Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Would humans evolve if we couldn't see the stars? | Konstantin Batygin and Lex Fridman" video.

  1. Secularity is not the source of the idea that the universe is logical. The Gospel of John starts, "In the beginning, was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God." (People somewhat familiar with the Bible probably remember that the original Greek word Logos is typically translated "Word".) Some historians of science propose that even astrology (with its degree of animism) was a significant step towards a mechanistic, scientific worldview.
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  2. Maxwell wasn't envisioning the electronics we have today. (Though Tesla is another story.) It gets more complex and morally grey; Wernher von Braun WAS envisioning space travel, but the capabilities he generated were put to use for awful ends, before he they were put to work again to reach the Moon. Even those awful ends, though, gave short-term achievable goals that served as stepping stones to long-term beneficial capabilites.
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  3. "You can tax it" Be VERY careful with this point of view. While "the power to tax is the power to destroy", a government also has an existential motivation to incentivize whatever it taxes. This led to the Opium Wars, and Britain's maritime empire.
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