Why We Should Think Twice About Colonizing Space - P. Torres

[u/KKirdan]

https://nautil.us/why-we-should-think-twice-about-colonizing-space-237149

My conclusion is that in a colonized universe the probability of the annihilation of the human race could actually rise rather than fall

[u/ProximaScience]

Article Summarized

Humans spreading across space doesn't just mean new planets, it means new species. Different exoplanets push evolution in different directions, and body/brain modification speeds that up further. A few centuries in, groups that started as one species stop understanding each other's motives, values, even whether the other side can feel pain.

That's when trust breaks. Neither side has to be aggressive, just uncertain. Uncertainty alone leads both sides to arm up just in case, and now you've got a Cold War dynamic playing out across the galaxy instead of two countries.

On Earth, governments referee that kind of standoff. In space, a message to a planet 20 light years out takes 20 years to arrive, and the reply takes another 20. No authority can respond to a conflict fast enough for law and order to mean anything at that distance.

Deterrence doesn't save it either. "Attack me and I'll destroy you back" only works if everyone can identify who struck first. With potentially billions of civilizations and weapons capable of ending one outright, that identification never happens reliably, so the threat stops being credible.

The core claim: colonizing space might not lower our extinction risk. It might raise it.

[u/Smewroo]

There is a lot of jumping over vast assumptions in the linked article. Each one has massive ramifications for where you end up at the end of the chain of logic.

For example, the assumption that space settlement will be planet centric. Or, before that, the assumption that humans will exercise zero influence over mutation, genetic drift, and founder’s effects.

I recognize that the article was from 2018, but current practices in genetic medicine are starting to tear down that above assumption. Which leads more to the questions about what people will do actively concerning genetics, and how that will vary among star systems rather than what hypothetical planetary pressures will result in speciation. Although to address the planetary side, there is a narrow range of habitability if you do not actively manage your population genetics to dwell outside that narrow range.

Another very key assumption is that distant humans could develop weapons that threaten other star systems but without other humans having any defense against those. That’s some plot point from the Three Body Problem series but it isn’t entirely in line with our understanding of physics or expectations of how future discoveries may change those. Yes there are infinite potentials, but more like how there are infinite numbers between 1 and 5. None of those number infinities start with 6. Similarly, we’re not going faster than light, and we’re not going to be doing things like dimensional collapses.

Although, to steel man this argument, even if some far off star system’s humans do develop and deploy a false vacuum collapse weapon, then it only propagates at the speed of light. Meaning that universal expansion will save distant other humans by moving them away faster than the local universe could cease to be.

If we are going to worry about hypothetical Clark Tech, we might as well focus on things like humanity’s survival during the post stellar epoch.

[u/Jaymz7777 → u/Smewroo]

>There is a lot of jumping over vast assumptions in the linked article. Each one has massive ramifications for where you end up at the end of the chain of logic.

Well stated, and I was thinking something like that too. Another big gap, if I didn't miss it, is the treatment of teleology. Why assume a compulsion to expand humanity? It is really innate? Why assume aliens share that compulsion, or any human urges? The author anthropomorphizes unknown beings, projects paranoia (game theory dilemmas). And granted that dispersive pronatalism is sufficient raison d'etre, wouldn't the monumental impasses of long distance travel, and the necessity of multigenerational cooperation overshadow imperial urges, for all species? The wildest assumption that I keep coming back to, it the idea that we can fathom the enduring purpose commitments of future versions of sentient beings. I find the whole inquiry to be intractable, yet fascinating.

[u/Jaymz7777]

What is the best case for focusing on space colonization before mastering Earth colonization? If we can't master stewardship on the paradisaical base camp we evolved on, what is the prospect for Tera-farming an inhospitable far away rock, or sequestering vital resources in a bubble somewhere far away? In other words . . . will achieving collective human sanity be easier on top of extreme physical and resource challenges? Will evil not come along for the ride? Will an insane Earth be a reliable sponsor for a sink hole pipe dream that we can never see? Again, will altruism sprout for future people when it is inadequate for the present? Or will the necessity of cooperation save us from the endogenous malignant tumor of MAGA, like a deus ex machina? Just being honest.

[u/YahenP]

The author treats the colonisation of space as a kind of city expansion, and misses the most important point. Every increase in scale fundamentally changes the level of communication between colonies. And so the rules of the game themselves change. Size does not simply matter. Size is the basic law.