Talk:1232: Realistic Criteria
I'm not sure I want NASA (or other space agencies) to solve all problems on earth. And what constitutes a problem? My laptop crashed this morning? Fighting in Afghanistan? Flooding in Germany and Poland? Kaa-ching (talk) 07:28, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
Hence the title: "Realistic Criteria" ;-) Kaa-ching (talk) 07:29, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
- I'm sure there is more that enough problems for 15 years in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ alone. Also, exploring other planets can help solving problems on our one. -- Hkmaly (talk) 08:44, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
- Earth should have a Bugzilla. 80.195.213.223 13:43, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
"The argument between exploring space vs saving resources and solving problems on Earth is a pretty common modern one, both in theory, and in practice."
Actually, we shouldn't have started expanding our species out of Africa before predicting (and allowing for) the development of Religious Hatred, Mechanised Warfare and Oppressive Copyright Practices... 86.10.119.75 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- Personally, I usually quickly send my initial Zulu forces up to blockade the land-bridge in the vicinity of Egypt, and then expand out throughout Africa so as to allow me to develop my own superior navy (and as many wonders as I can, including the library) before anyone else gets there. (Apologies, my comment below rather sent me down this line of thought.) 178.98.53.132 17:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
This attacks a rather typical conservative attitude that we shouldn't "waste" resources on "minor" problems when there are bigger problems to deal with. (e.g., "Why are you giving me a ticket for speeding when there are murderers out there you should be catching?") The title text pinpoints the fallacy of it (if you only ever work on the biggest problems, you will never solve that problem and also never accomplish anything else) JamesCurran (talk) 16:10, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
I have issue with 'The comic is, at its core, a parody of the overly optimistic scientism that often attaches itself to the idea of a manned Mars mission, which in the minds of its supporters is always "ten to fifteen years away," no matter the unsolved technical or logistics challenges that are still standing in the way.' I think it's the converse. The overly optimistic semi-scientism that if we put something like Mars exploration on hold that the resources this frees up would be instantly transferable into "solving all the world's ills". The ten-to-fifteen-year span is then the (sarcastic?) suggestion as to how long this would need to be done for, before we can consider them all solved and start pumping the same resources back into space missions and pick up from where we leave off.
- I agree that the 'The comic is, at its core, a parody of the overly optimistic scientism that often attaches itself to the idea of a manned Mars mission, which in the minds of its supporters is always "ten to fifteen years away," no matter the unsolved technical or logistics challenges that are still standing in the way.' line is not a correct analysis of this comic. I removed it, but would be happy to see it re-added if there is a discussion here that bring to light any evidence supporting it. 149.32.192.33 13:38, 2 July 2013 (UTC) Mike Powers
(Reminds me of my typical Civilization-playing scenario, pumping lightbulbs into one or other single scientific advance, but switching the target when realising I would quite like something else researched (perhaps for its associated military unit), even though it wasn't my original plan on the way to (perhaps) the Alpha Centauri win. Or, more generally, jumping between all 'spare population' being scientists and them all being entertainers or tax collectors, for a few turns, to deal with morale or cashflow problems while a corrective Wonder is being built... then once it's done I'm free to blithely make it 100% Science again, if I've got such a max/min playing style at the time...) 178.98.53.132 17:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
Great(!) Made a unanimous decision to make the change I intended (the "Fuggit!"-labelled edit), after apparently no-one else having an opinion about the need to switch the focus round, and then quickly a set of other edits occur that don't even revert things back (which I wouldn't have minded). Anyway, don't want to cause an Edit War by reverting/de-reverting/etc, so I'm leaving the following here for your combined consideration.
Mr (or Ms) 149.32.192.33 who "removed the comment about (...) the Mars Mission". You didn't remove anything explicitly about Mars, as I'd already removed that reference and re-edited that section (check what I did in http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1232:_Realistic_Criteria&diff=prev&oldid=42725) and of all the edits I made , I actually quite liked that bit of rare non-waffling. I propose we re-add text similar to:
The comic is, at its core, looking at the idea that space exploration is something we can ill-afford to fund whilst there are so many Earth-based issues that need to be addressed.
It's indicating White-Hat's views, and is neutral about whether this is a sound idea or not. (The rest is maybe more forceful, as I'm personally definitely not an "Earth-only" person, although I'm not extreme in the other direction either so hopefully created balance.)
My thanks to the typo-corrector (I'm always mistyping "lieu", it seems). Although "spaceborne" seems more correct to me than the hyphenated version. "Space-born", yes (born of space, e.g. a person of said heritage), but "airborne" is a word in my dictionary, so... Anyway, I've no excuse when I used "seem" instead of "seam" as the root of another word.
Dgbrt: Good reduction of my waffle (surrounding my oblique reference to Teflon), but I'm saddened to lose the general (if not always proven) examples and your edit perhaps goes explicitly pro-Space more than I'd intended. Still, it's shorter and more readable. I don't understand the criteria for "Trivia" enough to understand if that'd be a more suitable locale for what was removed. (But suspect it wouldn't be for the purely hypothetical asteroid-avoiding scenario.)
And I know this is potentially a hot-topic. Hence why I used loads of words to try to indicate that it is a hot-topic, that almost everyone could have an opinion about. (Even exclusing the totally uninformed, "for every expert there's an equal and opposite expert", so I tried to make sure everybody understood why they might find the explanation neither too pro-Space or too anti-space, depending on their defauly stance.) But for now I shall leave it as is. 178.98.53.132 15:58, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
- Uhhh, who should (or would) read all this?
- I'm trying to keep it simple, but all important details must be shown. That's why this article is still incomplete.--Dgbrt (talk) 16:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
Chaos at the explain section
Please try to add your content in a proper way, people will NOT read this chaos. But even if they do, they still do not understand what you're talking about. At this moment this explain is chaos and so it is incomplete.--Dgbrt (talk) 21:41, 2 July 2013 (UTC)