Killstream Post-Mortem w. The Boys

submitted by EthnocratArcheofuturist from self.debatealtright

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[–]casparvoneverecBig tiddy respecter 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Without constant supplies from the earth, no other colony can even survive. You can't settle a world with life because its microbes would be deadly to you. You'd need to terraform a planet and there are no suitable candidates nearby. A colony on mars would never be self-sufficient and would die out soon without supplies from the earth.

If an asteroid hits and kills us all, then that is it. Nothing we can do about it. At most, we could build a space station above the earth that's somewhat self-sufficient. All life would certainly not go extinct. Earth has been hit by giant asteroids, blanketed under ice, and bathed in volcanic waste in the past.

Life has always returned. It's just that the old life forms died out. New ones took their place. That is the law of nature. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for tens of millions of years. Only bones remain of them now. Their last descendants are the birds and the Rhino. The same will happen to man and all the other species on earth one day.

To accept this truth is to be truly traditionalist. To argue otherwise and think that you can rise above natural laws is the essence of modernity and Judaism.

[–]radicalcentristNational Centrism 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Without constant supplies from the earth, no other colony can even survive. You can't settle a world with life because its microbes would be deadly to you. You'd need to terraform a planet and there are no suitable candidates nearby. A colony on mars would never be self-sufficient and would die out soon without supplies from the earth.

Technology is specifically invented to reduce these problems or make them negligible over time.

Go back 10,000 years ago and ask European Cavemen if they've heard of America or can they build boats to cross it? They would have shrugged at the idea even though today, we have airplanes that make crossing continents look like a walk in the park.

If Humans settle another planet, our expectations would naturally evolve with them. And it would certainly turn into a competition if the idea of planetary real estate blows up. You don't think Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk salivate at the idea of becoming mini-monarchs on foreign planets that are outside of Earth's government? That's literally the story of how Brazil was founded after Portugal was invaded by France in the 1800s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_of_the_Portuguese_court_to_Brazil

[–]casparvoneverecBig tiddy respecter 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You don't think Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk salivate at the idea of becoming mini-monarchs on foreign planets that are outside of Earth's government? That's literally the story of how Brazil was founded after Portugal was invaded by France in the 1800s.

You are applying earth analogs to interstellar scales. Just because they would like to do those things doesn't mean they will. Again, there's no law saying that you must be able to do x because you did y despite people doubting it. This is very star trek like thinking. Where is the unified field theory after 70 years?

And all this is fantastical thinking. No government could possibly spend tens of trillions on such out-there projects. A government that did spend such copius amounts on space exploration would be overtaken and defeated by a government that spends those trillions on industry, infrastructure, education, and the military.

The US and China are a rough approximation. The US had the most prosperous and advanced economy in the history of the earth from 1950-1990. Yet, they squandered that unimaginable wealth on wars for Israel, bringing democracy and gay rights to Afghanistan, and dumping trillions on blacks, single moms, and other loafers. It pursued a fantasy that brought no return even on the time frame of 50 years.

China invested its energy into infrastructure, education, industry and it is on the brink of surpassing the US.

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

Again, there's no law saying that you must be able to do x because you did y, despite people doubting it. This is very star trek like thinking. Where is the unified field theory after 70 years?

Star Trek could get away with that kindof thinking because it is science fiction. You CAN go faster than the speed of life, IF you are smart enough, IF you are daring enough. The most explicit example of this was in Star Trek 5.

''What you fear is the unknown. The people of your planet once believed their world was flat. ...Columbus proved it was round. They said the sound barrier could never be broken. ...It was broken. They said warp speed could not be achieved. The Great Barrier is the ultimate expression of this universal fear. It is an extension of personal fear.''

In real life, however, it doesn't work that way. When Columbus discovered the new world in the 15th century, no educated person actually believed the Earth was flat. Likewise, no scientist ever said that the sound barrier couldn't be broken: After all, bullets routinely broke the sound barrier, and so did all kinds of other things. And as far as we can tell, the speed of light is as fundamental as the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of mass. It is extremely unlikely that any future scientific advances will ever enable this law to be broken.

 

As far as the unified field theory, you bring up an important point. I am by no means an expert in this subject, but I believe that the field of physics (particularly the standard model) may be caught in a scientific dead end. Not unlike the field of medicine was in a dead end before germ theory. Modern physics is unable to verify its own foundational assumptions, and practitioners are required to take them on faith.

As for the claim that the large hadron collider actually proved the existence of the higgs boson? They spent billions of dollars on the most extensive scientific project ever, and the entire framework of the standard model was dependent on it. They were going to find it whether it was there or not.