wow, I didn't know that, thanks for pointing out!

Yeah you are right. There is no doubt that revealing the truth is a disobedient act and must be severely punished in order to restore peace and public blindness. Now watch TV and go to sleep and feed the economy, will ya?

There's an irony in how aggressive people are in downvoting any comment which doesn't toe the "Snowden is clearly right" line loudly.

Dissent, ironically, must be crushed on this issue it seems.

It's not like you're making an argument, you just call what some would consider doing the public a service "torquing off that government in the most flamboyant way possible". If you're gonna dissent, argue... but don't be silly, and then pretend the reaction to that sillyness is an argument ;)

You might note I'm not the author of the comment you're referring to.

So true. The comments section on time.com almost got me a heart attack. Thought that HN would not be infected with that breed of ignorant nationalistic sheeps.. Thank you for restoring my faith

Good idea! Keep us informed if it worked, I would be very happy to donate!

Renouncing technology you say... Also Medicine? If not so, overpopulation would soon become a problem and if by then they still don't know how to colonize further into space they face a serious problem.

That. Why did I have to scroll down so far to find exactly what I was thinking all the time? I mean, I absolutely love Asimov and Mass Effect but they are entertainment stuff. The distances we are talking about here seem to be completely beyond everyone's mental reach. Even if we could upload ourselves into spacepods like Kurzweil suggests (or for that matter could just UDP our souls out into space) we would not break the speed of light - which makes interstellar travel possible but only in a very constraint range feasible. Plus the problem that during the four years it had taken me to get to Proxima Centauri, humanity on earth will probably have seen centuries pass...

I think we just have to modify our brains to think a little bit longer term than we do right now.

I wonder how much of a perception you have of this trip though... if you're just radiation floating through space you might just was well think you just "instantly jumped" as soon as you arrive and "assemble" (whatever that process may consist of)

no, YOU thought of China as terribly hostile. We in Europe know the deal for a very long time. It's not like there was no cold war and vietnam war and irak war and....