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A fun thought experiment is to imagine what we will do once we leave the cradle of Earth behind. Will we just leave all of our junk here? Make the homeworld a m

A fun thought experiment is to imagine what we will do once we leave the cradle of Earth behind. Will we just leave all of our junk here? Make the homeworld a monument to our past? We would know that it wouldn't last, everything decays with time so some would argue it would be a crime not to preserve it and the only way you can be sure to preserve something is by regularly tending to it. I imagine many would argue that we take all of the most valuable artefacts with us, keeping them in pristine condition and on display. This sentiment might even extend to our dead, why leave them to be ground to dust by the uncaring aeons? Inter them in gigantic space crypts instead. Further, we may be determined to leave a pristine planet behind for the animals that still reside there and, eventually, for the next species to crawl its way up to sentience. Jeff Bezos has expressed a wish similar to this for our future. Move everything into space and keep the Earth as a giant nature reserve. Hundreds of years from now perhaps we will do that and after that maybe we will even leave the solar system behind us as we strike out into the universe. Now cast your mind back tens of millions of years and imagine some other intelligent species doing the same for us.

kadoban 4y ago
> A fun thought experiment is to imagine what we will do once we leave the cradle of Earth behind. Will we just leave all of our junk here? Make the homeworld a monument to our past? It is a fun thought experiment, but humanity is big. Humanity leaving Earth would be extremely more likely to look like a few people hopping on a ship and flying away and everything else stays the same. For it to look anything like "last one out, turn off the lights" type of thing, energy would have to be truly free and there would need to be a _very_ compelling evacuation scenario. Otherwise there would be a lot of people left behind for social/economic reasons or because they just don't want to leave.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  It's all about incentives. A huge percentage of the human population has decided to live in cities because they offer a variety of incentives to live there. The transformation isn't complete but if the benefits were even greater then you could eventually see a complete shift. Who knows what incentives a hyper-advanced civilization might have? Maybe life in space is a million times more appealing than life on a planet for a sufficiently advanced technology level. If estimates are to be believed then the resource wealth of the solar system far exceeds anything contained within the Earth. If you've solved the problems of efficient space propulsion, resource extraction and construction then you would have access to an abundance of everything you need. Space also has a lot more space, enough room for any person or group of people to build whatever they want without annoying their neighbours. It also has more energy both in the form of sunlight and radioactive elements. So yes, maybe energy and matter are nearly free for a true space faring civilization and maybe that's the reason no one would want to stay behind or at least so few that they would leave very little evidence of their presence.

kadoban 4y ago

> A fun thought experiment is to imagine what we will do once we leave the cradle of Earth behind. Will we just leave all of our junk here? Make the homeworld a monument to our past? It is a fun thought experiment, but humanity is big. Humanity leaving Earth would be extremely more likely to look like a few people hopping on a ship and flying away and everything else stays the same. For it to look anything like "last one out, turn off the lights" type of thing, energy would have to be truly free and there would need to be a _very_ compelling evacuation scenario. Otherwise there would be a lot of people left behind for social/economic reasons or because they just don't want to leave.

throwaway4aday 4y ago
It's all about incentives. A huge percentage of the human population has decided to live in cities because they offer a variety of incentives to live there. The transformation isn't complete but if the benefits were even greater then you could eventually see a complete shift. Who knows what incentives a hyper-advanced civilization might have? Maybe life in space is a million times more appealing than life on a planet for a sufficiently advanced technology level. If estimates are to be believed then the resource wealth of the solar system far exceeds anything contained within the Earth. If you've solved the problems of efficient space propulsion, resource extraction and construction then you would have access to an abundance of everything you need. Space also has a lot more space, enough room for any person or group of people to build whatever they want without annoying their neighbours. It also has more energy both in the form of sunlight and radioactive elements. So yes, maybe energy and matter are nearly free for a true space faring civilization and maybe that's the reason no one would want to stay behind or at least so few that they would leave very little evidence of their presence.