leave no witnesses to confirm if the deed has been done.

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