One of the traits of the human species that differentiates it from many other animals is its capability to transform its environment to suit itself. We long ago developed this ability to an even greater extent than any other animal on our planet, and we are still further developing this ability.
So, in dropping a mindless "meat probe", he's experimenting with something that isn't really human. It isn't bringing resources with it, or building shelter, or altering its environment. He's instead artificially limiting the terms of the experiment to environments that are between 40 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit, with arable soil, no predators, and readily available food and (clean) freshwater sources.
Well, hell, under those conditions, many of the places that we live today aren't supposed to be habitable.
One of the traits of the human species that differentiates it from many other animals is its capability to transform its environment to suit itself.
This is an outstanding characteristic of Homo sapiens, but many other living things (not just animals) improve their environments. Everyone in North America is familiar with the example of the beaver
(the mascot of MIT and Caltech), the classic example, but lowly fungi improve their environment by poisoning it against bacteria with antibiotics, and many living things poison, shade, predate in, or otherwise alter their environments.
My favorite example of other animals doing this is the ants. They are incredible: they explore, have organizational structures, wage wars, expand territories, transform large areas -- possibly, in one case, a couple of continents in size.
You seem to have a decent grasp of the author's point, since you just reiterated a huge chunk of it!
The point, as the author repeatedly tried to explain in the comments, is not that this is some sort of actually good idea for a probe. The point is to use it to examine the entire concept of "habitable" by creating a fairly objective standard. It's like how psychologists name and classify disorders just so they have an objective standard to discuss the matter with, long before they understand the disorder. Exploring the meaning of "habitable" explicitly without reference to Man's ability to change the environment is the point.
Yes, the standard is arbitrary. I'm surprised to see so many people freak out over that. Mathematicians do it all the time.
In a nutshell: The human race is prolific, therefore, the earth is a nice place to live.
This argument contradicts the conclusion of a hypotethical alien probe, which declares the planet uninhabitable due to and over abundance of water, snow, deserts and mountains. The probe in this scenario is a collection of randomly distributed naked mindless humanoids tasked with surviving for 24 hours.
100 years ago many people -in the US- had 10 kids in hopes that 2 or 3 would survive. Earth was far from habitable up until then. Most of us -in the US- live far better than a king did two centuries ago. (One example: look into the history of royal toilets.)
Good article for reminding us that life has never (until lately) been a (relative) bowl of cherries. He missed one thing: we're our own worst enemies. E.g., we nearly killed ourselves off not too far back (nuclear war).
For an antidote, read Larry Niven, some of the Known Space novels--he claims that humans are not suited to space, because they grew up in this idyllic world which prospered in a narrow band.
There are other mechanisms that might render the Earth uninhabitable by our kind of life. Over geological time, the partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere has risen. With more solar energy inputs, it may be that oxygen levels continue to soar. Above about 28%, even waterlogged biomass will burn handily: and there are indications that atmospheric oxygen (currently down around 16%) has been well over 20% in the past. If oceanic photoautotrophs pump out too much of the stuff, the continents may well be burned back to bedrock by the resulting lightning-triggered fires.
I get that more oxygen in the atmosphere = a potentially combustible atmosphere.
What I'm a little confused about is why we never hear about spontaneous greenhouse fires? Wouldn't the presence of all those leafy greens push large amounts of oxygen into the (relatively) closed local atmosphere? or is the innate ventilation to the outside world from a not purposely constructed vacuum environment enough to offset the potential dangers of this? I assume it must be or we'd at least occasionally hear of greenhouses resulting in explosions?
One of the traits of the human species that differentiates it from many other animals is its capability to transform its environment to suit itself. We long ago developed this ability to an even greater extent than any other animal on our planet, and we are still further developing this ability.
So, in dropping a mindless "meat probe", he's experimenting with something that isn't really human. It isn't bringing resources with it, or building shelter, or altering its environment. He's instead artificially limiting the terms of the experiment to environments that are between 40 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit, with arable soil, no predators, and readily available food and (clean) freshwater sources.
Well, hell, under those conditions, many of the places that we live today aren't supposed to be habitable.