He’s very concerned about World War III…but not because of the horrific loss of life or the destruction of civilization, but because it might set back plans to colonize Mars. Therefore, we have to hurry up and get humankind into space before we blow ourselves up.
I don’t think we can discount the possibility of a third World War. You know, in 1912 they were proclaiming a new age of peace and prosperity, saying that it was a golden age, war was over. And then you had World War I followed by World War II followed by the Cold War. So I think we need to acknowledge that there’s certainly a possibility of a third World War, and if that does occur it could be far worse than anything that’s happened before. Let’s say nuclear weapons are used. I mean, there could be a very powerful social movement that’s anti-technology.
I agree that there’s a possibility of a cataclysmic war that would be far worse than anything that’s happened before. So, maybe, we should be concerned about, oh, I don’t know, stopping it? Working to change all the conditions that are leading us to this horrible eventuality, like over population, religious fanaticism, economic inequities, climate change, ignorance, disease?
I can’t help but notice that the Musk Plan is to help an infinitesimal fraction of the population run away, while the bloody big war goes off anyway, wiping out a big chunk of the human species and wrecking a significant portion of the wonderful planet we’ve got right now, all so a few survivors can live in sterile boxes on an otherwise uninhabitable barren wasteland, a planet with no breathable atmosphere. It seems to me that one underpaid social worker is doing more to help humanity than one multibillionaire egomaniac with tunnel vision.
And say, hasn’t Musk proposed setting off nuclear bombs to terraform Mars? I think he needs to imagine a future in which Christian theocrats take total control of the entire technological apparatus of the Western world, the same technology he hopes to use to send his tiny cohort of techno-salvationists to Mars to build a small, fragile colony, and they then slip a small explosive surprise into the next supply package. Or they just decide that they don’t want to support a distant heretical abomination. (There are Christians who oppose the idea of life on other worlds because Jesus is only coming to Earth, you know).
I should also point out that there could also be a social movement that is not anti-technology, but is anti-plutocrat-abusing-technology-to-neglect-humanity, which would be far more damaging to Musk’s selfish and short-sighted aspirations. That’s probably Musk’s worst nightmare, that the grown-ups would wake up and take his toys away.
I might be missing something, but I don’t see anything in the linked article that warrants calling Musk a “terrible human being”. His ideas might be loony — especially nuking Mars — but that doesn’t qualify, in my opinion. It seems perfectly possible and reasonable, to me, to advocate for exploring or even colonizing Mars while still supporting a fight against climate change, wars, intolerance, ignorance, etc.
Through his electric car efforts, Musk is doing more than most to combat climate change.
I wonder if Musk isn’t like some other space exploration advocates, and has the idea running in his head that the problem is simply that we’re not spending enough money on it. That all we have to do is spend enough money and the answers to the problems of manned space exploration will quickly appear. Unfortunately that idea is naïve. Just look at nuclear fusion power, where we’ve thrown hundreds of billions of dollars into the pot, yet we still haven’t had that imminent breakthrough that’s been imminent for decades.
PZ, I think you are presenting a false dichotomy. Musk doesn’t say people shouldn’t try to make the world better, or that he isn’t interested in using any of his wealth to help prevent a cataclysm. (On the contrary, he is using it for exactly that purpose.) He just also wants to get humanity into space. That may or may not be a realistic ambition at this time, but I don’t see why you think it’s evil. There’s no contradiction between that and good works of whatever kind.
On a larger scale, I distrust the privatization of space exploration. Most of the enthusiasm, IMHO, stems from Ayn Rand like Science Fiction read by adolescent boys with no sexual outlet. Nerds, please don’t be offended. I was also describing myself until I began to develop some critical thinking skills.
Cheers
@timgueguen #3: I’m not seeing the analogy. It’s not like people have been trying to colonize Mars, and failing.
I really don’t get this post. Can humanity only do one thing at once? Has Musk said something at some other time that already made you hate him?
@1 Well the terribleness probably has something to do with:
World War III has occurred with massive loss of human life and destruction of a fair portion of the planet which is the best ‘space ship’ for human existence. What is Musk’s only concern? That society may take away his toys.
Might indicate a lack of empathy to say the least.
Paganeng @ 5
I don’t mind seeing the ‘routine’ stuff (aka getting things to low-Earth orbit) shifting to private industry, since at this point, it doesn’t take a visionary to see why you might develop that technology — satellites have a lot of uses for our society.
But the actual exploration bits strike me as still in the ‘this might never be profit-motivated, but is still worth doing’ camp which I associate with NASA and other science/space agencies. But I’m much more interested in sending robots to learn about the solar system than in colonizing Mars. Because, as useful as a geology team on Mars (or even on a moon of Mars, directing surface operation of the robots without that pesky speed of light delay), humans are far more fragile than robots, and Mars is a long way away.
(Then add in that the more we find out about Mars, the more I side-eye terraforming it both for practical reasons* and ethical reasons.)
* It’s looking more and more like, while Mars had an atmosphere thick enough for water to be liquid, it was never that substancial and was lost to space (rather than being chemically bound into rocks or frozen at the poles). Even if you want to get to the ‘can walk around with only an oxygen mask and a jacket’ stage of terraforming, there might not be enough things you can vaporize on Mars.
PZ, I think this falls a bit more into the category of naivety with really poorly thought out expression. Maybe my bar for terrible person has just been set high. (Disclosure: My opinion on space colonization is between yours and the people pushing for it. I personally think it’s a possibility, but will not happen in my great-great-great grandchildrens’ lifetimes.)
Nemo @6
You’re probably not seeing the analogy because timgueguen probably wasn’t giving an analogy. They were urging caution and consideration based on past mistakes. It’s a precedent rather than an analogy.
So why aren’t you a social worker PZ?
I think Musk named his company Tesla as homage to the person he reincarnated from. As in a genius with some looney ideas. Like using nuclear weapons above the Mars North pole to release some CO2 from ice form to greenhouse gas form, dot dot dot. Tesla believed in radio signals coming from ET’s, though invented AC power generators (visit Niagra). Musk also sketched out a plan to link SF to LA with a hyperloop (look it up) that is currently being prototyped by two separate institutes to iron out all the design kinks.
oh yeah, SpaceX is also Musk.
Musk started two companies whose vision is about reducing the dependence on fossil fuels, one via electric cars for the masses (albeit with a start point of electric cars for the elites), the other via solar panels for the masses. And another company, whose focus is on reducing space transportation costs. With the goal of Mars colonization, true, but satellites turn out to be pretty useful for people here at home. Finally, he’s got the pipe dream which is being taken seriously enough as a potential improvement on train technology that there’s prototypes being built.
To say he’s uninterested in solving real problems back home is pretty far off the mark.
To say he’s indulging in adolescent fantasy, well, go ahead and argue that, I’d probably agree.
Based on the snippets there, it’s… rather hard to come to such sweeping conclusions. As cervantes pointed out @4, he didn’t say anything about not trying to prevent wars or disasters. Pushing very hard for an alternate transportation infrastructure that isn’t critically dependent on fossil fuels, to the point of putting rather substantial money and effort where his mouth is, would seem to be a useful effort along those lines.
From what little I can tell, it looks more like an insurance policy – put at least a few eggs in another, offsite basket. There’s plenty of room to argue about the best balance of investments, but I’m not aware of a general case that says you must put all your money in fire-suppression systems and none in fire insurance.
The most evil acts are a consequence of ignorance and naivete, so that doesn’t excuse him.
The whole idea that, when faced with devastating future prospects, you should privilege a few hundred people (your chosen few) with safety, and that you can use the threat of nuclear war as an incentive to support your pet project that does nothing to forestall the threat, is simply odious.
I have no problem with Musk supporting space travel — I like the idea. What I detest is this callous attitude that the prospective death and suffering of billions is a good reason to send people to Mars. It isn’t. There are good reasons to explore the universe, and there are bad reasons, and without fail, Musk always raves about the very worst reasons.
Good reasons:
New knowledge
Curiosity
Testing the limits of human capability
Developing new technologies
Creating incentives to promote science
Broadening human perspectives
Bad reasons:
Saving the human race (you aren’t)
Getting outta here before everyone else dies
I don’t think Musk is even capable of comprehending the good reasons.
Well, that would be relevant if he’d done an evil act.
PZ, what the heck are you smoking?
A technologist who can’t comprehend the good in developing new technologies. Yeah, that’s what Musk is, sure.
This is clearly an echo-chamber practice test. The rumors are true! Every commenter at Pharyngula agrees wholeheartedly with everything PZ says!
***
Wait, they don’t? Someone fix the horde-calibration, quick!
I think Elon touched PZ in a naughty place.
I don’t think Musk is a horrible person, but I do think he’s getting things backwards. The technical and economic challenges of colonizing/teraforming Mars are so ridiculously extreme that only a highly advanced society that has huge amounts of spare resources could reasonably attempt it. That’s not our current world, and won’t be until we’ve fixed all those problems that Musk seems to think are the reason to colonize Mars in the first place. If we somehow lose the technology that it would take to go to Mars, that would just prove that going to Mars was never a good use of technology and resources; it was better spent solving other issues.
If Musk didn’t care about the environment at all, he probably wouldn’t be putting a ton of time and money into electric cars and new batteries to go with solar panels. It’s not like those things are hugely profitable for him – Tesla’s still a small segment of the luxury car market, and the cost of the batteries is a big barrier to producing cheaper electric cars that most new car-buyers could afford.
When you get into details of what he’s ultimately hoping to do in space (which probably will be more than what he actually ends up being able to do), it’s not so bad. He said in a recent interview that he’s hoping to basically get the cost of going to, say, Mars down to the point where a family could probably afford it if they were willing to make it a permanent move and sell their house. Something like $250,000- $500,000, hopefully less. And he’s trying to make the steps along the way there profitable as well, although we’ll see how that works out – I could easily see it being a case where it doesn’t. SpaceX is already a rarity in terms of New Space success.
@Timgueguen
That’s pretty much the opposite of the approach he’s taken with SpaceX. The whole point of SpaceX was trying to figure out how to do space launches cheaper than what they cost when it was founded.
@Ray Ingles
I know, right? I can’t help but wonder if there’s some fear here that if we do multiple steps on stuff like this, it will somehow make people less willing to try and prevent problems in the first place. It’s like someone opposing safety drills and nuclear warfare survival preparations out of the fear that this will somehow make people more willing to tolerate a nuclear war.
I’m not convinced that this demonstrates that he’s a terrible human being. You’re claiming that one should take no measures to protect ones’ own interests in the face of impending potential disaster, and instead divert all resources to preventing that disaster–even if one’s interest has nothing at all to do with the causes of the disaster.
Are you suggesting that Elon Musk set his visions for technological progress aside, and instead become a politician/leader for world peace in order to guarantee a future in which his innovations can thrive?
There may be some trenchant criticisms of Elon Musk, but I don’t think this is one of them. I’m often in agreement with PZ, but this is not one of those times.
Getting human settlements off-world is a difficult goal, and the technological developments that result from it, like most space research, may benefit us on Earth significantly. Right off the top of my head, the kind of life support systems that we’d require for long-term space habitability would need significant investment in biological research and ecosystem management. The ability to grow food in a spaceship correlates well to other similar research in feeding humans here.
We can do more than one thing at a time; if we criticise people for saying that we have to feed all the homeless before allowing one refugee in, we can’t turn around and say that we have to feed all the problems on Earth before we spend a dime on exploring space.
Well, we’re not colonising Mars or any other body. Not for a very, very long time if ever at all. When futurists jerk it to their fantastical ideas about colonizing other worlds, they’re as bad as some philosophers can be when they jerk it to hypothetical scenarios that stretch credulity to justify mass murder (or some other thing).
The exploration of space is an awesome vision. The human species isn’t going to be saved by leaving this planet behind, though. If any condition on this planet can be considered hostile to human life, then there is no word in English, at least, that can adequately describe the rest of the universe, except, perhaps, anathema. Let’s explore and let’s keep our home tidy and always come back to it.
I’m not sure Musk is a horrible person, though. Being wealthy beyond the imagination of pretty much everyone else on Earth is …well, it doesn’t make him horrible exactly. But, PZ does have a point that it doesn’t take malice to do some evil thing or to set some evil thing in motion. Maybe Musk is cynical. No part of the answer to our problems, however, can be to colonise other worlds. I’m very hesitant to endorse anything that comes with that as an initiative. Not that there aren’t unintended uses for whatever technology may be developed along the way, but because self-imposed ignorance is reprehensible and there are better reasons and better goals.
It’s a slight point of pedantry, but I think this is actually rather illustrative of a point that can be made here. We don’t need more food to feed humans here. The problem with starving humans is not one of food. Some 40% of all food produced for human consumption is wasted globally. Growing food in space is a solution looking for a problem. It’s not that it’s not worthwhile, it’s that it doesn’t address any actual need. There’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself. The problem is the motivation. We will not feed more people with that technology. Humans are starving for a completely different reason. Resources are finite. Research, invention and discovery are very important. The pursuit of basic knowledge and science are integral to the betterment of human life. It matters what you’re doing something for. Don’t start with a false premise and divert resources to an end goal with no realistic probability of helping.
This is a bizarre argument. Like arguing against developing, say, AIDS drugs because that’s taking resources away from telling people not to get sick.
Or, imagine a young adult is ready to leave home and strike out on their own. They happen to mention, as one of their many reasons for doing so, that this might mean at least part of their family might survive if — heaven forbid — the original home were to burn down later.
Obviously a genocidal firebug, amiright? A monster who clearly cares nothing for responsible fire prevention. And it’s not like their reasoning even makes sense, because they aren’t going to be taking the WHOLE family along!
Which argument is bizarre? You’re going to have to get more specific. If you’re talking about my post at #26, I’m suggesting solving an actual problem, which is exactly what developing drugs that fight HIV do (there is no such thing as AIDS drugs, AIDS is not the disease it is the result of an untreated HIV infection). I also never said that we can’t do more than one thing at a time.
The point of my argument seems to have gone completely past you. It’s not even subtle. It’s important to have the right reasons to be doing something to start from good premises and to work for the betterment of humanity.
PZ this is absurd. Elon Musk has done more for promoting Electric Vehicles, Large-Capacity battery storage, Solar Farms and re-usable space travel than possibly anyone else on the planet. To call someone who is actively trying to make the world a better place ‘evil’ because he advocates having a fantastical backup plan to human failings is a hyperbole at best.
I think, like most of the other commenters here, that you’ve gone wa-ay too far with this one.
“terrible human being” is an entirely unfair way to characterize Mr. Musk for the quoted statements, although it’s great click bait
PZs OP, of course.
Stop strawmanning him, it is beneath you.
http://www.gq.com/story/elon-musk-mars-spacex-tesla-interview
He is saying that if there is a real world war, we could easily lose the ability to ever get off this planet. We have already used up all the easy to get energy resources, if we lose our technological civilization, it is likely that our ancestors will be limited to animal power, peat, and wood. You can’t build solar panels or orbital rockets with primitive technology.
Musk has always been straightforward with what he wants to accomplish. It boggles my mind that people either don’t believe him or don’t listen and ascribe other motives.
He made a couple hundred million dollars off of what would become PayPal. Instead of buying an island and a bunch of fancy cars, Musk threw it all in to solve the biggest problems he saw with human civilization: we need to switch to sustainable energy sources that don’t contribute to global warming, and we need to become a multi-planatary species so that if a comet we can’t stop hits earth, we don’t lose the only light of consciousness we know of in the universe.
To tackle the first, there is Tesla to show consumers that a pure electric car can be as good or better than an ICE version and to show the big manufactures that there is a market for pure electric cars. Then there is Solar-City that is trying to get as many PV panels on roofs as possible, and is now building a huge manufacturing plant in NY to produce even cheaper panels (and for the naysayers, their discharge water will be cleaner than their input water).
To tackle the latter, he started SpaceX so that they could get the price per pound of stuff to orbit low enough that the whole idea of sending enough mass to Mars to make a colony is feasible.
Just because Musk’s idea of what are the most important problems facing human civilization aren’t your top problems doesn’t mean that they aren’t big problems or shouldn’t be solved. Just because he isn’t tackling your pet problem during his retirement doesn’t make him evil, especially when he is pouring everything he has into trying to make the world and humanity better.
Sorry, but I gotta jump on the bandwagon.
Most climate and military experts I’m aware of agree that any potential WW3 scenario would be, in large part, driven by the warming climate.
Some are already saying that we’re already waging the third world war in the Middle East, and climate change has played a significant role in fanning those flames.
While I think there is more he could do, I think Musk has done more to push the implementation of renewable energy than any single person currently working on it. His work on making electric cars acceptable to the public, and on making home batteries practical and accessible are both significant steps in moving us away from fossil fuels.
The battery work is also a vital step in making us more resilient in the face of the changes in our climate that have yet to manifest.
He IS working to prevent the kind of war you’re talking about, on a massive scale. Maybe there’s more he could do, or different areas he could focus on, but that has ALWAYS been the case with everybody who has done good in the world.
And maybe his reasons for funding space exploration ARE shit, but that doesn’t justify the work that he’s doing here to move us towards a society that runs on renewable energy.
He’s obscenely wealthy, and we already know that that leads to a skewed view of the world and of humanity. I don’t make excuses for that, and it undoubtably leads him down some unpleasant rabbit holes.
But you’re calling him a terrible person because you disagree with some of his statements and fears, and accusing him of not working for a better world, while ignoring the enormous amount of work that he has been and is still doing, and the very real results it that have come of it.
He wasn’t born into wealth, and is only ‘obscenely wealthy’ in the last few years and only if you count his paper wealth in stock. During the 2008 crisis, he mortgaged everything he had to keep Tesla and SpaceX alive and had to borrow money from friends to pay for food.
Even now, he doesn’t live ‘obscenely wealthy’: he has a decently sized, but not extravagant house, his garage contains a Tesla or two plus an E-Type Jag (his first car, which he bought when he sold his first company) and a Ford Model-T that someone gave him as a present. He spends his time either with his kids or his companies, and when he is with the latter he is usually engineering rather than schmoozing on the golf course.
Amongst all the people on earth with Musk’s level of paper-wealth, he acts the least like an obscenely wealthy person.
That…is still a problem of food. As in, one way or another, it’s not reaching people’s mouths.
I get what you’re saying — production is, in theory more than sufficient for existing needs, if only distribution was more uniform and utilization efficiency was better. But that doesn’t mean production improvements won’t also help (particularly if they were localized to areas with shortages), or won’t be needed eventually overall.
Beside, production is obviously not the only food-related technology that space-motivated research could help with. Wastage would also be a key concern there, as well as figuring out diets and crop mixtures which maximize nutrition, improving food storage and preparation techniques, etc.
Growing food in space solves the problem of…having to food to eat in space.
Of course, Rob’s point was that along the way to solving all the problems with that, you may very well accidentally solve some problems with growing food on the ground as well. (Including problems we may not even know we have yet – that being one of the benefits of basic research.)
Thomathy@25: The human species isn’t going to be saved by leaving this planet behind, though.
Exploiting resources in space could certainly help the human species, and several others. There’s a lot out there, with a lot of solar power to help reach and process it. Whether or not Mars is great prospect, any efforts are bound to yield some progress along those lines, and – as has been pointed out by many – it’s not an either/or proposition anyway.
Thomathy@26: We don’t need more food to feed humans here. The problem with starving humans is not one of food. Some 40% of all food produced for human consumption is wasted globally.
And being able to grow a wide variety of foods close to where people actually live would not help with that at all? Let alone the results Rob Bos pointed out regarding “biological research and ecosystem management”. Being able to build a viable closed-loop sub-ecology would help a lot in understanding the larger one we live in. And – as has been pointed out by many – it’s not an either/or proposition anyway.
Dale Carrico was right as he said all you have to do to make liberals become arch-conservatives and nerds morons is say the magic word “tech.”
Already the zealous Musk fanboyism has infected the Pharyngula. “Hyperloop?” Really? People still fall for this sham? Let Jon Oliver speak instead of me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-b_7PMWDio
Meanwhile, here in the real world where real people have to make do with real technologies, social circumstances and physics, the SF-LA high-speed line running on conventional tech is being built while “Hyperloop” is still a bunch of PowerPoint illustrations. http://sfist.com/2015/01/05/californias_high-speed_rail_finally.php
#2: But I have to ask, does he really? After all, how much greenhouse gases do the factories that build Tesla’s cars and batteries produce? What’s the amount for the very resources they’re made of? And anyway, if those cars become just another upper crust toy, the impact of Saint Musk’s deeds is but negligible.
This carries the reek of a greenwashing scheme if I ever saw one.
It’s perplexing people have to be reminded on this fact so shortly after one of the most important climate summits in history. Anthropogenic climate change is a stupendously multifaceted problem that cannot be solved by chants of “FREE MARKET PROVIDES!” It takes collective action, both social and political but also many other forms, to tackle this problem. Just look at another phenomenon that’s roughly comparable to ACC in that it’s both global and threatening to society at large. Was the ozone hole dilemma satisfactorily mitigated by single celebrity CEO con-artists?
No, it took worldwide political action, just like with most problems of globalized society these days.
Funnily enough, that’s how most of my imagined Mars Colony scenarios end. Some twit is bound to wipe out our first extraterrestial outpost. It’s a small miracle noone has taken potshots at the ISS yet.* Mine is a very cheerful disposition.
Hence, if I were to build a classic 1950s domed city on an alien world, I’d fit it with the best possible early warning system I could (perhaps even with one of those “LASERS” I keep hearing about). Only because of asteroids and the likes, of course. The fact that it would also be set off by unexpected spacecraft and nukes or nuke-like devices would be one of those bugs that noone ever gets around to fix. It would be on the to do list, just below “improved AI for Minesweeper”.
The ideal Mars Colony wouldn’t need supply packages anyhow. If there were any they could be dropped off on Phobos, where very serious people make them take off their shoes and belts before deciding everything was contraband anyway and chucking the lot in the bin. In my dystopian scifi universe, everything is generally ok, except for Phobos, which is littered with nail files and tiny scissors.
*I expect the main problem is one of range. It helps that almost everyone with the means is also a stakeholder.
The hyperloop is just a wild idea he had that is technologically feasible with today’s tech. He is just throwing the idea out there hoping someone else will run with it because he has his hands full already.
http://www.gq.com/story/elon-musk-mars-spacex-tesla-interview
So he is annoyed at traffic, has a clever idea that he mentions once he finally gets to his press conference, it gets huge news play, he realizes his off the cuff idea won’t work, so he works on it until it does work, then publishes his viable plan so anyone else can pick it up and implement. Oh and he is building a test track so university students can play with ideas to make it even more viable. And you’re giving him shit for all that?
The Gigafactory will be run on totally renewable resources (on site solar and wind). Current, grid based, battery production already spews less CO2 than gasoline production.
Creating a new car company from scratch requires bootstrapping yourself using higher profit models first so you can get to the economies of scale required for an affordable mass market car.
From Musk’s first blog post about Tesla entitled: “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)”
https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me
applehead@37: Electric cars have lower carbon emissions than comparable fossil-fueled cars, which has been shown quite a few times. It gets better the more non-fossil electric generation you have access to.
http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2014/lifecycle-emissions.html
Tesla’s business strategy is to build a car for the 1% and use the profits from that to develop a car for the masses. Other manufacturers are building cars that have poor range and hoping to improve them over time. The technology for a drop-in replacement for standard middle-class gasoline-powered cars isn’t there. The infrastructure is only still being built to support what technology we have now.
Indeed. Neither can it be solved by chants of “THE TREATY SAYS 1.5C” — it takes political action, deployment of existing technologies, and development of new technologies. All three.
Maybe Musk should start a real life version of Vaultech to protect the vestiges of humanity when nuclear annihilation occurs. OK, sorry I’ve been playing way too much Fallout 4.
Professor Myers,
Have to agree with many others in saying that you are way off the mark with this one. The idea that Musk is a “terrible human being” seems unfair and your characterization of his views on Mars seem more like a strawman than anything else.
Here’s hoping you’ll rethink this one and come back with a more well informed point of view on this at some point down the road.
If this post was headlined “Elon Musk says a terrible thing”, there’d be a reasonable argument to be had. I wouldn’t have agreed with you (because I don’t think he sees it as a reason to prevent WW3) but I could see your point, and even concede the possibility that I may be wrong.
But to title it “Elon Musk is a terrible human being” when your reason for claiming that can be easily proved wrong by his actions (he has probably done more to help try and prevent global warming, and therefore prevent WW3 and make human lives better than any other individual) is fairly ridiculous.
ONE person mentioned the hyperloop.
Nobody has ever said that we won’t have to burn fossil fuels to develop the infrastructure to leave them behind. We used animal power to jump-start the industrial revolution, and we’ll use fossil power to build renewable energy.
Saying that factories or electric cars produce CO2 emissions somewhere along the way is an utterly useless complaint. You’re essentially whining about how we’re not using a system that doesn’t exist because it’s still being built.
While I think the idea to terraform and colonize Mars is hopelessly optimistic as to the time and effort needed as well as the continuing dependency on there being an Earth around to support the process, Elon Musk isn’t a terrible human being for promoting such a scenario. Musk is a techno-utopian who misses more than he hits, but he’s doing fairly more good than harm.
applehead @37,
We call BS. Please provide some quotes from this thread to back up this characterization or kindly admit that you are making shit up.
Has anyone anywhere suggested that any dilemma will be “satisfactorily mitigated by [a] single” anything? WTF are you even talking about with this?
Has anyone suggested or implied otherwise? If you think so please provide specific quotes.
Bottom line is that you seem to feel Musk is a “con-artist” and anyone who disagrees with you is apparently a “zealous Musk fanboy.” That about right?
Ray Ingles, you may notice that I never framed anything as an either/or proposition. Read for comprehension and don’t make things up that I haven’t said. I was also pretty careful in mentioning that there may well be benefits from endeavours that have unrealistic goals. It’s as though you didn’t actually read my two comments.
On the matter of food, sure, it may help to be able to grow food closer to people. The experiments for growing food in space, though, are for growing food in space and overcoming those challenges. There may be very useful runoff from those experiments. Whose to say until we find out? As it is, we’re actually incredibly good at growing food virtually anywhere. Of course, the costs, both monetary and environmental, for certain crops grown in hydroponic greenhouses, in places where those crops can’t be produced outdoors, far outstrip those costs for moving that crop many thousands of kilometres for consumption. And, experimenting growing food in space, which costs billions of dollars, is maybe not the best way to experiment growing food in inhospitable places. The experiments and innovations in growing food in inhospitable places are underway and they are scaled massively by comparison to any experiment in space or for space. Agriculture is really big business, you know? And, in fact, food distribution is actually a really complex problem. That’s why, you may have noticed, had you actually read what I had to say, that I do think basic research an invention are very important. I’d say that they’re critical, even. I will also say again that the problem with food currently is not one of production. And I’ll say again, because repetition may be good for you, that it may help to grow food closer to people, but that does not solve the problem. It doesn’t solve any problems in the same way that dreaming of colonising Mars doesn’t solve any problems, except, maybe incidentally. And I’ll say again that that’s not good.
I was using what is a very complex problem that can’t be solved merely through technology to illustrate that the starting point and the end goal should be predicated on something reasonable and that there are other kinds of advancement and innovation that aren’t technological. Science: it’s not just rocket ships and Mars colonies.
And again, Ray Ingles, read for comprehension:
That sentence of yours, that’s a rebuttal to that sentence of mine? Exploiting resources in space is not leaving this planet behind. Good job, you found something I wasn’t arguing against to rebut a statement about something else entirely.
Do me a favour before you reply. Read this post over and over again. Wait an hour. Read it again. Wait another hour. Then, write something in response if you have to.
In other EM news: Elon Musk launches $1bn fund to save world from destruction by artificial intelligence.
Elon Musk:
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/17/elon-musk-mission-mars-spacex
Musk has been doing plenty for humans living on Earth, has definitely earned his right to whatever inane pet project about saving some humans.
@timgueguen
I have worked in fusion research and even from the inside the most optimistic estimates spoke of twenty years (ten years ago).
Not sure where did you pull “imminent” from.
@paganeng
Fuck you and your stereotyping.
@PZ
I think you are lying to yourself.
I love you PZ, but you do have your moments where you lose touch with reality.
@Pierce R. Butler #48: Not sure I buy much of the singularity scare.
A program that could rewrite itself to be better, could also turn itself into utter garbage in the same way we develop tumors.
There goes Musk’s place on Ray Kurzweil’s Christmas card list.
@46:
“We call BS. Please provide some quotes from this thread to back up this characterization or kindly admit that you are making shit up.”
Well, there you go!
#12: “I think Musk named his company Tesla as homage to the person he reincarnated from. As in a genius with some looney ideas.”
I bet you 500 quatloos 90%+ of the pro-Musk acolytes here really think Musk is a modern Tesla, Edison, Einstein, whathaveyou, just without shouting it from the rooftops like that guy.
The simple fact of the matter, though, is that Musk didn’t invent any of the stuff he makes money with. That’s the thing Jon Oliver mocked as the pseudo-news talking heads began their spiel about the “real-life Tony Stark.” Reality check, Tony Stark is a frikkin’ comic book figure. Not one of today’s celebrity CEOs invented anything their companies produce!
That’s the basic idea behind corporate ownership, you appropriate the work of the engineers you employ for fame and profit and best of all everyone will be okay with it.
Musk didn’t come up with SpaceX’s rockets. Musk didn’t come up with fancy new batteries. Musk didn’t come up “Hyperloop” (because, remember, what happened there was Musk basically released a press copy reading “man, wouldn’t a vaccum tube train be cool?” and then independent engineers sacrificed their free time and talent to draft blueprints and present them to him. To quote Oliver a last time: “Hey guys, how about a cure for cancer? Don’t ask me how it’s supposed to work, I’m just the ideas man!”).
What you people don’t realize is that Elon Musk is the Donald Trump of the tech industry.
Both are simple showmen who try to sell you empty verbiage by telling their marks what they want to hear. The only difference is where Trump uses unworkable reactionary talking points, rambling about anti-illegal immigrant walls, travel bans for Muslims and how much he likes the Bible, Musk uses Buzzfeed’s Top 10 Most Popular SF Tropes.
“Man, wouldn’t it be cool if Cali had a vacuum tube train?”
“Dude, wouldn’t it be cool if we had a Mars Base?”
“Guys, how cool would a sooper-human AI be?”
In both cases the ignorant masses eat it up like candy.
Just to provide a bit more from the story than Pierce R. Butler’s chosen quote might convey @48:
Wow what a terrible person funding research with a goal of pursuing applications with positive social impact…
Ah. I think I see the problem.
You were directing your original comment at all those nihilistic strawmonsters out there who advocate abandoning our planet completely in favor of a nice hospitable space rock, and then later, for kicks, smearing Earth’s surface in its remaining crude oil and setting the whole thing fire with a gigaton or two of nukes.
The confusion arose, when Ray — who I infer is not an absurd nihilistic strawman — took the phrase “leaving the planet behind” to mean the normal thing space nerds might mean by that (inexact) phrase. I.e., exploring, exploiting, and perhaps settling space in order to, among other things, bring economic benefits back to Earth’s population.
Hint: No one has suggested ‘leaving the planet behind’ in the ‘abandon’ sense you appear to be using. It might be less confusing to wait until someone has made an argument before shooting it down.
F.O.@49, I think you’re taking my imminent a slight bit too seriously. On other hand we just had a British firm, Tokamak Energy, claiming they’re within 5 years of achieving “reactor relevant” fusion, which is pretty close to imminent by research standards.
Musk is very hands on with the engineering decisions in SpaceX and Tesla.
He is nothing like you have described him.
https://www.quora.com/How-did-Elon-Musk-learn-enough-about-rockets-to-run-SpaceX
https://leanpub.com/theengineer
http://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/0062301233
And it’s not like he doesn’t have academic cred either:
https://www.iop.org/careers/working-life/profiles/page_57723.html
Musk is an engineer not a suit. Slandering him as useless suit that only uses the ideas of others is a huge insult to his intelligence and hard work.
applehead @51,
Are you kidding? In your mind that quote from @12 is evidence that “liberals [have] become arch-conservatives and nerds morons” and that “zealous Musk fanboyism has infected the Pharyngula?” Really? Are you being serious because it’s very difficult to take what you are saying seriously.
Also who in the ever loving fuck ever claimed or even implied that Musk personally invented everything? Presumably these are the same people who think Steve Jobs personally invented designed and hand built all of the Apple products himself. Seems you are valiantly fighting an absurd strawman that nobody here ever espoused.
Yeah sure. Right. They are totally alike in so many ways. Just for starters Trump open sources his intellectual property just like Musk right?
https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
Gee what a terrible selfish asshole this guy is. So much like Trump.
Gee what compelling evidence you’ve provided to back up your narrative too: your very own made up Buzzfeed Tropes. You have presented deliberately shallow mischaracterizations of what Musk has really said and that totally proves your point. Well done ace.
Are you implying that the commenters here are part of that ignorant mass? If that’s what you’re meaning to say you ought to be more explicit and own it.
I recall reading an article about Musk a while back. It describe a period of time, before either of SpaceX or Tesla had succeeded in producing any commercially viable products, and both were hemorrhaging funds, when Musk was faced with a choice: he could either sacrifice the company dedicated to space travel to shore up the company dedicated to reducing reliance on fossil fuels, sacrifice the company dedicated to reducing reliance on fossil fuels to shore up the company dedicated to space travel, or pump more of his personal wealth into both and face the risk of personal bankruptcy, within months, if something doesn’t go right with either of them.
He chose option #3.
I think that tells us more about what kind of human being he is than any comments about WWIII.
Alteredstory@44: actually, I also mentioned Hyperloop, except I couldn’t remember the name exactly so I just called it a “pipe dream.” Do I still qualify as a fan boy?
(Hyperloop to me sounds as important as monorails and maglev: some advantages but not that likely to actually get deployed anytime soon. I suspect Musk felt the same way.)
It should also be pointed out that both his comments about nuking the martian poles and his comment about WWIII aren’t original to him. The idea of using nukes on Mars had been bandied about among the people speculating about terraforming Mars for quite some time, decades at least. (I recall watching an interview with Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society where he talks about that option, and rejects it on the grounds that the only people with enough stake and motivation to consider investing in terraforming Mars would be people who were already living on and trying to colonize Mars, and they would be unlikely to agree to nuking a planet they were already living on)
The idea that a world war would curtail space colonization efforts, both from the sheer destruction and from the potential of a social backlash against space technology (which, remember, in many cases, is the exact same technology that is used to fight a nuclear war) is also not new. It’s been circulating since at least the 1950s among people talking about things like the Drake Equation, Fermi Paradox, SETI (ie intelligent aliens that do arise and develop technology nuke themselves back to the stone-age prior to obtaining the level of technology necessary to colonize space with a regular-enough frequency to account for why no spacefaring aliens have yet come to earth), and of course, science fiction of many kinds.
It seems to me in both cases Musk is essentially repeating stuff that he has read, or been introduced to by others in his social circle.
numerobis @58 yep just another arch-conservative zealous Musk fanboy… Shame that you fell for that hyperloop scam perpetrated by that straight up conartist amateur Trump impersonator and all around terrible person.
On the upside we welcome you with open arms as part of the ignorant mass. So you’ve got that going for you.
@51:
Did anyone say he did? Musk is the founder and CEO of firms that are successfully mass producing excellent electric cars, cost-effective high-density rechargeable batteries, and now a space ship. The notion that he had nothing to do with these things is idiotic. Without him, those firms don’t exist.
While I agree that PZ’s characterization of Musk is too harsh and uncharitable, I can’t help but sympathize a bit with applehead here. By the sound of some of these comments, it does seem as if this guy’s greatest product were a pair of ice cream boots which people can’t resist to lick; I see the same thing happen when agritech companies are brought up (no, I’m not anti-GMO, just respectfully wary of Capitalism in general).
Plethora@61: yay! When can I expect my model S?
numerobis @58
I didn’t notice that (did a word search for “hyperloop”), but I think my point stands. I was responding to this: Already the zealous Musk fanboyism has infected the Pharyngula. “Hyperloop?” – not something I think refers to your comment and attitude.
My main objection to it was that applehead@37 was apparently picking out the most easily rebutted “argument”, and using that as part of an ad-hominem attack, rather than addressing the more serious points that had been made.
Kreator@63
“By the sound of some of these comments, it does seem as if this guy’s greatest product were a pair of ice cream boots which people can’t resist to lick”
That’s pretty easy to explain, Kreator. Look at the context of this thread – Myers said that Musk is a terrible human being, and many of us are disagreeing with that.
Rebutting that assertion means showing ways in which he has shown himself NOT to be a terrible human being.
We are not submitting general critiques of Musk as an entire person, we’re pointing out that the case P.Z. made for calling Musk a terrible human being is not supported by the content of his post (or any of the comments supporting that assertion that I’ve seen so far).
Your complaint is a bit odd, to be honest. It’s like saying a person is ignorant about a subject, and as soon as they point out that they have a degree in that field, accusing them of arrogance. The point isn’t saying “look at me, I’ve got a fancy degree”, it’s “I am rebutting the specific claim that I don’t know about this topic”.
The tenor of the disagreement in this comment thread is a direct result of the content of the blog post, and as such is NOT an indication of the kind of unthinking devotion you seem to be taking from it.
Admiring someone is not the same as bootlicking or hero worship.
Musk is a flawed human like us all, but he has been able to leverage his intellect to produce some great things that likely wouldn’t exist without him.
With minimal privilege due to birth, he was able to make a fortune by producing a useful product. Instead of using that fortune to join the country club life of the uselessly rich, he bet it all on solving the biggest problems of human civilization he could identify, with full knowledge that he was likely to fail. Even if he failed I’d still admire him for putting it all on the line for the betterment of our species.
But he hasn’t failed yet. Put almost any other human in his place and they likely would have failed (just ask Carmack about Armadillo).
Musk is highly intelligent, a very hard worker, and can make the seemingly impossible happen through sheer force of will. How can you not admire and root for such a human?
numerobis @64,
Sorry no Model S but as a consolation prize please enjoy this Tesla branded pair of ice cream boots instead.
Can I get a pair of SpaceX branded ice cream boots instead?
I need something to gnaw on during their Dec 19th RTF. The last time I watched a SpaceX launch live the damn thing blew up. Maybe ice cream boots will counteract the bad mojo of me watching ;-P
Christopher,
Yes but yours will be freeze dried ice cream.
But seriously if you’re looking for the optimal snack food for a rocket launch you might want to consider peanuts. They’re both delicious and in keeping with long standing traditions (apparently).
http://www.space.com/16927-mars-rover-landing-peanuts-tradition.html
RE: Musk’s fears about losing our technological civilization:
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html
I apologize for my earlier rudeness, as I said I do agree with the general critique that is being made of PZ’s post. I guess I’m just “allergic” to gushing, even when it’s deserved (I even hate to receive too much praise myself, the few times it’s happened).
@timgueguen #54: fair enough.
Please note though that “reactor relevant” means everything and nothing.
We have been obtaining “reactor relevant” fusion for decades.
Kreator@72
Respect
Sorry PZ, as with others I have to disagree with you. I don’t know how good a human being Musk is, but I don’t see any significant evidence that he’s a terrible human either. He comes across like someone who aspires for himself and humanity to be better than it is and he develops projects that have the potential to push in the right direction.
If you want to decide if someone is a horrible person, at least do them the honor of listening to what comes out of their mouth, not what someone else said they said.
http://shitelonsays.com/
I really can’t find one thing Musk has said that made me go, “well that’s fucked up.” That is pretty damn rare for someone as in the spotlight as he is.
http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/tesla-introduces-tesla-energy-2015-05-02
What a horrible person.
It’s too bad Elon Musk isn’t a Catholic.
He’d be a saint by now.
Re: Hyperloop
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/amid-overwhelming-interest-124-teams-qualify-for-hyperloop-competition/
Terrible human being?
Yeah, no.
Also, if you want to see where Elon can be a real asshole:
http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/advice/a5380/millionaire-starter-wife/
Both Applehead and Plethora essentially recycled the same type of rhetoric and phrasing in slamming Musk, down to the verbiage itself. I wonder if a trolling is afoot?
One thing I will give for large-scale crewed space exploration efforts is that as far as Big Technology Projects generating spin-offs go, they’re pretty good simply because they transect so many fields in the process. Life sciences, rocketry, high-temperature engineering, and so forth. It’s very good for cross-fertilization.
#7 Steven:
He once said video games were art.
“What I detest is this callous attitude that the prospective death and suffering of billions is a good reason to send people to Mars.”
Any port in a storm.
#81 Thanks. I was already ready to write that PZ was being way too harsh. But after reading your linked article, I realized that this person, like Pistorius, is just another failed product of the male-dominated culture of South Africa. It’s probably also what happens to people, with too little humility and empathy, who reap success after success up to the point of feeding into a superiority complex.
I have a very different picture of the man now… Maybe PZ is right on the spot after all!
Thomathy – The entire thread is framed as an either/or proposition. I did read your comments… in that context. Even if you disavow that, there are several problems with your case.
For example, you claim that experiments about growing food in space cost “billions of dollars”. But you’re ignoring the fact that a whole lot of work needs to be done on Earth before that is practical. Recall that I specifically mentioned “a viable closed-loop sub-ecology” – a necessary precondition for any long-term off-Earth humans. Plenty of work on that can and must be done here before anything gets launched. And that’s a useful goal no matter what. Try to build an independent ecology and you will find a lot of dependencies you didn’t know about – which will inevitably have implications for understanding and managing and working with our global ecology.
I’m quite aware that “there are other kinds of advancement and innovation that aren’t technological” – but if you think that actual solutions to the issues with world food production and distribution will not have major technological components, well, after Babbage, I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a claim.
That leaves aside the goal of bringing down that “billions of dollars” cost in the first place, necessary for exploiting all those resources out there. If nothing “leaves this planet behind”, there won’t be any exploiting of resources in space. Musk isn’t proposing moving to Mars tomorrow. The actual work being done today is on reducing launch costs. Whether or not you agree with the long-term goal, you should have no problem whatsoever with the short- and medium-term goals. If Musk starts diverting resources to something you actually object to, with no chance of success, then you can criticize him on those grounds.
In short, I haven’t seen you point out an actual problem with the actual actions Musk’s taken to date in these regards, nor anything planned for the next decade or two.
VP@79: And if PZ had cited that as evidence for Musk being “a terrible human being”, he might actually have had a case. But he didn’t.
Consider: Pat Condell and Thunderf00t are terrible human beings, but not because they are atheists, or post YouTube videos, or whatever. It’s because of their terrible words and actions. That’s the case against them.
brett @82,
Our supposed slamming of Musk was meant as a sarcastic response to applehead and Kreator. Seems we should have included /sarcasm tags for clarity’s sake.
For the nonsarcastic response to applehead please see @46 and the first couple of paragraphs @56. The rest was not meant to be taken literally. Sorry for not being more clear on that but frankly thought it would be obvious given the context.
VP@81
I wouldn’t want to be married to the guy. In addition to his cultural baggage, his people skills come across as very aspy. Still, nothing in that article paints him as an asshole: he wasn’t purposefully cruel, mean, or violent. Even after all the stuff they went through, him, his ex, and his current on again off again wife are all on friendly speaking terms. Better than I can say for a lot of the divorces I know of personally.
Musk is a flawed human being who is far from perfect, but he is also far from being a “terrible human being.”
I think it’s long been known that Musk is kind of a jerk in his personal life. I don’t know if I would want to be his friend. This seems to be true of a lot of tech entrepreneurs, like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Succeeding in that hyper-competitive world probably requires a certain mix of brilliance and pushiness, the “get it done no matter who’s in the way” attitude. Still, it doesn’t appear to hamper their ability to care about humanity and do right by it.
Yeah, but he comes across as more of an oblivious jerk rather than a malicious jerk which makes a huge difference when trying to determine if someone is a “terrible human being.”
I hope Musk’s life journey includes emotional growth. But, if he dies a stunted man-child who nonetheless dedicated everything he had to convert human civilization to solar power and multiple planets, I would have a hard time holding his lack of emotional growth against him. I sure wouldn’t classify him as a “terrible human being” because of it.
I think this is true of a large majority of very successful people, and probably comes from the extreme confidence and self-belief you need to be that ambitious. That’s why I always laugh when people talk about a leading politician’s humility.
That said, I’d far rather they be jerks like Bill Gates than jerks like Donald Trump….
@85, 88 – Musk has some major issues, and many blindpoints. Much like most human beings (which does not mean they cannot be criticized for their negatives).
The problem with PZ’s article is that he criticizes Musks for all the wrong things. If you had to make a list of people who cared and did stuff to “save the planet”, Musk would easily be near the top.
If you wanted to make a list of people who were horrible to deal with in a personal relationship, it appears he is way down.
PZ criticizes him for the former. He does not even bring in the latter (unless he wants to imply that because he is a male in tech his personal behaviors can be assumed, to which I can only respond “holy stereotyping, batman”).
Given that Britain and Germany had been in a dreadnought-building arms race since 1907, I’m less than impressed with this start to his argument.
Jeebus, if Elon Musk is a terrible person, then I must be human garbage. Dude has contributed way more to making positive changes in society than I ever will.
Freeze-dried boots for me too please — global warming and el nino are making it so that Montreal isn’t freezing, even in mid-December, which means the ice cream boots would just melt.
I’ll be standing by my pneumatic tube / hyperloop for the delivery.
I’m with PZ on this one. I saw a skyscraper with a lightning rod fitted before. Maybe they should be more concerned with stopping lightning, instead of just trying to save that one building. And don’t get me started on food insurance. Have these policy holders never considered maybe stopping flooding instead? In fact I raised that difficult question to some insured people before and they pointed out to me that they were very active in preventing the floods using their own money and initiative, but I was able to look beyond such plutocratic facts by impulsively dismissing something they once said about Mars. Checkmate Musketeers.
From an old interview.
Musk shoots down the silly strawman that PZ is trying to slander him with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=h_DOXs8L84A#t=1343
omg
What a mean, myopic, and poorly argued writeup. No wonder the cultural left inspires no confidence within the rest of humanity. And PZ’s takedown of Sam Harris was not only inappropriate, but his math was wrong in certain ways.
they are sooo stuuuupid
Living on Mars would be astonishingly brilliant. Being a resource-independent colony would be truly incredible. I hope that these things happen; global war on Earth would permanently prevent that.
This is the only planet that anyone alive today will ever be able to call home: let’s plan to stay alive so that future generations might eventually be able to call somewhere else home too. Not instead, but as well.
He’s saying “if we want humanity to survive long-term, we need to expand to multiple planets”, not “rich people should flee from a dying planet”. I don’t think his point makes him a terrible human being. It simply makes him right.
The “bomb Mars” thing was clearly a joke. Watch the video where he says it.
It was 2/3 joke, 1/3 truth.
Part of the joke is that Musk is well aware that it would be pretty much impossible to convince the Earth’s governments and people to put a 1/5 or more of our nuclear stockpile on top of the largest non-nuclear bomb ever made in order to send it to Mars in a multi-generational effort at terraforming.
The second part of the joke is that we wouldn’t be bombing Mars like it is Nevada in the 50’s with pretty mushroom clouds on the horizon.
Which brings us to the kernel of truth in his comment: what Musk is referencing is creating nuclear pulse generators over the poles that are similar to the Project Orion idea, but instead of using the pulses to create thrust, you’d reflect it to the surface to warm as much area as possible. The idea is to make mini-suns over the poles out in space so as not to contaminate the surface with radioactive fallout. Such an idea is possible with the resources and technology available today and would jumpstart the terraforming effort by centuries. But good fucking luck implementing it.
I assume there’s also a reference buried in there to schemes like those in KSR’s Mars trilogy, where IIRC the colonists use underground detonations to help melt polar aquifers or somesuch. Not sure whether anything like that is still part of anyone’s serious terraforming playbook, but it’s not as if Musk is the first one to suggest something like this.
And, yeah, maybe it’s a joke, maybe it’s an unworkable idea for other reasons, but one way or another this is obviously about a peaceful engineering use for nuclear technology, which is not even a little bit analogous to committing genocide on a densely inhabited planet with a biosphere. So it seems like a big non-sequitur to mention it in the OP. The “logic” of that barb is practically playground level: “Oh, you act as if you’re against nuclear war on Earth, yet you’d just loove to nuke Mars for entirely peaceful purposes. Which is it, smart guy? And if you love nukes so much, why don’t you marry one?”
(Re: fallout — not sure it’s a big worry. On Mars I would think that’d just be part of a cost/benefit equation to balance rather than something to avoid at all costs. You’re already in a radically harsher radiation environment, and any population you have is going to be living in sealed, shielded habitats long into the foreseeable future. Even with dirty surface detonations, there’s very likely more than enough time for the contamination to decay and dissipate to safe levels before anyone is realistically going to be walking around out there unprotected. Thousands of years, probably. Dust-related cooling would be more worth worrying about in the short term.)
Total quote mining here.
If you read the entire interview, Elon is talking about times that humanity has been been set back in technology, either wars or religious movements. He is making the point that progress needs to be made when we can progress, because later we may not be able to.
What is he supposed to say? “God forbid that…” before every single sentence when talking about the possibility of natural disasters or war?
So terrible that somebody is not working on the method to end all war… uh… what was it again?
Gosh maybe somebody should work on making solar power effective and affordable and replace fossil fuel vehicles with electric ones to help the climate. Where can we find somebody to do that?
I heard about this one guy…. oh wait he is evil because he wants WW3 because Mars. *facepalm*
Also: seed banks? Evil. With a capital E.
People who really cared about biodiversity and preservation of genetic heritage would be out there trying to end those threats forever out in the real world. Their real motive for making seed banks is their secret hatred of all agriculture and even photosynthesis itself. And there’s obviously no overlap between them and those working directly against those threats. Nosir.
Besides, it’s only a handful of elite seeds from each species that are going to be stored in the bank. Not all of them. Totally immoral.
Well, something’s terrible here.
There’s no difference under libertarian capitalism. That’s pretty much his main jam.
There is absolutely no reason to gripe over why someone is doing the right thing, as far as I can tell, other than to try to consolidate ideological hegemony to construct a narrative; a narrative designed, not to persuade people away from their opinions and towards another, but rather to try to skew their line of reasoning at its very core, which could negatively affect their future decision making until they abandon said reasoning, thereby manipulating their worldview for years to come, if not longer. It’s disgusting and manipulative.
Also, what the heck is up with the Christian boogeyman talk? I hate on Christians a lot, because its hilarious, and because the fundamentalists say a lot of idiotic things, but this isn’t even valid criticism on PZ’s part; its more like borderline bigoted fear-mongering. If you were to replace the Christians in his example, to a religion that feasibly could use nuclear weapons to enforce a theocracy, like Islam or Hinduism, PZ Myers would flip out and call you a racist, despite the fact that the latter two would be much more plausible in the current geopolitical order, mostly due to Pakistan and India’s contention over Kashmir, and the xenophobic attitudes that are rampant in both states, towards the other.
Elon Musk is the best of humanity, he has done more with Tesla alone, to save humanity and to stop capitalistic exploitation of developing nations for non-renewable resources, than PZ Myers could EVER DREAM of doing by complaining on the internet. Stop being bitter that you didn’t have the merit to become one of the Four Horseman, and apologize to Elon.
And you need to apologize to the memory of Carl Sagan too, because who the hell are you to mock a sincere and honest plea from him and Musk, to take to the stars to improve humanities chance for survival? You’re a terrible human being PZ.
Christopher A
Bit of an authoritarian, aren’t you
Where does he say he doesn’t care about the loss of life? Pics or didn’t happen.
PZ, you have completely lost it. I don’t know what kind of mental illness you have, but you are just sinking deeper and deeper into complete madness.
You are the laughing stock of, well, everybody really. Atheists, creationists, everybody. And every new blog post of yours only makes it worse.
Easiest way to infuriate fanbois: criticize their heroes.
I’ll just add that if, when your hero is asked to think about an existential crisis for humanity, such as environmental catastrophe or global war, their first solution is to run away, then they are a coward. And if the destination they intend to run away towards is even more inhospitable and dangerous, and requires far greater expense than to maintain and repair the situation here on Earth, then they are fucking stupid.
Ah. Sure sign that someone has been infected by the Slymepit. Sorry, guy, but if you were to actually read what I’ve written in the past you’d know I’ve disliked the idea of personifying an imaginary atheist ‘leadership’ as just 4 people, and over the years I’ve become increasingly convinced that it was a PR disaster.
Not only could I not imagine ever being one of the “four horsemen”, but I would recoil in horror at the thought of it.
juhanieminen @112,
Your attemped use of mental illness as an insult is offensive and gross.
Professor Myers @113,
In the GQ interview you cited in the OP it says “Musk was asked about his ambitions to colonize Mars.” The question that seems to have prompted the response about a potential world war “I ask Musk how often he actually thinks about colonizing Mars. Every day? Every week?”
Whereas your comment @113 seems to imply that Musk was asked about war (or some other existential crisis) and that he responded with his plans to colonize Mars as if it was some kind of a solution. That would indeed be problematic. However it doesn’t seem like that’s what was asked nor what Musk actually said.
So are you referring to some other interview instead where he was asked about an existential crisis and he offered colonization of Mars as a solution or have we misunderstood your point? Otherwise with all respect it seems you may be mischaracterizing what question Musk was asked and therefore drawing an unfair conclusion based on his response. Any clarification you could provide on this point would be much appreciated.
That’s not what I meant.
juhanieminen @ 112:
I don’t consider PZ to be a laughingstock, so that alone negates your statement. Perhaps you could attempt an actual argument, preferably one grounded in reality (based on this planet, please).
PZ Myers @113
> Easiest way to infuriate fanbois: criticize their heroes.
Correct. Trolling is easy. Trolling is also fun, and grows your audience. You’ve fired an excellent first shot in what could become a delightful flamewar that gets discussed on other sites. Musk is a juicy target for trolling, and one that hasn’t been exploited yet AFAIK. Well spotted!
You might want to follow up on this article with more in the same vein. You have trolled so well that you have already gotten an enraged response at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgJMXAcrLNY that offers plenty of hooks for derision and scorn. You have demonstrated all the skills necessary to milk another couple of troll posts out of this, and since the internet reliably rewards flamewars, you’re sure to obtain many more rage clicks this way.
And if you didn’t consider yourself a troll before – welcome to the horde! :-)
Mr Musk is speaking on contingencies because he considers all potential issues to his goals. Mr Musk has been overcoming preeminent technical challenges and you criticise it as “tunnel vision.” Each of us has gifts and passions and Mr Musks’ do not lie in social work.
You’re not exactly a people-person either are you, Mr Myers? And what have you done to prevent WW3? Your trolling reflects poorly on the University of Minnesota Morris.
I enjoyed reading your students’ feedback on ratemyprofessor lol! “average”
Elon Musk. The greatest entrepreneur of our time, dedicating his life to making the world a better place. Doing 100 times more than PZ will ever do in his sorry little existence, but of course, he doesn’t have exactly the same opinions as PZ, so he is the spawn of Satan. Gotta love that logic.