As a consequence of my dismissing human space futures as fantasy, I was contacted by an academic astrophysicist counterpart pushing back on my position—which is perfectly reasonable. But the nature of the conversation offered too many revealing insights for me to set it aside. I share the dialog here as a case study representing two extrema on the space question, quickly exposing foundational disconnects of staggering proportions in terms of how the universe works and what we might expect of the future.
The identity of my interlocutor is not revealed, here. Suffice it to say that they are an astrophysicist in a research/professorial position having an impressive list of publications to their name as well as a few books—often touching on the topic of space futures. In other words, the opinions you are about to see are from a serious professional engaged in the subject at hand—more so than I am, in fact.
Not every sentence from the thread is reproduced below (cut about 10% of material less germane to the issue), but whole sections are left intact with no editing or modified emphasis. For each of the four rounds in the exchange, I include the original verbiage, then elaborate a few points before moving to the next round. Each starts with Not Me (NM) followed by the response from me (TM).
A recurrent emerging phenomenon is one of apparent symmetry, in a number of facets. For example, a top-level assessment is that each appears to think the other’s position is bonkers, and I’m ineligible to judge.
Round 1
The initial communication included the following core piece:
NM: […] space settlement is the most certain and in the long run the ONLY mitigation for almost all existential risks human species is facing at the moment and in the near-to-medium future. Conversely, [I argue] that the prevailing space skepticism in much of the academia and the media is just another expression of cognitive and moral myopia and deep ethical irresponsibility for future generations.
TM: In a sense, my skepticism lies in what is missing rather than what is “there.” In other words, narrow focus lacking full context (anthropological, ecological, psychological, political, demographic, economic, etc.) can easily run off making unsupportable/unconstrained claims based on incomplete mental models (as all mental models are bound to be) and decontextualized extrapolation of an anomalous period. Even the technical front is basically delusional fantasy from my perspective. Maybe 0.1% of what would be needed for off-Earth living (or is it 0.01% or 0.001%?) has been actually demonstrated. I would be more easily convinced (but still orders-of-magnitude short) if someone were to demonstrate a decades-long self-supporting colony on Mt. Everest or even 10 meters below the ocean surface. But even that is essentially beyond our means despite being vastly (unimaginably) easier. It’s a bit ironic (and seemingly non-productive) to use the myopic framing, as that cuts both ways. I would call indulging in futile space fantasy the morally irresponsible path.
Round 1 Reflection
Independent of your own position, it is amusing that two diametrically opposite viewpoints can consider the other to be myopic and irresponsible. The symmetry is almost beautiful. Either view rests on some unprovable notion—or even faith/conviction—of what the future holds or could hold, so that the moral value of the same pursuit flips according to the ultimate fate. Only one will be right: time will break the symmetry.
I’m also struck by another symmetry: each of us believes the other’s position to be the prevailing view, thus self-identifying as an outcast/victim of sorts. Based on how hard it has been for me to find instances of prominent naysayers, while rhapsodies are a dime a dozen, I stick to my view. Even books whose main thrusts are criticism of the space endeavor tend to stop short of calling it fantasy that is unlikely to ever materialize. I perceive two biases at play, here: our culture does not reward pessimism; and enthusiasm makes advocates more vocal. Thus, it stands to reason that space promotion would be more prevalent in the public arena than space pessimism. We can’t both be correct, but we can both believe that we are.
Round 2
NM: I am COMPLETELY CERTAIN that at some point, about 3.2 million years ago or so, there were some among our hominin ancestors who regarded walking on two legs and not living in tree canopies as "delusional fantasy" which has 0.0...1% chance of succeeding in face of all the dangers and uncertainties facing them on the ground. As [the saying goes], I'll drink one - but not more than one - for their souls.
TM: I find your (commonly-encountered) argument to be very thin, isolating one thing that *did* happen in hindsight (and that wasn’t technically unprecedented or hard to pull off, at that). It implies that anything we deem unlikely to transpire will become likely in the fullness of time, and that future pessimism is never justified - bypassing assessment of the actual context. People have also doubted that humans would ever fly like birds, flitting from treetop to treetop, or live in underwater caves with the eels. Millions more. All wrong? I’d say the vast majority of such speculations/musings never materialize for lots of reasons. I’m sure you could come up with a huge list of inspiring ideas that will never come to pass. And if you can’t, well, I’d say that signals a serious disconnect.
Round 2 Reflection
We hear variants of this point all the time: people 200 years ago could not possibly have foreseen… Therefore anyone who doubts any conjecture—however outlandish it might seem—is clearly a fool to do so. Such an argument is “only” logic, and not a very impressive instance, at that. Logic is just one tool for thinking, and one that can backfire, as logic alone tends to lack almost all context. This sort of “argument” is deployed as an attempt to terminate debate, using a flimsy analog to establish any pessimistic view as invalid—which strikes me as a little extreme (i.e., an overwhelming bias that can’t be correct).
Importantly, such statements work backwards, which cheats entropy’s arrow of time. Hindsight is like that, requiring no analysis to be correct, and contributing a misplaced sense of inevitability to any random future notion. We can’t just posit some desire like space habitation in the future and put it on the same footing as something that actually materialized through the billion-year gauntlet of causality. For every one that does instantiate, how many millions (or vastly more) do not?
Oh, and keep that toast to the doubting souls in mind for later.
Round 3
NM, [in response to my statement, It implies that anything we deem unlikely to transpire will become likely in the fullness of time]: Exactly! That is the idea underpinning all science and philosophy, going back to Democritus and elaborated by Aristotle as the Principle of Plenitude and many subsequent names, which all boil to one thing: everything that is not forbidden by laws of nature (incl. cosmological boundary conditions, if you wish to split hairs) WILL indeed happen. I'm kind of flabbergasted that you reject it: all modern physics is built upon it. Think of Feynman's diagrams, for instance. Or Penrose's singularity theorems. For me, it's enough to consider what the opposite will mean: to say NOW that something allowed by physics will NEVER happen in 10^100 years strikes me as the extreme of hubris and egocentrism. Which kinda defeats your starting point, doesn't it?
TM: Well, that does lay the disconnect bare, and I’ve learned that arguing against faith doesn’t often work, so I should opt out, but find it difficult to do so.
Not everything that *can* happen will, in the very finite life of the universe. Just as not everything that could happen to you will happen to you in your lifetime: a vanishingly-small number of the near-infinite possibilities will actually manifest. If sufficiently motivated, we might build a literal castle in the sky, rockets and jets and propellers ablaze. Physics doesn’t disallow. But come on. I’m sure you could go all day listing things that could happen but never will. Again, if you can’t, then try harder: imaginations can always outstrip reality, even remaining within physics.
Example: one could see it as a combinatorial bottleneck. Some legitimate sentences will never be constructed. It’s not that hard to make up one that has never appeared before, though physics won’t prevent any from being formed. Or consider a modest digital photo format with 2,000x1,500 pixels at 24-bit color. That’s 3 million to the 24th power, or 1e155, which is FAR larger than the number of atoms in the visible universe (thus forget storing even 1e-80 of them). Even generating temporary instances at one per nanosecond, only 1e28 can be created in the age of stars. Nothing in physics prevents any one of the images from manifesting (a very large number of which have you riding on the shoulders of Napoleon, wearing any number of costumes and set in any number of backdrops), but almost none of them will ever happen. I don’t consider this to be hubristic or egocentric: just staggering numbers - and as a result obvious that the vast vast vast vast majority of possibilities will never happen. To me, believing otherwise seems quantitatively unhinged.
Correction: I was hasty in composing this message, so didn’t think it through and didn’t double-check, uncharacteristically. The number of photos is 224 (number of possible pixel values) raised to the power of 6 million (number of pixels) to get 1021,660,000, so instead of 1e155 I should have said 1e21660000 (ten to the power of 21.7 million)! Apologies for the gross error, but for the sake of argument, 1e155 does just fine.
Round 3 Reflection
Again, we appear to have encountered a symmetry of flabbergastery. In NM’s view, for every conceivable photo of them riding on Napoleon’s shoulders, whole planets are devoted to that image as a sacred visage. Wars are fought over it. Rival civilizations clash over whether a mole is on the left or right cheek (as the set of all possibilities contains a version with a mole anywhere you like, or two, or three, or an actual mammal-mole on NM’s head, or even that mole sporting a mole on its cheek). None of this is disallowed by physics, so NM says every such possibility WILL happen. And I’ve just gone down one very minuscule and specific rabbit hole around middling-resolution digital images. It’s just not that hard to mentally conjure physically-allowed scenarios that have vanishingly-small odds of occurring (let alone all possibilities happening). Even restricting oneself to the narrow domain of digital photos, it’s actually kind-of fun to explore the endless variety of possibilities among the set of 10155 images. Some are downright embarrassing, and you’ll hope those images never pop up!
Also note that NM mistakes the converse statement, suggesting that I would claim some particular event will NEVER happen. No. I would say that some events have vanishingly small probability and thus are extremely unlikely to ever happen, which is a lot different than declaring they “never” could, and outrageously shy of “always WILL.” It’s quantitative; probabilistic. The central point is that physically-allowed possibilities far outnumber what a finite universe has the opportunity to express.
By the way, as much effort as I have made to dismantle ego, human supremacy, and hubris, I have to take seriously any charge of indulging in such attitudes. Is that what I’m doing? It’s hard for me to shake the sense that faith in humans expanding into space is very self-centered and hubristic. Meanwhile, I bend over backwards to demote our importance or authority to call the shots in the universe. I’m missing something big here, apparently.
Finally, for those who are not astrophysically calibrated, 10100 years is, absurdly, 1090 times longer than the age of the universe. A star like our sun lasts about 10 billion (1010) years. Lower-mass stars can go longer, like hundreds of billions of years. Let’s be generous and multiply that by about 1,000 to get something in the ballpark of 100 trillion (1014) years for the age of stars. This already-intuition-busting duration (10,000 times the current age of the universe) is unimaginably short compared to 10100 years: 0.00[80-more-zeros]01%. Just as only so much can happen to us in our lifetimes, limited lifetimes of stars dampen the “everything goes” philosophy—divorced from practical reality as another misfire of the imagination. In fact, depending on its origin, the accelerating expansion of the universe could rip even every atom apart within a (short?) trillion years, at which point it’s definitely game-over for all those fun possibilities of the unconstrained imagination.
Round 4
NM: OK, we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't care about my own lifetime, in lifetime of particles which constitute me everything will happen - and even the lifetime of THIS universe is unimportant, since we have enough reasons to believe that there is a vaster multiverse out there, which is infinitely old and will continue to exist for an infinite amount of time. 1e155 is just as small as the number 1 in this wider context. I have no problem thinking in this context, since THAT requires imagination, and not thinking about allegedly unachievable things that could never be verified (logic teaches us not to try to prove negatives from our minuscule, infinitesimal experience). Hence, among other things, every planet and star in the universe will eventually be inhabited and teeming with Life: even if humans don't do it (which would be stupid, self-defeating, parochial and boring not to do), someone else certainly (in the asymptotic sense) will.
TM: Well, if we’re willing to move the goalposts to even other universes (and who am I to doubt the possibility of a multiverse?), then my strong suspicion that humans (of Earth in this universe) will never live in space is on infinitely safer ground to which it seems one has little basis for objection (for every way it could happen, perhaps trillions of ways it won’t, all allowed by physics). And that’s my main concern as my readership and impact/scope happens to be exclusively Earth-based humans.
Your final statement veers right back into unhinged territory (confining to our finite-stellar-lifetime universe and asserting every star/planet in fact!). Is it parochial and boring that we won’t have castles in the sky, or might practical reasons enter?
Round 4 Reflection
You heard that right. It’s small-minded to differentiate 1 from 10155 when graced with sufficient imagination (more on this below). Douglas Adams would warn NM against stepping into the next crosswalk. I might recommend the casino or lottery tickets for a more joyous experience.
Lots of sins can be accommodated by taking mathematical infinities seriously. It’s heady—even rapturous—stuff to flirt with the infinite. But physics has a way of preventing literal infinities from manifesting. Certainly anything to do with the actual subject at hand (humans living off-Earth) has gone off the rails when arguments rest on numbers so vast that 1 and 10155 are rendered indistinguishable by mental gymnastics.
We now return to the statement in Round 2 about toasting a single drink to misguided souls. One might as well commit to 10155 drinks—pretty much stripping any meaning from the statement. Don’t ask the dumb liver what it thinks: what could it possibly know compared to inspirations bouncing around in our glorious crania?
We find another partial symmetry in each side’s challenges involving imagination, but in entirely different senses. My position is twofold: that humans cannot possess sufficient imagination to anticipate the tangled twists in something as complex as ecology or humanity’s future; and that imagination is anyway unconstrained to the point of being practically useless: not a suitable guide to the real world. In other words, I’m not sure imagination is an entirely complimentary attribute: more is not always better.
Discussions of this sort always leave me pondering: have they ever built anything? Being neck-deep in technology, I’ve invented and realized a number of successful devices of non-trivial sophistication. It’s all about compromising the imagined to what the universe will allow. Limits assert themselves at every turn. Imagination is required, but quickly exceeds constraints of nature and must be reigned in (humbled). Armchair theorizing (talk) is cheap—frequently sacrificing messy multi-threaded context for tidy logic. I suspect a large part of the disconnect—and blithe dismissal of hundred-plus orders-of-magnitude as meaningless—stems from this experiential estrangement from the real and uncompromising universe.
At this point, I terminated the conversation—sensing only divergence.
You Be the Judge
What we have here is two well-educated astrophysicists on extreme opposite sides of an issue, down to the fundamental interpretation of numbers and probabilities—hypothetical vs. actual. Ironically, NM appears to take Murphy’s Law literally: if something (bad?) can happen, it will. My preferred version is that if something can happen, don’t be surprised if it does (or surprised if it doesn’t, depending on the odds). Not every possibility allowed by physics has the opportunity to manifest in the finite space and time to which we (or our universe) have access. The combinatorial possibilities so vastly outnumber the actual path walked by the universe that “actual” is a vanishingly small subset of the physically-allowed. In the end, our universe only goes ONE way out of an uncountable infinitude of seemingly-possible outcomes. Imagination must take a distant back seat to actual occurrence.
Anyway, each apparently finds the other to be emitting gibberish, essentially. As a result, each probably feels reaffirmed in their position with regard to space settlement: “If this is characteristic of how the other side thinks, no wonder their conclusions seem totally unhinged.” As with so many issues, we each believe ourselves to be in the right—and I can attest to how difficult it would be to move me off my position, assuming that to be symmetric as well. What is one to do?
Granted, this conversation reflects a sample-size of one, and thus can’t be taken as representative of the entire space-enthusiast community. On the other hand, not only does it come from a credible source who is professionally engaged in this topic, but it isn’t in any way “cherry-picked” from a menu: it was the only instance of someone reaching out to challenge the space pessimism expressed in my recent blog series. I would not be surprised if the deep disconnect between me and space enthusiasts can often be distilled down to disagreement as fundamental as this one, on whether “infinity and beyond” is taken literally or contextualized within limits. It’s not news that many in our culture are violently allergic to the notion of limits (and then we all die of limitations). Maybe fear of death is another key driver for space fantasy, but let’s not get into that just now.
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I found shortly after publishing that my teletype font selection for the e-mail dialog was not showing up in the final product (looks great in the editor), so apologies to the first 80 readers for not seeing a clear demarcation between exchange and commentary. Since then, I changed the color of the dialog text and inserted headers to indicate the reflections that follow each block.
Entertaining discussion. I find NM's perspective hilarious in an "wow, people really think that?" kind of way, as I do the same about people who think that yes, the economy will keep on growing infinitely (on a finite planet), and yes, the planet really can support 10 billion people and more just fine, and no, ecological overshoot really isn't a thing and who needs wildlife anyway, and yes, we'll solve climate change by sticking enough solar panels and nuclear reactors on every square inch of ground we can find. There are, seemingly, quite a few topics (all related by hubris!) on which there seems to be little to no middle ground.
It does indeed seem to be all of a piece, which raises the tantalizing prospect that many or most such delusions stem from the same screw being loose. What might produce that A-ha moment to flip the Necker Cube? It's my delusion to imagine it could be so easy.
Is it “just” a matter of switching from “I am separate” to “I am not separate from anything”?
But, yes, if only there was a literal switch that we could flip to switch people's mindset from one of separateness to one of inseparable interconnectedness. If we could genuinely shed our sense of being separate, we might then just naturally shed our sense of superiority, properly acknowledge and hold in awe the unfathomable complexity of the universe, truly appreciate what evolution over deep time has given us, give up on the idea that we can control things and on the idea of "progress", and finally "relax" back into living well on this planet.
I suppose that's what I'm trying to accomplish, in so many tangential ways. It also explains why I resist separating mind or consciousness from the same material interactions that govern everything else in the universe. It's all just one enormous and complicated and interacting phenomenon, dammit—all following the same rules with no special privileges. Back to humility!
You've certainly helped set me straight in this regard, Tom. Thanks for all you efforts, which have made me feel much better positioned to bring up and discuss this sort of stuff with people, without it coming across as me just being an angry, jaded ranter/fruitcake (at least I hope this is the case). For me, "back to humility" and acknowledgement that we are not separate are the key points from which all else flows.
A few years ago, while manning an Extinction Rebellion road block, I killed some time by describing the physics behind the multiverse idea to a fellow protestor. At the end of the explanation he turned to me and asked "if you believe that, why do you care about any of this"? That did leave me stumped.
I spent a long time trying to find an answer, and I eventually came up with something along these lines: what I care about is the subset of the multiverse which is future-like with respect to this moment. That's to say: moments of the multiverse in which are embedded historical evidence of this moment now. Why do I care mostly about those? It's because those represent the futures which in some sense carry my legacy. Now, each of those moments has an amplitude in the universal wavefunction (at least that's what I believe). And I would agree with you TM that the amplitude of those with human beings from earth colonizing space is miniscule compared to other likely futures. So how do we act now: I think of this as a trolley problem, but with amplitudes used to scale the possible outcomes.
I think you have got upon a similar problem yourself as a committed determinist. How do you answer the question: why worry if you believe that? But in both cases I think we can square philosophy and our pre existing moral codes.
I am coming to perceive that nihilistic reactions signal a deep discomfort around the prospect of giving up a cherished worldview. If someone's meaning derives from particular features of that worldview, then an alien perspective is likely to lack those features so that their source of meaning is lost. But it's probably always possible to construct meaning and value from any position, if allowing oneself to inhabit it just for a bit. Nihilism is simply allergic, reflexive reaction to the unfamiliar. And fear of the unknown abyss tends to keep people where they are. But loads of people have indeed transformed their worldviews so that what provided meaning before seems silly in hindsight, and the "void" they once might have feared turns out to provide richer meaning than they had before.
Well said!
Most of us live like only humans matter, and currently derive our sense of meaning/purpose from this worldview, which is essentially to (supposedly) “further the human race” (and perhaps get to heaven/nirvana). But so many people are now growing disillusioned, given the state of the world, and slowly realising that they have been sold a dud worldview.
The last thing that is needed is for nihilism to be presented, unchallenged, as the only alternative that awaits if you give up on modernity!
Once you reject the related ideas that we humans are “separate” and (partly) made from something different to the rest of the Cosmos, you discover that you are actually swimming in a veritable sea of meaning, which you have been oblivious to, or only partially appreciated, up until then. This sea of meaning has been slowly built up (deepened) by everything that has happened in the past, and is maintained and contributed to by everything that is happening now. Evolution over the aeons has created a vast web of interdependent life from the inseparable interconnected web of fundamental matter that constitutes the universe, and in so doing, created “meaning”, in the sense of “something mattering to each of the individual life forms”. Our “purpose” may indeed still be just to persist, BUT in way that doesn’t entail us ripping apart the web of life that we are part of, and nothing without. Our “purpose” is to exist as an integrated “part” of this Whole: to live “well”.
What is the meaning of life? Life! Life is meaning (something Phillip Ball said, if I recall correctly). We need to live like all life matters/means something. In fact, everything means something/matters, even all the “inanimate” matter (which is actually animate… the phenomenon of life includes non-living things as part of it). Our “purpose” is/should be to live like all life has meaning. If we don’t, we end up reducing biodiversity and lessening the depth of the sea of meaning that evolution/Life has produced. In a way, “biodiversity” corresponds to “depth of meaning”, to my mind at least.
I think your first argument of 'if people could prove to live decades on Mt. Everest…' is fantastic. His response, 'Monkeys thought living on the ground was a bad idea…' is just embarrassing.
If we could dig into his brain and ask him WHY haven't we built a decades long self sustaining outpost on Mt. Everest. I think he would eventually have to admit that no one wants to live like that and no one wants to pay for it.
But if its on another planet, where the stakes and costs are insanely higher, then that changes everything? I don't think he's seriously thought this through.
"…just another expression of cognitive and moral myopia and deep ethical irresponsibility for future generations."
Wow, a profound moral judgement, right off the bat. This is the sort of response that leads me to immediately terminate a conversation with something like: "Thank you so much, and best wishes."
If only I were quicker on the take… I suffer the deranged sense that I can get through, despite a pile of failures. But once in a while, it *does* work, which I suppose is part of what keeps me motivated to try.
Tom – would you ever consider going on a more “mainstream” podcast – such as Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson or Bill Maher?
Your views are really important to the conversation, and worth getting out there. Thank you
I'd probably be foolish enough to talk to anyone who invites me, for the reason you cite.
You should do it, please!
Thank you!
Don't even think it. Completely hopeless.
How big pieces of Cardboard, a charming ex-Nazi & pretty pictures of planets cast one enduring childhood spell…
I WAS having an electrician’s slightly rough day @ work until I grabbed a Latté @ J. O. Coffee (d’town Detroit near Canada… ) and read your riveting, gibberish-laden account of the dueling astrophysicists !
Of course, I quickly felt an affinity for ‘NM’ because I fondly remembered my own amazing cardboard rocket ship that you could prop up between my bottom bunk-bed & a chair to enable crawling up into the ‘cockpit’ from below.
It had a painted instrument panel , jumbo-sized, rear cardboard fins, and a handy rectangular slot for the pilot’s windshield.
Sometimes I brought my favorite space exploration book along for extra inspiration. It was jammed full of beautifully rendered, illustrations of planets, galaxies & Werner Von Braun quotes.
Other than that, all I could make out thru the crude viewing port was part of the bedroom wall & one familiarly scratched wooden post holding up the upper bunk.
Anyway… I know ( that ) flying that pretend rocket ship thru Space got my curious 7yr. old-self through an uncounted, bunch of rainy New England, mornings w/o getting soaked.
We didn’t have a TV in the house due to ( I later discovered…) dogged misgivings about its entertaining effects on a child’s developing imagination & related cognition . But coping w/ Werner in Space slid right under my harried parents’ radar ;).
But, yeah … ‘NM’ loyally keeping that ol’ magical spirit of Space colonization alive sure rang a bell !
– suerté, JJ
Tom, while I am on your side (as far as the future of humanity), as far as your conversation with NM is concerned, it seems to me that you were both just waving sticks at each other. There did not appear to be any effort, on either side, to elicit any understanding about where your opinions might be coming from. Not that I suppose you (or he) have any responsibility to do so. The activities that are labeled "debate" have always struck me as just so much "preaching to the choir." Good practice at the local bar (so long as the bar requires that firearms be left outside), but I don't recommend you use it with your wife.
It's true that neither ever explicitly asked what grounded each other's opinions. But my sense is that each round of the conversation addressed points raised by the other—rather than for instance just discharging free-form talking points in isolation, talking past each other. It was an actual back-and-forth responsive conversation. NM did offer the foundation of his opinions in Aristotle, Feynman, Penrose, etc. If waving sticks, at least we acknowledged each others' sticks and challenged whether the sticks were solid enough to land a hit.
Yeah, I kept waiting for the facts to be hurled in anger, but they never got passed the philosophical.
Like a boxing match where they just dance around and is called a draw.
Fun read though!
If anything is possible in the universe then I think humans becoming extinct is probably more likely than colonies on Mars.
I find it quite enlightening that someone who has had the privilege of a good education and is of above average intelligence can believe that "we" will live on Mars (or wherever).
(It's the kinda thing I would expect from a bloke down the pub but not an academic.)
Makes me realise that we are f¢°~ed if some of the sharpest minds can be sooooo delusional.
It would be more interesting to have the conversion with an astrobiologist as they would have more of an understanding of the biological constraints at play and maybe be able to help delineate some bounds on the problem.
It is also interesting how much is focus appears to be on the survival of the "human species" aka life that homo sapiens could presumably interbreed with. Like we are a pinnacle in the universe and deserve to be held in stasis for all time. Rather that a larger focus on the survival of complex life or "intelligent" life that can investigate the universe.
It it not immediately obvious to me that we are physically constrained from developing "intelligent life" that is able to make the journey between stars. I am more certain that the form of that life is not human in the conventional sense, our life support needs are quite complex and not overly adaptive to the environment. It is also not obvious that if one were seriously undertaking the project of getting interstellar compatible life in the DNA based biological substrate if you would start from humans. It isn't even clear if DNA would be the most viable substrate for a interstellar capable self reproducing process.
It would be interesting to know where you stand on the chances of us getting an "intelligent" self-replicating process off earth?
To me the limiting factor would appear to be our ability to sustain ourselves for long enough to undertake such a project. As much as people make an argument for our moral and ethical responsibilities to future generations, we only seem to be willing to run the machine at maximum intensity to try and accelerate "progress" so current generations see it. We seem to be unwilling to dial the intensitivity back to give us the resources in space and time to be able to reliably achieve such a project.
True. If one is going to let their imagination run truly wild when pondering the possibility of "space colonization" (or, rather, transfer of life – self-replicating organisms/processes – from one planet to another), why limit your daydreaming to colonization by humans?!
That's why I find it interesting to ponder the "panspermia" hypothesis/theory/wacky idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia
It is likely complete fantasy, but "infinitely" more probable than us humans ever living on Mars (I mean living in the proper sense).
Interestingly, the pseudo form of the idea ("pseudo-pangenesis") is taken more seriously than the idea itself, at least according to Wiki, which defines pseudo-panspermia as "the well-supported hypothesis that many of the small organic molecules used for life originated in space, and were distributed to planetary surfaces".
If, by some "miracle", panspermia proper really is a "thing", my response would be that the universe is/would already doing it, and we should leave it to the universe to continue doing it the way it has been, via "simple" life forms (i.e. no splicing of Tech Bro DNA/RNA into viruses and bacteria, and especially not with "unpacking" instructions that activate upon exposure to a planetary environment suitable to sustain complex life. The chances of this occurring are, of course, so close to zero as to not warrant mention. But still, not worth taking the risk…)
The "Hyperloop" is also physically possible, and much easier than creating a colony on a planet without an earthlike atmosphere. Tens of millions of dollars were invested in creating this new cheap high-speed form of transportation. The investors eventually figured out that maintaining a vacuum over hundreds of miles requires enormous amounts of energy. Also, the "pods" that people would use would have a lot of trouble with turning, and the temperature of the tubes would have to be kept constant in order to prevent massive differences in length and circumference of the steel cylinders. What was discovered, after a giant waste of time, money, and effort, is that the hyperloop is just a bad idea. It could be done, but it's not worth it. I don't personally think we are likely to solve all the problems (many of which we have yet to identify) with colonizing other planets. I also don't think we should try. It's a much bigger waste of time, energy, and effort.
A lot of NM's arguments seem very close to the entertainingly named "Infinite monkey theorem" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem), which asserts that an immortal monkey jamming keys on a typewriter eventually produces Shakespeare's complete works.
The expected number of letters this simian bard must type before achieving this is larger than 10^(10^5), so it's unsurprising that nobody has seized upon this as a business proposition yet. A probabilistic argument for space colonization seems to stand on a similar footing.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
But isn't it more likely that the monkey would produce infinite amounts of gobildeegook?
Since infinity encompasses everything, by definition, yes it would contain infinite amounts of gobblydy gook but also infinite Shakespeare and every other possible book.
Half of infinity is still infinity.
But does infinity encompass everything?
By definition infinity has no boundaries and where as "encompassing" refers to boundaries?🤷
Agreed. This also reminds me of the thought experiment about an apple placed in a sealed box. The claim is that after disintegrating/rotting away, it WILL reappear again at some (very distant) point in the future, just as soon as the atoms in the box stumble across the original starting arrangement…
@Bim
Hmmm. But does anything ever happen twice?🤷
Reincarnation (if it is even a thing) isn't the same as replication.
Hi John. I'm with you on this one (I think).
For the apple that reappears (in this thought experiment!) to be classed as being exactly the same apple as the original one in every single respect, the rest of the atoms in the universe would all also have to be in exactly the same state(s) as they were when the apple originally existed… History would have to repeat.
But… To DEFINITIVELY answer the question "But does anything ever happen twice?", I would need to be fully acquainted with the fundamental nature of reality, which sadly/thankfully/mercifully, I am not 🙂
I can certainly *imagine* ways in which the same thing could happen twice. For example, suppose it is actually the case that upon undergoing a Big Crunch, our universe begins again with a Big Bang, and exactly the same things happen as in the previous cycle (with the same initial conditions, the same laws of physics and, for some reason unbeknownst to us, "God rolling the exact same set of numbers on their dice" for all the quantum events. So a "Groundhog Day" sort of universe, but with the exact same "story" replaying itself between every Big Bang and Big Crunch. This is almost certainly complete BS, but there's no way we can prove it is or isn't the case. Or is there? (very happy to be corrected here). A variation on this "idea"/flight-of-fancy is that the universe might begin each cycle with the same laws of physics, but the initial conditions vary in a random way. If time happens to be fundamental, linear, and stretches to infinity in both directions (past and future), there will inevitably be a cycle that duplicates exactly what happened in some previous cycle. In fact, every cycle would eventually get duplicated, triplicated, quadruplicated, etc. Again, this is probably/almost certainly BS (one could even loosen the requirement that the laws of physics stay the same for each cycle. If time stretches on forever, every cycle will still eventually lose its "unique" status).
People propose all sorts of "out there" ideas these days about reality, the universe, multiple-worlds, multiverses, time being fundamental, time being emergent, time not really existing at all, etc, etc. All likely BS, but in some sense untouchable because, whilst they can't be proved, they also can't be disproved by us. One can't even say for certain that idealism and solipsism are false… Again, happy to be corrected.
Here's another crazy idea: perhaps it is the case that every potential thing/possibility/state actually does exist in Reality in some strange sense – perhaps as an infinite collection of separate, timeless moments in “potential space”. And perhaps our universe amounts to some sort of sampling/filtering-and-"stitching together" process/phenomenon that is able to assemble a unique "logical"/"sensible" story from a subset of these moments (one consistent with causality and the specific laws of physics that we have). Again, likely just complete BS…
These days I am trying to limit my flights-of-fancy (with limited success, as you can see), or at least trying to not let my imagination and thinking distract me too much from experiencing *this actual world* – the one that I am absolutely nothing without. It is important to stay grounded in the reality of this universe! For me, the most important question for us modern humans to ponder is "How can we humans live truly WELL on Earth, a planet which forms a vital and inseparable "part" of each of us, and indeed every single living thing on it?"
If everything can happen more than once, but it requires a different run of the universe? Well then, you can also live twice but never be aware of it. Which is just as good as not happening more than once at all.
Though I am with you on the "How can we humans live truly WELL on Earth, a planet which forms a vital and inseparable "part" of each of us, and indeed every single living thing on it?" thought experiment part. If only that happened more than once…
One thing I see missing from nearly all arguments regarding colonizing off the Earth; we have ZERO data on the viability of a human fetus in other than a one gee environment.
No point in going there if we can't reproduce.
Indeed: it seems that testing over the decades produces more failure than success. To date, no full cycle (fertilization, birth, maturity, second-generation) has been successfully demonstrated for any vertebrate (or perhaps any animal?), while plenty of anomalies pile up to justify skepticism. It didn't turn out to be one of those: "yep, it just works normally" situations.
From the Weinersmiths, who extensively researched the topic for the City on Mars book: "We know of no studies on mammals in space where the process was observed from conception through birth, let alone development and conception in the following generation."
What we know so far does seem to rule out low gravity for vertebrates. But that only trims off the microgravity approach for humans. It leaves the massive rotating space habits and other such mechanisms on the table.
I prefer your ecosystem based arguments better since it makes it more a question of how well can we create a robust life support system that is able to sustain itself within the available energy flux.
As it simplifies it down to something that we can put to the test on earth. Which is not only has the advantage of not having to deal with gravity. Providing and rejecting energy is much simpler as well.
The "we will solve those problems when we get there" on the threat of the earth umbilical being cut off, seem wildly irresponsible. Though one could argue that urgent and obvious problems are the only thing we actually respond to. We do seem unable to take the sensible development path, recognizing reality does appear to be maladaptive in our society that persists on shared delusions.
Given that virtually all of the existential threats that humanity currently faces are man-made, I fail to see how exporting us to another planet provides a viable escape-hatch.
If we follow Shanna Swan's logic in her book 'Count Down', we are mere decades away from losing our ability to make babies on Earth due to endocrine disrupting chemicals. Is a fully man-made environment on a hostile dead planet that we never evolved to live on the antidote?
Are space colonization enthusiasts concerned about low probability events such as asteroid impacts and super-volcanic eruptions while they ignore the actually invoking existential threats that are unfolding so quickly that it renders the timeline for attempting space colonization moot? – It's difficult to make a pretty sand castle right as the tide is washing over that same part of the beach…
How long do space enthusiasts expect technological modernity to hold together?
It's hard to know just how much self-created existential threat the space enthusiasts take on board. My guess is that they imagine the smart ones will leave and never do anything as stoopid as what Earthlings managed—not recognizing that the impulse to flee our evolutionary context is even more colossally ignorant (they'd learn soon enough, in practice, if they could even get that far).
As to modernity not being able to hold out, I expect you'd get the "I don't see why not" admission of wave-it-off ignorance.
Perhaps space enthusiasm and hand-waving off modernity's inevitable failure are representations of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Since confidence sells in our culture and there is a huge confidence tranche at the ignorance phase of the Dunning-Kruger effect, it may cause ignorance to be largely profitable, and thus rewarded/upregulated by modernity.
Seems hard to argue against this connection from my perspective. If the shoe fits…
Question is: how much longer the "smart ones" can remain smart in an isolated environment? Thought experiment: let them descend into their full comfort escape bunkers for decades and live the Howard Hughes life they so desire. Let them drink the wonderful bottled and canned drinks that they hoarded there. Then, for the real fun part: Count up the extra microplastics that accumulated in their brains, rendering them the living zombies they would turn into.
You are both right, but only one of you has defective denial genes.
1) Colonizing space is the only path to continuing modernity, and 2) it's not possible; which means the few of us that survive the overshoot collapse will return to our ancestral roots.
I wasn't really interested in NM's arguments, because while there is *some* logic to it, the likelihood of it is extremely low.
I'm more interested in why you chose this particular image for your post? 😀
Buzz Lightyear is a character in Toy Story (series of movies) whose catch-phrase is: "To infinity and beyond!" He's irredeemably smitten by the idea of a glorious space future.
And also not that educated: beyond infinity doesn't make a lot of sense, since infinity encompasses everything.
Unless there are some subtleties I wasn't aware of.
Actually, infinity comes in different sizes. This is a Scientific American article from 18 years ago:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-infinity-comes-in-different-sizes/
This from New Scientist 3 years ago:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25433822-900-infinity-has-long-baffled-mathematicians-have-we-now-figured-it-out/
And it seems new discoveries are continuing to be made.
Thanks!
There is the largest three-digit number 999, if you rotate it clockwise, you will get the well-known "beastly" 666.
But how amazing and quite simple the terrible 9^9^9 looks.
In my opinion, a wonderful and disguised ironic numerical metaphor for the cosmic odyssey of man 🙂
NM makes a revealing remark about their way of thinking: "I am COMPLETELY CERTAIN that at some point, about 3.2 million years ago or so, there were some among our hominin ancestors who regarded walking on two legs and not living in tree canopies as "delusional fantasy" which has 0.0…1% chance of succeeding in face of all the dangers and uncertainties facing them on the ground."
This thing they are completely certain about may be mainly a habitual rhetorical device, but in any case it is almost certainly not true.
For one thing, it reveals amazing hubris: they think they know how people thought back then. In fact, if the stories that come down to us from our (much later) ancestors are any guide, they actually contemplated plenty of much more fantastical things.
It also reveals a tacit assumption about how "progress" happens— always by human intention and planning. In the real world, natural selection got us out of the trees by a series of steps, each of which had adaptive value at the time. The long term future of the species wasn't part of day-to-day thinking; those folks just did what they had to in order to eat and reproduce. They obviously accomplished amazing things they never foresaw. They were not held back by a lack of imagination.
The thing that really struck me is how the remark reveals a state of mind, and assumptions about imagination and intentionality that underly humans-in-space futurism: deep assumptions about their personal relationship to reality. You'd have to peel back lots of layers to change the mind of a true believer.
Hey, Craig! Agreed. I'm surprised you did not jump on the interpretation of Feynman/Penrose as saying everything WILL happen.
@Craig Hogan.
And to add…….I'm not sure that walking upright on two legs was a conscious decision in the first place?🤔
Or that other primates thought it was a bad idea.
It's a strange argument/point to make by NM.
And just to add…….
Where is the energy going to come from to make all this "stuff" to make the trip?
Some things are actually finite unlike the human imagination (it seems).
Rather bizarre exchange. Once numbers mount high enough, their abstraction outweighs their meaning, which is perhaps why your interpretations diverge so deeply: inevitability vs. unlikelihood.
I recall Daniel Dennett arguing (I think in his book Darwin’s Dangerous
Idea) for a supposed Library of Mendel in which the vast number of potential combinations of proteins almost never lead to life. Yet we live on a planet teeming with life predicated on just that. It’s a paradox of sorts that makes what occurred in reality appear in hindsight inevitable.
I'm glad you published this as it's a great example of the type of easily offended person whose anti-scientific attitude & egocentric, sophist logic is hiding behind so-called "moral" efforts for the sake of "future generations". Well we did already know that even scientists can be profoundly anti-scientific–history is full of them, most famously those corrupted by early successes who then actively attempted to suppress anything that may challenge their settled viewpoints or prove them wrong in some way.
Considering that humans have drastically failed so far to maintain Earth as a "nice place to live" for the vast majority of people in general, both ecologically and economically, it couldn't be more obvious that it's an escape from their own disaster that these people have in mind more than anything. Even if they understand it wouldn't be possible for them personally–if possible at all–they can still "get cred" (and ideally a seat on the money train) by building it up as a viable option to save our descendants.
Humans do have a very deep-seated desire to explore and expand. Such activity, and space itself, is interesting for a lot of reasons. These things do make people feel optimistic, and you can bank on that kind of optimism when you're selling a good story.
But I've always been convinced that everyone *actually* on team space migration doesn't care at all about future generations or they'd be more active in improving life for people now and improving the best thing we've got (Earth), which quantitatively and qualitatively improves lives for future generations right now. Actions speak louder than words, as the saying goes, and I know most of the outspoken people *do not care* about human quality of life on a grand scale, and I'd wager many can't even think beyond their own EOL. They're in it for what they can get out of it *right now*.
Humans as a whole are completely incoherent in the way that they approach "the survival of the species". I would say once human life on Earth is "solved"–something naturally allowed by the laws of physics, obviously, considering it was pretty much perfected before it arrived at us, the disruptors of all things well-balanced–then people can reward themselves by thinking about moving on. But damn, that's a lot of work and it's no fun either! Plus you'd get called all sorts of nasty names like "environmentalist" or "social justice warrior" if you *actually act like* you care about human quality of life, now or in the future.
I'm confident that any colonization efforts, even limited to a sociological rather than cost/difficulty-based analysis, would end in disaster. Simply because humans would be involved! Humans still haven't figured out how to live in a balanced way with each other or their environment & as a culture seem to detest all insinuation that implies they *should* figure that out. Human style, in a nutshell, is to burn all the bridges & then move somewhere else.
People just want to be able to leave the vastly more probable flaming dumpster of Earth behind, because they know they don't care at all about fixing it. And the reason it's turning into a flaming dumpster is because they themselves and others like them either continue starting the fires (an age-old tradition) or are actively engaged in fanning its flames & making sure if you question any of that somehow *you're* the problem.
One modification I would like to offer is that humans of our culture (99.9% of humans on Earth at this point) are not representative of all humans ever (in fact, something to the tune of 100 billion Homo sapiens have lived). Immediate-return hunter-gatherer cultures only persist if they have a deeply-instilled respect for their local ecology and work within it rather than try to master it. The second sentence in the last paragraph is then too broad a brush. Some humans do seem to have figured it out, just nobody we've likely met, personally (thus the oversight is forgivable/understandable).
That is true, and I admit I excluded some cultures a priori without even thinking about it. It definitely doesn't apply to societies that live(d) more as a part of ecology, as the rest of the terrestrial lifeforms do, instead of against it. Especially when done in a conscious manner as opposed to simply lacking the knowledge or technology to dominate and disrupt on a wider scale.
I also do think that some people, perhaps not an insignificant amount, *have* figured out aspects of a sustainable human presence on Earth in current times, without excluding technology. Or at least have ideas to contribute to such an existence and are willing to work toward it. But on the species level, it seems clear that they have had far less impact than the ones who actively work to degrade the planet on a mass scale (even if that's not how they view it, it's the practical result).
The point made by NM in Round two is absurd. As if the change to bipedalism occurred within a single generation, and individuals were debating whether it was a good idea. There are no parallels between evolutionary changes here on Earth with the fantasies of Space Colonisation.
Well put. Lots of people try to impose an evolutionary framing onto space colonization, but without considering the forces of evolution, gravitating toward greater beneficial resource and away from danger. Space is the opposite on both counts, so a colossal evolutionary loser.
As NM has written a lot of material on colonisation of other planets, you were starting a conversation with someone who has effectively hard-wired their brain to think in that way, so I think it would have taken a calmer exchange to even shift one synapse.
I don't know if NM has thought of the energy and resources involved in colonising another planet but that will surely be a huge barrier if we don't find an unlimited source (which also requires no energy or resources to harness). Also, his certainty that this is physically (and physiologically) possible is unsound. Until it is done, no-one knows whether it's allowed by the laws of nature, and by the way nature is manifest. So your example of humans not even colonising hostile environments on earth was great.
This last point seems similar to "The Transition" whereby it's assumed that it will be possible to obtain all of the resources and materials necessary, without having to resort to fossil fuels. We don't know if a single turbine, solar panel or battery can be produced in a transitioned world.
h/t Rob@un-Denial
For all you Tom Murphy groupies out there (count me in that group), here's a blast from the past. 2011 video titled; Growth has an Expiration Date. I'm still not sure if that was Tom giving the lecture or Steven Seagal. lol
https://youtu.be/o_8b6ej0U3g
I give Tom a hard time because of his outlook re fire. But that's cuz I'm a cocky prick. But all kidding aside, Tom is the man. So cool that he's been doing this for so long. 2011!! Hell, that's a full decade before I even learn the concept of overshoot.
ps. Tom, check out my exclusive interview with your buddy Ishmael. He was grumpy as usual, but he was kicking some good knowledge about fire.
https://un-denial.com/2025/11/09/ai-on-collapse/comment-page-1/#comment-114730
Wow: a blast from the past! This was the same conference where I had the dinner conversation with an economist that turned into one of the most popular ever Do the Math posts (still raking in views today). I was worried about this talk because the day before I was sick and lost my voice, which I don't recall ever having happened to me before! It was still pretty froggy the day of the talk, but at least my vocal cords were vibrating again. No excuse for all the "Ums," though. Also: I was still very much in love with modernity and thought the goal was to keep it alive.
Another thing: Colonizing another planet would be a net resource sink, because you would need to continually send resources from Earth to sustain the colony.
That's part of the fantasy: independent living off the barren land—even harder (than already practically impossible) in a rotating space can.
I had a conversation with a friend a while back about the concept of "Terraforming".
He was very excited about it after reading a book on the subject.
I didn't want to burst his bubble, so didn't enter into a long debate about how it was never going to happen.
Some ideas are so appealing we want them to be true.
Like Father Christmas!
I like the idea of terraforming Mars. As an idea. Nice and fluffy and reassuring. I just don't like a reality of near marsforming Earth along the way. That seems beyond silly to me.
🤣 Yes,good point.
We seem to be doing a good job of "forming" this planets atmosphere.
Your debate with NM has got me thinking about the concepts of past, present and future.
It's very difficult to see/predict the future. Who can safely say what the world will look like in 2030?🤷🤔
But when we look at the past it seems almost inevitable/predictable how events played out.
Primates walked on two legs. It happened, but was it ever inevitable? Was it fate?
Is it fated that we will live on Mars?
These questions become philosophical very quickly.
Maybe past, present and future only really exist in our heads.
Powerful survival tools non the less.
On the other hand, it's not a complete crap shoot. I think we can pretty much rule out a lot of notions based on physics and limits and context, for instance. A scan of past predictions of what the future would hold get some things basically right and others wildly off the mark. I've noticed a pattern in that the ones that failed to materialize tend to have large footprints in terms of materials or energy or both. But a device you can hold in your hand that lets you video-conference? Why not. Anyway, the space fantasy falls on the side of being much easier to rule out on grounds of physical footprint.
Yes.
Teleportation is a great narrative tool to get the occupants of the USS Enterprise down onto a new planet (and back again in the knick of time!🤣)
But is unlikely to ever be a reality.
But why let the truth get in the way of a good story?🤷🤔🤣
I suppose so. We may not get to space, but we'll progress some other way, perhaps like you say, or maybe some other way. As long as we know our limits, we'll do.
The thing is with the future, is that anything goes, perhaps your beliefs could turn out to be true, or it could be someone else's. Either way, we'll go forward some way, as long as it works and it can be feasible.
The idea of progress requires a target. Progress towards what? I think people regard technological improvements or innovations as progress. Sometimes, very occasionally, equity is seen as a goal and progress is made towards that.
When modernity starts to go away, so does the "progress" we've made and it will all start again at a much lower base, with its probably being impossible to get back to the current level of "progress."
@tmurphy
You've got me thinking (again), that technology is such a big factor in human history. From fire and the first hand axe, these technologies have defined what was possible.
But it's only part of the story. The Conquistadors were able to do their Conquistadoring, in part, because they had better tech. But who could have predicted that the "Colombian Exchange" would have favoured the Europeans?
Syphilis just wasn't as deadly to Europeans as small pox was to Native Americans. Probably a much greater factor in the conquest than any tech?🤔
In the defence of NH, working in an "ivory tower" dreaming up ways of colonising other planets is probably preferable to getting a proper job.
As a kid, I used to create/draw new Dr Who characters. (Mostly villains and robots)
Much more enjoyable than what I ended up doing for a living.🤣
Interesting read. The numbers game reminded me of a lecture on the thermodynamics of biophysics I attended many years ago. The lecturer used a 100-amino acid protein (which is a small protein) as an example of how there simply isn't enough time to try all 20^100 combinations as it takes ~1s to fold a protein, and there isn't enough mass to try out the combinations in parallel. Things become ridiculously improbable if one considers, e.g., the human genome with ~3 billion base pairs (4^3,000,000,000 combinations). I boldly predict that life will not try out all combinations in the lifetime of the universe.
One objection is of course that the workable subset is much smaller, and that evolution works incrementally to extend this set. Paul Romer makes similar remarks in his blog post "The Deep Structure of Economic Growth". There may well be a (countably) infinite set of potential solutions to a problem, but the obvious follow-up question should be: compared to how many unviable solutions? The countable infinity of rational numbers embedded in an uncontable infinity of irrational numbers comes to mind. That blind spot is seldom addressed, it seems.
For the record, Aristotle did not held to the principle of plenitude, certainly not in the form that "all that's possible will eventually happen". At most, he thought that all that's potentially the case will eventually happen (or has happened in the past). And that relies on his philosophical distinction between potentiality and mere possibility (he says explicitly that things that are merely possible may not come to pass), not to mention his ideas about the eternity of the universe, and in general on metaphysical assumptions that are far from universally held (as influential as Aristotle has been). So yeah, just citing an impressive-sounding name without understanding anything about it.
To extend your point, appeal to *any* human "authority" is dodgy. People are mostly wrong—even the smartest ones. In fact, sometimes hyper-intelligence pairs with over-active imagination so that the sheer delight that comes from frolicking in heady ideas leads to some pretty unhinged musings. I return to: what did they ever build? How grounded are they? Pulling famous names from the past is a turn-off for me: translates to "almost certainly wrong." Note that I'm not claiming superiority—just doubting that any of us can possibly have a full handle on the universe. I'm throwing sand in the gears, because sand is a real thing the universe will do to otherwise-pristine machines. In a sense, I'm advocating that we give up on trying to mentally master the universe, because we suck at it.
Yes, “we” (our minds) certainly need to work on staying grounded in this universe, on this planet, and in the bodies that we “possess”, whilst simultaneously recognising that the rest of the universe is actually an inseparable “part” of “us” and that we are made of entirely of the stuff of this universe.
They really can be crazy little tear-away things, minds, can’t they?! In some ways they are like off-road vehicles: enough power/capability to allow you to explore (imagine) exciting new territory, but also with the potential to get you stranded in increasingly remote places. They can also end up being like teenage brats, treating their parents like crap and seemingly oblivious/ungrateful for the many inputs that support their existence, such as the food that magically appears before them.
We could all do with learning to appreciate and respect our “parents” more – the Earth, the universe, matter, energy and the laws of physics, evolution…
We could also perhaps all do with a lesson or reminder on the difference between potentiality and probability… even some/many highly educated scientists!
I guess it was a noble endeavour to try to engage with NM in first place – not entirely surprising that your debate didn't go much further than highlighting the gulf in perceptions. To my mind, it's not that dissimilar from trying to debate the existence of God or the afterlife with a devout believer, and, I would venture that the faith in a space future has, for many, taken the place of former religious beliefs. It is perhaps disconcerting when this form of religious conviction comes from someone who is in other respects intelligent and scientifically literate, but I suspect that the faith and reality-apprehending vectors, if not directly opposed, are pretty much orthogonal. My hunch is that the space colonisation fantasy will be an early casualty of the impending collapse (near earth activity will probably persist somewhat longer due to its tangible commercial and military potential), in a similar way to which commercial supersonic travel has been quietly ditched as an aspiration. Space colonisation may well be subsumed in the broader genre of science fiction – which may not actually be such a dramatic shift given the wider public's difficulty in differentiating the real and the virtual (until, of course, collapse makes that difference all too clear).
In NM’s words I do sense a great fear of death, but restricted or focussed on to the death of the individual and the human species, or a subset of it.
I also really don’t like death. But I understand that it is necessary and inevitable. In a fruitless attempt to escape death, modernity leads to so much unnecessary and premature death/extinction. We seem to value human lives that don’t even exist yet above things that are actually alive now, but in a very extreme, pathological sort of way. It’s as though it’s our duty to bring as many people into existence at the same time as possible (you can’t have too much of a good thing!) rather than being happy with a sustainable number living on a finite planet for as long as possible. Weird! It really is an inability to appreciate and respect limits at heart.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
@tmurphy
Interesting and thought provoking. Thank you for reproducing the crux of this conversation. In matters of such gravity, I often ask what others, more qualified would say? For example, a philosophy heavyweight like Voltaire, who presented Candide with the argument, that this world and all that is happening in it, apparently is the best possible of all the possibilities that could happen. And then proceeded to subject the interlocutor to all kinds of misfortunes imaginable. Although his was only a fictional argument between imaginary protagonists, it is quite apt in this case I would think.
So, perhaps Voltaire would say: Anything that can happen will happen, and my opponent is absolutely correct. Therefore I propose that the thing that can happen in this case is that humans will not, I repeat, *NOT* colonize space. By the strength of your brilliant argument, therefore, you are absolutely correct, indeed. Shall we now drink that toast to this?…
Perhaps, this might say that if anything can happen, that is also true to its opposite. But we cannot both colonize space and not colonize it. Has logic failed NM, who argued based on it?… It might have been cleverer not to avoid all the practical impasses and mounting evidence against the very idea of such space adventure. Or was that the whole point? To argue more on ontology, and much less on facts?
I think in this case, our imagination can be shackled by the metaphors and similes that we can come up with: adventure, exploration, settlement, colonization, start walking on land, etc. All earth-bound, all conjuring images of eventual triumph; used by the strength that they actually happened. Some only once, some many times over. In other words, already loaded with bias.
Hmm. A lot of shooting fish in a barrel here. Of course NM believes in the aspirations of the system that produced him. Only a tiny minority (including TM) have been 'black-pilled'. It's not a matter of being 'smart', but of seeing the broader picture (as far as is possible).
While it's easy to call out space colonisation, that silly idea is only one end of the spectrum of hubris that goes from… what? Doesn't all science now depend on destroying or controlling Nature in one way or another? Leaving aside 'renewable' technology and all the terribly destructive mining that entails, even the practice of 'tagging' animals (seen so often in nature documentaries) is questionable. Is it really for the shark's own good that it gets a bulky radio transmitter stapled through its dorsal fin? I'm fairly sure that, had it any say in the matter, it would decline the procedure.
It's almost (but not quite) funny. How do you show people who've grown up in (and been successful under) modernity that the whole ediface is a house of cards and will come crashing down? At the water cooler? 'Oh, by the way…'
Space colonization is just the low-hanging fruit of modernity's foolishness.
I completely agree that modernity is a house of cards, James. But I guess there are different ways in which it might all come crashing down. How much control humans will have over any of it is a good question. Probably very little at this stage.
Regarding tagging (and conservation efforts in general), I completely get and respect your sentiment. All these things are "unnatural" and do have somesense of control about them. But modernity has screwed things up so badly that it seems to force (some of us) into having to do "unnatural" things in an effort to try and save at least some things from modernity's destructive path.
"Do nothing altogether" would probably be the best option for humanity to take, if all humans could miraculously agree to this approach at same time. But with modernity marching relentlessly onwards, I tend to view conservation efforts as a "net positive", since they represent an attempt to keep pools of species alive until the worst parts of the house of card hopefully start coming down.
I do struggle greatly with all this stuff. Even when I partake in revegetation efforts, I find myself thinking, "This is dumb in many ways. "Nature" can and should be left to do all this the "correct way". Who am I to be coming in here, imposing myself and seeking to shape and control things?" ( I also notice how many people drive their cars a long way to partake in these revegetation works, and how a whole lot of plastic signage gets made to promote them, etc). The problem is that the "natural world" just doesn't get the chance to do its thing enough. I would love it if we could just fence off half the world to keep the humans out and leave all the other life forms to it. Sadly, this is unlikely to happen (though there are good charities like Bush Heritage that buy up land solely for habitat), so I feel it necessary to make some effort to try and "help other species along". But what I am doing could ultimately just be contributing to the extension of modernity… I acknowledge that. I desperately hope it isn't. I hope it is contributing to something being left when the house of cards comes crashing down.
It's all so screwed up. I wish I knew what the right thing to do was…
Agreed. On animal tagging/tracking/counting, within the context of modernity, one can make the case that we need such data in order to soften the blow of the sixth mass extinction—or at least to track it well. But a bat wrapped in padding is still dangerous. Modernity might need data, but the Community of Life does not need modernity. Living in right relationship means appreciating the living world without having to count it.
Besides being low-hanging fruit, it's hard to identify a belief/pursuit that more thoroughly expresses faith in human awesomeness AND the separation of humans from ecological context and the material world: imagination trumps material reality.
Tim, I thoroughly enjoy your posts, which have enriched the way I think about the role we humans play in this world, and what is likely to (not) happen in the future.
Though I stand firmly on your side of the exchange, my pedantic side drives me to point out that you committed two errors in computing the number of possible digital images, and as a result vastly undersold the true number of possibilities: For each pixel, there are 2^24 possible values it can take, and not just 24. Moreover, if each pixel can take on N values, and there are P pixels, the total number of possible images is N^P and not P^N (as the case of just 1 pixel clearly shows). Thus for the scenario you imagined, there are (2^24)^(3e6)~(10^7.2)^(3e6)~10^(10^7.3) possibilites.
How utterly embarrassing! I wrote that e-mail response in such a hurry that I flung down some numbers without thinking it through or checking: very uncharacteristic. I'll issue a correction!
NM seems to consider possibilities that he likes. Another possible range of outcomes includes that our attempts to colonize Mars result in us polluting earth's environment and depleting its resources to where we end up less healthy or resilient than before. This range of outcomes seems more likely than ones where colonize Mars or the galaxy, plus they make his desired outcomes impossible.
Why does he only consider outcomes he likes?
Also, for the monkeys leaving the trees, there are also many examples of our would-be ancestors trying something new and dying. Many of our ancestors' brothers and sisters fell off cliff they walked too close to. Plenty of civilizations collapsed.
My goal isn't to promote pessimism, only to show that he seems to be cherry picking possibilities that serve his interests.
One example I like to raise, when arguments along the lines of "if it's physically possible, there is nothing preventing it from happening" crop up, is the issue of world hunger. For decades upon decades, I'd posit that every government (if not every individual human) has believed that ending world hunger is a desirable goal, so the lack of will can't be a factor. The world already produces many times the calories required to do this, and the transportation infrastructure currently exists. Yet, it hasn't happened, despite there being no physical reason why it couldn't.
Also…if everything that can happen WILL happen, what about mutually exclusive events? It's physically possible that I'll knock my cup of coffee off the desk, and also physically possible that I'll drink it without incident. Both of them will happen? I guess that's where we need all those spare universes :D.
@Dean
That's the point that I keep coming back to on this one. Apart from what is mutually exclusive in what is terminally allowable (in the vein of once the "we cannot colonize" happens, the "we will colonize" option is forever excluded).
So, suppose that after the initial condition of this moment, anything can happen in the next. But then the next state after that will make it path bound: the chain of events is a Markovian chain where every state adds more filter to all the states that can come after.
Whatever we may imagine, cannot happen unless it comes through this ever finer compounding filter. It simply prunes the tree of all possibilities to one single worldline. Doesn't matter how long we stretch it, vastly more possible states will always be unavailable to it than the comparably miniscule amount bound around its forward attractor.
It is inaccurate, imprecise and illogical to say that since the future is uncertain, if we can imagine something, it will necessarily happen in the vastness of time. No it won't. And that to my mind is dead certain.
Sounds like Sean Carroll. I stopped taking him seriously when he went down the whole "time is emergent for entropy" rabbit hole. He can be safely ignored.
As for the interlocutors claim that "whatever can happen will" and that there are "no theoretical bounds on human space exploration". These claims are completely unjustified.
1. This defies our know rules of probability, whether we are looking at classical physics using entropy, or QFT with Feynman phase weights, there are clearly highly improbably, to the point of being lifetime of the Universe impossible outcomes.
2. The ideal photon sail places real physical limits on the specific work (the amount of work per unit mass that we can use to move stuff in space) for any energy source derived from the Sun.
3. While fusion may seem like a sidestep, it is not. First, it has a terrible theoretical energy return. While the amount of energy released is enormous, sustain terrestrial fusion requires at least half of the produced energy to go right back into activating the next reaction. Stars get around this by having matter fall down a gravitational potential. Second, imagine being an astronomer, observing exoplanet with chemically induced fusion. That would be fundamentally bizarre and would require producing an enormous amount of heat just to ensure entropy increases. I'm not talking about the heat produced by the fusion. I'm talking about the heat necessary to make a chemical system organized enough to trigger fusion.
Sending a couple tons of metal to the heliopause is one thing. Diffusing, and it literally is diffusion, an entire civilization off of a planet, let alone out of the solar system is a whole other level of improbable, in a very real calculable sense. Once you get out of the "one off" anecdotes of space travel and start looking at mass migration then physics very definitely has a strong opinion.
Enjoyed both this series of blog posts and the commentary they stimulated so much that I went down the rabbithole and read it all.
Lots of comments refer to "smart people." "Smart" is a dumb word, worse than "nice". I am often accused of being "smart". Makes me cringe. Well, every form of "smart" is incredibly limited. I've met PhDs with no sense of humor. Can a person who cannot enjoy a joke, a play on words, a logical twist really be said to be "smart"? And then every brilliant climate scientist I can think of is so committed to modernity and the myth of progress that they double down on the green transition, both in the claim that it is proceeding apace and in that choice as being obvious, with no other choice being morally entertainable. Climate scientists who claim to be panicked over the horrors experienced now and potentially in the future due to global heating, and who even admit that thriving ecosystems provide an essential carbon sink (and other climate mitigating factors such as the biotic pump), consider economic growth and modernity to be unassailable.
At the same time, people who are never labelled "smart" often exhibit excellent cognitive skills, ranging from ecological thinking to the ability to run a business.
Besides, "can we" is only one of the questions to ask. The more important one is "should we." The Anglophonic world is so skewed towards left-brain preference that it only uses "smart" in reference to the left-brain sort of cleverness that should be constrained to the role of the emmissary, in Iain McGilchrist's terminology.
I agree with Gordon M. Shephard in reference to NM's mention of "cognitive and moral myopia" in Round 1, that it was a debate-killer. I keep failing to learn (the hard way) to diagnose statements of deeply held values and refuse to engage with them. David McRaney's book How Minds Change claims to offer ways to soften these exchanges, using political polarization as the prime example. I haven't read the book, but have listened to enough of his podcasts to have some idea of what he's saying. He recommends probing how certain the other party really is. By having to declare their degree of certainty, it can provoke them to examine just how certain they really are. NM's "COMPLETELY CERTAIN" in Round 2 confirms that there is no basis for a conversation.
In fact, conversation, dialog, the written word, none of that is likely to shift worldviews. These things are useful for the humble, the curious, those open to different ways of thinking about things. They're also useful for confirmation bias when they agree with our opinions.
Some theories of change claim that only deep interpersonal relationship can do that. Others point to psychedelics, meditation, and other religious or spiritual practices. Having gone through an epiphany similar to @tmurphy in 2023 after watching a video of Richard Heinberg (first I had heard of him), I'm sure it only kicked in because so much lifework prepared me for that moment. So despite experiencing a change of mind, I'm still none the wiser about a theory of change.
In a shout-out to the commenters from @un-denial.com (@paqnation & @Rob_Mielcarski), you might be interested in the new book, The Origins of Language by Madeleine Beekman. I haven't read it yet, but listened to David McRaney interview her. She may have evidence that sets the point of no return all the way back to bipedalism. Equally interesting, in her account, evolution provided one hack after another, each hack needed to solve problems introduced by a previous hack (with bipedalism as the earliest hack in this series). After all the preaching of ecological holism, encountering a theory of evolution as a series of hack jobs embodying narrow-view solutionism seems like an alternative explanation of human capacity for denial. After all, just because some ancestors needed more precise communication in order to midwife babies with big heads born upside down and sideways from mothers with narrow hips has no implication for developing a realistic assessment of one's mortality.
@tmurphy, I had really hoped you might have come out with a happier ending, one where NM might have at least softened their stance. I guess I was hoping for a clue on how to address the rampant technophilia and techno-hopium surrounding me with respect to the so-called green transition. Green transitionism has much in common with space colonization. It won't work no matter how hard we try, but the harder we try, the more damage we do to local ecosystems, and thereby to the global ecosystem of Life as a whole. Green transitionism strikes me as just as harmful as climate denial, maybe even more so since it placates those who sincerely wish to do something about our predicament, rendering them tools of modernity rather than instruments of change.
Love your work, Tom!
I'm with you on the "smart" assessment, and also perceive it as a bit of an insult—at least in the context of how modernity defines the term. As you indicate, the label as typically applied has almost no correlation to the most amazing people/animals worthy of respect.