What are some alt-right explanations for the space program (including non-whites)?

submitted by radicalcentristNational Centrism from (self.debatealtright)

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[–]radicalcentristNational Centrism[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Ok sure, but that's basically irrelevant to anyone alive today. If you're worried about demographic trends in the next 50 years what happens in a hundred or more doesn't matter much, you've already "lost".

Just because we can't achieve the Star Wars stuff right away, doesn't mean we drop any active research that could still pave the way for it. So it's still relevant, we just need to be realistic with our expectations. At least until better technology does arrive.

Maybe, personally I think it's extremely unlikely. You can't just assume physics will work conveniently for humans despite all indications otherwise. Our ignorance isn't really a good argument, we can only speculate based on what we know, which currently precludes any sort of practically useful extra solar travel.

It might not be convenient for humans, but that's also assuming our bodies stay the same forever, or we don't encounter another environmental pressure that forces humans to interact with the known universe in another way. That's basically what I hinted at when I said Robots have already bypassed the very same limitations you said affect Humans. All that matters is we keep this chain of progress going for future generations to take a hold of.

[–]AidsVictim69 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

AI and cryogenics are at least theoretically possible and these could aid in intrasolar colonization (which will always be incredibly limited by the reality of these environments) or in seed ships that will probably never have contact with Earth in a meaningful way again. They also aren't likely to get developed if the average IQ a hundred years from now is 20 points lower.

FTL travel (or even moving at fast enough relative speed to Earth and not getting exploded) is not possible without just making up new physics and tossing everything we have now out the window. It's by far the biggest magic trick in most scifi. I can't tell you absolutely it's not possible of course, but I think most people who assume this will just be a solved problem in the future misunderstand how incredibly integral relativity is at every level of physics. It's far more likely it's correct than not based on everything we know.

[–]radicalcentristNational Centrism[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Hear me out, the solution to FTL travel will probably come in the form of particles.

I'm not a physicist, but if you ever looked inside a computer, you'll know that every piece of silicon sends information to each other at blazing fast speeds. Every year, this technology gets faster and faster until eventually we hit the quantum level. This is where the "sci-fi" stuff becomes real, because teleportation and other far out concepts get taken seriously in this realm.

https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=300854&org=NSF&from=news#:~:text=While%20human%20teleportation%20currently%20exists,than%20the%20transportation%20of%20matter.

Again, I don't deny that it's impossible to break the rules of physics. But the constant evolution of computers shows plenty of other cheat codes exist that can basically act like the same thing.

[–]AidsVictim69 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

But the constant evolution of computers shows plenty of other cheat codes exist that can basically act like the same thing.

Not really. Quantum "teleportation" is something that's been understood and studied for 80 some years, this is just a mechanical implementation of the theory. There is no actual physical transfer of energy/information here nor does there exist even some theoretical way in which it could occur in any currently plausible model. It's not even directly useful for quantum computing (superposition is what makes quantum computers theoretically useful). The word quantum is thrown around a lot mystify things for public consumption and while it's interesting they can build a system sufficiently isolated to practically measure entanglement it doesn't actually represent anything new in physics. Rather than pushing the limits of physics into new realms, most research of the last ~30 years has been confirming and building consensus that the standard model/relativity are correct and occluding alternative theories to the point many physicists don't even know where to look anymore beyond just building more energetic colliders.

"Light speed" is a bit of a misnomer - it's more like the "speed of causality". Anything that breaks that gives you all kind of nonsensical results, such as time reversal or particles appearing at random intervals before they're created/emitted. In sci fi shows like star trek or star wars or whatever when ships travel faster than light it appears as if they're just moving very quickly - in the real world traveling like that couldn't even be modeled by physics as we understand it because it breaks so many conceits of reality baked into our models.

[–]radicalcentristNational Centrism[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'll concede FTL is a topic I still need to read more about. If I come across new research, I'll definitely update my post with them.