This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
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Notes -
I obviously disagree very strongly on factual premises. Especially:
If we're using/relying upon human astronauts (or if the Soviet Union/Russia is pioneering in space flight, why cosmonauts?) for centuries, the future has dun goofed.
I am also not claiming that we should be spending all of our money on spaceflight. I am saying they we should be spending more money on it, but closer to the "3% of the national budget" that the average American believes NASA gets instead of the far, far smaller fraction it actually is.
In the near-term, we do have other very important things to spend our money on. I would be the last person to think that money spent on AI data centers is inherently wasteful or stupid, barring the usual x-risk concerns. If we got get AGI and then ASI, spaceflight and the exploration/industrialization of space becomes way easier.
But I do not think we are guaranteed to get AGI. I think it makes sense to hedge against a future where things don't pan out, and we need to do it with old-fashioned human grit. That means that spending large amounts of money on things like medical or anti-aging research, fusion power, spaceflight and so on. Just in case AI doesn't show up on schedule. And also because they would have immediate near and medium term benefits, assuming the research and investments pan out.
A society or a civilization can have multiple priorities. Even Uganda can spend money on both food, education and electricity, let alone the US. I am arguing that we should spend much more, but not ridiculously more, and that this spending should be considered a civilizational project that will pay off in our lifetimes, even if not next week. If the US has the money to waste in Iran, it has the money to put men on Mars (and women, and small children too).
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