markusbrutus

We live in a big universe that's greatly unexplored both at the macro- and the micro- level, both in the physical and the spiritual realms (since you allude to less material motives in your reply). Anything we do (even large-scale, government-sponsored meditation) has the potential to "yield dividents in ways we probably can not even think of today". That's why you need economic calculation (and a firm grounding) to quantify that potential and decide which of the infinite projects that individuals, governments, or humanity can undertake makes the more sense. Colombus voyage actually made perfect sense from that perspective as it was all about economic calculation.

Relying on analogies to guide one's thinking is so common and so wrong, I guess there must be some Latin phrase to describe it. Plus, as I am sure you are aware, the attempted analogy is broken on more points than I care to enumerate.

Its high time that humanity moved past the notion that sending meatbags into space is a good idea. Pampering to Star Trek fans has squandered trillions of dollars pursuing the "meatbags in space" chimera and all they have to show for is a crammed toilet in LEO (soon to be decommissioned since all the "bubbles in space" experiments than 10 year-olds can conceive have been carried out) and the abominable space shuttle. Had robotic exploration being pursued instead we would have had thriving Lunar and perhaps asteroid belt mining by now. What's more, at this point it would have made economic sense and it would create wealth rather than destroy it. Some grandiose ideas are fun but they get you nowhere, and leave you worse off as they represent a gigantic misallocation of capital. The Pyramids for instance, did not propel humanity in an era of skyscraper building.

Grants, careers and reputations aside there are fields like Mathematics where there can be no political agenda because the findings are not input to political decisions. Climate change is definitely not such a field and people are wary of agendas in either direction. Given the huge interests involved it is impossible for even the most well-intentioned layman to arrive at a safe conclusion without spending an unreasonable amount of energy (pun intended).