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> Why would they stop at thousands of colonies Why would we stop at a hundred of colonies? A couple of observations: - in rich countries, the trend is that th

> Why would they stop at thousands of colonies Why would we stop at a hundred of colonies? A couple of observations: - in rich countries, the trend is that the birth rate is declining, the population gets "older". There seems to be a link between wealth and birth rate. Even if space conquest gives us a lot of resources, if that trend persists, the lack of people will be the limiting factor. - there are only really two reasons to go out: curiosity and making sure that a stellar-scale catastrophic event doesn't wipe out our civilization. A bunch of colonies "far enough" from Sol achieves this. And probably after visiting a dozen of systems, the next one will look like one of the previously visited.

akiselev 7y ago
The curiosity aspect might be generational. After growing for enough generations, the critical mass of "curious" individuals - people who are persecuted, who don't fit into the prevailing culture, or who are just really bored - might be there for exploring outwards, even if it had already been done many time before.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  That's the general story of humanity. From the first settlements to the ever-away "final frontier" — somewhere between Moon and Mars as we speak. There is no doubt in the mind of any historian, psychologist or sociologist, IMHO, that we'll probably keep doing this for as long as we are "homo sapiens sapiens". That should be ~50K years total based on past mutations (iirc? anyhow much bigger than recorded history), so I figure we can take curiosity for granted as a civilization trait for next-gen politics. Like, lots of gens. ;-)
  - astrobe_ 7y ago
    Since I'm no historian, psychologist, etc. I have always believed that great migrations were caused by local population pressure - id est too few resources for too many people. Even Columbus stumbled upon Americas because he was looking for a better trade route.
    - K0SM0S 7y ago
      That's a reasonable enough assertion! You could argue that exploration, migrations, colonization are but the emergent/complex behaviors described by more fundamental principles in psychology, sociology, biology. Conway's game of life, in a way. History being a mere factual, chronological account — a log. You are thereby operating at a high-level, manipulating complex umbrella objects like "great migrations", "local population pressure", each of whose words (composite concepts) map to lower-level datapoints — e.g. like some eternal tension (psy., soc., hist., bio...) between a desire to look inwards (for security? familiarity? survival, support?) and a drive to seek outwards (for growth? curiosity? lack, want, need?)

akiselev 7y ago

The curiosity aspect might be generational. After growing for enough generations, the critical mass of "curious" individuals - people who are persecuted, who don't fit into the prevailing culture, or who are just really bored - might be there for exploring outwards, even if it had already been done many time before.

K0SM0S 7y ago
That's the general story of humanity. From the first settlements to the ever-away "final frontier" — somewhere between Moon and Mars as we speak. There is no doubt in the mind of any historian, psychologist or sociologist, IMHO, that we'll probably keep doing this for as long as we are "homo sapiens sapiens". That should be ~50K years total based on past mutations (iirc? anyhow much bigger than recorded history), so I figure we can take curiosity for granted as a civilization trait for next-gen politics. Like, lots of gens. ;-)
- astrobe_ 7y ago
  Since I'm no historian, psychologist, etc. I have always believed that great migrations were caused by local population pressure - id est too few resources for too many people. Even Columbus stumbled upon Americas because he was looking for a better trade route.
  - K0SM0S 7y ago
    That's a reasonable enough assertion! You could argue that exploration, migrations, colonization are but the emergent/complex behaviors described by more fundamental principles in psychology, sociology, biology. Conway's game of life, in a way. History being a mere factual, chronological account — a log. You are thereby operating at a high-level, manipulating complex umbrella objects like "great migrations", "local population pressure", each of whose words (composite concepts) map to lower-level datapoints — e.g. like some eternal tension (psy., soc., hist., bio...) between a desire to look inwards (for security? familiarity? survival, support?) and a drive to seek outwards (for growth? curiosity? lack, want, need?)