this is just it, and maybe gets us back on topic irt how humans react...

is there even any way to project how much capital/man power/ingenuity/resources can be redirected towards the planning and funding and undertaking of this task?

like, do the top 100 cancer researchers in the world stop doing that and start trying to crack the fusion nut? how long will it take them to actually help in an area they have ignored their entire adult lives? would the expected value of pharmaceutical companies' worth be higher if they began testing chemicals to be used on Mars, or testing chemicals that increase worker productivity and happiness?

those two minute, almost inconsequential divisions of labor already are going to need many weeks/months/years(??) to assess the best way to employ the millions and millions and millions of people that are already highly efficient at what they do and whether a complete and total shift in production (along with the re-training time, which prevents even the trainers from doing something else for a while) would bring better returns down the road.

there are thousands and thousands of decisions like that to be made.

what gives me or you or Obama or the United Nations representatives the right to be the one(s) who make the choice?

it's a nightmare of Bureaucracy, or a nuclear nightmare over who the most worthy Bureaucracy is.

either way, all it really takes is one thing of thousands to not go right and the entire plan falls apart.

Wiper, Kurn and masque: It all ends well.

First you noted:
"I reject the idea that saving the species is important."
And then you asked:
"Why is saving the species important?"

I answered your question. Saving the species is important for the exact same reason that you choose to eat food and drink water every day: hence my question - "why do you choose to eat a meal every day?"

Therefore. If you reject the idea that saving the species is important - as you've noted - but you accept the idea that eating food every day is important, then categorically your perspective is both contradictory and selfish.

Didn't read all of the hissy fit, but I don't see what the big deal is if things became somewhat of a dictatorship. Freedom is nice and all when the end is far off, but everyone knows a dictatorship is more efficient getting the job done. Businesses aren't democracies for a reason. If the best chance for the human race to survive were a focused effort lead by a select few who harness the power of the smartest scientists and dictated to the rest what to do, I'd welcome such rule.

Large power-distance and bigger power hierarchies are an efficient way to mobilize resources in a directed manner, within a short-time frame. Sure, force may be required, but whatever is necessary to keep the species alive.

Furthermore, it's not as if Masque is not open to alternatives that could require the use of no force. If you could come up with an alternative that would theoretically keep the species alive, through the use of no force at all, that would be ideal: but even then, you'd have to decide how many people survive and how many don't.

When you've got no available choices apart from choosing between one evil or another, it's preferable to choose the evil that is necessary.

Your logic fails everywhere. Firstly your question was

There have been numerous days on which I haven't eaten a meal, so saving the species can't be important for the exact same reason.

And you are asserting it is important without even attempting to explain why, you can't because there will be some point in time when the universe becomes uninhabitable, when our species ceases to exist, If the only way we can derive meaning from our lives is the continued existence of the species then the sacrifices made will be futile at some point in the future. To the dead I really don't think it matters whether that time is 20 years or 5bn years hence, they are dead. In fact we should probably welcome our impending demise in order to limit the amount of sacrifice retrospectively rendered meaningless.

@FoldnDark

it won't become a dictatorship. I'm very sure that you who has lived in freedom, I assume, all of your life will be suddenly compelled by the drive of species survival when MP's come knocking on your door to take you to your working place and perhaps seize some percent of your food for a cache or even your house for "government" matters and move you to a barrack where you share the bathroom with 50 other people. You will question this authority, there is no doubt in my mind.

A focused effort won't happen because of the reasons I underlined in my posts and the reiteration of them plus some others by Kurn.

@VeeDDzz`

None of us would be in the position to make the choices you talk of.



Which of you ran a business before or currently does?

Are you sure about that? Are you sure that the universe will become uninhabitable any time soon that is not astronomically ridiculously distant like trillions of times current age and certainly well after intelligent life has created unimaginably interesting results and experiences? Are you sure all this will not matter. Have you solved all future outcomes to know that eventually all is for nothing? What if we are serving a purpose not known to us yet? Not saying we do, just saying we dont know that yet. What if in fact it is possible to even alter the fate of the universe through amazing technology. What if through that technology we can even escape to another universe? What if typical thermodynamics is only the surface?

As it is i can describe for you conditions that intelligent life will flourish and create amazing worlds that can exist for over 10^15 years and possibly as much as 10^100 well past all stars and galaxies by recycling energy sources endless of times with small loss each cycle. Do not by the way buy the bs scenaria about the end of the world that arrogant physicists that are still unable to go post standard model are so confident they understand to offer papers about. We have seen nothing yet of how interesting it all will get likely. This is just the beginning. We do not even need a star in order to have a civilization trillions of times more impressive than current.

Woe what is this about Siberia style conditions you are describing? North Korea anyone? Seriously? In a world with our kind of technology you think its necessary in order to work in some big project to be housed with 50 other people, Stalin era style? Seriously? Arent there enough homes for each human alive today? Exactly what is it that you think will put the system in such position to do such ugly things? The only thing that happens in this scenario is to change the jobs people do to ones that support the projects that are necessary. Those will be for the most part jobs like the ones they already do now. It will just be focused on tangible benefits though rather than irrelevant competitive pro profit projects (where one human exploits another for profit) that make no sense in such situation. You still have factories, research centers, hospitals, industry, transportation, computers you name it. Its just that space industry and new manufacturing industry, materials research, fusion etc will take a more prominent role. Thats all. We will still have even better agriculture than today and we will be producing far more energy.

1 mil on Mars is not as impossibly hard as you guys think if it is a priority similar to the defense budgets of all the countries. World GDP is like 90 tril. Defense budget is like 1.5-2 tril. Money means nothing to very little in that world but a correspondence between effort and resources scarcity and GDP will still exist to offer perspective. A rocket with substantial infrastructure sent to Mars today costs about 1-2 bil$. Soon it will be 10-100 mil. The space station cost 30 bil. Can you imagine what one can do with say 100 tril? Something like 3000 times larger effort? How about with improved efficiency 20 years from now that all will be much faster and more advanced? Can we be looking at some 1000000x more impressive space technology development than all prior history if it is part of everyday life to work for it? Yes we could. If it is that important it could. Spend some time to study Mars and see how close to Earth it is in many properties.

It is doable to live there if a lot of effort is placed into designing an autonomous compact society. If you have the energy and local resources all is possible with effort and cooperation. If physics allows it society can deliver it with enough will.


US and Russian societies converted to mega war industries within only 2-3 years of the war in WW2 and in the greatest challenge mankind ever faced united in 20 years we wouldnt be able to change society to do something more remarkable along these lines?

The contract you sign with people worldwide (especially the poor that had no chance before) is that you will not let chaos reign. You will provide for all of them what they need and they will die in the end with dignity and love after they have already seen some of them live elsewhere. You avoid collapse of society before the catastrophe and secure life in another system.

Right now living on Mars is a done deal within 2-3 years (the technology is already tested on earth) but it requires resources from earth sent regularly (still not as bad as space station though). You simply need to find ways to recover what you need from Mars. That is challenging but its not radically different than what we already do on earth. You just need to design more compact factories and skip for a while the consumerism madness of modern world that makes it so important to have 1000 factories making 1000 different t-shirts that all do the same thing. A Spartan compact existence doesnt have to be poor and miserable. Just not idiotically excessive into unimportant details like our current world is like at the expense of other more important priorities. After we recover enough we can go back to our old ways if we havent wised up by then any more.

That's a sweeping statement, considering you'll probably eat a meal sometime today, if you haven't already done so.

You honestly tell me why you keep eating every day (or second/third-day if you want to nit-pick) and I'll tell you why saving the species is important.

Deal?
This is a possibility. I doubt it's probable though, seeing as just 500 years ago, a video camera or a cigarette lighter would've been perceived as "magic". Imagine what a billion years of intelligent evolution can accomplish. You can't. Neither can I, so its meaningless to engage you in a conversation about utterly unpredictable possibilities.

I didn't say anytime soon.

I'm also not saying that it's all for nothing, it won't be all for nothing irrespective of whether that end comes in 20 years or 20bn, my point was directed at VeeDDzz who asserted that the lives already lived will have been for nothing if we don't survive as a species. It doesn't matter to them.

However my point is quite simple, I am not privileging the existence of the species over the lives of the individuals that constitute it.

To address your questions on the previous page

1) I respect human cultures and I doubt very much your "plan" accounts for the breadth of these cultures.

2) I find value in my life and I allow others to determine how they find value in theirs, I am not prepared to impose a perspective on everyone in order to attain some goal that is not common to everyone. Certainly not when the goal is the actual preservation of a incredibly small % of the worlds population.

3) To whom should I be gracious that I have lived?

4) I want a better world for those that come after on the grounds that it is known they will come after, I do not see it necessary to ensure they come after.

21,000 people die every day due to hunger, this is more than 7m people per year, in order to save that many people we would need to get on average 7,000 people off this planet every week for the next 20 years. I reject the idea that people as individuals have less worth the more our number, I reject the idea that saving the last person is more important than saving the people who are dying now, as BTM has alluded all should count for one and none for more than one.

So you wouldn't take the chance to kill one person (let's say if you had the chance to kill Hitler) in order to save 5 million?

No deal, your analogy failed it isn't exactly the same and given that I have shown that you could actually just answer why saving the species is important.

I'll give you a thought though, is your need to eat more or less significant that the needs of others? If you wish to avoid the charge of being contradictory and selfish you should demonstrate how you respond to the 21,000 people who die every day due to hunger?

Personally I think the needs of the less fortunate as important as the needs of the privileged and I think in order to protect the needs of the least fortunate we need taxation to act redistributively. You consider tax is theft.

Yet you are reliant on incredible speculative guesses as to what can be acheived in 20 years despite masque offering numbers in range between 1m and 1b.

Sure.

Yes I would but they are actual lives not potential lives and I haven't yet seen any calculations that would justify masques enslavement of 140 billion lived years.

Each to count for one and none for more than one.

The interesting thing is that thought experiments are interesting because they present challenges to our worldview, whatever framework we subscribe can be tested by these kinds of questions. You've previously articulated a support for a libertarian/utilitarian hybrid that I don't think makes a lot of sense but one that you absolutely aren't prepared to leverage here.

I respond by donating money and making more money to donate more money and travel there as well to contribute to their tourism industry and thus economy. Maybe one day I'll even engage in foreign direct investment and build up businesses in those countries to help alleviate the poverty.

I don't see what this has to do with the conversation at hand though.
Do you also propose that a brain surgeon gets paid roughly the same amount as a cleaner?

Because you are making claims about what sacrifices 7bn people should make and I do not think this is consistent with your worldview, you brought in my eating every day as comparative and I have shown that the comparison fails. You have presented a treatise on taxation here though and given that I consider taxation to be a significantly better mechanism to redistribute wealth I don't think you are consistent.

To what extent is the money you donate impacting your ability to maximise your own potential?

This is a much more complex question than it appears but yes.

How does the comparison fail? if survival is important to you (via your direct actions of adding nutrition to your body), by logical extension, it's important to the species/life that's brought about your very existence.
To the extent that I don't give more than I can afford to give. I don't give an amount that would negatively impact my future earning potential.
Have you ever met a highly intelligent person who also happens to be lazy? A person whose talents have gone to waste? A person whose family/and surrounding community suffers as a result of this wasted talent?

Is it fair that such people would receive roughly the same pay-check as someone who is a hard-working under-achiever? someone who has worked 12 hour days to get to where they are?

Also consider the complexity in performing brain surgery to the complexity of cleaning a house and the resource demands on one's available time with their family and so on.

A surgeon getting paid the same as a cleaner is insane kind of society that promotes misery and mediocrity. And i still see the job of the cleaner as important but the surgeon is even more important. Still its also possible a surgeon that does it only for money and exploits situations to get rich never giving a break to people in need is a worse person than the cleaner and i want to be able to prevent that from happening or find incentives to make it less likely. I want a society that gives both these guys a minimum standard of living and chances to educate themselves and develop skills proper to their nature and liking without any obstacles and then i will reward the one that makes the higher contribution with effort or natural skill the most benefits (or money etc) because not all things are the same in value and learning to be a surgeon takes decades while cleaning is at best a 2-3 years thing if at all.

Also about the value of future lives. Just because something hasnt existed yet itdoesnt mean its not very likely it will or that its not a good thing that it will. We must care about future generations. We have what we enjoy today because of the ones before that fought for it and sacrificed by living in worse conditions. They enable us a less miserable life today and opened the door to a spectacular world if we can get it together and design it.

By allowing future generations to exist by some effort even such ambitious effort as proposed we open the door to amazing worlds to exist also (worlds we would love to know/experience). Our world today is better than in ancient Athens or Egypt's Pharaohs era Nyle Delta. We are better because of what these people among many others learned by living. I am grateful that they lived and gave me the world i have today. It is very interesting.

I therefore speculate that enabling future generations to exist and saving life will provide for them a chance to agree they are also glad they existed and that their world is better than mine.

David Hilbert has in his grave what says it all so elegantly;

We must know. We will know.

This is what it means to be human. That conviction right there. I dont want that dream to die with my generation. Because it is a dream that keeps giving and enriching the human experience.

I was just hinting at the fact the Foldndark didn't and doesn't live in a dictatorship and takes lightly an installation of such a rule. It gets out of hand quickly.

And don't dismiss the possibility of a relocation to a common barrack or housing project so hurriedly, what if the government requires the workers to be close to the factory to cut on fuel costs and efficientize time? This has been done before.

Masque, I understand your ideals, they are noble, they are grand, I see the picture you paint, all I'm saying is that those things will not happen. Humans are not that way.
When was the last time you spoke to someone with an IQ under 100? I think you've spent way too much time surrounded by gifted intellectuals or at least of average intelligence, enough so that you become fooled by the idea that that's how everyone is.

The majority of the 7 billion have no grasp or understanding of what happens around them, in them, you name it. Most of them are uneducated, unintelligent people.


Dereds is right on the money, you are hypocritical by saying you care about human cultures, when some of them would simply not agree with your plans and views or would even oppose them strongly.

I agree with most of what you said but I disagree here. If the surgeon wants to spend his money on elitist pursuits, to feed his hedonistic desires, instead of giving back, I believe he is entitled to do so. He is entitled to use his money as he wishes (so long as he's not committing seriously immoral acts like murdering or directly stealing from people).

The reason I disagree is that without access to those hedonistic motivations (due to restrictions placed on them), perhaps he wouldn't have even become a surgeon (and thus helped hundreds of people) in the first place. Perhaps he would've become something that contributes far less or just turned to drugs instead: to feed those same motivations more directly.

Some people achieve simply for the glory, pride and money that comes with it. If restrictions are placed on such motivations, you'll get less achievement overall.

Because I reject the species is important and consider that individuals are, I am certainly not prepared to defend a line that executes members of this class that you privilege because they dissent from what you consider important. You are failing to see the trees for the wood.

How do you define what you can afford to give. How would giving $10 more per month affect your earning potential. here you are privileging your needs above those of others yet you claim my position is both selfish and contradictory. You may want to revisit.

It is certainly no less fair then the person who works hard cleaning every day who receives hardly enough to survive when there is a class of people who work much less hard who receive an amount excessive to their basic needs.

How complex the job is is irrelevant, I don't think a brain surgeon works harder than a miner yet they receive more, I also don't think it's appropriate to reward based on luck, the myth of meritocracy get's little truck with me.

I don't think ones access to essential resources be reliant upon what skills you are fortunate enough to have and what opportunities you have to identify and exploit them.

A group of individuals - of roughly the same genetic code - can be said to comprise a species. Either you're not making sense here or you're not clarifying your point well enough.
I am not privileging my own needs above that of others because achieving more will allow me to give more. By negatively affecting my future earning potential, through giving too much (an amount that negatively affects my investment potential, etc.) I am able to give less over the long-term.
You sound like someone who hasn't participated in the job market very much but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and I won't make these assumptions.

The fact that you say "how complex the job is is irrelevant" tells me that you'd be happy to promote a system that doesn't incentivize or encourage people to become brain surgeons. Why would anyone want to become a brain surgeon, instead of an artist or a writer? under a system that doesn't incentivize that line of work?

And you don't think that brain surgery is more difficult than mining? I think you ought to Google "brain surgery" and just take a look at the effects of surgeon's long working hours and job demands on their families. In 2009 I did a bit of research on occupational stress and co-authored a book-chapter on the effects of surgeons' work demands. The bottom-line is: most surgeons would not recommend their job to their children.

So, an important job like brain surgery, without significant incentives, would somehow attract the same (or even 'enough') amount of people as mining....under your system?

My point is that I consider the members of the class important not the class. You are privileging the class over those members you would enslave for 140 billion lived years.

yes you are, you haven't explained how giving an extra $10 per month impacts your future earning potential and till you do I will consider it beyond you, similarly to your explanation as to why saving the species is important.

I've worked for over 20 years, I currently donate 10% of my salary directly to the worlds poor. I do not consider that I do enough nor do i think I know it all but after working in 4 different countries I am pretty sure I have significantly more experience of the job market than you.

This however is cowardice, it's an attempt to introduce an argument and withdraw it in the same sentence, you really should focus on your arguments than you are assumptions about me.

I haven't done any research but I think more miners have died on the job than surgeons even allowing proportionality. Also I'd imagine that successful writers make more than surgeons in a lot of cases but that hasn't deterred those who are currently surgeons.

You have a very pessimistic view of people, I think more people would want to be brain surgeons than miners because they would prefer to do that job on merit. Not because of the rewards available to them. Let's just remember that you are asking a sacrifice of 7billion people in order to justify getting a few on a ship to mars yet you hold such pessimistic views.

No it doesn't it promotes the kind of society that considers the person before the profession. It's the kind of society you are going to need on your martian outpost.