Date: 09 SEP 1980 1122-EDT
From: HITCHCOCK at CCA (Chip Hitchcock)
Subject: It can't be THAT easy to criticize

[ Our earlier discussion on space colonization was interrupted
  by NorEasCon II. This message is a reply to a message from
  Richard Stallman in [SFL V2 #60] which asserted: "It can't be
  THAT easy to criticize...If a flaw in space colonization plans
  were THAT obvious, people would not be taking them seriously."
                                                          -- RDD ]

In blunt fact, it can; everybody has a set of prejudices which blind
them to faulty reasoning in certain areas.  The spacies have their
dreams, the eco-freaks have their dreams, the so-called
Right-to-Lifers have their dreams --- and in each case the assumptions
the dreams are founded on are unquestioned.  Selective blindness is
endemic --- try looking at Brunner's THE STONE THAT NEVER CAME DOWN,
which is a less-biased discussion of what would happen if the ability
of people to ignore facts was removed (the results are startling, even
if you feel that Brunner is overoptimistic.  Of course, it depends on
what you define as "facts" --- but when few are available I'm wary of
touted panaceas.)

  In the case at hand, a particularly vocal exponent of a view
opposing my own (I won't say "an opponent", since the wight in
question is not a participant in SF-Lovers and probably wouldn't
recognize me or my name) has shown himself incapable of applying the
scientific method to his own prejudices, especially his prejudices
about people. (See back issues of MYTHOLOGIES, a local fanzine, for
extensive details; I won't talk here about his behavior when he found
himself bested in fair debate because I don't have absolute evidence
for some of the incredible but believable allegations.)  I have no
evidence that his reasoning capabilities are generally defective when
he is sober; in fact, he seems a bit more stable than a less-well-
known character who commonly refers to his opponents as "peasants
with torches" regardless of the merit of their arguments. Nor do I
deny that there are similarly irrational people on the "other side"
of the question.  They simply share the world's disease.

  I use the term "the world's disease" advisedly. Look at Sturgeon's
essay at the back of VENUS PLUS X, in which he quotes a survey in
which 64(?)% of the people polled said it was true that all men
were equal, but only 4% would acknowledge that blacks were the
equals of whites.  I doubt that the remaining 60(?)% would claim
to see more resemblance between blacks and apes than between blacks
and (putatively human) whites; they were merely discarding evidence
that didn't fit into their world model. (This is also effectively
dramatized in a flashback in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (the
book, not the movie).)  The talent for self-delusion is similarly
described by Damon Knight in HELL'S PAVEMENT ("If I, officiating
at High Services, were to stick my tongue out at the [holy symbol],
half of the people wouldn't begin to believe their eyes, and if any
in the other half spoke up it would be him taken for a demon and not
me", someone writes in his diary (very loose quote).) I don't pretend
to exclusive knowledge; in fact, reading SFLovers has frequently been
eye-opening. It is those who refuse to listen, who deafly mock those
who disagree with them, who are most likely to be wrong.

Addressing your specific ideas:

1. How many is "more than one might think"? Is it as many as 20
   million in 14 years (which is less than the population growth
   in the US alone)? And HOW WILL THEY GET UP THERE? To repeat an
   earlier contention, what propulsive system in the conceivable
   future will get a significant number of people off the earth
   without consuming all of the energy available, of which we are
   already short?  Theoretically, to teleport somebody to lunar
   orbit would take around 4 x 10^6 btu's in the change in potential
   energy, which is trivial next to current consumption of 10's of
   quadrillions of btu's--but given the recent discussion here, how
   many take teleportation seriously as a near-term opportunity?

2. Prosperity from space is a hypothetical, and the reduction of
   birthrate is equally hypothetical (given the above figures, the
   fact that the experience of the last countries to industrialize
   is severely unlikely to be like that of the first countries, and
   the time it would take that we don't have) leaving an extremely
   frail reed to lean on. Right now, when someone promises me wealth
   and health from space I feel like the Feiffer cartoon: "I am a
   technician/I design the new cars/I planned New York City's power
   system/.../Soon I will build a nuclear reactor near your home
   town/Trust me." Looked at realistically rather than optimistically,
   are the payoffs really there? Recall my analogy of two weeks back:
   when you treat such auxiliaries to Murphy's Law as "Do not depend
   on miracles; rely on them" as humorous, they're funny; when you
   start believing in them seriously they are tragic.

  Instances of such blindness (whether willful or not) are constantly
available to anyone following current events. I was almost as much
amused as appalled recently to read in the letter column of CHEMICAL
AND ENGINEERING NEWS somebody's claim that a "limited nuclear war"
had already been fought and won (in response to the uproar following
the contention that it would be possible to fight a limited nuclear
war at all); the writer's example was World War II, which fails the
test (at least to my inspection) because only one side had nuclear
weapons. (The letter got a torrent of response; I sometimes wonder
which mundane editors follow the common SF fan editors' practice of
including really off-the-wall letters whenever the general written
response begins to flag.)

  For a really good example of how people can ignore evidence that
doesn't fit their case, read L. Neil Smith's Libertarian novel, THE
PROBABILITY BROACH. He ignores huge chunks of history, including the
probability that Britain, which regarded the 1783 peace as anything
but final, would have destroyed the American steel industry by
flooding it with imports had there not been tariffs; the small
portion of pure science (as opposed to technology) that has not been
done under patronage of the wealthy (individuals or government); and
the difficulty of maintaining not two but three metals in a constant
value relationship to each other.  It's a good read if you jump over
tracts of 5-10 pages and concentrate on the adventure and gadgets,
but infuriating in its smug self-righteousness.