In general, a little controversy isn't harmful: if anything, it gets people interested.

I have a fear of nuclear annihilation. I'm a child of the cold war: I didn't live more than 10 miles from a major WarPac nuclear target until the Berlin Wall came down and the CW ended. Knowing you can die horribly at any moment because of decisions made by alien intelligences thousands of miles away who don't even know you exist - there's something Lovecraftian about that, isn't there?

I'd like to be proven wrong firstly on the difficulty of building a self-sustaining closed circuit ecosystem in space that can support human life.

I suspect losing paper maps but gaining GPS and online maps is a similar step function: maps still exist, but they're vastly more useful, not to say permanently up to date, in their new form. Again, I won't be shedding any tears, but I'll keep a paper road atlas in the back of my car for another few years, I think, Just In Case.

In general, a little controversy isn't harmful: if anything, it gets people interested.

[Core concepts: Human beings all have souls. Souls are software objects. Software is not immortal.]

I don't want to permanently damage myself! On the other hand, a couple of days off the keyboard tends to make things somewhat better.