Seeding the universe
We are approaching a point where we could quite conceivably tailor life forms that could live, thrive, and evolve on worlds and moons other than Earth.
I'm intrigued by this as an ethical/moral question.
Some argue to spread life outside of earth would be pollution and contamination. In yet, on earth we hold life and all lifeforms as the most wonderful and precious thing. So why not spread life past earth?
I can see the argument, than until we've searched a place enough to establish life doesn't already exist, we may be inadvertently destroying alien life. But what of places devoid of life? Must they be kept that way.
There is also worry that given the long term we can't predict the outcome. So what? It seems hugely exciting that we could seed life to evolve and adapt in parallel to ourselves.
And on that, what if we could help change places to make it more approachable for man-kind? What if we could make something hardy enough to live in the outer atmosphere of Venus and slowly diffuse the greenhouse effect in place.
Is it so morally wrong to make the universe suit ourselves? Otherwise who are we keeping it pristine for?
I'm intrigued by this as an ethical/moral question.
Some argue to spread life outside of earth would be pollution and contamination. In yet, on earth we hold life and all lifeforms as the most wonderful and precious thing. So why not spread life past earth?
I can see the argument, than until we've searched a place enough to establish life doesn't already exist, we may be inadvertently destroying alien life. But what of places devoid of life? Must they be kept that way.
There is also worry that given the long term we can't predict the outcome. So what? It seems hugely exciting that we could seed life to evolve and adapt in parallel to ourselves.
And on that, what if we could help change places to make it more approachable for man-kind? What if we could make something hardy enough to live in the outer atmosphere of Venus and slowly diffuse the greenhouse effect in place.
Is it so morally wrong to make the universe suit ourselves? Otherwise who are we keeping it pristine for?
4 Comments
kulpimssooner or later, as we break new grounds with stuff like nanotech and AI, we're gonna have to set some rules. dangers are real. but when has that ever stopped us from playing god:P
NetRunnerMan owns everything nature produces, according to the Bible and free market philosophy.
I don't really see why anyone would pause to consider the moral and ethical consequences of doing these sorts of things, as long as there's money to be made.
I suspect that in our own solar system, our progress is going to be slow enough that we'll have a pretty damn good idea of whether there's life someplace before we strip mine and terraform it. I also think that at first the cost/benefit analysis will make it so we'll prioritize scientific research of alien life above mining and colonizing.
Once we start talking about an interstellar migration, I think all bets are off though. The cost of establishing the first few interstellar colonies is going to be so high, we're probably not going to blink twice about eradicating even sentient life to secure them.
Maybe once we've exterminated a few planetary ecosystems (including our own, naturally), some sort of environmentalist movement will rise up to try to protest the expansion of the colonial empire, but they'll just be ignored as dirty fucking hippies who hate humanity.
Of course, there's always the chance that we'll outgrow capitalism before we start flying to the stars. It'd be nice if we at least learned how to treat every member of our own species as if they're people before we started encountering people who definitely aren't human beings.
A guy can dream, I guess.
gwiz665Is there any money to be made?
Now, building a Dyson Sphere, that's where the big bucks are. I wanna be the creator of "Big Sun", the biggest energy company in teh world. I'll be rich, RICH. If it weren't for those meddling kids.
gwiz665Also, aren't we tailoring life quite a bit already? Cows don't look like natural cows anymore, they've been tailored to produces far more milk than they did before. Bananas never would exist in the for it does now if not for artificial selection by us.
The day we artificially create life will be a good day.
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