5 ms·

This is very correct. Earth is a treasure of life and biology. Space is filled with endless resources but no known life. The equation is very, very simple.

This is very correct. Earth is a treasure of life and biology. Space is filled with endless resources but no known life. The equation is very, very simple. Protect the life on Earth at all costs and reduce interference in natural evolution. Migrate off-world to barren wastes and mine them. Every feasible activity that can be done off world, should be. Use those space resources to build self-sufficient extra-terra systems and eventually migrate all modern / advanced tech off of earth, and remove all traces of our existence there so that new intelligence can take root. Leave behind only humans who live simply.

sneak 4y ago
> Protect the life on Earth at all costs There will eventually be a threat to Earth's biosphere that we simply lack the technology to divert, avoid, or remediate. Pretending that this isn't true eventually results in human extinction.
- survirtual 4y ago
  Agreed. Rogue black holes, gamma ray bursts, or even the very fundamental constants of known physics shifting to a more stable form and that new rule propagating at light speed imperceptibly — and countless, countless other possible dangers. We are no where near the technological level to deal with these, as we cannot even deal with simpler world-ending events (meteor strikes, desertification, proper stewardship of emerging AI, nuclear war). In addition to all the other reasons one can muster, our advancement in technology can easily be motivated and justified by the objective of Earth preservation and propagation. It will be interesting to see, however, as we potentially discover other forms of life maybe in places we actually think are barren, how we as a species cope with that. But we are not even remotely at that problem space yet.
api 4y ago
That'd make a great sci-fi world setting: primitivists who occasionally hop in their spaceship and plug into a superintelligence. Seriously though: I do think a far future option for preserving the Earth is to move at least heavy polluting industries off world. All technology is not going to happen but we could put Shenzhen on the moon. I could see the moon being Earth's industrial park.
- survirtual 4y ago
  It would be interesting. On the front of moving industry off world, it does not need to be far future. In fact, we really should have gotten on this years ago already. We are behind schedule. Our aversion to nuclear tech has set humanity back decades. Chemical rockets are not sustainable. Nuclear fusion rockets would be, but fear of nuclear fission made society largely afraid of all things nuclear & reliant on oil based energy gen, and the advent of dirt cheap solar allows us to have more time being afraid & using energy sources that constrain us to Earth’s surface. Use of nuclear energy comes with it a more educated world populace wrt nuclear engineering (nuclear physics is more or less completely understood so the adventure here is in engineering and material sciences). With that more educated populace comes miniaturization of nuclear reactors, materials that can handle radiation better, perhaps even materials that can generate charge when struck by radiation such that most energy is captured in a usable form instead of generating unstable isotopes (think: like solar panels but for alpha / beta / gamma radiation). It also means more people with the background to make fusion a reality. With fusion reactors comes fusion rockets. Contained plasma has a cool feature of being useful as a clean, high-energy matter stream that can be ejected (and imparting force) while simultaneously generating energy, all while potentially requiring orders of magnitude less reactant mass. This would completely change our relationship with space.
samatman 4y ago
This is my first exposure to Extropian Viridian Anarchoprimitivism. I'm not sure I like it but I'm intrigued.
yrgulation 4y ago
The planet has a limited lifespan anyway and even if we somehow manage to clean everything up we’d still reach and endgame, and so will all living things. Life tends to spread but non intelligent life is limited in what it can achieve. Therefore it is our duty to spread outside the boundaries of earth, because with us, other life forms will follow. Crazy as it may sound but we are likely biologically programmed to do so but we haven't reached the right level of understanding it yet.
- survirtual 4y ago
  I agree, but I think many of us have this understanding. We are just largely ruled by a people who utterly lack it. I would even argue we have all had it for thousands of years. Most spiritual traditions have it embedded in their teachings, so there has been a “knowing” of our cosmic destiny for a long time I think.

sneak 4y ago

> Protect the life on Earth at all costs There will eventually be a threat to Earth's biosphere that we simply lack the technology to divert, avoid, or remediate. Pretending that this isn't true eventually results in human extinction.

survirtual 4y ago
Agreed. Rogue black holes, gamma ray bursts, or even the very fundamental constants of known physics shifting to a more stable form and that new rule propagating at light speed imperceptibly — and countless, countless other possible dangers. We are no where near the technological level to deal with these, as we cannot even deal with simpler world-ending events (meteor strikes, desertification, proper stewardship of emerging AI, nuclear war). In addition to all the other reasons one can muster, our advancement in technology can easily be motivated and justified by the objective of Earth preservation and propagation. It will be interesting to see, however, as we potentially discover other forms of life maybe in places we actually think are barren, how we as a species cope with that. But we are not even remotely at that problem space yet.

api 4y ago

That'd make a great sci-fi world setting: primitivists who occasionally hop in their spaceship and plug into a superintelligence. Seriously though: I do think a far future option for preserving the Earth is to move at least heavy polluting industries off world. All technology is not going to happen but we could put Shenzhen on the moon. I could see the moon being Earth's industrial park.

survirtual 4y ago
It would be interesting. On the front of moving industry off world, it does not need to be far future. In fact, we really should have gotten on this years ago already. We are behind schedule. Our aversion to nuclear tech has set humanity back decades. Chemical rockets are not sustainable. Nuclear fusion rockets would be, but fear of nuclear fission made society largely afraid of all things nuclear & reliant on oil based energy gen, and the advent of dirt cheap solar allows us to have more time being afraid & using energy sources that constrain us to Earth’s surface. Use of nuclear energy comes with it a more educated world populace wrt nuclear engineering (nuclear physics is more or less completely understood so the adventure here is in engineering and material sciences). With that more educated populace comes miniaturization of nuclear reactors, materials that can handle radiation better, perhaps even materials that can generate charge when struck by radiation such that most energy is captured in a usable form instead of generating unstable isotopes (think: like solar panels but for alpha / beta / gamma radiation). It also means more people with the background to make fusion a reality. With fusion reactors comes fusion rockets. Contained plasma has a cool feature of being useful as a clean, high-energy matter stream that can be ejected (and imparting force) while simultaneously generating energy, all while potentially requiring orders of magnitude less reactant mass. This would completely change our relationship with space.

samatman 4y ago

This is my first exposure to Extropian Viridian Anarchoprimitivism. I'm not sure I like it but I'm intrigued.

yrgulation 4y ago

The planet has a limited lifespan anyway and even if we somehow manage to clean everything up we’d still reach and endgame, and so will all living things. Life tends to spread but non intelligent life is limited in what it can achieve. Therefore it is our duty to spread outside the boundaries of earth, because with us, other life forms will follow. Crazy as it may sound but we are likely biologically programmed to do so but we haven't reached the right level of understanding it yet.

survirtual 4y ago
I agree, but I think many of us have this understanding. We are just largely ruled by a people who utterly lack it. I would even argue we have all had it for thousands of years. Most spiritual traditions have it embedded in their teachings, so there has been a “knowing” of our cosmic destiny for a long time I think.