Cozy Futurism
I&#x27;ve been thinking about how to phrase how I feel about this topic for a while and it&#x27;s hard because there are so many nuances and facets to it.<p>Ultimately I think it is absolutely crazy to think that making earth&#x27;s life multi-planetary is something we should start now for any other sake than inspiring our young people; because by any other measure, we could do something else to solve the long tail risks multi-planetary life solves starting with living deep underground or under the water and powering everything with nuclear reactors. But nobody wants to do that for obvious reasons. Furthermore, there are many other long tail risks that we can invest in to decrease the likelihood of extinction.<p>But Elon Musk knows this. In fact one of his other businesses is devoted to helping stop climate change! So what is this really about?<p>I think it&#x27;s about history books and status. Nobody will read about the billionaire that funded think tanks. They&#x27;ll read about the one that got people to Mars first. That&#x27;s my best guess, anyway. Because it&#x27;s so clearly obvious that going multi-planetary in 100 years will be vastly cheaper for us and there is no way any of this math makes sense to do it now unless you just want to do it for coolness sake or maybe, MAYBE, inspiring young people will get us to 100 years from now faster.<p>Doubt it though.