> There's no reason to send people other than to show we can.
That is true for lots of other things. What's the point of building the Taj Mahal? What's the point of running a marathon? What's the point of getting the world record for the longest time spent underwater? Just to show that we can.
> Elon's plan would make a lot more sense if Mars was an Earth 2.0 and we just needed to move a bunch of people there, but it's not and even if we do find something really close to Earth with JWST, it would take centuries to get there.
I agree that we probably won't be able to have a viable Mars colony in our lifetime. However, I do think that the pursuit of that goal will result in lots of useful inventions; just look at what SpaceX has accomplished already.
Making a reusable rocket is not the same thing as a sustainable settlement in a hostile environment. I mean sure ...why not other than it's a huge waste of resources.
Musk aside, I think there is huge value in knowing how to sustain human life indefinitely without the earth. In fact, I think its inevitable that humans will need to leave earth at some point in our future.
It may simply be as a result of population and overcrowding, it may be to flee war and persecution. I think there is a small chance we have already made changes to our atmosphere that make life here incompatible with humans.
Its possible that within just a few hundred years, humans need to live entirely within climate controlled environments. If I had Musk level money I would be working on this now.
it may be a hot take, but yes. A lot of humanity has indeed been ways to show off how big someone's dick is, or as a dick measuring contest.
The moonlanding was an amazing but ultimately useless landmark in the grand scheme of things. Very little of the tech used back then is useful for a practical space supply line. The ability to launch out of our atmosphere and later put sattelites into orbit was 90% of the worth of such resarch 60 years later.
I think that from everyone else's perspective, an ideal copy of me would be me; by the definition of "ideal copy". I, however, would not consider the copy to be me; to me, there is only one me.
Scientific American isn't a social media platform; by publishing these opinion pieces, they implicitly support them. Would you be ok if they published an opinion piece bashing evolution and defending creationism?
Major news orgs publish op-eds they disagree with all the time. They label them as opinion.
It's actually unfortunate if publications decide only to publish things they agree with because that fails to acknowledge they could be wrong.
Evolution and creationism are settled wars (as far as science is concerned) and wouldn't be interesting to readers. It would be interesting to read a serious assessment of, say, the Covid lab leak theory.
> by publishing these opinion pieces, they implicitly support them
This would seem to be true if they tend to run opinion pieces that are all from one "side". If they ran pieces that espouse conflicting viewpoints, it would not imply that they support all of the opinion pieces they publish.
From the look of it, they stick to one team. They wouldn't be taking this heat if they had a broader diversity of thought.
Depends on what you consider diversity of thought. "Bashing evolution" is not diversity of thought, it is crackpottery. Diversity of thought exists in opinions about, e.g. what evolutionary mechanisms are most important, how to interpret old evidence, what are the best opportunities for new research... A Creationist will look at that and call it "all one team" because none of them believe the universe is only 5000 years old, but that's nonsense. It's important to keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out.
I expect them to publish op/ed pieces they believe their subscribers will find interesting. As long as they're clearer labeled as opinion, what's the problem? Op/ed pieces have been part of journalism pretty much forever.
Should it be impossible to have a rigorous scientific method for reporting and peer review in the news section, while advocating for certain actions or perspectives in the opinion page?
If someone sends me a Wall Street Journal news article that reports on facts, I can trust it, even if their opinion page is intellectually bankrupt.
Democrats actively fought against voter id laws. Instead, they should have supported those laws, but with an amendment to make it easier for people to get an id.
I do think trying it is a better tactic than not, but would not bet on embracing reasonable ID laws preventing a push to modify those to unreasonable ones from becoming exactly as big an issue, through the same mechanism, among the same voters.
That’s the risk when the measure is more-or-less harmless but also the problem it addresses isn’t real. They can just keep claiming the problem still exists and running on it.
Sort of. As far as I remember, his primary motivation wasn't to get treatment (he actually doesn't want to get treated at all at first), it was to leave behind enough money for his family.
