The first ten on today’s playlist:

What’s particularly annoying about the “Mars” article I keep denigrating is to actually refute it, you’d need to spend ten times as many words and time writing that rebuttal than the author did spewing his hogwash. That sort of Gish Gallop is how debates are often won. It’s too much bullshit to deal with so people just…don’t.

It’s disappointing that so many people just buy the contentions therein unquestioningly because the piece contains a lot of big words and suspect numbers. You know, I can use big words too. But I use the right words exactly where they fit. If only everyone bothered to do this.

Fauci’s warning to America: ‘We’re living in a progressively anti-science era and that’s a very dangerous thing.’

Fauci is often wrong, but he’s right about that. The “Mars is Scawy, Scawy and Bad” article is basically just anti-science dressed up in obfuscatory language. Anti-humanist too, for that matter.

Hacker News actually has a fairly decent discussion of that relentlessly and overpoweringly stupid “Why Not Mars” article. A screenshot of a few of the best comments below:

The reason I accurately called the article “smart people stupid” is that sort of piece is specifically calibrated to sound smart to other people who like to think they are intelligent while containing little that is accurate or justified by any sort of sober look at the reasoning or the numbers (and often, as in the case of that article, the numbers are just made up).

In the end, most humans believe mostly myths and lies most of the time. Smart humans, because they both believe more and know more period, have minds that contain even more myths and lies than people not as cognitively capable (as well as more true thoughts and ideas). The “Mars” article is a good example of how that works and why such claptrap appeals to them.

Everyone is wrong sometimes and most people are wrong most of the time, but I believe people should to maintain dignity at least make an effort to avoid being clown-level wrong. That is my goal and philosophy anyway.

The goal is enhancement beyond the merely human, not arbitrary change for the sake of self-affirmation. Our goal is to grow and become in the direction of godhood. The merely human holds no promise. Strive for the superhuman, even if we will not achieve it for generations.

— Wolf Tivy (@wolftivy) January 2, 2023

This is it, right here. The “impossible” is a series of hard climbs and plateaus that people then say we can’t go beyond. This cycle has happened hundreds of times in our history.

This is reference the “we should just die in this anthill, Mars is impossible article” I linked to earlier:

That’s a less angry take and more charitable than I’d ever be to that unspeakably stupid and clueless article, but “Why not?” is always a better response than, “It’s hard. We shouldn’t even try.” What a clown that dude is (the one who wrote the Mars article).

Why Not Mars.

This article is deeply, deeply stupid. But it’s “smart people” stupid so it will snooker more than a few.

Explaining why — dang, I got better things to do, and it would take also thousands of words. But mainly I hate it because it’s loser thinking. In short, we could have the tech if we wanted it, and robots are no replacement for human exploration. Also, the idea that we’d send humans to Mars and restrict them from going outside when they got there is fucking ludicrous.

Smart people are the best in the world at having deep and meaningful-seeming justifications for their already-decided-upon positions.

We should build a permanent base on the Moon, then should be pushing for Mars and then Europa or Ganymede.

What’s easy but people are NOT doing it?

Working out for 20 minutes three days a week. Has immediate and long-term health benefits, makes a positive difference no matter your weight or health, and has no negative benefits other than spending 20 minutes of your time that you’d probably be watching some terrible sitcom etc.

Doing this improves your health, cognition, physical capabilities and your metabolism for quite a small time committment.

I mean i don't think reading those particular books is much of a bad thing, it's more about the spacing- I don't know anyone who reads "a book a week". You wouldn't have time to really digest the material

— Icaru (@koko8971) January 1, 2023

LOLWUT?

I read a book a week now, working a full-time and a part-time job, as well as consuming thousands of articles and papers a week. When I was in middle school and high school I read 2-3 adult-level books a day for years.

Who are these people, where a book a week seems like some great challenge? I guess the same ones that think my average workout is “impossible.”

alien deniers be like ‘there’s no way life can exist on a random planet in the galaxy, not possible.’ and then this is literally where they live pic.twitter.com/doldc3Vh9o

— (@lucylovebunny) January 1, 2023

I’ve thought about that — and laughed about it — since I was 8-9 years old.

It’s one of the last refuges of human-centric (and in Western society, Christian-inflected) belief to think that humans are uniquely special. That never made any sense to me at all. The chances of there being no other aliens in this galaxy is just vanishingly tiny.

The first ten on today’s playlist: