such a waste of time and (other ppl's) money.
10 karma · joined December 28, 2010
really? says who? humans have evolved to be on Earth for 100,000 years .. we're not going to colonize Mars or interstellar space. perhaps cyborgs, robots, single-cell life .. but not humans.
once you accept that, it opens an enormous set of questions. like .. is a world full of post-humans something we should be striving for? (seeing ppl's faces glued to smartphones is only the beginning, and that is sad enough).
i'm sorry, but you're talking out of your ass .. and imho, you have watched too much star trek and have become enamored with sci-fi garbage.
no incentive to change a thing, and that's the straight dope.
don't get me wrong, I love SpaceX (and Elon), but most of this is folly.
Even terraforming Mars isn't realistic, it's a mostly dead planet whose core has cooled and now doesn't have any protective electromagnetic belts.
nobody will want to actually live there. if there is money to be made by mining Mars' resources, fine - but don't steal my money (via tax dollars).
btw, i don't have the answer .. i don't want to go back to the mud, and i don't want to live in some kind of 'Logan's Run' scenario either. but i recognize that something has to give. the trajectory is alarming and my point is that technology won't be the answer because we ultimately live on a planet of finite resources.
- the moon and mars (let alone the other planets) are _not_ hospitable to humans. pure fantasy to consider fruitful colonization.
- the next stop outside of our solar system is lifetimes away, who would actually want to live in a moving space station? yuck
- more efficient energy and transportation systems - why? so we can cram even more people onto this planet? how many is enough (or too much)?
- more/better gadgets? games? sad - aim higher.
the big questions we need to solve are those pertaining to sustainable living (as a population). the only people giving this thought these days are crackpots.
we have significant peak-this-or-that issues staring us right in the face. if we don't stop farting around w/ 'golden age' SF fantasies, and start working on the real problems we face .. we'll be looking at another dark age rather than crying about not playing frisbee on Neptune.
Addtionally, it should be said that Asians are not the only folks guilty of this - they're just the best at the meta-game (e.g. preferring to learn about playing the system over learning about the material itself).
Weird that Asians behave like this given the wealth of zen philosophy in the east : ‘A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.’ ~Lao Tzu