From this summary I don’t know what the book’s arguments are, nor what original pro-colonization arguments it is responding to. (x-risk?)
Interesting topic though, and sounds like a good book from what I can tell. Thanks for the alert and invitation to read it.
Is there a “right size” for space colonization, (one solar system, a few nearby stars, one galaxy)? Or is it basically inevitable that any space colonization is going to lead to infinite expansion?
Thanks for this Tandena. Apologies if the summary is unclear. The book argues that we ought to refrain from initiating effectively irreversible space colonisation processes unless and until robust suffering-mitigating constraints are demonstrated.
By “effectively irreversible processes,” I am referring to actions such as sending probes containing microbes to seed life on distant star systems (directed panspermia), establishing independent colonies capable of further expansion, sending out Von Neumann probes, and so forth. These leaves upon colonisation at intra-Solar System scales, which I argue may be more reliably governed.
From this summary I don’t know what the book’s arguments are, nor what original pro-colonization arguments it is responding to. (x-risk?)
Interesting topic though, and sounds like a good book from what I can tell. Thanks for the alert and invitation to read it.
Is there a “right size” for space colonization, (one solar system, a few nearby stars, one galaxy)? Or is it basically inevitable that any space colonization is going to lead to infinite expansion?
Thanks for this Tandena. Apologies if the summary is unclear. The book argues that we ought to refrain from initiating effectively irreversible space colonisation processes unless and until robust suffering-mitigating constraints are demonstrated.
By “effectively irreversible processes,” I am referring to actions such as sending probes containing microbes to seed life on distant star systems (directed panspermia), establishing independent colonies capable of further expansion, sending out Von Neumann probes, and so forth. These leaves upon colonisation at intra-Solar System scales, which I argue may be more reliably governed.