Our future as a species - Fermi Paradox revisted - Where they all are

william mook wrote:

Sander Vesik wrote in message ...
ORDOVER wrote:
Humanity has always progressed by expanding its range using technology

Not really - it has occassionally, but the vast majority of the human
colonization of the earth was done by people who set up housekeeping just down
the road from where they came from - then generation after generation did just
the same thing.

This is hardly true as both simple math and archelogy will tell you.

The vast majority of the human inhabited surface of the earth was settled in
paleo- and neo-lithic times by people who just walked there. It's
comparatively recently that ships of any kind were employed.

My answer to the Fermi paradox is quite simple - space travel is economically
unsustainable - it always costs more in resources than it brings in. So no
species anywhere in the galaxy can afford it over the long haul.


yes, we already know your answer...



John Ordover


While its clear that a society must generate sufficient wealth from
space faring activity to sustain that activity (regardless of how
capital is organised or accounted for)

And/or have sufficent wealth to *spare* for it. Much as probes
launched strictly for basic research purposes are now. No one expected
to make money from Explorer 1, but knowing the Van Allen belts are
there, has proved to be useful information....

Joann Evans wrote in message ...
william mook wrote:

Sander Vesik wrote in message ...
ORDOVER wrote:
Humanity has always progressed by expanding its range using technology

Not really - it has occassionally, but the vast majority of the human
colonization of the earth was done by people who set up housekeeping just down
the road from where they came from - then generation after generation did just
the same thing.

This is hardly true as both simple math and archelogy will tell you.

The vast majority of the human inhabited surface of the earth was settled in
paleo- and neo-lithic times by people who just walked there. It's
comparatively recently that ships of any kind were employed.

My answer to the Fermi paradox is quite simple - space travel is economically
unsustainable - it always costs more in resources than it brings in. So no
species anywhere in the galaxy can afford it over the long haul.


yes, we already know your answer...



John Ordover


While its clear that a society must generate sufficient wealth from
space faring activity to sustain that activity (regardless of how
capital is organised or accounted for)

And/or have sufficent wealth to *spare* for it. Much as probes
launched strictly for basic research purposes are now. No one expected
to make money from Explorer 1, but knowing the Van Allen belts are
there, has proved to be useful information....


Your conception of paying for probes is flawed. The cosmos represents
a vast resource base - of material, energy and working volume - that
is largley untapped. Probes sent merely to gather information are
economically useless and indeed must be paid for with profits just as
Easter Island heads, cathedrals, pointless competitions, crime, graft
and all manner of economically pointless activities.

Yet, sending scouts to a new frontier holds the promise of eventual
economic return that other economcally useless activities do not. Its
precisely because interplanetary space and the cosmos beyond holds
vast resources that this is true. All that's required for humanity to
make economic use of these resources is that they be brought to market
at a cost the market can bear. As we already have achieved with
commuinications, sensing, and navigation satellites. If we are
permitted by those who control us to invest freely in rocket
development, then we may expect that the markets for space based
assets and resource will grow. Once this growth takes place it will
continue without end. Which is quite different than growth based on
limited Earth resources - which those controlling powers see so
clearly as the basis of their authority.

On Mon, 6 Oct 2003 15:02:07 +0000 (UTC), Ian Stirling
wrote:

John Ordover wrote:
Newton's third law still works. It's not the physics, it's the the
economics. As the technology matures, the level of justification
steadily drops. Somewhere, even interstellar flight may have reached the
private expedition or 'hobby' stage. At which point, an 'economic
return' isn't required at all. (Which doesn't mean there will never be
one.)

If the physics of the univere aren't such that there is a way to make
the ecomonics feasible, then it can't be sustained.

Assuming that capitalism is the dominant force in the universe.


Not at all. Economics is the method by which resources are allocated.
Capitalist or otherwise, if you don't have the resources, you can't do
what it is you want to do. For example, we do not have the resources
to make Mars habitable and send a billion people to live there. We
just can't afford it.


It seems likely that at a very minimum, a colony mission with a couple
of people (and a sperm collection) will be technically possible at some
time in the future.
Commerce between colonies established this way would probably largely be
information.
All you need is for a colony to have enough success to be able to
launch its own colony mission, and you've got expansion.

But you could get that same info from a probe.

If you prioritize space travel over food and medical care, you don't
survive. If their reproductive drive is that strong, it will lead
them to destruction, not successful colonization. Just wanting to go
to space really really badly won't make space travel economically
sustainable, call it sex drive or call it anything else. If the
physics isn't there, it isn't there.

So you're a physicist?


Note I said "If."

On 6 Oct 2003 15:29:16 -0700, (william
mook) wrote:

Sander Vesik wrote in message ...
ORDOVER wrote:
Humanity has always progressed by expanding its range using technology

Not really - it has occassionally, but the vast majority of the human
colonization of the earth was done by people who set up housekeeping just down
the road from where they came from - then generation after generation did just
the same thing.

This is hardly true as both simple math and archelogy will tell you.

The vast majority of the human inhabited surface of the earth was settled in
paleo- and neo-lithic times by people who just walked there. It's
comparatively recently that ships of any kind were employed.

My answer to the Fermi paradox is quite simple - space travel is economically
unsustainable - it always costs more in resources than it brings in. So no
species anywhere in the galaxy can afford it over the long haul.


yes, we already know your answer...



John Ordover


While its clear that a society must generate sufficient wealth from
space faring activity to sustain that activity (regardless of how
capital is organised or accounted for) - arguing that the Fermi
paradox is answered by the argument above misunderstands the question
Fermi asked. Fermi knew that interstellar travel was economically
feasible with nuclear power given the energies of nuclear reactions
and the energies required of interstellar travel.

Not at all - he knew it was -technologically possible-. The economic
for space travel still aren' t there.

william mook wrote:

Joann Evans wrote in message ...
william mook wrote:

Sander Vesik wrote in message ...
ORDOVER wrote:
Humanity has always progressed by expanding its range using technology

Not really - it has occassionally, but the vast majority of the human
colonization of the earth was done by people who set up housekeeping just down
the road from where they came from - then generation after generation did just
the same thing.

This is hardly true as both simple math and archelogy will tell you.

The vast majority of the human inhabited surface of the earth was settled in
paleo- and neo-lithic times by people who just walked there. It's
comparatively recently that ships of any kind were employed.

My answer to the Fermi paradox is quite simple - space travel is economically
unsustainable - it always costs more in resources than it brings in. So no
species anywhere in the galaxy can afford it over the long haul.


yes, we already know your answer...



John Ordover


While its clear that a society must generate sufficient wealth from
space faring activity to sustain that activity (regardless of how
capital is organised or accounted for)

And/or have sufficent wealth to *spare* for it. Much as probes
launched strictly for basic research purposes are now. No one expected
to make money from Explorer 1, but knowing the Van Allen belts are
there, has proved to be useful information....

Your conception of paying for probes is flawed.

How? did I not say "sufficent waelth to *spare* for it?"

The cosmos represents
a vast resource base - of material, energy and working volume - that
is largley untapped.

Yes, so?

Probes sent merely to gather information are
economically useless

The point many people miss about basic research is that there's no
way of really knowing in advance (unless the research has some specific
direction to an area where we consider our ignorance as espically
undesirable, such as biology) what projects and results will be useful
(which includes, but is not limited to 'profitable') or not. As with
those who can spare resources to be patrons of the arts, not everything,
including the search for knowledge, is driven by profit.

and indeed must be paid for with profits just as
Easter Island heads, cathedrals, pointless competitions,

Define 'pointless.' How much does 60 seconds of commercial time on a
Super Bowl sell for? No, the winner of same will do nothing to 'improve
the human condition' so to speak, but a very large number of people are
entertained by it (and many other sports), and its players are paid more
than any of us to do it. As I said once to Mr Ordover, people don't make
money *just* for the sake of making more money, in the end, they do it
to increase the range of wants and needs they can meet. And one of those
wants may be something 'useless' as watching a football game.

And plenty of people make money providing and televising that
entertainment.

crime, graft
and all manner of economically pointless activities.

Even those people expect to do something for themselves (which
requires spending money in some way, usually) and certain others with
their gains. The fact that they were gained unethically or immorally
doesn't change that.

Yet, sending scouts to a new frontier holds the promise of eventual
economic return that other economcally useless activities do not.

We can't have both? And as I said, it's a gamble as to which probes
will obtain information that will be profitable. Profit can be *a*
motive, it should not be the *only* motive.

Its
precisely because interplanetary space and the cosmos beyond holds
vast resources that this is true. All that's required for humanity to
make economic use of these resources is that they be brought to market
at a cost the market can bear. As we already have achieved with
commuinications, sensing, and navigation satellites. If we are
permitted by those who control us to invest freely in rocket
development, then we may expect that the markets for space based
assets and resource will grow. Once this growth takes place it will
continue without end. Which is quite different than growth based on
limited Earth resources - which those controlling powers see so
clearly as the basis of their authority.

Okay, so what are we arguing about? I'm for doing all that. We
probably can't really call ourselves a spacefaring civilization until we
do. But not everything we do in space *necessairily* is/will be to those
ends.

Again, what does one do with wealth? I bought a car, because I need
it to get to work (though it happens I'm a walkable distance to my
current one, but that most certainly wasn't always true). It therefore
helps me earn money.

I also use it to go to a movie theatre. It therefore helps me do
'unprofitable' activities like entertain myself. But then, I work to
live, not live to work. For me, 'profit' isn't an end in itself, it
makes the *rest* of my life possible.

Wealthy nations and civilizations have similar options. This is why,
for example, Cassini was launched by the United States, not Haiti.

Your conception of paying for probes is flawed. The cosmos represents
a vast resource base - of material, energy and working volume - that
is largley untapped.

Because it does not represent a source of food, air, water, farmable
land, nor is it cheap or simple to access. Therefore those resources
are meaningless with our current understanding of physics.

As I said once to Mr Ordover, people don't make
money *just* for the sake of making more money, in the end, they do it
to increase the range of wants and needs they can meet. And one of those
wants may be something 'useless' as watching a football game.

Which puts space travel firmly in the "hobby" category. Something to
be done with spare cash and in space time.

I also use it to go to a movie theatre. It therefore helps me do
'unprofitable' activities like entertain myself.


The movie theater exists because people are interested in paying money
to see what happens inside. The car exists because there is a market
for cars. There is next to no market for space.

Joann Evans wrote in message ...
william mook wrote:

Joann Evans wrote in message ...
william mook wrote:

Sander Vesik wrote in message ...
ORDOVER wrote:
Humanity has always progressed by expanding its range using technology

Not really - it has occassionally, but the vast majority of the human
colonization of the earth was done by people who set up housekeeping just down
the road from where they came from - then generation after generation did just
the same thing.

This is hardly true as both simple math and archelogy will tell you.

The vast majority of the human inhabited surface of the earth was settled in
paleo- and neo-lithic times by people who just walked there. It's
comparatively recently that ships of any kind were employed.

My answer to the Fermi paradox is quite simple - space travel is economically
unsustainable - it always costs more in resources than it brings in. So no
species anywhere in the galaxy can afford it over the long haul.


yes, we already know your answer...



John Ordover


While its clear that a society must generate sufficient wealth from
space faring activity to sustain that activity (regardless of how
capital is organised or accounted for)

And/or have sufficent wealth to *spare* for it. Much as probes
launched strictly for basic research purposes are now. No one expected
to make money from Explorer 1, but knowing the Van Allen belts are
there, has proved to be useful information....

Your conception of paying for probes is flawed.

How? did I not say "sufficent waelth to *spare* for it?"

The cosmos represents
a vast resource base - of material, energy and working volume - that
is largley untapped.

Yes, so?

So, anything that brings those resources to bear on the problem of
survival for the human species can reasonably be counted to the good.
Including probes of the type you mention and wrongly assume are not
investments in the future survival of the human species but should be
counted as costs never to be recovered.


Probes sent merely to gather information are
economically useless

The point many people miss about basic research is that there's no
way of really knowing in advance (unless the research has some specific
direction to an area where we consider our ignorance as espically
undesirable, such as biology)

You equating space probes with basic research is flawed. That's my
point. There are vast untapped resources in space - even in
interplanetary space - that can easily be developed to the benefit of
all humanity for all time.

what projects and results will be useful
(which includes, but is not limited to 'profitable') or not. As with
those who can spare resources to be patrons of the arts, not everything,
including the search for knowledge, is driven by profit.

There's a difference between investments made with the expectation of
future benefit and those that are not. Space development has the
expectation of future benefit - due to the vast untapped resources
available there.

and indeed must be paid for with profits just as
Easter Island heads, cathedrals, pointless competitions,

Define 'pointless.'

Activities that do not enure to the benefit of the species.
Activities that do not help our long-term survival.

How much does 60 seconds of commercial time on a
Super Bowl sell for?

This is quite different than benefit or profit in the larger sense of
which I am speaking.

No, the winner of same will do nothing to 'improve
the human condition' so to speak, but a very large number of people are
entertained by it (and many other sports), and its players are paid more
than any of us to do it.

Yet it does very little to benefit the species or benefit its longer
term survival. So, it bears very much in common with the construction
of Easter Island heads. I am absolutely certain that the construction
of Easter Island heads benefitted the short term needs of the Easter
Islanders as they defined them in their local culture. As it turned
out, such local cultural norms did not serve their long-term survival.
Very similar to our fascination with death and destruction as a
culture and our over-investment in nuclear weapons and warfare
technology. Similarly our fascination with power and prestige and our
resultant over-investment in pointlessly competitive sports.

As I said once to Mr Ordover, people don't make
money *just* for the sake of making more money,

No, they do so for the local cultural benefits it offers them. Like
the Easter Islanders there is no guarantee that these psychological
benefits inure the benefit of the survival of the culture or even the
species of which they are a part.


in the end, they do it
to increase the range of wants and needs they can meet.

To the extent those local wants and needs meet the needs of longer
term survival of the culture or species, the culture of which they are
a part is stable. To the extent those individual wants and needs do
not meet the needs oflonger term survival the culture or species of
which they are a part is not stable.

Clearly we are a culture in decline and our situation is not stable.
The agressive development of space based assets and resources has the
capacity to change this. People at a very deep level know this, which
explains their fascination with space travel and their otherwise
irrational and illogical support of it.

And one of those
wants may be something 'useless' as watching a football game.

Playing out competitive fantasies as a way to exorcise the demons of
the powerlessness of an abused childhood does little to benefit the
long-term survival of this culture or our species.

And plenty of people make money providing and televising that
entertainment.

Making money isn't what we're talking about. I am certain that the
people who supplied and promoted and supported the construction of
huge head statues in the Easter Island culture made lots of money. Of
course this had little to do with the ultimate failure of that culture
as a functioning and vital society.

crime, graft
and all manner of economically pointless activities.

Even those people expect to do something for themselves (which
requires spending money in some way, usually) and certain others with
their gains. The fact that they were gained unethically or immorally
doesn't change that.

Just as the stone-masons of Easter Island expected to be fed for their
efforts the weapons builders and atheletes and all manner of useless
assholes expect to be fed - even while they have absolutely no idea of
how it comes to be that they can be fed.


Yet, sending scouts to a new frontier holds the promise of eventual
economic return that other economcally useless activities do not.

We can't have both?

We can. But there is a limit to which we can support useless
activities. This is called the Schumpeter Limit. When we support
useless activities to the extent that it causes owners to dis-invest
in their assets to support those activities, our economy declines. As
I've said, we are a culture in decline.

The modern age of science and reason is not a high-culture as
anthropologists define it. That's because science hasn't a clue of
what humanity is about. We have no idea of how to answer the question
of the meaning of human existence. Until we do we are a low-culture.
As our needs go unmet we are open to all sorts of insanity. This
insanity can and most likely will lead to our demise as a functioning
culture. Once this is complete perhaps there will arise from the
ashes some sort of post-technical high-culture. The other avenue is
to embrace the meaning we find in space development and the
exploration and development of our global frontiers - this will lead
directly to something brand-new - which embraces technology and
science - and also leads to high culture. But a high culture that
embraces technology and science. Which is to be preferred in my
humble opinion.

And as I said, it's a gamble as to which probes
will obtain information that will be profitable. Profit can be *a*
motive, it should not be the *only* motive.

Why? If you don't like the word 'profit' then subtitute the word
'benefit!' Clearly we should only do those things that deeply and
truly benefit humanity. Whether its humanity writ large or writ small
- but we should always look for the benefit. (the small benefit would
permit sporting events, but not the excesses which are merely a
reflection of our insanities.)

Its
precisely because interplanetary space and the cosmos beyond holds
vast resources that this is true. All that's required for humanity to
make economic use of these resources is that they be brought to market
at a cost the market can bear. As we already have achieved with
commuinications, sensing, and navigation satellites. If we are
permitted by those who control us to invest freely in rocket
development, then we may expect that the markets for space based
assets and resource will grow. Once this growth takes place it will
continue without end. Which is quite different than growth based on
limited Earth resources - which those controlling powers see so
clearly as the basis of their authority.

Okay, so what are we arguing about?

The current status of our global culture as a culture in decline. A
culture that hasn't a clue of what its about or where its going. A
culture that is destined for the dust-heap of history.

I'm for doing all that.

Right. Developing the economic utility of the vast resources of
interplanetary space are unarguably the highest best use of risk
capital available to us today. Absolutely.

We
probably can't really call ourselves a spacefaring civilization until we
do.

That's right. We are potentially a space faring civilization. To the
extent we turn away from the opportunities presented to us by
resources and assets in interplanetary space - we are a culture in
decline. To the extent we embrace these opportunities and demand of
them, and of ourselves, the benefits we deserve, we are a culture on
the rise.

But not everything we do in space *necessairily* is/will be to those
ends.

No. We can waste vast resources in space pointless defending
ourselves against one another or defending ourselves against low-risk
outcomes. Absolutely. Why we do things in space is just as important
as what we do.


Again, what does one do with wealth?

Precisely. This question would not be possible in a high culture. It
is only possible in our low-culture. Once we all know and agree on
the answer to this question - because of its obviousness - we will
have graduated to another level of cultural development.

I bought a car, because I need
it to get to work (though it happens I'm a walkable distance to my
current one, but that most certainly wasn't always true). It therefore
helps me earn money.

shrug Wealth profit are terms that are subject to abuse (as all
terms are) So, lets talk about benefit shall we? Individual action -
like the worker to went to work every day on Easter Island to carve
out huge blocks of stone - is difficult to assess in the short term.
It is only in a larger context one can make such a determination. You
have not provided an acceptable context in which to judge your
behavior. Such context is not possible in a low culture such as ours.

I also use it to go to a movie theatre. It therefore helps me do
'unprofitable' activities like entertain myself.

You seek to define something for which a definition is impossible in
the context of our current cultural melieu. You use this
impossibility as a means to argue against what I am saying - when in
reality, the very impossibility of the argument proves my points
exactly.

But then, I work to
live, not live to work. For me, 'profit' isn't an end in itself, it
makes the *rest* of my life possible.

Yet none of what you do is clearly connected to the benefit or
survival of the human species or even your culture or even yourself -
which shows the extent to which you are caught in a low culture.

Wealthy nations and civilizations have similar options. This is why,
for example, Cassini was launched by the United States, not Haiti.

Haiti has been impoverished as much by US imperialism as by their own
actions. The US dominates global affairs and the US hasn't a clue
about the meaning of life. The US since the end of world war II has
maintained a global hegemony that benefits its own citizens. But
since it hasn't a clue as to the ultimate source of true wealth, it
does so at the expense of non-US citizens - and as a result is a bane
to the rest of the world. For this reason it has come under
increasing and sustained attack by those outside the US co-prosperity
sphere.

The US isn't particularly bad in doing this. This is the result of
the age of reason. Had the US shunned the leadership role it has
taken up, others would gleefully take up the role in its place -
likely with far worse results for the world.

In the 1950s and 60s when the world briefly embraced the development
of interplanetary space the world was on the very beginnings of a new
age of development that lead directly to a post-national paradigm.
When the US and other nations saw this tendency of space development
they summarily rejected space development as a goal and sought to bury
all memory of such development in the stuff of fantasy. As a result
we have since become a global culture in decline passing first through
the Beruitization of the globe and ultimately the destruction of
technology and the rise of a post-technical ethic. If this is allowed
to come to pass we will not be space faring, but post-technical - with
a religion and culture to support it for a very long time.

Our only hope is the rapid and immediate development of interplanetary
resources and assets to the benefit of all humanity. Space
communcations, space navigation, space power, space manufacturing, and
so forth.