Comment Re:hyperbolic (Score 1) 479
As an adjective for flamebait? I think he did mean hypergolic.
Comment Stop-progress-until-everybody-catches-up bullshit (Score 2) 167
"But in the end it's sad to watch these predictions. A space hotel is more important than helping developing countries and getting food for everyone. Also first world people get to live on the moon while tens of thousands of children die of hunger and wars"
This is not even, nor right. In Clarke's article, developing countries help themselves (there are references to India, Singapore and China), and the "food for everyone" issue is covered by the cheap energy devices. No reference is made to war, even indirectly. I you want to blame him, do it on account on the wild foundations of the happy century he, well, extrapolates (commercial cold fusion in 2002 and quantum generators in 2010, indeed!).
And the space hotel project is private. If you deem other things more important, don't invest in it.
You seem to suppose that, once arrived to a certain point (_which_ point exactly?), progress must be stopped until everybody has reached it. And then, perhaps, resume it again.
This is ludicrous. Technological progress cannot be switched off and on at will; it is inextricably woven in the fabric of our civillization. New technologies are at first scarce and expensive luxuries. Some of them will succeed and become more common and cheap, until everyday life will be unconceivable without them; say inhouse plumbing (yes, I am aware that a large part of humankind hasn't got inhouse plumbing, or even outhouse plumbing; that part included the home village of some relatives of mine when I was a child). I can hear you 150 years ago: "Let's stop spending effort and resources in such arcane and useless things as electricity until everybody has a water pump at home".
AFAIK, it was F.A. von Hayek who made the argument (here crudely paraphrased) that the rich are the vanguard of the poor in the progress of society, and that in an equalitarian society an equivalent would have to be established, i.e., a selected group of persons who would test new goods before they could be produced in large quantities.
And he wasn't being cynical.
This is not even, nor right. In Clarke's article, developing countries help themselves (there are references to India, Singapore and China), and the "food for everyone" issue is covered by the cheap energy devices. No reference is made to war, even indirectly. I you want to blame him, do it on account on the wild foundations of the happy century he, well, extrapolates (commercial cold fusion in 2002 and quantum generators in 2010, indeed!).
And the space hotel project is private. If you deem other things more important, don't invest in it.
You seem to suppose that, once arrived to a certain point (_which_ point exactly?), progress must be stopped until everybody has reached it. And then, perhaps, resume it again.
This is ludicrous. Technological progress cannot be switched off and on at will; it is inextricably woven in the fabric of our civillization. New technologies are at first scarce and expensive luxuries. Some of them will succeed and become more common and cheap, until everyday life will be unconceivable without them; say inhouse plumbing (yes, I am aware that a large part of humankind hasn't got inhouse plumbing, or even outhouse plumbing; that part included the home village of some relatives of mine when I was a child). I can hear you 150 years ago: "Let's stop spending effort and resources in such arcane and useless things as electricity until everybody has a water pump at home".
AFAIK, it was F.A. von Hayek who made the argument (here crudely paraphrased) that the rich are the vanguard of the poor in the progress of society, and that in an equalitarian society an equivalent would have to be established, i.e., a selected group of persons who would test new goods before they could be produced in large quantities.
And he wasn't being cynical.
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