[ExI] Manned Spaceflight (Was: future fizzle)

[Stefano Vaj]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, we make efforts to stay alive so that we can do things that are
> enjoyable. People want more money and better technology so that they
> can have more fun. Pure science is done because it's fun, with the
> potential bonus of an applied science spinoff,  but it gets less
> funding than what we traditionally think of as entertainment because
> it isn't as popular.

OTOH, this brings up the question of *why* it is not as "popular".

Same story as for "market rules", which really do not tell us anything
on why and how the demand for given "products" evolve.

Ultimately, those things do not depend in the least on some kind of
"natural law" which we would have to deal with as an eternal and
universal rule, but rather on societal values, which in turns are
determined by the cultural norms in place.

So, the real issue is, quite trivially, that technoscientific
achievements are valued *less* than they used to be simply because
societies are drifting away from what might motivate them in this
respect, our task being that of resisting, if not of reversing, such
trend.

-- 
Stefano Vaj