The article provides basically two counterarguments to terraforming Mars, derived from a foundation of Aristotle's virtue ethics. Argument one: terraforming Ma

The article provides basically two counterarguments to terraforming Mars, derived from a foundation of Aristotle's virtue ethics. Argument one: terraforming Mars would destroy its beauty. Argument two: terraforming Mars would demonstrate hubris. Let's break these out. Argument One P1) Terraforming Mars would destroy its beauty. P2) One should not destroy beauty. C) Therefore, we should not terraform Mars. P1 is loaded with some questionable assumptions. Namely, that a terraformed Mars would not be beautiful. Or that shifting a thing from one type of beauty to another creates a loss that is incommensurate with any benefit from that shift. I personally find technology very beautiful. So when people attack wind farms as "ruining" the landscape, I just scratch my head, because I find them awe inspiring, like a cathedral. We all know there's no accounting for taste. So we should be wary of someone claiming aesthetic appeal to hijack an argument. Anyone can say they find what another person is doing "ugly" to claim they should stop. That goes both ways. I can claim that argument style is ugly, because it creates an irrebuttable nuclear option that sabotages coherent debate. So if you stand by the principle of avoiding things just because one person claims they're ugly, then avoid that argument. If you don't stand by that principle, then don't argue ethics derived from your personal aesthetics. The second argument is about hubris. The problem with hubris though is there is a fine line between trying something hard out of ego, and trying something hard because you want to strive for something better. There's an element of hubris in all major human endeavors. It's hubristic to try to eliminate malaria. It was hubristic to go to the moon in the first place. There's no way to sort bold worthy projects from bold unworthy ones. In defense of the hubris argument, it is important to admit the limits of our knowledge, and the high possibility of failure. Maybe a lighter gravity and lack of a magnetic sphere will lead to bizarre results from any attempt to terraform the planet, and likely not leave it any more habitable. That's exactly why we should try to find out. We have a planet that is n of 1 right now, it's the limits of our knowledge that would inspire us to learn more from Mars. Terraforming Mars is driven not by our ego, but by our insecurities.