Hindsight is the playground of propaganda

I have previously been critical of manned space exploration as being nothing more than extremely expensive political propaganda. A new history book recounts what Americans thought of the Apollo program and shows how it has taken decades for the propaganda to really saturate our culture, to the point that every American knows the name of the first man on the moon, and politicians speak of space exploration as though it were the obvious measure of a society's greatness. Thank Ford for state-run schools!

Many people see space exploration as part of a culture war. According to a review in the Economist, NASA's chief saw it as the flag-bearer for "Squareland", in its contest with "Potland". According to an editorial in Space Review, the contest was between rationalism and neo-romanticism. Unfortunately, space exploration never represented true rationality, but instead of the religion of rationalism, where the achievements of science are used to induce a mystical awe among the rabble and legitimize power relationships both within and between nations, as illustrated by both the USSR and post-war USA.

Death of a Scientist: Sasha Shulgin

We have lost a great scientist --Alexander Shulgin. I call him "great" not because of any groundbreaking insight he had, but because of his determination to explore and report on a part of the world that others would willfully ignore. In the mold of scientific legends, he pressed on with his investigations despite ostracism and harassment.

He has left us with many writings, but as far as I know, the capstones are PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story, and it's follow-up TIHKAL: The Continuation.

FD: The risk of climate change, and its implications

originally published at Freedom Democrats, 12/19/2007

When dealing with an issue like greenhouse gas-induced climate change, productive discussion needs to stay focused on the practical questions: what is the general nature of the risk, and how can we mitigate the risk. Discussions of climate change often become sidetracked by non-productive investigations into the detailed nature of the risk, which are often initiated by individuals who are afraid that general recognition of risk implies that particular strategies/policies must be adopted. I hope to keep this discussion on track by starting with these two declarations:

 1. We don't know exactly how the climate will respond to our greenhouse gas emissions, and it doesn't really matter.
 2. There are many different strategies available to us.

Before getting into the details, let's consider the nature of risk and uncertainty with respect to climate change. We don't know what our climate will be like in the future. It might be similar to today's, or it might be worse. We often wish to refrain from developing plans/opinions until we have a clear sense of what to expect in the future, but this prudence becomes paralytic in situations where we will never have high confidence in our predictions. Some degree of uncertainty is unavoidable with any prediction, and this is especially true with climate predictions due to the complexity of the system. Just to become an expert on this topic would require about 10 years of full time study, and even the experts don't know what will happen. Obviously, most of us cannot become experts, yet we still need to decide how we will act. So, let us begin:

*Greenhouse gas emissions (GGEs) create a substantial risk of problematic climate change.*

1. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas: it allows visible light to pass , but prevents the passage of infra-red light. The net effect is that energy from the sun can easily reach the surface of the earth, but it is hindered from leaving the earth.

2. Humans are drastically increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (about 25% since 1900).

By themselves, these facts give us reason to consider how to reduce GGEs. But we still may wonder if these changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels can impact atmospheric temperatures. So we look at fact 3:

3. Atmospheric temperature is strongly correlated with carbon dioxide concentrations. This has been seen over the long term (ice cores ) and over the short term (modern monitoring).

3b. We also know that the size of glaciers is inversely correlated with atmospheric carbon dioxide, both over the long term and the short term.

This doesn't prove that carbon dioxide levels cause an increase in atmospheric temperature or glacier-melt, but the data is consistent with that proposal. Warming may have all types of side-effects, while excessive glacier-melt will impact the entire water system of the earth, ranging from glacier-fed rivers to the ocean itself. As a practical matter, we face a substantial risk that carbon dioxide emissions will cause global warming and climate change. If these facts aren't enough to convince you that we face a risk of GGE-induced climate change, here's one last fact:

4. The experts agree that we face a risk of GGE-induced climate change.

The Earth is warming. Glaciers are melting. It's time to admit that there is a risk of GGE-induced climate change, and figure out what we want to do about it:

*We have many options for dealing with the risk of GGE-induced climate change.*

 1. Reduce GGEs. This is the intuitive response, and has recieved the most attention over the past couple of decades, meaning that we have developed plenty of ideas of how to reduce GGEs. These options include personal, institutional, and governmental reforms. They exhibit a wide range of return on investment, as illustrated by abatement curves . These options include development of low-emission infrastructe (buildings, vehicles, cities), low-emission technologies, low-emission lifestyles, and carbon sequestration. These may be promoted by private initiative or governmental policies including subsidies, mandates, spending decisions, taxes, cap-n-trade, etc. The most drastic measures (immediate elimination of fossil fuels) could be as bad as global warming.
 2. Buffer the change on a global level (i.e. Geo-engineering , such as putting sulfur dioxide in the upper atmosphere)
 3. Do nothing/Deal with the symptoms directly: We may decide that other concerns are more pressing, and that the risk of climate change does not justify the expenditures needed to stop it. We may also find that we "can't put the geenie back into the bottle", since we've already changed atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. We may also find that it is easier to deal with the symptoms (both technically and politically) than it is to deal with the cause of climate change.

Personally, I favor a mix of options 1 and 3. Reductions in GGEs will reduce the severity of climate change -- both in its magnitude and its suddenness. Total elimination of GGEs in the near-future is possibly not worth the cost, and is probably politically impossible (considering the needs of developing countries). Finally, the climate change models are relevant to the extent that they help us to anticipate future challenges arising from climate change. Keep up the work guys!

/Inspired by discussion with John, and cross-posted to Swords Crossed and Daily Kos . /

FD: The World's Most Elite Libertarian Scientist on Global Warming

originally published at Freedom Democrats, 5/18/2007; author unknown

Sorry for the bombastic title. But I'm not sure any of you have heard of David Deutsch, so "David Deutsch on Global Warming" doesn't have the same bite as say, "Stephen Hawking on Global Warming."

Deutsch is the intellectual father of quantum computation, the viability of such likely validating his Multiverse, Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics--a paradigm to be the most radical since the overthrow of classical physcis with relativity and quantum mechanics at the turn of the 20th century. And he is a libertarian--probably, no doubt, the only one at Oxford.

Deutsche believes in "liberty as an essential human value, the abolition of victimless crimes, favors entrepreneurship and takes the view that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing at a profit."

Deutsche rejects carbon taxes, regulations, centralized control of output, arguing, that, firstly, it is too late for carbon dioxide emissions controls to work, anyways, and secondly, mankind is better off focusing on ways to adapt to a constantly changing environment, rather than spending huge sums on attempting to prevent that change.

Here's the video of his talk

Global Warming libertarians

Peter Gleick, a prominent climate researcher and scientific popularizer, was recently disgraced due to his use of a false pretense to acquire internal Heartland Institute documents. This whole story (starting with the publication of the Heartland documents) is reviving the idea that there is something "libertarian" about denying the science of global warming. For instance, if you look at the story that I linked to, you'll see Heartland described as a "libertarian" think thank.

I cringe at that association, but I regretfully cannot argue that Heartland is just a tag-along in the libertarian movement -- their roots go back to the origins of the "think-tank" component of the libertarian movement.

Since I cannot disown them from the libertarian movement, I can only discredit their approach to climate change, and point out how they discredit the libertarian movement by politicizing science.

With that, I suggest the following blog articles, the first being by Kevin Carson at the Center for a Stateless Society, and the rest being my own thoughts as published at the (defunct) Freedom Democrats blog:

• Libertarians for Junk Science (by Kevin Carson)
• Politicization of Climate Sciences
• The risk of Climate Change, and its implications 
• Activism: looking in, looking out (libs and climate science)
• Science denialism
• America's Climate Choices

Unfortunately, these writings do not address all relevant issues, but should make the point that global warming denial is not a libertarian position. We all need to come to grips with the fact that human activity can change the climate, and this will only become more true in the future as our technologies advance. Libertarianism can handle this reality as well as any other ideology can.

Activism: looking in, looking out (libertarians and climate science)

Originally published at Freedom Democrats in 2009

The main goal of ideological advocacy is expand the influence of a particular ideology among the general public. I define an ideological movement as a group of advocates for an overlapping set of ideologies, who recognize their shared interests. These advocates will frequently look to each other for intellectual and material resources, which aid them in their primary task of expanding the influence of their ideologies. While most of their attention will focus on contrasting their own ideology against others that influence the general public, some of their attention will be focused inwards--evaluating disagreements within the movement.

While there are definitely benefits to some degree of introspection within the movement, I've noticed a tendency for people to go overboard and focus on internal squabbles to the detriment of the original goal of advocacy. There are probably many reasons for such navel-gazing, ranging form a concern with one's own social circle to finding more satisfaction to debating with others who share at least a few common assumptions, but I don't want to get too deep into that speculation. What I want to focus on here is an example of productive introspection, and how a lot of people seemed to miss the point.

Over at the Center for a Stateless Society, Kevin Carson wrote an essay called "Libertarians for Junk Science". I thought it was a very well focused and relevant essay. He starts with the premise that there is a scientifically valid risk of man-made climate change, that will cause major harm in at least a few ways. This has long been the mainstream opinion among scientists, and it has finally become the mainstream opinion among the public. Carson takes a faction of libertarians to task for obsessively denying the science here, accusing them of providing a disservice both to science and libertarianism.

Carson's essay is primarily focused inwards, but it can also provide an outsider with greater respect for libertarianism. Carson asserts that climate-change denialism is driven by the fear that the reality of man-made climate change would invalidate libertarianism, then argues that there is no reason for this fear. This point is of immense importance because if the public believes that climate change invalidates libertarianism, then libertarianism is dead. Even if the greenhouse gas effect turns out to be benign, our ability to modify the climate will only increase in the future and we will eventually have to deal with these sorts of issues. Carson provides an explanation for non-libertarians, and asks libertarians to stop framing the issue in a way that discredits liberty.

Unfortunately, his audience (as represented by the comments) seemed to miss the point. One commenter (Schulman) immediately turns to navel-gazing, debating whether Carson is a real libertarian. Another (Kinsella) ignores Carson's critical introspection, apparently interpreting it as an attack on libertarianism and insisting that statists are much more prone to ideology driven pseudoscience than libertarians are. While this is an interesting issue, it is beyond tangential and it wasn't clear that the commenter recognized it.

A final note on the comment thread, is that it was full of standard denialist rhetoric (I've become familiar with it from the evolution/creation debates). The core of this rhetoric was misrepresentation of scientific opinion. Understandably, it is hard for a layman to get a good grasp of the issues, since they don't have the time that a professional has and they are often getting their information second-hand from reporters and activists who don't have a great understanding themselves. One consequence of this misunderstanding is the "magic bullet" refutation -- acting as though one inconsistency is sufficient to demolish a body of theory that has been built by hundreds if not thousands of research projects (and often, that apparent inconsistency has already been addressed). I also got the impression that some commentators have spent more time reading fringe opinions (both for and against climate change legislation) than they have spent reading the opinions of mainstream scientists or policymakers.  They seem unable to distinguish between the ideas of opposing ideological advocates, such as radical environmentalists, and those of the mainstream scientists and technocrats whose ideas form the solid foundation of public debate.

Heartland slimebags

Like many corporate-funded institutions, the Heartland Institute is trying to spread lies. Now, they are suing anyone who calls them out.

The Bad Astronomy blog has the original story. According to the DeSmogBlog:

It is clear from the documents that Heartland advocates against responsible climate mitigation and then uses that advocacy to raise money from oil companies and "other corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies."

A comment on Slashdot has a good evaluation of conspiracy theories...

"Turning everything into a massive conspiracy theory is not going to help you do this."
One side promotes the idea that there has been a massive global conspiracy by scientists, across a number of disciplines and organizations, lasting over decades, to lie about a central scientific result in their field. There is no sensible organizational backing or motivation to this.
....
The other side promotes the idea that there is a small political conspiracy to gain by people who have previously been known to engage in political conspiracies of a a similar nature. There is a well known organizational consistency and economic motivation to this.

These legal threats are just one more link in their conspiracy to silence unfavorable opinions.

Dear Chinese: Don't send a person to the moon

To my Chinese friends and their countrymen:

I read with dismay a recent report that the Chinese state is thinking about sending humans to the moon. Meanwhile, our own idiot politicians are spewing a lot of hot air about the glory of space colonization. While these minor-demagogues justify these projects in the name of "national greatness", these activities should instead be viewed as sources of shame. We should not allow these thieves in government to spend our money on their silly propaganda campaigns while our neighbors are suffering from want of anything.

Lest you think that I object to China's technological advancement, I can only say that I welcome the discoveries that Chinese scientists are contributing to human knowledge, and I look forward to the immense expansion of scientific research and technological progress that will occur as Chinese prosperity increases. It is for this reason that I hope that China will not squander its resources on space colonization -- these funds should be allocated in a manner that accomplishes scientific and commercial goals; instead, we are at risk of being drawn into a space race that only benefits the egos of politicians.

Michael Eisen on censoring dangerous knowledge

Michael Eisen has some interesting comments on the validity of (self-) censoring scientific publications. He argues that this increase in the transmisability of the flu (among ferrets) is not particularly important, and therefore this should be seen as being purely a test case for whether the scientific establishment will self-censor, and what do we define as "dangerous knowledge". As many pundits have pointed out, suppressing the details of the experiments is unlikely to make anyone any safer -- either because the details will be leaked easily enough, or  because it would be straightforward for anyone with the relevant skill-set to replicate the experiments, with or without the details.

When knowledge is dangerous

Well, it's finally happened: in the course of researching a disease, someone has created a virus that could decimate the human population, and states are moving towards censoring the findings:

For the first time ever, a government advisory board is asking scientific journals not to publish details of certain biomedical experiments, for fear that the information could be used by terrorists to create deadly viruses and touch off epidemics. 

In the experiments, conducted in the United States and the Netherlands, scientists created a highly transmissible form of a deadly flu virus that does not normally spread from person to person. It was an ominous step, because easy transmission can lead the virus to spread all over the world. The work was done in ferrets, which are considered a good model for predicting what flu viruses will do in people.  

The intent of the "authorities" (both scientific and legal) seems to be that the details of these experiments be restricted, so that only "legitimate scientists" have access to the information needed to replicate the experiments. I'm torn on this issue: clearly we don't want to hand a weapon of mass destruction to a homicidal maniac, but this restriction on scientific communication could usher in its own problems.

I don't have a clear thesis to argue for, so I just want to list a number of points that need to be considered while debating this decision:

• The scientific establishment (epitomized by the journals Nature and Science) wants to maintain its independence from political institutions and will resist any formal censorship. That is all well and good, but we still need to be concerned about self-censorship. The openness of science is integral both to its progress (addressed below) and to its authority among the public. This notion of "legitimate scientists" risks encouraging the notion that professional scientists are elitist snobs who want to rule over the ignorant masses, in part by keeping them ignorant. This type of move is very dangerous both for science and for democracy.
• Censorship can at best delay the independent development of this technology (10-20 years, I'd say). It also is likely to retard the progress of mainstream research into infectious diseases, with the extent dependent upon how well implement the system of access is. Regardless of the calculus here, the point is that we cannot stop technologies from spreading to our enemies, and the best strategy for protecting ourselves may paradoxically be to allow technologies to spread freely, while dedicating our resources on maximizing our own capabilities to respond to infectious diseases -- whether natural or engineered.
• The release of a pathogen like this new flu virus will probably be either ineffective or suicidal. Either the virus won't spread well and the outbreak will not expand, or it will expand rapidly and affect the entire globe. Anyone seeking to use it as a tool for "Clash of Civilizations" terrorism would be extremely foolish. While the terrorist may be able to inoculate himself and his close associates, the only societies that could engage in widespread inoculation are Western and Japan. So there would be some terrorists who may be able to use this weapon effectively, but they aren't our typical Islamist boogeymen (think: Unabomber, or White Supremacists)

I'm sure that they'll be a lot of debate on this topic in the future.

Privacy and Transparency at the University

The Mackinac think-tank has filed a broad Freedom of Information Act request for the emails of professors of labor studies at three universities run by the state of Michigan. This appears to be nothing more than political harassment, similar to the harassment of climate researcher Michael Mann by Virginia's Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, following the "Climategate" brouhaha. It is specifically to avoid this type of political pressure that we have the notion of "academic freedom", and that universities jealously guard their independence from the state.

The heavy use of the Internet by university professors has clearly opened them up to new forms of encroachment by political actors. Universities should dedicate some serious thought to how they manage their data, so as to keep private communications private, and properly document and release any information that should be made public.

I propose that, by default, all internal communications of university staff and students should be considered private, and should be handled in a way that maintains confidentiality. To accomplish this, university IT departments should develop encryption standards for individual email accounts and encourage their universal adoption. This is not a terribly difficult technical issue, as strong encryption systems have already been developed and deployed, such as Pretty Good Privacy. One of the big hurdles to adopting PGP encryption is to establish a network of users with trusted encryption keys; universities are in a perfect position to accomplish this.

This idea of secure communication within universities probably scares a number of people -- I've repeatedly heard mumblings about universities being sinister, oppressive forces in society (for example, view the first comment on this blog post at Bleeding Heart Libertarians). You don't have to be an anti-intellectual conspiracy theorist to insist that universities develop a high level of transparency. Universities provide some important public services where the quality of the final product (e.g. research results, student certification) cannot be easily evaluated without knowledge of the process by which it was produced. To maintain public trust, universities should develop a process that provides relevant information to anyone with a legitimate interest.

Documents relating to student evaluation should be available, both to administrators and to each student or their representative. If encrypted emails are among these documents, the student should keep a copy, and perhaps the university could keep a copy of the student's encrypted emails (at least, any from a professor), which could be recovered if the student provides his decryption key. One nice side-effect of widespread encryption would be widespread signing of electronic documents (using the same key), so that if a document is deemed relevant to an accusation, its authenticity can be easily validated.

Finally, we have the raw data that goes into research publications. The issues here are complicated, and many extend beyond individual universities. For instance, data accessibility has been a major source of contention in climate research, but much of the raw data is treated as a commercial asset by non-academic institutions, so there is little that universities can do. Additionally, scientists will always hesitate to release data until they have had a chance to analyze it themselves. Each field of research probably has to develop its own process for making raw data accessible. For instance, biologists have developed a massive database of DNA sequences (Genbank), and all major journals require that any sequence discussed in a publication be submitted to the database. There is currently a push to mandate the publication of the source code for any program used in an analysis. There has even been some frivolous dispute over accessibility to the raw data from traditional microbiological techniques (which is rarely digitized).*

The complete archiving of research data is an unreachable ideal, though it may become more common with the increasing automation of data collection. Every innovation in data collection and data storage will require researchers to develop new systems for archiving data, possibly leading to the loss of older data archived with obsolete systems. University IT departments (and perhaps librarian/archivists) may be able to provide resources that enable researchers to record their data in an accessible form, but ultimately the focus and extent of archiving and distribution will be determined by the value of the data to other researchers, not curious laymen.

*Addition: There are also experiments relating to transparency in the peer-review process.

Politics has failed

The ongoing budget stalemates, at both the state and federal level, are just the most recent demonstration that American political institutions are in decline. As far as such institutions go, they are still pretty good; however, we can only expect them to become an increasing burden on our society. These institutions are committed to maintaining the status-quo, yet they have made so many implicit promises over the past decades that they cannot realistically fulfill all of them, let alone face new challenges. They will continue to devise band-aid solutions to mounting problems, and continue to prop up other failing institutions (e.g. banks), thereby draining an ever increasing amount of our economic produce.

In contrast, many developing countries (e.g. Brazil, India, China) are ambitiously reforming their core political and economic institutions, which may soon be just as good as America's. While nationalists present this as some sort of threat, we should be thankful for the rise of these other economies that will provide alternatives to our own ailing institutions and pick up the slack for our own decreasing ability to innovate. With our institutions becoming increasingly parasitic, the only opportunity for economic growth will come from technological advances and disruption of our lethargic economic institutions (despite political backing) by way of new competitors. America will continue to contribute to some advances, but not enough on our own to maintain our standard of living in a world with fewer natural resources per person.

This is really our only path forward -- to replace our current bloated institutions with new ones. The hope of reform from within the political system is dead. President Obama was elected on the hope that he could bring this reform, and revive the legitimacy of the state. Two years into his term, there's no sign of success. Obama and his allies dedicated their political capital to major initiatives that changed everything but solved nothing. All they did was reallocate the spoils of power among various special interest groups.

Obama hasn't even done much to increase the transparency, efficiency, or lawfulness of the state. Treaties are still negotiated in secret (e.g. ACTA and such), without public comment, but with plenty of input from corporate bosses. Government departments (e.g. Treasury) still cover up mistakes and corruption. We've actually seen a startling increase in harassment of political opponents under Obama, as Wikileaks was systematically crippled the state-corporation cartel, and Private Bradley Manning has been threatened with exaggerated charges and mistreated prior to his trial.

The end fact is that the state is the enemy of the people. It's officials constitute a class with separate interests and ideology than the public at large. They act to increase the power of their offices and their own wealth. They are co-opted by various wealthy interests (e.g. big corporations) who help them acquire power through elections, exercise power once in office, and reward them with plush jobs after retirement -- as long as these officials manipulate the markets to increase the profits of their benefactors.

There is no real hope of reforming the state. It is evil by nature. We can try to restrain it by political means, but our best hope is to directly break its economic grip on our lives, while we build institutions that actually do serve our needs.

Update: Another good essay on this topic at C4SS: The Last “Political” Essay

Patents and progress in the method of discovery

I am often shocked by the rapid advances of scientific techniques, and how major accomplishments from a decade ago can be repeated with a tiny fraction of the effort. Recent advances in biology -- particularly with DNA sequencing and synthesis - may be exceptional, but the basic principle surely holds across all sciences: advances in the methodology of discovery will increase the ease with which future discoveries are made.

Through the recent past, the most general advances are probably related to computing -- the storage, transmission, and analysis of data. These advances are continuing, along with advances in artificial intelligence and robotics. Regardless of whether these advances will create a technological "singularity", they will surely contribute to additional discoveries in all fields of science.

Recently, a "robotic scientist" has even been built. Specifically, this "scientist" is a geneticist, with a very limited toolkit (both in design and implementation of experiments). However, as a proof of concept, it does raise the specter that robotic systems will soon be able to make discoveries that traditionally required a lot of time from highly trained scientists. Perhaps over the course of a decade, we will see 100-fold reductions in the price of discovery, across many fields of research.

If we put this rate of advancement in the context of patent law, we see a startling incongruity. Patents grant a 20 year monopoly to the inventor of a new tool or process, supposedly providing incentive for research and development. This monopoly allows the inventor to capture all of the benefits of the new invention for himself -- which makes like more costly for everyone else, but seems fair as long as we assume that it was necessary to produce the invention in the first place. While this assumption has always had some problems, it seems extremely shaky in light of the current rate of progress.

Science denialism

Despite some accusations, global warming theory is not a fad. See the following paper:

Peterson, Thomas & Connolley, William & Fleck, John (September 2008). The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus. American Meteorological Society. http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0477-89-9-1325.pdf

The hypothesis was proposed over 100 years ago, and has been a focus of serious research since the 1950s or so, and has been the consensus opinion of climate researchers for about 20 years now.
The fact that most of the public kept their heads in the sand* through this process is irrelevant. Science does not progress by going back to square one at the request of every ignoramus who decides that he wants to passively investigate some phenomenon as a part time hobby.

This post was inspired by the discussions at Libertarians for Junk Science, and is related to my post at Freedom Democrats The Politicization of Climate Science.

*with the help of plenty of profiteers driven by ulterior motives

Manned space exploration -- what a crock!

Cross-posted to Freedom Democrats. (note for new readers)

Frustration is the leitmotif in the lives of most men, particularly today—the frustration of inarticulate desires, with no knowledge of the means to achieve them. In the sight and hearing of a crumbling world, Apollo 11 enacted the story of an audacious purpose, its execution, its triumph, and the means that achieved it—the story and the demonstration of man’s highest potential.
--Ayn Rand
As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
--Henry David Thoreau

One of the things that has always baffled me about Ayn Rand (a self-described rational egoist and free-marketer) was her gushing endorsement of NASA's manned space flight program. She celebrates it as a symbol of the potential of rationality, but completely ignores the fact that this rationality emanated from the centralized, coercive state. The fact that this was a government program should have given her cause to consider whether this sort of project was, or ever could be, the product of free men. Another reason to pause is the recognition that this project was instigated in direct response to a challenge from the USSR--"let's see if we can beat them at their own game"!
Manned space exploration is pure political propaganda, financed by tribute from slaves. Rand should have seen that, but she (and her present-day disciples) are apparently blind to it. Erika Holzer says that Rand treated centralized, coercive planning as a given and figured that we might as well get something worthwhile (i.e. technology-based spectacles) out of it. But when Rand writes "Apollo 11’s triumph is not political; it is philosophical" she is elevating her own wishful thinking over the actual forces that drive human behavior. The Apollo program was political from its conception to its execution. It was conceived to justify corporate liberalism at home, and American hegemony abroad. It was designed to engage the sense of wonder of 10 year-old boys while also speaking to their hardnosed elders by demonstrating the awesome power of the USA.
The issue of practical benefits is absent from Rand's assessment of the Apollo program. Holzer even endorses the view (expressed by Krauthammer), that considerations of practicality are a distraction from the true purpose of the spectacle. However, this illustrates exactly why no rational, free man would expend substantial effort on this project. Krauthammer says that "we retreated" from the moon, but the truth is that "we" had no reason to stay. "We" went there simply to show that "we" could do it. Any attempt to create a permanent human presence on the moon or send people to Mars using modern technology would be the largest boondoggle in human history. Maybe these projects would be feasible after extensive robotic exploration and infrastructure development, but not in the near future.
There's a reason I've been putting we in quotes: the most perverse message from these "individualist" cheerleaders of manned space flight is that they portray human greatness as a social project rather than an individual project. They speak as though the only alternative to manned space flight is to vainly obsess over the eradication of poverty or get lost in shallow self-gratification (egoism, perhaps?). They ignore the possibility of redirecting money from manned space flight to basic scientific research, both terrestrial and cosmic. Most fundamentally they deny the possibility that individuals, left with control over their lives and the fruit of their labors, could ever contribute to anything worthwhile.
Note: The title may lead some readers to expect a full argument against sending people into space (see comments). Instead, these readers will find nothing more than an individualist criticism of Ayn Rand's argument for manned space exploration as a form of ideological propaganda. If there are any other serious arguments for manned space exploration, I do not know of them and this essay does not address them. I have not seen any serious proposals for a manned space exploration program that had scientific or economic goals. If such proposals existed, then I would retract the title, but so far everyone (including Presidents Kennedy and Bush) seem to view manned space exploration as ideological propaganda. My disdain for current proposals for manned space exploration do not extend to robotic exploration, or continued experimentation with long term (but near-Earth) space habitation, nor does it apply to some hypothetical future time when manned space exploration could have a serious economic or scientific purpose.

Demoralizing Moralism: The Futility of Fetishized Values

Below is an abridged version of an interesting essay by Jason McQuinn published in Anarchy Magazine (#58) back in 2005. I've reprinted it here, while removing a bunch of text that is specific to the particular community the author was writing for (and Americanizing the spelling). I assume those anarchists don't mind.

My source: Demoralizing Moralism: The Futility of Fetishized Values from Anarchy magazine #58 by Jason McQuinn
------------------------------------------------------------------
morality:
N. (pl. -ies) principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. (The New Oxford American Dictionary)

moralism:
N. the practice of moralizing, esp. showing a tendency to make judgments about others' morality (The New Oxford American Dictionary)


Introduction:

Most anarchists-just like most other people on the planet-remain relatively naive concerning the many problems with theories and practices of compulsory morality and moralism. Positive, uncritical references to various forms of compulsory morality are nearly ubiquitous in both historical and contemporary anarchist writings, despite the occasional influence of Max Stirner's critique of morality amongst the more widely read. Even amongst anarchist writers who have actually taken the effort to read Max Stirner's 1844 master work, The Ego and Its Own (the publishing date was 1845, but it actually appeared in late 1844), his powerful and important critique of morality often remains either misunderstood, unduly ignored or ignorantly rejected. And although most anarchists may understand that moralism is most often a self-defeating practice in radical social movements, it is generally only excessive references to morality that are so understood, rather than uncritical submission to compulsory morality per se.

Every social theory-including those based on philosophy, religion or science-contains judgments of value by necessity. There is no form of knowledge that can be strictly value-free or even value-neutral. Unlike the natural sciences which can more easily-though never completely-evade acknowledgment of the human values expressed within their hypotheses, theories and research programs, the social sciences are unable to hide their multiple commitments to particular forms and particular expressions of human values. As Max Weber (one of the most important of the early scientific social theorists) put it: "There is no absolutely 'objective' scientific analysis of culture or of 'social phenomena' independent of special and 'one-sided' viewpoints to which-expressedly or tacitly, consciously or unconsciously-they are selected, analyzed and organized for expository purposes." (see Max Weber's The Methodology of the Social Sciences edited by Edward Schils & Henry Parsons [The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1949])

Values are even more obviously implicated in radical social theories which are explicitly formulated to aid the pursuit of deeply rooted structural changes in society. But such values can be constituted in two distinctly different manners: (1) as finite, historical expressions of people's individual and social desires, and (2) as being imputed to have some form of fetishized, transcendental-often absolute, ahistorical or objective-existence over and above human individuals and communities. Unfortunately, there is no commonplace, well-understood terminology to easily distinguish these two manners of constituting and speaking of human values. And this alone can lead to misunderstandings.

Problems of terminology

Terminology is a problem with many aspects of social critique wherever overcoming the many facets of social alienation is concerned. For every form of compulsory fetishization, whether religion, ideology, politics, commodity-fetishism and work, or morality, there remains a corresponding form of non-fetishized thinking and activity that is most often uncritically lumped together with it. Thus, the critique of religion often founders on a widespread, irrational insistence that nonfetishized thinking about life and the cosmos actually constitutes a form religion (even when it self-consciously denies such an identity). And that, therefore, since this particular imputed form of religion is not fetishized, then the critique of religion as such (as fetishization of the realm of the spiritual, divine or sacred) is argued to be unfounded. Similarly, those opposed to the critique of ideology tend to consistently (if insincerely) claim to see no difference between fetishized social theory and nonfetishized social theory, calling every form of social theory "ideology" in order to evade the sting of criticism for their own devotion to particular ideological mystifications...

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Although most dictionary definitions of morality clearly imply it involves the fetishization of values, this implication is lost on most readers. For example, The New Oxford American Dictionary defines morality as "principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior." Obviously, the "right and wrong or good and bad" qualifiers here are most likely to be taken (unself-consciously) as fetishized, transcendental values, rather than as particular, finite choices with no claims to any reality beyond the unique desires of individual human beings. However, the moment the critique of morality is raised, even in Anarchy magazine, there are always those who pop up with the aim to confuse things (in order to defend their own moralistic commitments) by claiming in one form or another that there is no such thing as a non-moral human value!

Most people, in common with dictionary definitions, would never say that a person expressing her or his own desires with no claim to transcendental status for them is being moral by valuing a particular goal. But the defenders of morality will come out of the woodwork to claim that even the most finite, ephemeral and contingent human desire indicates the existence of a moral system every bit as real as those taught by the various branches of the Catholic Church!

To avoid this intentional confusionism wrought by those afraid of any criticism directed at their own sacred cows, people pursuing critiques of morality usually attempt to make a clear distinction between ethics and morality. In this case, ethics is considered to be concerned with finite, non-fetishized values, while morality is concerned with fetishized, transcendental values: right and wrong or good and bad. Unfortunately, since there is almost no radical and substantial criticism of morality in our popular culture (as opposed to the mountains of superficial and insubstantial, partial criticisms of morality), appeals by moralists to dictionary definitions of "ethics" often derail such attempts. (Most dictionary definitions in an alienated, moralistic society will be unlikely reflect the possibility that a dichotomy between fetishized and nonfetishized values could even exist. For most people consistently nonfetishized values simply aren't considered possible).

Therefore, in this essay, I will try to refer to the critique of "compulsory morality" in order to make it absolutely clear that I'm speaking of a system of fetishized values that demand compliance....I will also refer to "finite ethics" to make it clear that the alternative to compulsory morality involves finite, nonfetishized values.

The anatomy of compulsory morality

Compulsory morality involves self-subjugation to a system or set of values that are, for one reason or another, believed to require mandatory compliance-even if the person believing this is unable to-as the cliché goes-"live up to them." Although compulsory morality can potentially be grounded within an individual's subjective experience, it is almost always instead grounded somewhere outside the realm of directly lived human experience.

For example, religious forms of morality are commonly grounded in such unlikely (nonexistent) places as "the Word of God," or other forms of supposed direct revelation from some sort of unseen, disembodied, (unreal) Spirit. (Of course, this grounding is generally mediated through the supposed gods' appointed representatives on Earth, however irrational the belief in the authenticity of these representatives might be.) In this form of compulsory morality, God is supposed to be the source of moral values that must be followed because the source-whatever it may be-is in some sense considered far more real and important than the unique individual person who cannot be trusted to know what she or he should do without the guidance of a system of fetishized, sacred values. The formal structure of compulsory religious morality is thus: sacred values from an unseen source to be followed by a relatively worthless human being whatever the context.
With a system of values like this, whatever the actual content of the morality, is it any wonder that people attempting to live this form of alienation are constantly mystified about their lives, desires and social relationships?

However, in these modern times, the place of religion has often been supplanted by other things, like Science, or particular social or political ideologies (like Marxism) that demand compulsory adherence.

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Science is one example of a source of many forms of modern, enlightened compulsory morality. I have capitalized it above to indicate that it is not the actual practice of experimental exploration of nature in pursuit of knowledge (science) of which I'm speaking, but an ideological construct (Science) of particular fetishized scientific ideas taken out of their finite, experimental contexts and elevated into general, quasi-religious principles. The prestige of the various forms of scientism (ideologies and worship of Science) is based on the practical accomplishments of experimental science in combination with industrial capitalism. Together their power seems to rival that of the old gods for many modern citizens of the civilized world. For those whom religion no longer satisfies, but who do not yet understand the social origins of ideas and values, the various forms of scientism can be very appealing.

They all involve the deduction of value systems from particular, reified scientific (or semi-scientific, or even pseudo-scientific) theories. Notable examples include the (misnamed) social Darwinist ideas whose morality is usually based on some version of the Spencerian "survival of the fittest" ("and Devil take the hindmost"), the ideologists of the fetishized gene whose morality is based on imagining what genes (as if they had minds of their own!) would want "their" bodies to do to promote their reproduction or evolution, and all the various ethnological, zoological, or evolutionary psychological reifications of humanity whose moralities are all based on imagining that our values are determined in one form or another by biology or genetics, etc.

The formal structure of the various scientific moralities is, once again, the same as that for religious morality: sacred values from an unseen source to be followed by a relatively worthless human being whatever the context. Like religious morality, scientific versions of morality attempt to limit and determine what is supposed to be humanly desirable and possible, narrowing the choices that can be made by true believers.
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Radical moralism?

In the absence of genuinely lived community (of contestation) and a genuinely revolutionary movement throughout society, many would-be radicals tend to retreat into other activities that substitute for radical, direct action. One of the easiest traps to fall into is the reduction of the radical project into a moralistic project (and, as a corollary, the reduction of subversive, radical discourse into relatively meaningless moralistic discourses). Instead of creating a subversively radical social theory in concert with other rebels and putting it into practice with them with the aim of directly eliminating as many aspects of domination and social alienation as possible, the goal becomes the rigidly Manichaean division of the social world into "good" and "bad" parts (in themselves--outside of any context), with the aim of mechanically suppressing the "bad" wherever and whenever possible, and enlarging the "good."

Instead of a dialectical social theory aimed at increasingly sophisticated understanding in conjunction with an increasingly sophisticated, subversive practice, moralistic ideologies are aimed at simplistic dividing and labeling with little or no regard for context or the totality! For environmental moralists, for example, recycling and wilderness are always good, while SUVs and new housing developments are always bad. Context doesn't matter, resulting in mechanistic strategies aimed at, for example, simply discouraging SUV use (whether by firebombing new SUVs or working for legislation that makes them more expensive), or discouraging the construction of new housing (whether by arson or attempting to organize political pressure on developers). Rather than encouraging the spread of the (practical and theoretical) critique of capital and state as parts of a worldwide system of social alienation and domination, moralism tends to result in always seeing the entire social world in a series of single-issue blinders.

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Examples could also be given for other forms of would-be radical moralism like pacifism, many forms of leftism including most Marxist ideologies, and various other single-issue campaigns.

One of the most striking aspects of moralistic practice involves the generally futile attempts to communicate across the finite ethics/compulsory morality divide. Even when those who have no belief in any fetishized value-systems make quite clear that their criticisms and commentary develop from their own practical experiences within particular social contexts and historical situations, their words are almost automatically interpreted instead through a moralistic framework that assumes these criticisms and commentary must be based on some undeclared, but still-transcendent system of values!
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The effects of morality

Whatever the specific content of compulsory morality, the effects are basically similar. A person's ability to think clearly and act decisively in his or her own interests (within appropriate contexts) is compromised or sabotaged. If people are not able to consciously act in their own individual and communal interests, they will almost certainly end up acting instead in the (alien) interests of another in some fashion.

In most forms of compulsory morality this other around whose interests values are oriented is an abstract idea rather than a person or persons: God, Science, Nature, one's Country (or Nation-State), the Economy or Ecology, etc. (Although there are always real people, social groups and organizations just waiting to exploit the victims of morality by acting as mediators between them and their abstract ideals.) Even in those cases in which values are explicitly oriented towards people or groups of people (for example, the class-struggle morality that puts the Working Class at the center of value), these values usually remain oriented much more towards the abstract idea of the person or the group than towards any actual, concrete, living persons: the fetishized idea of the Proletariat or the Party (rather than actual living and breathing workers or the individual members who make up the party), Humanity (in the abstract rather than in the form of an aggregate of concrete individuals in all their interrelationships), the State, etc.

People whose compulsory moralities are organized around these abstract ideas attempt to force themselves to follow their demands because they have displaced (projected or alienated) their own subjectivity onto them, usually through the influence of years and years of alienating and
demoralizing socialization and indoctrination. Rather than understanding and acting for themselves the victims of morality attempt to make themselves the puppets of the abstract ideas they fetishize.

Living without morality

The radical alternative to morality involves the creation of critical self-theory. The formation of any coherent and effective anarchist perspective and practice requires that people develop (through interaction with their natural and social environments) a relatively sophisticated understanding of themselves and their places in their social and natural worlds. Without a consciously understood subjective locus of understanding, without a clear focus on one's own personal and social interests, it is impossible to develop a critical social theory that can comprehend social alienation and the possibilities for its supersession. Critical self-theory and critical social theory are two essential poles of one comprehensive project.

Only by developing and maintaining a self-critical understanding of oneself and one's world can people make comprehensively rational decisions about what their most genuine interests are and how to pursue them (rather than making narrowly or partially rationalized decisions which won't accurately reflect themselves or their overall context). In the 19th century language of Max Stirner, this kind of critical self-understanding was termed "self conscious egoism," but today it makes more sense to jettison this outdated, pre-Freudian term in favor of "self-theory."

Critical self-understanding involves the simultaneous development of a finite ethics, a set of values consistent with what are considered and felt to be one's most important interests, that are expressed in everyday life activities. These values are organic expressions of one's radical subjectivity, of one's self-possession, self-understanding and self-activity. They don't originate outside of one's life, demanding one's subjection, because they originate from one's own direct life-experiences and serve one's own interests.