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Not a Drill: SETI Is Investigating a Possible Extraterrestrial Signal From Deep Space

Hey what about that probe that launched last week on a 7 year voyage to an asteroid to suck up samples, and bring it back to Earth?

Won't that take another 7 years to return?
 
This is too nihilist imo. If this were true, we'd still be in the dark ages.

Not really, we've come a long way but at base level most of it has been driven by greed, ambition, status, resources, not the long term greater good of humanity. None of that is obviously sated by an attempt at interstellar colonisation, nor can we ever hope to move the population off world.

In fact it's hard to see where the payout would be here at all and thus the incentive for enough influential politicians to green light the idea, much less for preceding generations of said politicians to continue pouring trillions in from the taxpayer's purse. Any such mission would by necessity be small and likely to fail given any reasonable projection of our technological capabilities.

Crucially, the people on earth stumping the bill would never even know whether the investment had paid off, the ship would launch, it would slowly travel out of practical communication range, then what?
 
Not really, we've come a long way but at base level most of it has been driven by greed, ambition, status, resources, not the long term greater good of humanity. None of that is obviously sated by an attempt at interstellar colonisation, nor can we ever hope to move the population off world.

In fact it's hard to see where the payout would be here at all and thus the incentive for enough influential politicians to green light the idea, much less for preceding generations of said politicians to continue pouring trillions in from the taxpayer's purse. Any such mission would by necessity be small and likely to fail given any reasonable projection of our technological capabilities.

Crucially, the people on earth stumping the bill would never even know whether the investment had paid off, the ship would launch, it would slowly travel out of practical communication range, then what?

Just as you say. It's extremely unlikely that we'll ever invest in something like that. What would be the incentive?
Either Earth is a paradise with energy galore and new means of extracting material either from Earth or from the Asteroid belt and in that case no one will be willing to leave on a trip that they'll only see the beginning of or Earth isn't such a paradise, in which case we won't be able to afford such project.
 
Well either we stick to this green blue rock and don't spread out into space and overpopulate this planet or we grow.. I don't much like the idea of us not moving out beyond the Earth. It's an option that fills me with dread.
 
Well either we stick to this green blue rock and don't spread out into space and overpopulate this planet or we grow.. I don't much like the idea of us not moving out beyond the Earth. It's an option that fills me with dread.

None of us will be alive to see it, even if it happens.
 
And you know this how?

ETA: I don't doubt that your are correct (although the leaders probably believed the mummery as well unlike now), but being prehistoric, there's obviously no historical record and it would be hard to envisage how one might come to this conclusion from non-written archaeological evidence.
 
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there is a difference in believing some supernatural idea like some kind of vague god concept and tying ought behavior rules to that believe turning it into a religion.
It is a controll mechanism. Convince someone to believe the same thing you do so that someone behaves in a preferred way.
Doesn't need to be manevolent, but it is a controll mechanism.
Believing it yourself does not change the fact, that you go to someone and say better believe this, or else, is correcting the others behavior in some way.
 
And you know this how?

ETA: I don't doubt that your are correct (although the leaders probably believed the mummery as well unlike now), but being prehistoric, there's obviously no historical record and it would be hard to envisage how one might come to this conclusion from non-written archaeological evidence.

Well, ethnologists have reported on a few tribes that still lived (at least back then) in similar ways as people from thousands of years ago must have and they all followed the same pattern. The religious authority acts as a controlling element that has power more often than not; even over the leader of the tribe who wouldn't dare going against their will.
 
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