I like this quote a lot, because it really gets to the crux of it. It’s all about seeing things in sci-fi, and simply wanting to have them, without any thought paid to what the actual themes of the work are, and even less to the question of “is this actually possible?”. It’s in the show, and it… - ThreadSky

nataliereed84.bsky.social • 8 hours ago

I like this quote a lot, because it really gets to the crux of it. It’s all about seeing things in sci-fi, and simply wanting to have them, without any thought paid to what the actual themes of the work are, and even less to the question of “is this actually possible?”.

It’s in the show, and it…

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krietzsche.bsky.social•7 hours ago

Elon’s name is ‘borrowed’ from the Supreme Commander of Mars from a Werner Von Braun novel

bonuslesbian.dyke.city•7 hours ago

i happen to think the pursuit in itself is good and leads to improvement regardless if it fails or not.

nataliereed84.bsky.social•7 hours ago

*gestures around at the dystopia we’re in due in very large part to failed tech-utopianism and the myth of infinite progress*

bonuslesbian.dyke.city•7 hours ago

i don't mean it in a ooh technology will deliver us from evil sense i mean it sparks the imagination to strive for things we do not have. i don't think it's bad to have dreams & aspirations. even if you never reach them. people need to strive for what they can't reach. maybe no diseases or the moon

nataliereed84.bsky.social•1 hour ago

This conversation isn’t ABOUT dreams or aspirations. Nobody is saying “humanity shouldn’t strive for things”. Jesus fucking Christ.

bonuslesbian.dyke.city•52 minutes ago

okay well i consider space to be an important aspiration.

bonuslesbian.dyke.city•49 minutes ago

saying something is impossible and we should leave at that isn't an enticing proposition to me.

jons253.bsky.social•3 hours ago

Mars especially is about the *worst* planet to start with. Its gravity is *just* high enough to make rocket landings difficult, while its atmosphere is just a *little* too thin for effective aerobraking. There's no protection from solar radiation on the surface, but there's no evidence of naturally-

jons253.bsky.social•3 hours ago

occuring caves like the lava tubes on Luna, so you'd have to excavate a site first. And there's no reason to live there - no volcanism in the last few hundred million years means any useful ores are deep beneath the surface, and you can't grow food there. It's about as useless as a planet can be.

nataliereed84.bsky.social•8 hours ago

…looks cool in the show, and the technobabble explanation “makes sense”, and it FEELS possible, so it must be possible, right?

Flying cars, hoverboards, Mars and exoplanet colonization, AI, androids, nanotech… We keep bashing ourselves against these ideas, because we AREN’T actually very good…

nataliereed84.bsky.social•8 hours ago

…at separating fiction from reality. Sci-fi - including more and more stuff that is supposed to be set in the present day, like superheroes - has consistently treated it as a given that these things are possible. It’s even sort of taken for granted that a superhero’s origin being “nanotech” or…

nataliereed84.bsky.social•8 hours ago

…”AI” or “genetic engineering” related is more “realistic” than them getting their powers from magic, cosmic rays, or radioactive spiders! Which is fucking NUTS! We treat it as completely normal to think that some zany imaginary impossible shit is more “realistic” than other zany imaginary…

nataliereed84.bsky.social•8 hours ago

…impossible shit! That’s nuts!

And so OF COURSE people have internalized this! OF COURSE if the culture keeps telling lay people, with little scientific literacy, over and over and over, for decades on end, that Martian colonization and sentient computers and nanotechnology and so on are…

nataliereed84.bsky.social•8 hours ago

…possible, and realistic, and “just around the corner”, perhaps even an “inevitable” byproduct of the “approaching singularity”, the. yes, OF COURSE those people are going to accept that as true, and think of these technologies as real, genuine things that we can have. Why wouldn’t they?

nataliereed84.bsky.social•8 hours ago

So we get the current situation. A society that’s technological “innovation” is now entirely wrapped up in chasing fictions and phantoms, and making an endless series of increasing empty promises, and marketing useless junk packaged in the aesthetic of sci-fi, and rebranding old crappy technology…

freetahfox.bsky.social•8 hours ago

We should start with a moon base. After fifty years of doing that, maybe try mars.

nataliereed84.bsky.social•8 hours ago

See? This is what I’m talking about. The moon base is almost just as impossible and silly. It just SEEMS more realistic and plausible because that’s how it works in fiction. In fiction, the moon is the easy one that we do first. In real life, though, we haven’t even colonized Antarctica or the…

nataliereed84.bsky.social•8 hours ago

…Ocean, both of which would be INFINITELY easier (yet still extraordinarily difficult).

freetahfox.bsky.social•7 hours ago

Colonizing those areas will harm ecosystems that the population of earth depends on. We do not need any more population. It’s already maxed. We need to move off earth as soon as possible, in a way which does not wreak havoc. Send up robots to see if they can start doing anything useful.

lizardky.bsky.social•7 hours ago

PS:"The country's full!" is a common shibboleth among nationalists and racists. To me, it immediately marks someone as meriting closer observation and reduces the odds they're arguing in good faith. It *may* be being used naively, so it's not an insta-block, but it's a yellow flag.

freetahfox.bsky.social•7 hours ago

A human needs certain things. It needs food, water clothing oil, coal, wood, metal, etc. once all that’s gone, the empty map doesn’t matter. Most human political systems lean towards unequal wealth distribution and that’s not likely to change. The other answer is unlimited resources.

lizardky.bsky.social•7 hours ago

Drive coast-to-coast in the US.

Then come back here and tell me "the population is maxed".

freetahfox.bsky.social•7 hours ago

How much of what you see is edible?

nataliereed84.bsky.social•7 hours ago

This is just more sci-fi talking points. Why is the population “maxed”? Why do we “need” to move off Earth? Why do you think colonizing an exoplanet wreaks less havoc? Do you really think the reason we aren’t in Antarctica is to protect the ecosystem? An ecosystem that is basically nonexistent…

nataliereed84.bsky.social•7 hours ago

…once you leave the coastline? Why even *consider* these questions before we’ve even figured out if it’s even actually possible to *do*? Have you ever thought through this stuff yourself, or just sort of went with the ideas in media that seemed to make sense?

freetahfox.bsky.social•7 hours ago

It’s a lot easier to keep a moon base supplied. Structures can be delivered from earth more cheaply. Crew rotation as well. The goal for humanity now is to move off earth so our rampant consumption and expansionism doesnt kill us. We can mind the moon robotically for everything we need for mars.

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