Just fantastic stuff if they actually use them. Goodbye low earth orbit, hello Kessler syndrome.

No appreciable fraction of a percent of humanity living on the Earth now, nor of their decedents for several generations, has any genuine hope of making a home on Mars even if their is a concerted effort to get there.

  Mars or no Mars, if an asteroid hits Earth, the vast, vast majority of humanity dies out. Don't even start with the outpost crap, spend the money on environmental care or even asteroid diversion missions for a much higher cost-payoff ratio. Heck, even if an asteroid did hit we'd have a vastly easier time "terraforming" the resulting Earth.

You could put 200 robots on Mars and still not add up to the cost of a single manned mission, and do far, far more science. Humans on Mars will struggle just to stay alive (and probably won't). Just send more robots.

Why? Because if it didn't we wouldn't be here to answer the question

Oh come now, surely you can tell from advertising that people place a far higher value on having a bigger penis, than they do on curing dementia!

It doesn't have to be. After all humans are totally crap at collective long range planning, and individuals make very poor choices for themselves all the time.

I'd actually rather have a benevolent machine in charge than a power hungry politician.

Uhh.. except cocain is much more habituating and people tend to keep amping up the dose to dangerous levels, while high dose caffeine isn't much fun.

Why am I even 'the same' person that I was as a five year old? I barely remember that 5yo self. Wouldn't there be some other 5yo around now that actually has more in common with my 5yo self that I do with that person?

Consciousness isn't continuous anyhow, a sharp blow to the head will soon sort that out. A harder blow that causes large scale permanent destruction of brain matter will sort that out even more so, is the person that wakes up from that really the same person?

The conception of a persisting personal identity is shaky at it's core.

I'm still not in on the gay conspiracy. I always thought I was pretty much as gay as a dyke on a bike, but clearly not gay enough.

Looks like they've put their work in really.

Lack of x64 is an issue, but I do wonder how you'd have any chance of running drivers for a whole different processor in any meaningful way. Even multiple quite old versions of DirectX.

This widget fell apart because there's not enough screws holding it together! I know, let's punish it by pulling out more screws! That'll teach it for falling apart.

They can want the human touch all they like, but as long as caring remains a poorly paid and unpleasant job they ain't gonna get it.

For sure they can import Phillipnio slave girls to do it, but that's just poor form IMHO.

Pay carers well and the problem fades.

It may trigger MD, but not cancer. The only disease that matters is cancer. Heart disease, although more common, more deadly, and more preventabe, requires lifestyle change to prevent plus it's boring, so we don't talk about it. If it's not cancer, who cares? /s

There's actually a few well validated questionnaires that can be used. They correlate with each other, and with objective outcomes like suicide risk.

So... yeh.

There's actually been quite a few studies now that show this is a thing. As much as anecdotes are not data, I've personally witnessed this enough times in my clients to feel it is accurate.