I agree with almost all of the logic behind this argument, but there’s one critical factor that wasn’t taken into account.
The vast majority of the stars in the milky way are beyond 10,000 light years away, so if people were seeding the galaxy with life at the fastest rate possible, they would have to continue making the mistake of the seeding the galaxy with standard earth organisms, for significantly longer than 10,000 years. There’s no way the seeding itself could be locked in unless humanity persisted in the mistake for longer than 10,000 years, both lasers and von neuman probes can easily be overwritten by waves that are projected after 12022 C.E. that quickly replace the original animals with ethical synthetic animals (which will subsequently exist for hundreds millions of years). “Ethical synthetic life” might sound strange, but humanity only invented writing and civilization around 5,000 years ago and there was no modern math or science until at most 200 years ago. It’s actually quite a stretch to consider a world without the ability to develop a preliminary model of ethical synthetic life by 3,000 C.E. let alone 12022 C.E. or 102022 C.E.
The problem with this post’s analysis is that
setting aside the conversation of whether or not we should extend human life into other planets and galaxies (for those who don’t particularly follow longtermism, or the staunch antinatalists that might be reading this), wouldn’t we be far better off just seeding these terraformed planets with plant life instead?
Ignoring human actions isn’t like trying to write the equations of general relativity with one arm behind your back or without ever drawing a square root symbol, it’s like trying to write the equations of general relativity without acknowledging the existence of the number “3”. It’s a problem that’s worth solving, so getting the right answer is worth observing all the factors in the equation. We don’t even have any decent probability estimates for how likely it is that most anti-natalist problems will end up conclusively solved within the next 10,000 years. We do have good probability estimates that animal suffering will end up conclusively resolved as “yes”, which is high, so it’s worth considering all the variables in order to get the best results.
Seeding the terraformed planets with plant life could actually be a terrible mistake, since some of the plant species could mutate and ruin many of the planets in the timescale of 50 years, or mutate into extremely large amounts of strange, suffering life that humanity will not be able to detect, comprehend, and/or overwrite for a very long time because it is millions of light years away.
I agree with almost all of the logic behind this argument, but there’s one critical factor that wasn’t taken into account.
The vast majority of the stars in the milky way are beyond 10,000 light years away, so if people were seeding the galaxy with life at the fastest rate possible, they would have to continue making the mistake of the seeding the galaxy with standard earth organisms, for significantly longer than 10,000 years. There’s no way the seeding itself could be locked in unless humanity persisted in the mistake for longer than 10,000 years, both lasers and von neuman probes can easily be overwritten by waves that are projected after 12022 C.E. that quickly replace the original animals with ethical synthetic animals (which will subsequently exist for hundreds millions of years). “Ethical synthetic life” might sound strange, but humanity only invented writing and civilization around 5,000 years ago and there was no modern math or science until at most 200 years ago. It’s actually quite a stretch to consider a world without the ability to develop a preliminary model of ethical synthetic life by 3,000 C.E. let alone 12022 C.E. or 102022 C.E.
The problem with this post’s analysis is that
Ignoring human actions isn’t like trying to write the equations of general relativity with one arm behind your back or without ever drawing a square root symbol, it’s like trying to write the equations of general relativity without acknowledging the existence of the number “3”. It’s a problem that’s worth solving, so getting the right answer is worth observing all the factors in the equation. We don’t even have any decent probability estimates for how likely it is that most anti-natalist problems will end up conclusively solved within the next 10,000 years. We do have good probability estimates that animal suffering will end up conclusively resolved as “yes”, which is high, so it’s worth considering all the variables in order to get the best results.
Seeding the terraformed planets with plant life could actually be a terrible mistake, since some of the plant species could mutate and ruin many of the planets in the timescale of 50 years, or mutate into extremely large amounts of strange, suffering life that humanity will not be able to detect, comprehend, and/or overwrite for a very long time because it is millions of light years away.