Sid Meier Interview

[Chaos Theory]

Originally posted by PJayTycy
I meant that those rovers on mars can give us a lot more info about Mars than any human could if we sent one there.

If cost isn't an issue, that is flat wrong. Rovers are nice, but are quite limited. Send a few people, with reasonable provisions and equipment, and they can dig hundreds of meters deep, perform extensive chemical tests on soil, explore a wide area, yield medical data on the effects of low-G on people, etc.

[Darkstar]

Hydro, we are going. So don't panic! The commercial sector is approaching critical mass. Finally! So, unless something very unlikely comes along to stop it, we should have commercial services and tourists locations in orbit and possibly on the Moon.

PJayTycy, I'm afraid you've bought into that whole "humans suck" proproganda. The truth is that if we had sent actual geologists to Mars, we'd have gotten 100 million times more science back then the rovers. There's just so many things that the rovers cannot do. Like turn over a rock. That's a very simple, very basic sort of thing that geologists actually do.

Probes are nice for suicide missions. But most robotic probes cannot collect better science, faster, then a human doing the job. There's just a few instances where a human cannot match a probe, such as automated sky searches. We just aren't that advanced yet with our robotics and on-board software. We've got hundreds of years of human-instramentation and human-observationg collecting science. We've barely got a few decades in with robotic probes.

The problem is that the majority of people think that space is a waste. Why do they think it is a waste? Because they cannot go there themselves. They do not see their idols going there. Space is like deep ocean research to the public. Just a waste of money that could be better spent on subsidizing their viagra prescriptions. When the world's social Elite start living or at least vacationing in orbital and Luna properties, then they'll think space is the best. Until then, we have to soilder on.

Actually, the US does share its info, and quite well. Ask the Russians we work with. Now, during the Space Race, of course they didn't. But then, the space race was about demonstrating how good your rocketry was, and how well you could launch something heavy, like say, a nuclear bomb, into any orbit of your choosing, and have that payload come down whenever and wherever you like. I cannot imagine how people could be so selfish though and not share that sort of science at the time. Imagine, if the Axis and Allies had just cooperated and shared all their research, we could be half a century advanced now! We could be living on Mars already!

[Chaos Theory]

People working together, efficiently, effectively seems more far-future to me than a permanent colony on Mars. Right now, conflict drives advances, and peace allows frivolities to consume our time and energy. Getting the best of both worlds seems impossible with people as they are now.

[vishniac]

Originally posted by PJayTycy

I meant that those rovers on mars can give us a lot more info about Mars than any human could if we sent one there.

Steven Squires, the rovers' principal investigator, likes to say: what the rovers did in 1 1/2 year, a man could have made in 3 days.

[PJayTycy]

About the rovers <=> humans: ofcourse, if could send real laboratories, a lot of supplies, a vehicle and a few geologists to Mars, they would gather more info than the rovers did now.


The point I wanted to make however is about what we can do now. We can send rovers to explore mars because we don't have to worry about them ever coming back. The furthest away humans can go at the moment is the moon. I just think we can learn more at this moment from satelites and unmanned probes than from a few people orbitting the earth in the ISS or walking on the moon.


Maybe, I'm a little sceptical because I don't see them really building something there. If they really pull it off to create a permanent selfsustaining moon-base, that would be very cool, but I just don't see it happening.

[binTravkin]

People working together, efficiently, effectively seems more far-future to me than a permanent colony on Mars. Right now, conflict drives advances, and peace allows frivolities to consume our time and energy. Getting the best of both worlds seems impossible with people as they are now.

QFT, CT, QFT, it's worth a sig if you don't object.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by binTravkin

So you pretend that if someone keeps his knowledge from others he is actually boosting the overall advancement?

Oh, come on, that is not even logical.

No, but as your sig now states conflict / competition spur advances. Among the advantages are that technologies under development often advance on parallel tracks rather than all competitors adopting the first solution to a particular problem. In the long run most technology ends up as public knowledge (and before that it is often stolen), and this combined with the multiple research tracks gives technologists more ways to approach / solve a particular problem. And there is of course the increased sense of urgency that any agency in a competitive environment will feel. The results on the record speak for themselves.

[binTravkin]

It is if they go parallel and if the researchers doing the parallel are somehow on the same level of success.

If something has been discovered long before, it gives no advantage to rediscover it, or do you think Chinese are inventing a completely new way of spacecraft?

Ways of approach are not infinite, and, if one takes the same way that has already been walked and walks it again without having 'the map', it actually gives nothing or very little to the overall advancement.

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by binTravkin
Ways of approach are not infinite, and, if one takes the same way that has already been walked and walks it again without having 'the map', it actually gives nothing or very little to the overall advancement.

Still, it's a bit of a shame that the Chinese Space Program (AFAIK) does not take more ideas over from the cheaper surface-to-orbit projects under development that some space companies are taking.

Remember that 'spaceplane' that won a prize?

[Darkstar]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
People working together, efficiently, effectively seems more far-future to me than a permanent colony on Mars. Right now, conflict drives advances, and peace allows frivolities to consume our time and energy. Getting the best of both worlds seems impossible with people as they are now.

Not conflict. Competition. Conflict is a form of competition.

Competition drives advances.

People work together, peacefully, every day. It is in our very DNA to do so. Consider how many people peacefully cooperated the next time you have a meal. Consider all the people that worked together so that you didn't have to spend the whole growing season tending to that food that you eat. Consider that no other group of people is coming by to take your food from you, forcing to fight to keep your food.

We cooperate, everyday. Actual physical conflicts are the exception, not the rule.

Welcome to the closest thing humans will come to paradise while still alive.

[Chaos Theory]

Originally posted by Darkstar


Not conflict. Competition. Conflict is a form of competition.

Competition drives advances.

People work together, peacefully, every day. It is in our very DNA to do so. Consider how many people peacefully cooperated the next time you have a meal. Consider all the people that worked together so that you didn't have to spend the whole growing season tending to that food that you eat. Consider that no other group of people is coming by to take your food from you, forcing to fight to keep your food.

We cooperate, everyday. Actual physical conflicts are the exception, not the rule.

Then you have a somewhat narrow definition of conflict. I see sleazy lawyers as in conflict with their targets, corrupt politicians in conflict with their constituents, companies sometimes in conflict with threats to their profits, etc. Peace does work, but being able to buy food year after year isn't an advance anymore.

Welcome to the closest thing humans will come to paradise while still alive.

I'm not settling for this. It's better than almost any time in the past, but we can do better. I plan to live a while, and might as well improve my life while I'm at it.

[Darkstar]

Chaos Theory, you don't have to accept it.

My definition of conflict is rather narrowly confined. Having been in a few mortal conflicts, that's shaped my defination of conflict. Anything that doesn't directly affect your immediate continued existance is not a conflict. It's merely competition. Otherwise, you would have to say that all of life is just one conflict, as anything has the potentional of affecting your life, over a long period of time.

We can buy whatever you want. Food, shelter, entertainment, tools to aid you in improving yourself. For most posters here, our only real wants and needs are emotional in nature, not of survival. And if we want to, we can buy aids and tools to fill our emotional needs. So, lets try this again...

We are living in as close to paradise as humans are able to build. We have the capacity to have all humans alive living similarly. However, due to their local and national politics, their leaders and bully boys won't let them, because their leaders feel it would take away from their own personal power. But, their leaders still have them cooperating, on local, regional, and global levels, as it benefits their leaders (and sometimes, them). This cooperation benefits us. That's the point to cooperating. You get a benefit that you otherwise could not get just on your own.

We are at the point technologically where we could implant a device into a human, and be able to create euphoria in them, as long as we want, for the rest of their life. You may be happier throughout your life, being a drone, working for the state, collecting your pay in time with your own activated personal joy creator, but I don't find that to be paradise. The addict (and it would be very addictive), of course, would. At least, in between working for the state. I find this to be the opposite of paradise myself, but our descendants will not.

When you say paradise, what do you envision? How do humans fit into it? Does it survive human nature? No ideal paradise can survive human nature. This is as close as we've ever come, and it will be as close as we ever will, so long as humans themselves are not very radically and very seriously changed.

[Chaos Theory]

I'll have to work out what I'm interested in as paradise, as possibilities unfold. I am happy now, but if there were no hope of improving upon today, I would not be happy to stay put at today's society. This is not as close as we will ever come to paradise, and I say this based on realizing that past generations have thought the same, and been wrong, every time*.

When you say we have the capacity to have all people living at presumably a western standard of living, I have to wonder. There are enough bad leaders and idiots to follow them that we don't have the capacity to bring prosperity and freedom to everyone. If you mean we have enough material resources to make everyone happy, that's not true either since some people need to be happier than others to be happy at all. This, of course, is fallout from human nature. Granting everyone their physical needs does not entail paradise.

I wonder how many people would be content to be mindnumbingly happy drones. I suspect many such people are inclined to be sheep, following the easiest path and propping up a variety of bad leaders. If they can be effectively removed from the population, in a perfectly humane way, I don't see the problem.

*In the past, people in prosperous societies have generally been happy, just like we are today, despite less access to technology and science. I'd guess that a citizen in ancient Greece was usually happy, despite needing to grow his own food, being vulnerable to all sorts of disease, and generally dying at what we would consider a young age. He probably never left the vicinity of his birthplace, and communicated through no more advanced means than improvised mail. Subsequent generations, despite having more "goodies" were no happier, but without progress would have been sadder. In this sense, prosperous civilizations have been "near paradise" for millenia. If you consider a lower mortality rate or bringing a larger fraction of a civilization's population into prosperity an improvement, then we have made progress and will continue to do so.

[Darkstar]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory I wonder how many people would be content to be mindnumbingly happy drones. I suspect many such people are inclined to be sheep, following the easiest path and propping up a variety of bad leaders. If they can be effectively removed from the population, in a perfectly humane way, I don't see the problem.

Well, the vast majority of humans would love to do so.

And I agree with you. I prefer people that are actively trying to improve matters then those that aren't. But improvers are a very minor number of people versus the wantabee drones of humanity.

[GeoModder]

I'm a drone... gimme me beautiful shiny thingies!