Ask HN: Why would a city on Mars avoid Armageddon?

Re:Ask HN: Why would a city on Mars avoid Armageddon? by ModernMech on Sunday November 28, 2021 @03:46PM (#29372827)

> The problem with pessimism is that it is usually wrong, always counterproductive, and almost never gets held accountable for either. History is chock full of wrong pessimists.

History is filled with correct pessimists as well. Has anyone ever been wrong by predicting that humans competing for resources on a frontier will come into violent and deadly conflict with one another?

I realize it’s not a particularly deep or insightful thing to say, but there seems but be an unchecked optimism in these threads, one that builds a narrative of humanity spreading to the stars and filling the universe with our light. Meanwhile on Earth Prime we have famine, genocide, war, and an unquenchable need to consume and multiply. If Corona were sapient it would be making the same argument - we must spread to the stars to continue our existence! No one really stops to ask “why?”. Why should we spread to the stars? Why is the continued existence of our species important to the universe? Doesn’t this line of reasoning make humanity no better than a virus?

Imagine humanity coming across a planet filled with sapient alien trees. Completely defenseless and they have no concept of war. What would humans do at first chance? Slaughter them and use them for fuel or building materials. Is spreading the idea and practice of genocide across the universe really what’s best for anyone? What’s the other side of it? Is there an argument for why we should do this thing that isn’t grounded in selfishness?

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Re:Ask HN: Why would a city on Mars avoid Armageddon? by dTal on Sunday November 28, 2021 @05:59PM (#29374093)

>Why is the continued existence of our species important to the universe?

It's important to us, which is the only criterion worth a damn when deciding what we should do.

Specifically, the continued existence of at least some members of the human species is probably the only ethical axiom that every single human on Earth can agree on. If you openly disagree - if you embrace the extinction of the human race as a personal goal - well I can only say that we are irredeemably enemies, and I will seek your destruction with proportionate effort to my estimate of your likelihood of succeeding, and I do not think I will be alone.

(This is not to say I do not also consider sapient alien trees worth preserving.)

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Re:Ask HN: Why would a city on Mars avoid Armageddon? by stackbutterflow on Monday November 29, 2021 @07:16AM (#29378937)

I get what you're saying but what do you think about Mutual Assured Destruction then? Your reasoning goes against this doctrine. That is the leadership of a nuclear country must not retaliate to preserve humanity.

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Re:Ask HN: Why would a city on Mars avoid Armageddon? by dTal on Monday November 29, 2021 @02:30PM (#29384110)

That's a game-theoretical curiosity rather than an earnest desire to eliminate all of humanity. The point is to make a big show of being willing and able to commit mass murder, while fervently hoping it doesn't actually come to that. MAD is actually a result of people trying to prevent nuclear death - for themselves, at any rate. And I don't think human extinction is an intended outcome even in the very worst case (Dr Strangelove's Doomsday Device being, thankfully, a work of fiction).

But of course you're right - it would be extremely unethical to say the least to actually retaliate in a MAD scenario. This fact is well known and widely discussed.

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