“Remember you stupid tr#nnies, your job is to support the party, no matter how much the candidate we nominate hates you. Your job is to sit down, shut up, and get in line. We need your votes, not your voices. The correct time to oppose the TERFS is not during the first year’s primary (we let candidates hide their transphobia during the first primary.) It’s certainly not during the first general election. It’s during the primary, you stupid tr#nny!”

"Also, please be aware that it is irresponsible to primary a TERF democrat running for reelection in a purple district. We can’t give up an incumbent seat after all. You’ll just have to wait and vote SO HARDS until that district votes so overwhelmingly blue that it becomes a safe seat. Then it will be acceptable to primary the TERF we put forward. Also, please be aware that before running in that primary, your new candidate will first have to get passed the real primary, the money primary to decide who gets to be on the primary ballot. Ok, now that your role is clear, blue no matter who. Remember tr#nnies, you’re fabulous and we love you. And remember, if we lose, it’s all your fault and you deserve whatever laws are passed against you! Slay gurl! Hope this helps! Don’t forget to sign up to canvas for the terf as this year’s pride! 🥰 🥰 🥰 "

You chose to focus on humanity’s failings. I choose to focus on our successes and aspirations. I choose the less misanthropic option.

The habitable lifespan of this planet is already 80% consumed. Life on this planet has another billion years left, even though it’s been here for four billion. In a billion years, the Sun’s slow heating will cause the Earth’s oceans to boil and the surface to become barren. If we do nothing, all life on Earth will be extinguished. If we do act, however. If we DO learn how to spread life far and wide, then there’s no reason that Earth life cannot continue to exist for hundreds of trillions of years into the future.

This isn’t about just “feeling good.” This is about taking our responsibility as stewards of life seriously. Maybe you don’t feel that responsibility, but that’s a skill issue.

Frankly then, this isn’t a topic for you. Space exploration is not something that will be done by the entire human race. It’s something that will be done by those that believe in it. You and those like you can stay home and play video games while other people advance the human race. If you don’t get it, that’s a you problem.

The problem is that you will never reach a point where you feel it’s worth expanding off of Earth. There will never be a point where things are perfect and all our problems here are solved. In fact, if we ever do reach that point, we probably shouldn’t expand out that point, as that means we’ve probably become a species of entirely self-obsessed narcissists that believes we are perfect.

Self-criticism is healthy. But you shouldn’t allow it to hold back your own life or your whole species.

I think you just have far to little faith in your fellow human beings. Thankfully history isn’t moved forward by naysayers. For every inventor that transformed the world, there were a hundred jealous naysayers that said it shouldn’t or couldn’t be done.

Just a thought.

Sorry, I just can’t wrap my mind around the motivations of misanthropic trolls. I have more faith in humanity than you do. You should try and find the good in other people rather than obsessing over the bad.

Human expansion on Earth did require just the kind of investments you’re imagining. You’re just not using your imagination.

You couldn’t just immediately enter a new valley and start eating whatever you found there. Some things might be edible, but many could kill you. You encountered entirely different biomes than what your culture was adapted for, and you encountered new species that may or may not be habitable.

I imagine most expansion on Earth happened a lot like space colonization will happen in the future. When traveling to a new area, it probably started with exploratory expeditions. Small groups would go over the mountains and explore. Maybe they would bring back a few kinds of food to try. Maybe there they would find a few species they were already familiar with. (Similar to how there will be some resources we can use right from the get-go on Mars.) Later more regular expeditions would go, maybe once a year a group from the tribe would cross the mountains to gather some rare food type or animal skin. Over time, as people spent more time in the new biome, they did the hard work of figuring out what was edible. They did that hard painful work. And in time, they learned enough of about the plants and animals in the area to be able to safely gather enough food to sustain a population. It took generations. It was a learning process. A lot of people died in the process.

The thing you need to not forget about Mars is that we are no longer hunter gatherers. It doesn’t matter if we won’t find a garden of food on Mars, waiting for us to eat. We’re an advanced industrial civilization. We don’t gather food; we grow and manufacture it. What matters is not if there is food on Mars, but if there are the raw materials to support our food factories. Sure, settling Mars will require a lot more resources than hunter-gatherers than our ancestors needed when colonizing the next valley. But we also have a hell of a lot more resources and technology at our disposal than those ancestors did.

You’re a member of a species that owes its entire existence to exploration and expansion. We expanded from one biome in a tiny corner of Africa to a species of billions dominating an entire planet. We explored every corner of it and adapted to every possible biome. We learned how to live everywhere from isolate islands to endless deserts to polar wastes. We’re the ultimate explorer and colonizing species.

I cannot comprehend how a human being can look at that and then respond with the most bone-headed take imaginable, “we don’t have exploration in our genes.”

China engaged in all sorts of colonization. How do you think they ended up with Taiwan? India engaged in colonization in Sri Lanka and other areas. You’re just ignorant of history.

If exploration is so core to the human experience, why did the people of Asia - much more numerous than the Europeans even back then - not undertake any large exploration or colonization efforts? Or those of Africa?

You have deeply disappointed Admiral Zheng He. This may cost you your head.

It will just be Earth, but worse.

If people had had your attitude, humanity would still be huddled in one tiny corner of Eastern Africa, never having advanced past hunter-gathering. “Why go to that new empty valley over the mountains? First you have to get over the mountains. Then once you get there, there’s nobody there. You’ll be all alone. It will be just like our current home, but worse.”

Somehow I knew it would be SFIA before I even clicked the link.

Long term, the reason to expand into space is to expand into space. The point of going to Mars is not to make money. The point is to find a way for people to live there.

Let go of your sci fi visions of the future. Space colonization does not look like humans getting on a rocket ship on Earth’s surface, blasting off between stars, and landing on a second Eden around another star, a world where you can take your helmet off, breathe the local air, eat the food, and drink the water. What we’ve learned from our exoplanet studies is that the cosmos has exercised infinite creativity in generating new Hells, worlds uninhabitable and lethal to us in ways we never even dreamed of.

Real space colonization is going to take a whole lot of engineering and building. Mars is actually quite habitable compared to the vast majority of worlds in the universe. If you have some basic self-replicating machines, making Mars habitable is quite doable. Cover as much of the surface as you want in vast greenhouses. Live under domes potentially spanning the entire world. Long term, Mars has great potential for human settlement.

As for why? Well I would say it’s a moral responsibility. We know if we stay on just one planet, just one star, then it’s only a matter of time before some natural or artificial disaster wipes us out, and possibly the rest of life along with it. Earth has the type of biosphere you probably have to scour multiples galaxies to find one of comparable complexity. That’s a jewel worth protecting.

We tend to be too hard on ourselves as as species, viewing ourselves as some sort of cancer on the world. At the same time, we are the only hope for life on this planet to survive past a certain point. We are the children of Gaia. It’s our duty and moral obligation to spread life as far and wide as possible. Life itself has intrinsic value. And it’s our job to spread it.

You may find this blog entry by Nikhil Suresh useful.

There are frankly a lot of companies currently being led by individuals suffering from AI psychosis. Executives who plan their operations around AI…by asking for advice from AI.

The problem with AI is that it is very good at creating technical demonstrations good enough to persuade people who are not experts in the field. Executives have no idea how their workers actually do their jobs. They could ask the workers to assess the AI tools, but they don’t trust the workers to be honest, as the executives hope to use the AI to lay off the workers.

The ownership class has really taken to AI as a religion. They’re chasing the rapture. They have no connection to the actual work their investments are based on, so they are easily scammed by AI con artists.

However, America has an extremely authoritarian corporate culture. Most corporate leaders are surrounded by yes men and fire anyone who contradicts them. It’s very Death of Stalin. Where once the top leaders really decide on something, any criticism of that idea becomes heresy.

So what is happening is that shit flows down here. The wealthy owners of companies have convinced themselves that they’ll be able to cut their labor force in half, so they push the board of directors to deploy AI as fast and widely as possible. The board directs the CEO. The CEO and other executives direct middle management. Middle management filters the commands down to workers.

AI is a problem almost purpose-built to take advantage of the flaws in our corporate governance models. In a world where the economy was primarily run by worker-owned co-ops, this would never happen. But in our economy, all the people actually doing the real work have zero power over how the company is run. All the decisions are made by people who don’t know how the company’s workers actually do their jobs.

This creates a culture of compliance. If you’ve ever worked in a corporate environment, you’ll be familiar with ideas like toxic positivity. In most corporate environments, losing the company money is a far less offensive than contradicting the executives who are losing the company money. The owners decree that companies go all in on AI, and anyone down the chain who points out the emperor has no clothes gets fired.

This is fundamentally a problem of economic organization.

This is going to cause a second Great Depression.

I wonder if older houses seem more “hauntable” simply because they were built to facilitate air flow within them. Before air conditioning, homes had to be built to allow air to naturally circulate. Thought was placed into room, door, and window layouts to encourage air flow throughout the home, windows were designed to fully open, and transom windows allowed air flow even when doors were closed.

The point is that old homes were built to allow air flow. This means that there’s more opportunity for doors to randomly close and other things to be disturbed by the wind. Older homes also weren’t as sealed and insulated as well. They were designed assuming that some of the structure would get wet and then dry out. Older buildings were designed to undergo constant moisture cycling, while newer buildings try to seal out moisture all together. More dramatic changes in lumber moisture content means more creaks, groans, and other ghostly noises.

Simply because of how buildings science has evolved, it’s possible that older homes just more readily produce “haunting” sounds than modern ones.