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> This isn't some new frontier that needs exploring, its well understood at this point

This is where I started to think this was trolling and that it would soon devolve into overly satirical commentary to prove the opposite point. I was surprised it didn't do this. I'm very interested in this defeatist mentality, welp we know it's impractical we should stop trying. It's not only ignoring the advancements that manned space exploration has brought but seemingly ignores how advancements are done in general for all of human existence. This mindset would have us living in caves after a few hardships.

You could argue we know enough now but this overestimates how much humans know especially with respect to space



> but this overestimates how much humans know especially with respect to space

Does it? We can't know how many secrets there are out there, maybe there's infinite and maybe there's nothing. It's hard for us to know the opportunity cost until we understand what we're bartering for.

Like, humanity could pool their resources to comprehensively explore the Mariana Trench if we wanted. That's fairly unknown, entirely feasible, and could yield scientific advancement. But it's also expensive, and doesn't guarantee any lucrative returns for us. Maybe there's gold deposits at the bottom of the floor, maybe it's all silt and sand. Maybe we harvest the gold, and discover that humanity has upset a delicate balance that has only survived by us ignoring it.

Iunno, if I was an alien civilization somewhere, I'd be praying to whatever higher powers exist to ensure humanity stays far, far away from me.


To me it sounds like more like hyperbolic pragmatism than defeatism.




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