I read an article linked to on Slashdot yesterday by an Australian journalist talking about reasons why we should continue exploring space and aim towards colonizing out there. I thought it was a nice piece, full of optimism about humanity and technology. The comments, however, were rather sickening. Probably 75% were full of self-hatred and pessimism and doomsaying. When did humanity get to crotchety? The most dispiriting to me were the comments that reflected a hatred for everything human. People seem to think that technology has made us evil and destroyed the planet, but forget that even the "peaceful, noble, living in harmony with nature" American Indians did their best to adapt the environment to them, not the other way around. And as far as colonizing space, many of the comments revolved around how we'll never be able to go faster than light, or even close to it, and so we might as well forget colonizing the universe and concentrate on lowering the population here on Earth so we don't destroy Gaia and the squirrels will be able to survive. First off, why are squirrels more important then humans? And, if Gaia/Earth is really a giant organism that we are changing... Well why can't Gaia evolve/adapt to us some? What's so wrong with that? As far as not being able to go faster than light, that reminds me of the head of the US Patent Office in the late 1800's who claimed that everything that would ever be discovered/invented had already been discovered/invented. If he were alive today, obviously he would eat his words.

We are already seeing scientists coming up with demonstrable and repeatable experiments in which they slow down or speed up light, which tells me the limits such pessimistic people as the aforementioned negative commenters put upon the capabilities of humanity are utterly wrong. We will discover so much over the next century that if those people could be transported 100 years in the future, they would have to eat their words. Of course after adapting to the new paradigm of a century from now, those pessimists will then say, "Well I was wrong back then, but I'm not now. We are at the peak, and there is nothing more to be found." Such shortsighted B.S.


I'm about as optimistic and hopeful for the human race as anyone I have ever met. Every problem humans have ever faced, we have solved. We are immensely resourceful and creative, and we will find a way to travel faster than light some day, or some differing equivalent. Most likely we will find that time and space are somewhat different than we previously thought, and that traveling faster than light in the traditional sense of a spaceship with a big engine is not going to happen, folding space, or hyperspace, or some other science-fiction-seeming idea is not too tough. 10 seconds to Alpha Centauri. I am 100% sure it will happen if the pessimists do not destroy us first. And if humanity does die out, it will be because of the pessimists constantly hamstringing the optimists.

Be pro-science. It's a lot more fun than being a Luddite.