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from the if-a-kessler-syndrome-is-not-triggered-first dept.
Charlie Stross, a science fiction writer based in Scotland, has written a post about different possible approaches to space colonization. He includes a discussion of several different models.
While the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is evidently invalid, a weaker version—that language influences thought—is much harder to argue against. When we talk about a spaceship, a portmanteau word derived from "[outer] space" and "ship", we bring along certain unstated assumptions about shipping that are at odds with the physical parameters of a human-friendly life support environment for traversing interplanetary distances. Ships, in the vernacular, have captains and a crew who obey the captain via a chain of command, they carry cargo or passengers, they travel between ports or to a well-defined destination, they may have a mission whether it be scientific research or military. And of these aspects, only the scientific research angle is remotely applicable to any actually existing interplanetary vehicle, be it a robot probe like Psyche or one of the Apollo program flights.
(Pedant's footnote: while the Apollo crews had a nominal commander, actual direction came from Mission Control back on Earth and the astronauts operated as a team, along lines very similar to those later formalized as Crew Resource Management in commercial aviation.)
Anyway, a point I've already chewed over on this blog is that a spaceship is not like a sea-going vessel, can't be operated like a sea-going vessel, and the word "ship" in its name feeds into various cognitive biases that may be actively harmful to understanding what it is.
Which leads me to the similar term "space colony": the word colony drags in all sorts of historical baggage, and indeed invokes several models of how an off-Earth outpost might operate, all of which invoke very dangerous cognitive biases!
There are few more models which he missed.
Previously:
(2022) Moon Life 2030
(2022) Why Werner Herzog Thinks Human Space Colonization "Will Inevitably Fail"
(2020) Elon Musk Will Run Into Trouble Setting Up a Martian Government, Lawyers Say
(2018) Who Owns The Moon? A Space Lawyer Answers
(2017) Stephen Hawking Urges Nations to Pursue Lunar Base and Mars Landing
(2015) NASA Working on 3D Printers to Print Objects Using Martian Regolith
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 16 2024, @05:59PM (14 children)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday October 16 2024, @07:16PM (12 children)
Like it does... um... where? I think we have plenty of examples of societies on Earth that just don't have the Lord of the Flies problem.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by VLM on Wednesday October 16 2024, @09:08PM (3 children)
Humans invented religion as a technology to solve the problem of "Humans in general are hard pressed to behave rationally at the best of times, and obvious and certain death as the consequences of certain actions is no bar to irrationality.". Every culture that removes religion or has its religion forcibly removed from them achieves the same result in the end.
So you're both correct, the Moon is a Harsh Mistress is internally an almost parody-level unrealistic portrayal of an atheistic society, and at the same time, on the earth, all successful cultures have been at least somewhat religious so they don't have those problems as bad as the atheistic cultures.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2024, @04:01AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2024, @07:32PM
Religion may have started with good intentions, but it too gets fouled up with human vices - not least, just sheer amount of bullshit. There's nothing special about one type of clown in expensive kit waving a book and putting themselves in charge, ahh excuse me, religious group, over another.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 17 2024, @09:46PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2024, @03:30AM (7 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 17 2024, @04:06AM (6 children)
Does it? Your argument seems to rely heavily on this assertion. I'll note that we have plenty of examples of societies that self-organize on principles that we might not consider proper or rational self-interest, but don't require charismatic leaders - prisons. That happens to be the very situation of the book.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2024, @04:19AM (5 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 17 2024, @06:19AM (4 children)
"outside the sight of the guards" == opportunity for self-organization. "charismatic leaders form cliques around themselves" == self-organization.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2024, @06:29AM (3 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 17 2024, @06:00PM (2 children)
"Entirely".
Appearance of non-rational != non-rational.
I disagree. While researching this, I found an interesting thing. In that book, we have two examples of societies that weren't moving towards self-organization based on rational self-interest: Earth society and the future free lunar society (the cribbed version I read had a couple of the protagonists with later careers as politicians who eventually "quit in disgust". So I think it's worth thinking about why that happens.
My take is that Heinlein's idea was that in a small space colony everyone has shared destiny and veto power. That enforces both the rational thinking and a considerable bit of individual freedom. You want to survive, you have to take into consideration everyone else and make sure nobody gets unhappy enough with things that they're opening airlocks. When you don't have these survival pressures enforcing such, then the vagaries of modern, terrestrial civilization take hold: selfish interests, arbitrary infliction of harm on others, bureaucracy, pursuit of dysfunctional systems and ideals, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2024, @07:58PM (1 child)
I think some people have a fuck you, I got mine attitude regardless of this alleged "enforced rational thinking". Some douchbag will believe with all his heart that the world (religious worldview) is zero sum and fuck you, he gets his. Then somebody else will quite rationally open the airlock and say, yeah, fuck this.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 17 2024, @08:53PM
Cool story, but why would it happen that way? If you have douchbag that bad, then douchbag dies. There's plenty of stories of mutinies and such. They don't chop holes in the boat, they just kill the problem, leave it on a deserted island, or stuff it in a closet if they're feeling generous.
And there's nothing "quite rationally" about killing everyone on board.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2024, @12:15AM
Heinlein's answer to the lack of rationality of most people, was to have the environment on Luna kill them. Pretty sure there are a couple of mentions in the book of the horrendous death toll, especially in the early days. There was a reason he used the word "harsh".