[ot] Mars colonization

[Mistwell]

There is no economic reason to enter space. The cost of lifting things out of the gravity well, or lowering them back down in a controlled fashion prohibits meaningful material economic exchange between a space faring culture and a planetary culture, much less between two planetary cultures, much less between two planetary cultures around different stars. No one will get rich sending someone into space. No economic return will ever be recieved equivalent to the cost of the sending. It will always be cheaper to develop the means of production planetside. It will always be cheaper to find the raw materials planetside.

Funny, Space Adventures, Inc. has gotten rich off of sending people into space. Space Tourism appears to be a viable business model currently for space travel.

Xcor is doing pretty well as well.

Looked at through your eyes, nobody would have ever gone to Hawaii or the Carribbean either. And look at those tourism economies. For that matter, Las Vegas wouldn't exist. Neither would Disneyland. Your view that manufacturing is the sole economic motive is seriously flawed. Welcome to the 21st century, where first world countries are functioning almost entirely on service-based economies.

 

[tleilaxu]

Note also that Zahi has an admitted bias against finding that slaves built the pyramids. He was appointed to the position chiefly because of this belief. It is currently to Egypt's political advantage to claim that jews had nothing to do with the pyramids, and that Egypt does not have a history of slavery, but that the ancestors of the Egyptian people built it voluntarily as a sign of greatness.

All this maybe true, but note that we weren't discussing whether or not slaves did it, but instead were discussing what the views are within the Archaeological discipline. Heck, I personally think they were probably built by slaves, but that doesn't make it the consensus.

As for someones professor saying "unresolved", how nice. Consensus can be unresolved. You can have a majority of people thinking one thing (the consensus), a minority thinking another, and the issue remaining unresolved. As a counter to your "professor", I cite my own (who also happens to be the US archeological director in charge of Jordan archelogical affairs, and a personal friend of the King of Jordan). He claims it is the overwhelming consensus that slaves built at least a few of the pyramids and temples in Egypt, and even then best evidence against that theory is only applicable to the Giza pyramids, and not the non-Giza pyramids. Nobody has offered even a shred of evidence that the pyramids in the lower kingdom were built by anyone other than slaves, including Zahi.

Listen, the fact that we can both bring out people to support out viewpoint is evidence that a concensus does not exist on this issue. I took the time to bug my prof. to get that email, so you email yours and post his quote on the webpage. I doubt you would falsify one to justify your position.
In the end my point is easier to prove. The burden of proof is on you to show that an "overwhelming concensus" exists.
One last note. I agree with you that there is probably a gov't motivation to want to believe that slaves weren't used, but this doesn't necessarily make that wrong. Virtually all knowledge can be used to support one ideology or another...

 

[tleilaxu]

Funny, Space Adventures, Inc. has gotten rich off of sending people into space. Space Tourism appears to be a viable business model currently for space travel.

Xcor is doing pretty well as well.

Looked at through your eyes, nobody would have ever gone to Hawaii or the Carribbean either. And look at those tourism economies. For that matter, Las Vegas wouldn't exist. Neither would Disneyland. Your view that manufacturing is the sole economic motive is seriously flawed. Welcome to the 21st century, where first world countries are functioning almost entirely on service-based economies.

Well, a tourist destination would be thought of as having economic value, but the real question is whether or not Mars would be a viable tourist destination. We just had our first space tourist recently, but he had to go through months of training just to hang out in earth orbit. With current travel time to Mars being so long, I doubt many people would qualify for the requirements. Psychological tests, physical tests, etc. That space tourist only went up for a few days, think of the muscle deterioration of a year long journey. Sure, you could do exercises and the like, but your body will still degrade somewhat. All that for just a vacation?

How many people go to Antarctica as tourists? (i'm guessing trace amounts) And it is a heck of a lot easier to go there.

 

[Celebrim]

Mistwell: But that space would have a value as a tourist destination even if there is no tradiational economic justification for it is precisely my point. As tleilaxu pointed out, it doesn't really have the appeal of a tradiational tourist location. It is not relaxing in the traditional sense. It does not have traditional aesthetics - warmth, water, sunshine, cool breezes, greenry, etc. that humans naturally associate with 'good place to be'. It is not comfortable. It is in fact scary. It is even highly dangerous. It exists as a tourist destination because there are geeks who make it so. But, it is a whole different thing to make suborbital flights to experience the novelty of microgravity, than it is to colonize Mars or better yet the Kuiper belt. It remains to be seen what motivates the geeks, and how much determination they have.

And as for economies being based on service industries, that is myth that first world countries will eventually be disabused of.

 

[tleilaxu]

Isn't Kuiper a character from Night Below?

 

[Storminator]

<SNIP>
And as for economies being based on service industries, that is myth that first world countries will eventually be disabused of.

The real myth is that 1st world economies aren't manufacturing economies. America builds more now than at any time in its history. It just does it with vastly fewer people than it used to. And since the fruits of manufacturing are so much cheaper than ever before, a smaller fraction of household income goes to items, allowing greater expenditure on services.

PS

 

[s/LaSH]

Allow me to open a whole new can of worms.

Someone mentioned computers a while back, and that got me thinking about something I'd thought about previously; but be warned, there's philosophy galore.

Soon, computers will have the power to create entire worlds within themselves. Why should we need to leave Earth to explore, when cyberspace can provide the same thrills with none of the risk? Futhermore, cyberspace can be just as complex as the real world; if you think I'm joking, I suggest you read the Internet. It's harder than counting the grains of sand on a beach.

There was a book called Ventus I read recently (I forget the author). Besides the nanotech and teleology that were the main focus, humanity was for the most part computerised Matrix-style and never woke up. Even those that were awake spent all their time in VR. There was a scene where tourists were walking through an old European city, looking at buildings, going, 'Ooh! Ah!' - but they were wearing viewers that replaced their sight with a perfect duplicate of the city.

Then consider that artificial intelligence is improving every day. Top down, bottom up, soon they'll have machine intelligences that can fool even experienced Turing judges. How long before a PC hires a lawyer and demands emancipation?


I have a question to ask. Is it better to go to Mars, or to go to a thousand virtual worlds with their own inhabitants?


I would say Mars. But that's because I believe in a form of layered, prioritised reality; I'm not Cypher. Anyone else?

 

[Wayside]

Then consider that artificial intelligence is improving every day. Top down, bottom up, soon they'll have machine intelligences that can fool even experienced Turing judges. How long before a PC hires a lawyer and demands emancipation?

Do some fields still consider the Turing test as a mark on the AI stick? A lot of the bigger names in philosophy working on this area think real AI at the human level is a lot farther off than anyone realizes, if they don't deny its possibility flat out. I havn't read much on it in the last year though, maybe some progress has been made, some minds changed.

 

[s/LaSH]

Originally posted by Wayside

Do some fields still consider the Turing test as a mark on the AI stick? A lot of the bigger names in philosophy working on this area think real AI at the human level is a lot farther off than anyone realizes, if they don't deny its possibility flat out. I havn't read much on it in the last year though, maybe some progress has been made, some minds changed.

Well, I've met people who couldn't pass the Turing test without extensive training. So I think that it's probably not as relevant as it was once thought.

But with processer power increasing all the time, I'm almost certain someone will develop an AI system in the next ten years that convinces as to its livingness. I've seen transcripts of a laptop-based AI developed in Israel that had actually been taught English, although it talked like a toddler, and (although I'm no expert) I've seen reports of machine intelligences developing their own communication languages; the researcher said it shed new light on aspects of neurology.

Personally, I think that a form of Alife would be better, so long as you create an 'e-ecology' to integrate them into assisting humans. Then you could send some Alife entities to Mars and get them to build a colony for humans... you don't need a peer trapped in a PC; what you really want is someone in a PC who's comfortable there and is willing to help you. Images of group-mind pseudo-organic colony domes spring to mind... what if?

 

[tleilaxu]

the turing test is bunk because our subjective impression has nothing to do with the reality or unreality of consciousness...