I think he was referring to this part of the article:
"The psychology professor Geoffrey Miller suggested that as intelligent species become technologically advanced, they spend more time entertaining themselves than on interstellar space travel. Rather than actually going to Mars, they spend more time pretending to go to Mars via movies and video games and VR."
Recent successess of SpaceX, RocketLab etc. seem to have reinvigorated interest of the young engineering generation in space exploration to a degree unseen in the 1990s. Working on a Mars rocket is much cooler than working on user tracking systems in some giant tech corporation.
Watching something like Starship really launching from the Earth beats hundreds of hours of video games squarely.
Yes, and the point is that this entertainment isn't virtual and that it actually pushes the entire civilization forward instead of causing a hedonistic stagnation.
Recent successess of SpaceX, RocketLab etc. seem to have reinvigorated interest of the young engineering generation in space exploration to a degree unseen in the 1990s. Working on a Mars rocket is much cooler than working on user tracking systems in some giant tech corporation.
Private progress into space shouldn't be celebrated. If rich people get there first, they'll use it for ill. What Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk's forays into space, and the news frenzy around them, show is how embarrassingly we've let our government, with R&D underfunded for decades, fall behind.
It's not impressive that a billionaire can take a space trip. Big fucking deal. We put someone on the Moon in 1969 and haven't been back since the '70s.
Humans in general are capable of evil, not just private actors, and I fail to see how governmental activity in space was, on average, more honorable than whatever Musk or Bezos are planning to do there.
By far the most space-interested arm of a government is the military and plainclothed spies. Neither are particularly morally virtuous.
I mean that as a human group/tribe/corporation grows the organization and preservation of the organization dominates the goals of the organization far more than the original purpose of the organization. Do the Republicans actually want to dismantle democracy and impose a fascist government? Hell no, but the organization is going to have to create a fascist government to continue, or cease to exist in their current form. This situation is present for all dominating organizations.
