> Uhh, we also weren't evolved to read books. We're post-evolution, even if we're not post-biology.
Reading doesn't pose a challenge to our basic needs (food, water, shelter, clothing, sanitation), whereas Mars and seasteading do. The hill climbing barrier was considerably lower for our species.
Outside of the accomplishments for science and engineering, there is likely little benefit in building up Mars as a habitable destination for humans to live at scale. Unless the economies of space mining can support it, there's really no reason to be there beyond a thousand or so individuals.
I don't buy the astroid survival argument either. In the near term, putting humans on Mars does not de-risk the potential for an asteroid to cause human extinction. Mars colonies will likely still be reliant upon Earth for survival for a hundred years to come as they will not have adequate resources, support, or manufacturing capabilities for self-sustenance let alone growth. It's unlikely that a small colony could Matt Damon themselves back from the brink without a large industrial civilization backing them.
Research into enhancing human lives here on earth and protecting our environment will pay greater dividends. I'd even wager that advances in AI/ML, BCI, and biology outpace space colonization tech due to their immediate applications and inherent venture capital fundability. (SpaceX will be funded because of the DoD, NASA, and terrestrial communications. Mars not so much.)
> global climate change is evidence that we are past our current carrying capacity.
The current economic and political regime doesn't curtail dumping carbon into the atmosphere. The correlation with population is complicated. China and the United States, two of the largest contributors to CO2 emissions, have slowing population growth if you discount immigration.
I'm convinced he biggest benefit to colonizing Mars if we have the technology is that there won't be as many people there. If you can make Mars livable you can make anywhere on Earth livable even post climate crisis. The real thing that goes away is there won't be 7ish billion other people who also want to keep living trying to copy the tech and competing for those resources.
> Mars colonies will likely still be reliant upon Earth for survival for a hundred years to come as they will not have adequate resources, support, or manufacturing capabilities for self-sustenance let alone growth.
It'll take a hundred years after we start for the asteroid survival argument to be valid. A hundred years is too long, so let's never start.
> Reading doesn't pose a challenge to our basic needs
Having had developed a -7 vision by 12 years old, I'd beg to differ. Because of books, I'm completely useless without contacts or glasses in human "natural habitat".
There is some limited evidence that a lot of close focusing (e.g. reading) may contribute to myopia, but it's hardly conclusive, and certainly at that magnitude is unlikely to be a single cause.
Last I read, researchers had pretty convincingly isolated the primary cause as insufficient intense UV-bearing light (so, sunlight) exposure during a handful of critical early childhood years, followed by genes as a distant second major risk-factor for near-sightedness. "Too much TV" or "too much reading" had been ruled out as meaningfully affecting anything, once isolated from the "too little bright light during certain ages" factor. The supposed mechanism is that intense light plays a role in getting the eye to stop developing and changing shape at the right time.
Reading doesn't pose a challenge to our basic needs (food, water, shelter, clothing, sanitation), whereas Mars and seasteading do. The hill climbing barrier was considerably lower for our species.
Outside of the accomplishments for science and engineering, there is likely little benefit in building up Mars as a habitable destination for humans to live at scale. Unless the economies of space mining can support it, there's really no reason to be there beyond a thousand or so individuals.
I don't buy the astroid survival argument either. In the near term, putting humans on Mars does not de-risk the potential for an asteroid to cause human extinction. Mars colonies will likely still be reliant upon Earth for survival for a hundred years to come as they will not have adequate resources, support, or manufacturing capabilities for self-sustenance let alone growth. It's unlikely that a small colony could Matt Damon themselves back from the brink without a large industrial civilization backing them.
Research into enhancing human lives here on earth and protecting our environment will pay greater dividends. I'd even wager that advances in AI/ML, BCI, and biology outpace space colonization tech due to their immediate applications and inherent venture capital fundability. (SpaceX will be funded because of the DoD, NASA, and terrestrial communications. Mars not so much.)
> global climate change is evidence that we are past our current carrying capacity.
The current economic and political regime doesn't curtail dumping carbon into the atmosphere. The correlation with population is complicated. China and the United States, two of the largest contributors to CO2 emissions, have slowing population growth if you discount immigration.