• Saganastic@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    You can be passionate about technological advancement and also be concerned about rent prices, funding for schools, and climate change. Let people solve the problems they’re able to solve.

    • Waldhuette@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They aren’t solving any actual issues. They are just hogging resources and wasting them on their dream projects. They are taking away resources that others need to survive.

      • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I agree. I don’t think absolutely any value came from Jeff and Elon going to space in penis shaped rockets.

        Dreams are great, but we need those with means to give back more to society. We don’t need mars colonies, we need common sense solutions to corporate greed, stagnating wages, and the growing threat of unchecked, privately-owned AI.

        • undeffeined@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Worst part is that they will not deliver on their ludicrous promises because they are only meant to bedazzle people and pump up stock prices.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Starlink? Cheaper, partly reusable rockets for whatever satellites people find useful?

      • Troy@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Physicist here. Thermodynamics always wins.

        It really doesn’t matter what we do on the earth – as long as people and industry exists, we will heat the planet. Either faster (greenhouse gasses), or slower (increasing albedo to capture more sunlight, adding energy with nuclear reactors, etc.).

        There are effectively three very long term solutions: (1) kill all humans, and let nature recover – at least until the output of the sun crosses some threshold in about 250 million years where the Earth fries. (2) Large scale geoengineering, like solar shades between the earth and the sun, or similar means of reducing incoming sunlight. (3) Move all industry off the earth.

        Now, these are all very long term scenarios. The problem is, if we don’t work towards the technology required to do one of three, all of humanity is doomed eventually. Space tech may seem like a vanity project by the rich, and honestly it often is, but it is also advancing civilization in the direction required to turn Earth into Eden in the far future.

        If you look at the planet from far enough away, you stop seeing individuals, their triumphs or their suffering. You just see “solar energy capture cross section”.

        • irkli@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Bullshit answer (troy). Of course there are thermo limits. We can live within them. Change is required. The current industrial system is ruinous. Stop apologizing for it as if it were natural.

          • Saganastic@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Humans are natural, therefore our industry is natural. There’s nothing wrong with industry (as long as it’s mindful of pollution), we just need cleaner power generation.

    • Rom@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Sure, but the point of the comic is that while technological advances for “cool” things get all kinds of attention and development, actual social problems that continue to impact billions of people hardly get any focus.

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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      1 year ago

      Yes but when you have billions at your disposal you have a much greater moral responsability than a fresh out of uni geek. He could greatly contribute to our urgent problems.

      • MonsiuerPatEBrown@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        Musk can’t make a marriage between two people work: and you want to trust him with the world because he is greedy ?

        Tax all of those oppressors.