restoring the dream

On 10/5/11 8:54 PM, l_ed_cox wrote:

> This situation is what I would describe as an "ethical failure." It is
> ethical to plan ahead for the survival of the species. It is unethical
> to plan ahead for the destruction of the species. Right now I see too
> much of the latter and not enough of the former.

I sure can't argue with that.

> We might not be able to produce anything useful from this data. But you
> never know. I'm hoping to build a case for where the unethical thinking
> is coming from on this planet. I figure people deserve to know.

I can certainly pass along resistance where I see it. But my own
impression is that the failure you mention isn't a conscious ethical
decision, but rather, just the logical result of several common (and
probably invalid) assumptions:

1. The future will be pretty much the same as today.
1b. In particular, we'll never have the means to live off Earth.
2. People are trying to kill us (e.g., Twin Towers incident).

Actually, these two assumptions alone are enough to drive investment in
the war machine. If we were in fact engaged in a zero-sum game, doomed
to stay cooped up forever with organized homocidal maniacs, then
investing in defense would probably be our best option.

Also note the proximal reason people assume we'll never colonize space
-- i.e., because we can't do it *right now*. OK, you could argue that
we could be doing it right now if we spent enough on it, and that's
probably true, but it's never actually been done, despite a lot of folks
like us wanting to do it. So it is at the very least expensive, and
probably also hard, which to most people boils down to "we can't do it."
And from there, it is an easy leap to "we'll never be able to do it."

It's that leap that disturbs me most, because most people aren't even
aware they're making it. And it certainly wasn't the case in the 60's,
when "we haven't do it" merely meant "we haven't done it yet." (Or so I
perceive from media records -- but I wasn't even born yet in the 60s, so
it's possible I'm way off base here.)

So, if you go looking for the source of the unethical choices, I suspect
you're not going to find some evil puppet master... but instead, just
legions of well-meaning but ignorant people making the best of the
situation as they see it.

Best,
- Joe