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0 pointskomali29y ago0 comments

With all due respect, that is the standpoint of a cynic or perhaps nihilist. Which is totally fine, people should have the right to not care about stuff without being judged for it.

However, if everyone was a perfect nihilist, you wouldn't have cheap old cars to drive because nobody would have made cars. You wouldn't have a cell phone, and especially a data connection, if not for the space program. And so on.

So while I don't think it's a problem if some people take your viewpoint, I think it's a problem when everyone does. Somebody has to care enough about the environment to stop rampant capitalism from destroying it so that we have a planet to live on 50 years from now (electric cars, improved public transit.) Someone has to care enough to get humans off the planet so that when it is inevitably destroyed (asteroid, nuclear war, virus, overpopulation) the human race can continue elsewhere.

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inimino9y ago

> cynic or perhaps nihilist

Nonsense. It is a perfectly reasonable perspective for someone who isn't terribly interested in technological development and wants to live practically with what exists today. There's a place for dreaming about Mars, but most people don't. That's fine, and it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with cynicism or nihilism.

tempestn9y ago

Do you think this comment would be better received without the "Nonsense" intro? It's tough to bring someone around to your way of thinking when you dismiss theirs out of hand.

saiya-jin9y ago

this is beyond one's personal dreams. only total anarchist/nihilist truly doesn't care about state of the environment where he lives. solarcity - cheap storage of solar energy for daily uses in household - not for everybody, but potentially for billions for sure.

space - indirect windfall of discoveries and improvements made in materials, manufacturing processes etc - it happened in the past with Nasa, it happens/will happen with them and others.

I drive 13 year old diesel bmw that costed 25% of a new one and probably will never buy a new car, so what? Mankind needs people like him, now more than ever.

It's not perfectly reasonable perspective. It's a perspective of an old, grumpy person who only cares about himself, and the world he lives in. Sure, we have plenty of those, but it ain't the best attitude to say at least.

inimino9y ago

> anarchist/nihilist

You seem to be throwing these around as pejoratives, but neither of these terms has anything to do with this topic.

> doesn't care about state of the environment

Nobody but you said anything about not caring about the state of the environment.

> an old, grumpy person

You have no basis to make such remarks. Plenty of people care about the people around them, their immediate environment, and the circumstances they can personally and directly affect without getting caught up in fantasies about the future.

Wanting to send people to Mars for the good of the species is a fine idea, but your enthusiasm about it doesn't make you any more noble than someone who is simply more practically minded or not as optimistic as you are.

This kind of disrespect for the perspectives of others makes it that much more difficult to achieve the political compromises necessary to make any of these dreams a reality.

a_plastic_bag9y ago

> You wouldn't have a cell phone, and especially a data connection, if not for the space program. And so on.

Given enough time, it would've been invented regardless. You are right that we probably would be further behind technologically if it wasn't for the space race though.

nandemo9y ago

> You wouldn't have a cell phone, and especially a data connection, if not for the space program.

Is that so? Can you give me a source?

lkbm9y ago

The integrated circuit came out of Apollo[1], and apparently the cellphone camera came from NASA's work[2]. Not sure about the rest. We wouldn't have GPS, obviously.

You can credit a lot of stuff to the space program if you want, since all tech is built on other tech, and NASA was a big source of R&D in the 1950s onward.

[1] https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/apollo-ic.html [2] http://www.space.com/10635-space-spinoff-technology-cellphon...

patrickk9y ago

To continue this train of thought, the entire reason Silicon Valley exists in the first place is because of Department of Defense spending: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo (aka Big Government spending.)

The foundations of the web were laid down by Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN, a huge, expensive physics research organisation funded by European governments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN#Computer_science

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nandemo9y ago

Eh, so IC was invented and commercialized before Apollo, but Apollo was instrumental in accelerating the development of ICs. That's a far cry from "we wouldn't have cell phones without NASA"...

shaneos9y ago

All satellites for many years were only launched as part of the space race between the US and the USSR. Of course there would be no satellite communication without the space program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer_1

nandemo9y ago

But cell phones aren't satellite phones. Am I missing something? Do cellular networks rely on satellites indirectly?

I'm not talking about GPS, which isn't an essential feature of cell phones.

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inimino9y ago

> cynic or perhaps nihilist

tempestn9y ago

Do you think this comment would be better received without the "Nonsense" intro? It's tough to bring someone around to your way of thinking when you dismiss theirs out of hand.

saiya-jin9y ago

space - indirect windfall of discoveries and improvements made in materials, manufacturing processes etc - it happened in the past with Nasa, it happens/will happen with them and others.

I drive 13 year old diesel bmw that costed 25% of a new one and probably will never buy a new car, so what? Mankind needs people like him, now more than ever.

inimino9y ago

> anarchist/nihilist

You seem to be throwing these around as pejoratives, but neither of these terms has anything to do with this topic.

> doesn't care about state of the environment

Nobody but you said anything about not caring about the state of the environment.

> an old, grumpy person

This kind of disrespect for the perspectives of others makes it that much more difficult to achieve the political compromises necessary to make any of these dreams a reality.

a_plastic_bag9y ago

> You wouldn't have a cell phone, and especially a data connection, if not for the space program. And so on.

Given enough time, it would've been invented regardless. You are right that we probably would be further behind technologically if it wasn't for the space race though.

nandemo9y ago

> You wouldn't have a cell phone, and especially a data connection, if not for the space program.

Is that so? Can you give me a source?

lkbm9y ago

The integrated circuit came out of Apollo[1], and apparently the cellphone camera came from NASA's work[2]. Not sure about the rest. We wouldn't have GPS, obviously.

You can credit a lot of stuff to the space program if you want, since all tech is built on other tech, and NASA was a big source of R&D in the 1950s onward.

[1] https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/apollo-ic.html [2] http://www.space.com/10635-space-spinoff-technology-cellphon...

patrickk9y ago

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nandemo9y ago

Eh, so IC was invented and commercialized before Apollo, but Apollo was instrumental in accelerating the development of ICs. That's a far cry from "we wouldn't have cell phones without NASA"...

shaneos9y ago

All satellites for many years were only launched as part of the space race between the US and the USSR. Of course there would be no satellite communication without the space program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer_1

nandemo9y ago

But cell phones aren't satellite phones. Am I missing something? Do cellular networks rely on satellites indirectly?

I'm not talking about GPS, which isn't an essential feature of cell phones.

1 more reply

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