I agree with a whole lot of what you're saying about the whole "replace not repair" thing - in terms of more complex tools, like cars and computers, it's a combination of the fact that repair requires a dedicated toolset that isn't always available, plus the ways that corporate producers of these tools try to actively make them difficult to repair as part of the "planned obsolescence" model of development. For simpler stuff, though (say, shoes or clothes), I think it relates to the way that life has, generally, grown more complex over the past century or so, to the point that skills of repair and maintenance are less available for people to learn or practice. The easy availability of replacements is also a noteworthy factor, of course, since that removes the pressure that would previously have made those skills essential for life.
All that said - holy shit that take on space settlement couldn't be more wrong. The thing that makes such settlements hard to do is the absolute need to repair or recycle every component of the lived environment, often in shorter, tighter loops than the natural processes of the Earth. I mean, you've got a couple paragraphs in here about Laura Ingalls Wilder's stories of being a family that was part of a newly established community with intermittent, expensive contact back to what might have been external suppliers of goods. How can you possibly miss that any sort of space-based community would necessarily be like that but more so?
Nah, I don't think so. I find the whole project of space settlement so bonkers that the thriftiness of the execution is irrelevant. Praising a Mars colony for being low-waste is deck chairs on the Titanic stuff.
(Thanks for getting the order of "replace not repair" right before I fixed it, though! This is the worst thing about emails: I can't fix the version in everyone's inbox, and it drives me absolutely nuts.)
I ... think I got here after you fixed it? I honestly don't completely trust my own memory on the subject, but I'm pretty sure there were some edits where you talked about mixing them up by the time I was first reading through the post.
As far as the space settlement stuff, the praiseworthiness (or not) of any particular endeavor doesn't really enter into it. The wastefulness conversation here isn't "deck chairs on the Titanic" (in a moving-them-around-after-impact sense or a deck-chairs-vs-lifeboats sense), it's "the Titanic's metal should have been used to build tractors". You can make that argument, and it may well be a valid one, but it's fundamentally different from your central point about repairing things.
I think you’re interpreting well beyond both my specific intent and the well-established meaning of the phrase, which is simply that the general idea of something is so bad that the details of its execution are irrelevant.
There's some kind of misunderstanding going on here, and I'm trying to find my way to it without sounding hostile, but I don't have particularly high hopes. I can only request that you read this charitably, in the spirit of mutual understanding of each other's meaning.
We don't seem to share the same understanding of "[rearranging] deck chairs on the Titanic". As a reference either to moving the chairs after launch or after impact, I take it to be an allusion to futile efforts to remedy a flaw in some plan, the effect of which has already been decided. The problem with the Titanic was the assumption that lifeboats would be needed to ferry passengers away from a distressed ship, but not to hold them for rescue. Once the ship was at sea, no amount of rearranging furniture was going to change that fundamental issue.
I was confused about your use of the phrase to begin with, which is why I tried to allow for multiple plausible interpretations in my response. There is no Mars colony in existence (or in process, to my knowledge, though I'm sure there are plenty of pyramid schemes and pipe dreams to be found), and thus no deck chairs to rearrange. This gets at why I found the original critique so wanting. No serious person wants to create a space colony because they think the Earth needs to be replaced, in any sense. Generally, they want to expand the limits of human settlement as a goal in itself. Calling the project wasteful is like saying Polynesian navigators were wasteful because they didn't stay and build the economy of Indonesia and Asia.
I agree with a whole lot of what you're saying about the whole "replace not repair" thing - in terms of more complex tools, like cars and computers, it's a combination of the fact that repair requires a dedicated toolset that isn't always available, plus the ways that corporate producers of these tools try to actively make them difficult to repair as part of the "planned obsolescence" model of development. For simpler stuff, though (say, shoes or clothes), I think it relates to the way that life has, generally, grown more complex over the past century or so, to the point that skills of repair and maintenance are less available for people to learn or practice. The easy availability of replacements is also a noteworthy factor, of course, since that removes the pressure that would previously have made those skills essential for life.
All that said - holy shit that take on space settlement couldn't be more wrong. The thing that makes such settlements hard to do is the absolute need to repair or recycle every component of the lived environment, often in shorter, tighter loops than the natural processes of the Earth. I mean, you've got a couple paragraphs in here about Laura Ingalls Wilder's stories of being a family that was part of a newly established community with intermittent, expensive contact back to what might have been external suppliers of goods. How can you possibly miss that any sort of space-based community would necessarily be like that but more so?
Nah, I don't think so. I find the whole project of space settlement so bonkers that the thriftiness of the execution is irrelevant. Praising a Mars colony for being low-waste is deck chairs on the Titanic stuff.
(Thanks for getting the order of "replace not repair" right before I fixed it, though! This is the worst thing about emails: I can't fix the version in everyone's inbox, and it drives me absolutely nuts.)
I ... think I got here after you fixed it? I honestly don't completely trust my own memory on the subject, but I'm pretty sure there were some edits where you talked about mixing them up by the time I was first reading through the post.
As far as the space settlement stuff, the praiseworthiness (or not) of any particular endeavor doesn't really enter into it. The wastefulness conversation here isn't "deck chairs on the Titanic" (in a moving-them-around-after-impact sense or a deck-chairs-vs-lifeboats sense), it's "the Titanic's metal should have been used to build tractors". You can make that argument, and it may well be a valid one, but it's fundamentally different from your central point about repairing things.
I think you’re interpreting well beyond both my specific intent and the well-established meaning of the phrase, which is simply that the general idea of something is so bad that the details of its execution are irrelevant.
There's some kind of misunderstanding going on here, and I'm trying to find my way to it without sounding hostile, but I don't have particularly high hopes. I can only request that you read this charitably, in the spirit of mutual understanding of each other's meaning.
We don't seem to share the same understanding of "[rearranging] deck chairs on the Titanic". As a reference either to moving the chairs after launch or after impact, I take it to be an allusion to futile efforts to remedy a flaw in some plan, the effect of which has already been decided. The problem with the Titanic was the assumption that lifeboats would be needed to ferry passengers away from a distressed ship, but not to hold them for rescue. Once the ship was at sea, no amount of rearranging furniture was going to change that fundamental issue.
I was confused about your use of the phrase to begin with, which is why I tried to allow for multiple plausible interpretations in my response. There is no Mars colony in existence (or in process, to my knowledge, though I'm sure there are plenty of pyramid schemes and pipe dreams to be found), and thus no deck chairs to rearrange. This gets at why I found the original critique so wanting. No serious person wants to create a space colony because they think the Earth needs to be replaced, in any sense. Generally, they want to expand the limits of human settlement as a goal in itself. Calling the project wasteful is like saying Polynesian navigators were wasteful because they didn't stay and build the economy of Indonesia and Asia.