Submitted by Mickeymousse1 t3_11stqn6 in Futurology
strvgglecity t1_jckw3u7 wrote
Reply to comment by Chemical_Ad_5520 in Discussion: the goal of human existence should be avoiding the heat death of the universe by Mickeymousse1
Not a single word of this has meaning. I am telling you flat out it is impossible to predict that far in the future. All the things you dream of could be the exact reasons for our extinction.
Chemical_Ad_5520 t1_jcra7g7 wrote
Since you're not giving me any substantial reasoning to argue against, I'll just elaborate about my position. I'm not claiming any absolutes, but I do think that what we do now can affect the probabilities of one or another long term outcomes.
I basically feel like a dead universe is less interesting than one with life in it, because a dead universe is going to decay and destroy itself relatively predictively, but a universe with intelligent life existing for long periods of time is more dynamic and might do some pretty interesting things. There's no apparent objective meaning about the two possibilities, it's just my opinion that the dynamic nature of intelligent life is more interesting.
In light of this, I prefer that human life survives and figures out how to colonize space without destroying itself, because that would increase the potential longevity of earth life in the universe, which is the only life we have reasonable evidence of. If we can achieve space colonization - a near-term goal compared to our timeline of the lifespan of the universe - then the probability of earth life/intelligence organizing the universe such that the nature of its demise is affected goes from zero to potentially non-zero. You don't know that there is definitely no way for this to happen, except that it's obvious that life or intelligence can't change the universe if it doesn't exist. Thus if we colonize space, we are creating the possibility of outliving the solar system, which allows for some potentiality to affect the universe at extremely long time scales.
On the topic of determining what the best moves to prevent our extinction in this century are, I'd say that being very careful and wary of ethics in the development of AGI, nanorobotics, and genetic engineering are probably most important. Mitigation of ecological damage feels like it'd be next, then probably climate change, then probably we need cheaper desalination to curb conflict as we get past the middle of the century, and hopefully the risk of all-out nuclear war doesn't get too high. It would be nice to have a backup human colony in case something goes really wrong on earth during this dangerous period of technological development, but not at significant expense to these priorities. But on that note, society is nowhere close to optimally addressing humanity's risks and desires. Whether or not you think space colonization is worth any of our resources or not seems secondary to the ridiculous waste and inefficiency of the economy in general, which begs the question "how would you actually want to try to change things?"
It's already hard to see how we can even get future technologies developed with equity in mind, I really can't see how someone could expect it's possible to get all powerful people to forever abstain from creating incredibly powerful technologies, short of killing everyone, which defeats the purpose. So we have to deal with these risks and challenges, and we don't seem to have the option of doing it in an optimal fashion, so it's best to focus on what can actually be done to improve the future. Contributing to certain social movements or technological developments is the bulk of people's options for how to make impactful contributions. Working to make the development of technologies safe and their implementation ethical, and mitigating risks to communities and civilization at large are good ways to try to contribute in my opinion. If space colonization is something you can find a way to contribute to, I see that as being positive.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments