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Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space
neutralino writes "The Associated Press reports that astrophysicist Stephen Hawking wants humans to establish colonies in space in order to ensure the survival of the human race. At a news conference in Hong Kong, Hawking said that 'It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species. Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.'"
He later elaborated on the specific humans who should go into space, including several people he went to school with, that one snooty teller at his bank, his obnoxious neighbors with their noisy children, and that little bastard who egged his house last Halloween.
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Why do we have to start with humans in space, isn't it a much better idea to start making colonies with animals?
Those can provide us with a LOT of experience at a lesser risk. If animals die in space (or maybe even bacteria) people will probably make a small fuzz but forget it quickly. If humans die in space it could mean the end of the space project.
Once we establish a solid base, and knowledge about building a new colonie we can send humans...??
My blog: http://www.redcode.nl
Previous human migrations were driven by less, ahh, altruistic motivations. Survival, distaste for the status quo, better living, things like that.
And what part of wanting your offspring (or theirs, etc) to actually live and carry on your culture is "altruistic?" For most of us, that's exactly the opposite. It's completely, rationally seflish. We want what we build to last and improve. And you don't build large systems without redundancy, that's all. And the thirst for some adventure and a challenge is hardly "altruism." You want altruism? That would be killing yourself to free up some resources for somebody else so they don't have to work as hard. Except, a fat lot of good that does if a giant meteor smacks into your resources.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
There's is little point in escapint to space. After all space and time will collapse within 3,000 Zillion years(aprox.) anyway. You're just delaying innevitability. What we really need to plan is an escape from this doomed dimention!
Season 1, Episode 4: Infection http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/guide/0 04.html
Reporter: "After all that you've just gone through, I have to ask you the same question a lot of people back home are asking about space these days. Is it worth it? Should we just pull back, forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems, at home?"
Sinclair: "No. We have to stay here, and there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics - and you'll get ten different answers. But there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on: whether it happens in a hundred years, or a thousand years, or a million years, eventually our sun will grow cold, and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us, it'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-tsu, Einstein, Maruputo, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes - all of this. All of this was for nothing, unless we go to the stars."
What a hypocrite, Stephen Hawking. Why doesn't he take some of his own advice for a change?
But why should an individual care about whether or not the drama of humanity continues? For instance, if we permit let every person who currently lives to live out a natural and good life, and somehow do so without creating any new people, would that be acceptable?
Because a hardwired, nihilistic, self-destructive (self, including species as self) outlook wouldn't have allowed us to get this far, genetically. The very traits that allow us to nurture offspring that take years to develop simply require us to look at the big picture, and to cherish the future. And to make that more workable, we develop cultures that are built around generational continuity and hope. Anything less than that is a sort of cultural insanity and requires a truly loony willing suspension of disbelief (see 70-virgins-if-I-blow-myself-up-in-a-Zbarro, childish "rapture" fantasies, and related examples).
We're generally wired to get a warm and fuzzy feeling from passing along our culture and protecting our little broods. Remove that, and you're not going to have people, as a whole, living out a "good" life.
Reaching out to or making other livable environments (as in, off-world) is just as rational as clearing the bear out of the cave you need to shelter your tribe. Just as rational as using that bear's hide to keep your little naked ape-like offspring warm through the ice age. It's silly to ask if we "deserve" to survive... survival is deserved by rationally taking advantage of the fact that we exist at all. There is no meaning in anything, otherwise. Since we make the meaning in our lives, we decide if we're worth surving or not. The universe doesn't give a crap one way or the other.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
And a towel ! Can't forget a towel !
morcego
But I've watched enough 24 to know that the Big Disaster can only happen at the top of the hour. If you survive to 1:01 you're good for another hour!
A spacesuit is what you wear when you are in space. A cowsuit...?!
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
They (westerners) haven't the slightest hint of how to be happy. They're always unsatisfied. They need more and more, and they live for the future.
Good. It's called "drive." It fuels things like space exploration. Unlike our navel-contemplating planet co-squatters in the East, our "God" is outside us, above us, and we're forever (hopefully forever) building towers and spaceships to meet Him. Works for me, just fine.
It's the itchy, unsatisfied sacroliliac of some impotent balding outside-looking 40ish engineer today that will -- again, hopefully -- lead to my daughter finding herself working on Mars thirty years from now.
"Woot!" to Professor Hawking, sez I.
"Woot!" to his nurse, too...
Fly over urban metropolises and you'll see pus and grime coming out of them, a haze of brown tinges their atmosphere.
But from my SUV the sun is dimmed to a pleasant orange color.
People shuttle to and fro in their daily lives, consuming as much as their salaries will allow. They justify this as acceptable in the "spirit of capitalism". It's "acceptable" to spend all that money on crap you don't need, because everybody else has it, or "it's cool".
But aren't you free to reject these ideas. People would gravitate to better alternatives. It is hard to beat Nascar on my plasma HD and a six pack of beer
Then most of these blobs will be told they need to hurry up there too, so that they can meet that quota, and then by the time you're 40, bald, and more or less impotent, you say: "My God! I've arrived!" And you look around and realize that not much changed, and you feel a big let down, you feel deceived, as if there was some hoax played on you.
This is a victim's thinking. Are you having a midlife crisis? Try buying a red sports car.
If you're interested about what I said here, please know that it was basically all taken from the words of Alan Watts [wikipedia.org], the 20th century's best and little known-about philosopher and interpreter of Eastern religions.
Sounds kinda creepy to me, like Heaven's Gate. If you haven't noticed a lot of people from the far east are highly motivated by US style consumerism. You can only meditate so much I guess.
an ill wind that blows no good
The irony is in that Hawking wants us to leave the earth to protect humanity... You know what, nevermind. You're not worth protecting.
If these are all problems of being human, then the problem is humans. We need to do the galaxy a favor and protect the galaxy from humans.
-516
The problem with all kinds of "berzerker" "grey goo" type stories is that they ignore the thermodynamics of evolution. All over the Earth, right now, as we read slashdot, there are a trillion different forms of "grey goo" trying like hell to take over the earth and eat every last ounce of available energy. They are called plants, animals, fungus and bacteria. All of these things, genetically speaking, would like NOTHING beter than to cover the entire world with copies of itself and devour *everything*.
But, for some reason, that doesn't happen...
Every wondered WHY something was more or less fit than something else? It simply has to do with resource efficiency. You can't just go gung-ho in one single direction, such as non-stop reproduction, and expect to be successful... otherwise there would be organisms NOW that don't stop reproducing to take a breath. If the evolutionary system doedn't spend teh energy to balance the forces, focusing in required measure on health, defense, resource allocation and rationing, it will be quickly over taken by an organism that does.
The grey goo spends all it's time making more grey goo.... thus very little time developing defenses against the things that would love to either make a meal of them (everything is edible to someone, various iron metabolizing microbes are hungrily waiting to meet the micromachines at the bottom of the ocean) or build a house out of it, nor does it spend any time building feedback systems to make sure that it is expanding in a direction that won't leave it stranded in a dead end (like expanding directly down a hole and then unable to expand back out because it's own dead little corpses are blocking the exit), etc.
Grey goo, on Earth today, would quickly discover that attepting to compete with an system with a 4.5 billion history of winnter-take-all-no-holds-barred-free-for-all evolutionary deathmatch is not quite as easy as it may have first thought, and that's before the humans even begin to notice.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
No, it isn't. The Federation is run by the Vulcan shadow government.
Think about the situation at the time the Vulcans first contacted Earth. They've had their schism with the Romulans and have fought wars with them, and had the worse of it; and now there are Klingons prowling the dark places of the galaxy. Now the Vulcans contact a planet that's just developed warp technology. A planet full of creatures with a horrific record of murder and mayhem, who are capable of justifying the same to themselves in terms of 'pro patria mori' and similar bullshit, who could easily be a terror on the galaxy to make even the Klingons fear... but who are at a very impressionable stage...
Bingo! The Vulcans, in a paternal, imperialist sort of way, take Earth under their wing. They help humans build better starships, they advise and guide. In time, they join with Earth to form the United Federation of Planets. Coincidentally, the enemies of the Earth are the same as the enemies of the Vulcans... How did something like that happen?
So now the Romulans and the Klingons are kept off the Vulcans' backs by Starfleet. By the mighty space navy of the United Federation of Planets. A fleet of ships built at Mars, crewed almost entirely by humans from Earth, now guards a planet of decadent philosophers who are free to pursue their ideals of pure logic and reason. Humans fight and die in huge numbers for the protection of Vulcan. And every Starfleet ship we've ever seen has a single Vulcan, as a highly-ranked officer but not as captain... remember how Soviet ships used to have a 'political officer' to make sure the captain didn't do anything ideologically unsound? Yeah.
And whenever we see Starfleet command, the concentration of pointy ears is so much higher, don't you notice? Oh yes. It's all humans on the front line, but back at base it's all green-blooded bastards.
The entire Federation is a sham, concocted and perpetuated by the Vulcans for their own cowardly ends. Deal with it.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.