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If we could terraform, we should do it right away, humanity is one meteorite strike away from extinction... the universe is a harsh place and we have to hedge o
by SirLJ 9y ago
If we could terraform, we should do it right away, humanity is one meteorite strike away from extinction... the universe is a harsh place and we have to hedge our bets to survive and thrive...
- andai 9y agoThat's a good point and something the article doesn't mention: creating a stable colony off planet effectively cuts in half our risk of extinction due to impacts, supervolcanoes / god knows what horrors.
- atroll 9y agotrump for example
- monochromatic 9y agoCan you not
- monochromatic 9y agoIt does a lot better than cutting it in half.
- andai 9y agoOh right. The chance of two simultaneous catastrophic events is ... the chance of one multiplied by itself, not by two!
- gehwartzen 9y agoWhat if the other colony evolves into something other than humans, the two groups becoming distinct species? Will it have been a waste?
- Santosh83 9y agoThere's no rational need to survive as a species. An individual protecting its life is a different matter, but what's the point in struggling so hard to survive as a species? What is it that we hope to achieve in the end?
- monochromatic 9y agoIf the species dies, all of my potential descendants die. I have genes that have evolved to prevent such an occurrence.
- Bakary 9y agoGenes don't evolve according to a purpose, they simply happened to last until the current point in time.
- jpttsn 9y agoPeople have genes for all sorts of things, from over-eating to cheating on their spouse.
- monochromatic 9y agoAnd?
- jpttsn 9y agoRational decision-making involves second guessing or even countering your genetic programming. The "my genes made me do it" argument is no less flawed in a discussion about terraforming than one about what to order at McDonald's.
- the8472 9y agoMost matter in the universe is dead. So even if we assume that we can't come up with anything interesting and worthy achieving right now we can still transform dead matter into thinking matter that might eventually come up with something. At worst you would be wasting dead matter on a useless endeavor while ideally you discover more interesting things down the road. Seems like a decent tradeoff.
- calcifer 9y ago> humanity is one meteorite strike away from extinction According to NASA [0] that's a once in a million year sort of event which, given how behaviourally modern [1] humans have only existed for about 50000 years, is nothing more than a strawman for terraforming. [0] https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/back2.html https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/back2.html [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity
- freehunter 9y agoYou do realize that just because its called a one in a million event doesn't actually mean it has to happen every million years, and it doesn't have to wait a million years, right? A one in a million event could happen after 50,000 years, it just means on average it's expected to happen every million years.
- calcifer 9y agoSo? How does that add any urgency to our current situation on earth?
- jbooth 9y agoI bought a condo on a 100-year flood plain back in the day. Had 2 100-year floods, the first 2 springs I owned it.
- freehunter 9y agoA million year asteroid could hit almost literally at any moment.
- calcifer 9y agoYeah, not really. With the current state of various spaceguard projects working on mapping NEOs (near-Earth objects), the estimated "heads up time" for an extinction level asteroid impact is on the order of decades. The smaller the object, the less notice we get, but the risk also decreases dramatically.
- tim333 9y agoIt may be easier to set up meteorite protection than to terraform. NASA's already on the job http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/13/world/nasa-planetary-defense/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/13/world/nasa-planetary-defen...
- Pinckney 9y agoEarth stays far, far more hospitable than Mars even after absolutely colossal asteroid impacts.
- bamboozled 9y agoHow is the "Universe a harsh place" exactly? It provides us everything.
- Bakary 9y agoIt's harsh in the sense that not only is there a tiny amount of it that can be safely occupied by humans, but also that the sliver we do have can be easily wiped out by random events, and will be inevitably destroyed in a few million years.
- bamboozled 9y agoMaybe it takes all that perceived harshness to produce something special?
- Bakary 9y agoYour earlier comment got me thinking a little more. It's hard to disagree with your logic: since we are there and able to talk about it, that makes the Universe already rather compassionate. In fact, there is no other place to compare its possible harshness to. However, it's a bit like a parent abusing their child. The kid owes everything it has to their progenitor, but it's questionable whether their existence is worth something to begin with. Even without a frame of reference, I believe you can make the judgment that something is in fact harsh. The very fact that we can conceive of asking this question makes it a possibility. In an easier world we might not even consider it at all.