A lot of stuff not about Orion boosters, split from another thread.

[darthgently]

58 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Now in space you need an very high order of magnitude more.

Don't forget egg and sperm banks that increase diversity without increasing population at the start and automation completely disrupting the labor issue.  Personally I have misgivings about all the speculation about new ways that humans will generate new humans, but I'm trying to objective here because I also think that survival of terrestrial life beyond Earth is important so all paths should be looked at, even if rejected eventually.  And when I write "beyond Earth" I don't necessarily imagine a near term global disaster like many, short of an asteroid strike, but more long term, like normal glaciation cycles, the expansion of the Sun etc.  Major glaciation will happen again, it is inevitable, while it will likely not end all life on Earth, it would severely affect humans.  An asteroid strike could certainly set back terrestrial life to the cellular level and wipe out humans if big enough with not enough time or the wrong scenarios for intelligent life to re-emerge.  Finally, I think intelligent life has a purpose and that purpose is to build a bridge for life to better pastures when necessary.  We are remiss in our duties if we do not push outward.  A plant that refuses to flower is a dead end

[SunlitZelkova]

If the purpose is to protect human life, space colonization is completely understandable, but I don't think it is necessary at all for the survival of "life itself". I think this just is a matter of not appreciating life as whole and instead being "self-centered" on our Holocene biota.

It's like saying all life was going to end when the K-Pg impact occurred. Obviously, it didn't.

This is just in relation to the concept of protecting life itself. There is, of course, merit to protect current life and all of the intricacies that entails.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I know that a lot of people here would object to anthropomorphizing natural processes or ascribing intent to a process or collective result of a billion years of convenient accidents... but if we keep in mind the thought that sometimes incredibly complex things can arise from simple rules (instructions) the concept is perhaps not so objectionable:

I have this optimistic sense that the 'purpose' of life is to continue and spread.  Life in various forms literally infests this planet - from the bottom of the oceans, through the deepest mines to the thinnest atmosphere... literally it is everywhere, except where it can't be (and that 'everywhere' includes a lot of places we used to think 'it can't be'.)

SOOOO.....

There may be a 'purpose' to life driving a species to get intelligent and then spread off-world.  Like - if its possible, it almost must be done.  Whether by us or a successor species (should we fail and kill ourselves or be unlucky and killed by external forces).  Although I also have this weird theory that 'Life Codes for Luck'.  Every successive generation since life started on this planet has been a little luckier than the last (as shown by diversity and coverage/range).

So I like to think that we'll be lucky enough to get off world - and at a minimum plant a seed or two elsewhere (along with a host of unintended 'guests') that can not only survive but thrive and be a seed-bed for future expansion or repopulation if necessary.

Like Sunlit - I'm not sure Earth's Gaia requires the Holocene biota to be that life; but I also think that its willing to give us our fair shake at it.

Edited April 8, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[SunlitZelkova]

For starters, I’d like to acknowledge that this matter is completely objective, and everyone is entitled to their opinion. So I am merely making these comments out of pure entertaining and thought inducing discussion rather than “arguing” or trying to “prove a point” (I.e. change people’s minds). Although due to how discussion works, it is going to sound like that is what I am trying to do.

6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I have this optimistic sense that the 'purpose' of life is to continue and spread.  Life in various forms literally infests this planet - from the bottom of the oceans, through the deepest mines to the thinnest atmosphere... literally it is everywhere, except where it can't be (and that 'everywhere' includes a lot of places we used to think 'it can't be'.)

The issue I have with these sorts of ideas is that purpose is an entirely human concept. It only exists inside our heads and therefore can’t be applied to anything outside of the behavior of humans themselves. Doing so would be as incorrect as trying to characterize the emotions of an owl in detail- we cannot definitively make such assumptions as we are not owls.

While we debate whether cows, as part of life, have a purpose or not, cows just be cows. As they and their ancestors have been for millions of years. Even if we declare they play a part in some sort of grand purpose, in reality they do not. There is no “reason” that they are here and do what they do, they simply are.

Also I wouldn’t say life “infesting” the Earth is anything particularly special or outstanding. I think that isn’t an actual extraordinary characteristic of life as much as it is a) we underestimate where life can exist because we ourselves have become pretty fragile beings b) we instinctually prefer a cleanly habitat and therefore are induced to believe (without evidence, that is, as a sort of delusion) that we have mastered the planet and are “all-knowing” in regard to how to survive and thrive (e.g. life can only exist where we “allow” it to) when in reality we are just a component of an ecosystem we have no control over. People don’t like to even consider the prospect of no control or us being not as “intelligent” as we are trumped up to be, and therefore are astounded by what is just an ordinary aspect of life.

6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

There may be a 'purpose' to life driving a species to get intelligent and then spread off-world.  Like - if its possible, it almost must be done.  Whether by us or a successor species (should we fail and kill ourselves or be unlucky and killed by external forces).

Next we come to the question of what intelligence really is. Is intelligence simply surviving to the best extent possible? In that case I would say crows are far more intelligent than humans, even without space travel. The number of crows that suffer as a result of lacking the minimum needs of survival is likely relatively far less than the number of human lives ended prematurely by the biologically psychotic actions of humans over the decades. Crows have also had far more time to evolve than humans. If hominid “intelligent” behavior like the use of tools was necessary for survival, everybody would be doing it by now.

I also am of the opinion that human-like intelligence is pretty unlikely. I have been looking into speculation surrounding this recently and the conditions were so precise for Australopithecus and Homo to appear that it will probably never occur again on Earth. The retreat of forests and expansion of grasslands favoring bipeds to the increase in the size of the skull working out in birth, all occurring alongside the increasing use of tools is something most other species don’t need, and such a process is highly unlikely to ever occur again.

6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Every successive generation since life started on this planet has been a little luckier than the last (as shown by diversity and coverage/range).

I somewhat disagree, as the species of the Holocene are currently looking to be about as “lucky” as the menagerie of the Late Cretaceous, while their Pliocene and Miocene ancestors were far luckier as they did not have to contend with the human super predator.

6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

So I like to think that we'll be lucky enough to get off world - and at a minimum plant a seed or two elsewhere (along with a host of unintended 'guests') that can not only survive but thrive and be a seed-bed for future expansion or repopulation if necessary.

 

This is somewhat tied to the question of what intelligence is. What is survival? Why does life need to go to another planet to “be more successful”? Why do we seem to place indefinite survival as a benchmark of success upon species? Even if past species have become extinct, I don’t think that is an indication that they were somehow “inferior” or “a failure”. Extinction is just a natural part of existence, nothing to be feared or looked down upon. If for the time it was extant, the individuals of a species reasonably lived out their lives and successfully survived, I think it can be said to have been a success.

Part of the reason why this notion of “extinction = failure” is prevalent is because people don’t really take into account and appreciate the (to humans) enormous timescales involved. A species going extinct after several million years isn’t like a human being (no pun intended) killed in a car crash at age 25, IMO it should be treated like a man dying at 76. There’s no “failure” in that, even if the man could have lived a healthier life and been alive for another 30 years theoretically.

[farmerben]

On 4/5/2022 at 10:01 AM, kerbiloid said:

Calculate their area and put on google maps.

 

Upd.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/196106/average-size-of-farms-in-the-us-since-2000/

Average US farm = 428 acre = 1.7 km².

Average O'Neill cylinder: d = 8 km, L = 32 km.

S_side = pi * 8 * 32 = 804 km².

Swindows = 804 / 2 = 402 km².

236 average US farms, if the surface totally consists of plowland.

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/fnlo0220.pdf

2 million farms in US.

O'Neill cylinders per USA needed = 2 000 000 / 236 ~= 8 500

Number of US humans per O'Neill cylinder = 330 mln / 8 500 ~= 39 000.

I.e. O'Neill cylinder can provide with food ~40 kiloamericans.

Or, if count the exported food, ~ 100 kAm.

(Exactly like I had calculated before).

 

 A cylinder of that size could support about 50,000 grass fed cows, maybe more if we breed the cows to be more spherical.  

[sevenperforce]

15 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

While we debate whether cows, as part of life, have a purpose or not, cows just be cows. As they and their ancestors have been for millions of years

I will note, for the sake of pedantry and associated motivations, that cows no longer be cows. The qualia that is Black Angus bovid  existence did not exist before humans and would not be able to exist without humans. We may be small in comparison to the cosmos, but humans loom large over this planet. There was once a time where we competed with other species, but that time is long past. Now, the dominant reproductive fitness landscape of this planet is utility to humans. Hence the Black Angus.

I am not so concerned with human extinction as I am with the extinction of knowledge and consciousness. I would argue that there is an essential moral imperative (to the extent that any morality is essential) to preserve knowledge. As a society, we recognize that it is fundamentally wrong to eradicate the lifestyles and cultures of indigenous peoples. We expend enormous energy seeking to understand and document the histories of long-extinct cultures. It is the light of consciousness and knowledge, not the accident of human biology, which we properly seek to preserve. 

[SunlitZelkova]

8 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

I will note, for the sake of pedantry and associated motivations, that cows no longer be cows. The qualia that is Black Angus bovid  existence did not exist before humans and would not be able to exist without humans. We may be small in comparison to the cosmos, but humans loom large over this planet. There was once a time where we competed with other species, but that time is long past. Now, the dominant reproductive fitness landscape of this planet is utility to humans. Hence the Black Angus.

In a causal sense, the variety of different cow breeds do indeed only exist because humans want them to, but I assumed the discussion was pertaining to purpose in a human social hierarchical sense (like “the medic exists in the army to save lives”- but only exists because the military decided it wanted to save lives, not because of some natural necessity to do so. This is being applied to natural processes as though the processes were humans, or had some sort of human sentience).

Within the context of reality outside of human perception, I don’t think the existence of cows that don’t appear in the “wild” is any different than a beaver cutting down trees along a river. That sliver of the riverbed, transformed into ideal habitat for the beavers, isn’t “under the mastery of the beavers, existing with the special purpose of benefiting the beavers”. The trees were simply felled, and I don’t see anything outstanding about the breeding of domesticated animals either- it is a highly sophisticated example of a species altering the environment to its benefit, not something special humans possess. It’s normal behavior of a species with sophisticated capabilities, rather than some almighty, neo-divine act of creation.

8 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

I am not so concerned with human extinction as I am with the extinction of knowledge and consciousness. I would argue that there is an essential moral imperative (to the extent that any morality is essential) to preserve knowledge. As a society, we recognize that it is fundamentally wrong to eradicate the lifestyles and cultures of indigenous peoples. We expend enormous energy seeking to understand and document the histories of long-extinct cultures. It is the light of consciousness and knowledge, not the accident of human biology, which we properly seek to preserve.

I am curious as to how this relates to the discussion. Knowledge is certainly something that must be preserved but this struggle is something occurring within humanity rather than pertaining to the wider universe and Earth ecosystem.

Also, couldn’t it be argued that the preservation of “knowledge and consciousness”, as things that are virtually only used to enhance the survival of a species, is thus part of an attempt to preserve a species?

If not for use in survival, I don’t see why knowledge would be worth artificially preserving.

Edited April 9, 2022 by SunlitZelkova

[sevenperforce]

On 4/9/2022 at 5:11 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

The trees were simply felled, and I don’t see anything outstanding about the breeding of domesticated animals either- it is a highly sophisticated example of a species altering the environment to its benefit, not something special humans possess. It’s normal behavior of a species with sophisticated capabilities, rather than some almighty, neo-divine act of creation.

I wouldn’t call it neo-divine either. The origination of new species under our guidance wasn’t necessarily even intentional; it was just an accident of history and circumstance, not unlike the beavers changing their local ecosystem.

My point about cows, and everything else we’ve done, is more quantitative than qualitative. If you look at our energy consumption, our access to resources, and our knowledge of our planet, we are objectively quite close to being Kardashev-I. It would take something like ten Earths to provide the current human population with a Western-consumption-level lifestyle. And so without any qualitative or moral analysis at all, we end up with the realization that expansion (which we seem incapable of avoiding) is necessarily going to take us off-planet.

On 4/9/2022 at 5:11 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

Also, couldn’t it be argued that the preservation of “knowledge and consciousness”, as things that are virtually only used to enhance the survival of a species, is thus part of an attempt to preserve a species?

If not for use in survival, I don’t see why knowledge would be worth artificially preserving.

Why do we find value in the concept of being remembered?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

58 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Why do we find value in the concept of being remembered?

Because of who we are:

 

 

Edited April 10, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 4/8/2022 at 4:43 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

The issue I have with these sorts of ideas is that purpose is an entirely human concept. It only exists inside our heads and therefore can’t be applied to anything outside of the behavior of humans themselves. Doing so would be as incorrect as trying to characterize the emotions of an owl in detail- we cannot definitively make such assumptions as we are not owls.

I struggled a bit on how to respond in a way that doesn't seem married to the 'flaw' of anthropomorphic analogy, and while I wrote:

On 4/7/2022 at 9:32 PM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

There may be a 'purpose' to life driving a species to get intelligent and then spread off-world.  Like - if its possible, it almost must be done.  Whether by us or a successor species (should we fail and kill ourselves or be unlucky and killed by external forces).  Although I also have this weird theory that 'Life Codes for Luck'.  Every successive generation since life started on this planet has been a little luckier than the last (as shown by diversity and coverage/range).

if we exclude the word 'purpose' in its context of 'a thing having a plan or intent', but rather apply the meaning of 'its functional duty' or why it does what it does... there is an evolutionary explanation for what I attempted to communicate.  The thread of that is found in this video and the discoveries of Dr. Lenski:

...especially if you watch through the part about hypermutability and the Power Law.

Life kind of does 'code for luck', and things do 'keep getting better'.

Edited April 10, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[darthgently]

On 4/5/2022 at 8:19 PM, SunlitZelkova said:

If the purpose is to protect human life, space colonization is completely understandable, but I don't think it is necessary at all for the survival of "life itself". I think this just is a matter of not appreciating life as whole and instead being "self-centered" on our Holocene biota.

I think a longer, and wider, view is required.  It isn't just human life, or Holocene biota.  It is terrestrial life beyond the demise of the Earth from natural solar or asteroid causes.  The reason a lot of current biota are important is because humans, whether they want to admit it or not, are fairly woven into the current biota to a large degree and the simplest way to recreate an environment for humans, once enough habitable space can be made on a surface or in orbit is to leverage a lot of current biota (mostly bacterial, microbial, but also a lot of larger things also).  For me the purpose of humans is like the purpose of dandelion seeds on a dandelion.  It isn't to spread humans.  It is to spread life.  We don't know that terrestrial life isn't the only life in the universe, and even if we knew it wasn't so, we'd still want to push outward because it is in our nature

Edited April 10, 2022 by darthgently

[SunlitZelkova]

7 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Why do we find value in the concept of being remembered?

One theory I personally possess is that it is a desperate, subconscious extension of self-preservation- if one can’t survive longer physically one then tries to leave some mark upon the world, to have some comfort in the knowledge that one will not be “gone”.

It could also be an (subconscious) attempt to provide as much information as possible to the next generation, like a twisted, post-death version of a Pleistocene male teaching the young to hunt efficiently.

Although, because humans don’t really need certain instincts anymore (females no longer need be tasked with child rearing and males no longer be solely responsible for things like hunting and defence), I think the answer to that question will come down more and more to each his/her own. And obviously at the conscious level that is just a matter of personal opinion.

5 hours ago, darthgently said:

For me the purpose of humans is like the purpose of dandelion seeds on a dandelion.

I’ll have to go around now and look at different organisms with symbiotic relationships, although describing it as “purpose” rubs me the wrong way a bit, this may indeed be “something”- tangible behavior on our part*, not just merely in our heads.

That said, I still hold my view regarding extinction, and even if an effort can (should) be made, I don’t think it need hold the emotional weight that it seems to have on some people.

*Of course, only if we can get past the other instincts we possess and not destroy ourselves before we get the opportunity to do so.