
Colonizing the galaxy would be good - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/why-colonizing-the-galaxy-is-the-highest-good
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HONEST_ANNIE
>People like having a purpose and being part of something greater than
themselves. What could be greater than the entire universe?

There is also the possibility of complete existential freedom. Freedom to
choose meaning can be very frightening. Humanity is still driven by the
meaning and purpose programmed by evolution and slightly modulated by cultural
evolution. When technology advances, it will become possible to modify
personal or collective meaning at will or fulfill evolutionary desires more
directly.

Creat Filter Hypothesis:

The reason why it's difficult to meet technically advanced aliens in the
galaxy is because technology enables direct ways to get meaning and
satisfaction that far surpasses anything the real world can offer. Each
civilization develops to the point where they can produce technology that
short circuits the evolutionary drive and replace it with something better (It
can be 'Enlightement', 'Soma', 'immersive neural lace games and soap opera',
or 'permanent intellectual, physical and existential orgasm by brain fungus')
or alternatively they start to modify their core utility function that gives
them meaning and purpose.

Intelligent agent can't derive meaning from rationality or intelligence using
deduction. Self preservation is not more logical than being happy, it's
provided by evolution. Those who explore universe have not fallen into this
filter or have not opted to remove this desire.

Civilizations that pass this Great Filter are puritans

------
GCA10
"I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red
Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a
wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a
higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in
and taken their place." \-- Winston Churchill 1937

It's an argument that's been around a long time. It's a recipe for remorse.

~~~
shouldbworking
Wow. I like your take on this. Reminds me that the regular populace is still
in support of fascist ideas as long as the notion isn't obvious on the
surface.

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joshgel
"There is more happiness and pleasure (and whatever else makes life worth
living) in a single bird than there is in the whole known universe outside of
Earth."

That's a really beautiful sentiment. Lifelessness doesn't have happiness!

~~~
markbnj
Beautiful? I came here to react to it with awe at the sheer chutzpah it took
to make that statement. So the author has determined that the universe is
lifeless, and has nowhere in it other than Earth a single spark of
consciousness that might experience a pleasant emotion? This is pretty
significant news.

~~~
throwaway91111
There is 0 evidence of life outside earth.

There is also Drake's equation.... your opinion on that is probably already
formed, so why discuss it?

~~~
macawfish
There is 0 concrete definition of living vs dead on the cosmological level.

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ridgeguy
I found this a shallow, escapist read.

From the article: "So, it is small-time to make just the world a better
place."

It's not "small-time". It's essential. Until we learn how to do this, scaling
humanity to a galactic extent will only scale our unresolved existential
challenges.

When we have our current home running so that current and future people can
live up to their potential, I'll feel more confident about our chances in
spreading out into a larger neighborhood.

Edit for word choice.

~~~
politician
Suppose your entire civilization was running in a single Docker container.
Being a SPOF, that's not ideal. Now, consider scaling out horizontally by
running on a cluster of a dozen planets. That provides a bit more breathing
room for your devops team.

The website highscalability.com is a good resource on this topic of fault
tolerance and availability. It turns out that a lot of what applies to keeping
services like Google running applies to _the entirety of the human race_.

~~~
anigbrowl
Species != civilization. TO treat humanity as a monoculture is to skate over
some rather yawning chasms of philosophical disagreement between different
groups of people and to assume they've been resolved in your favor.

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rdiddly
If you agree that "things untouched by man" are "bad" and "things remade in
the image and whim of man" are "good," then yeah, absolutely! If we can just
keep a galactic perspective and get past these few little global catastrophes
that afflict precisely all the planets inhabited by _homo sapiens_ (I'm sure
it's just a coincidence...) then we could build a real cool civilization you
guys c'mon!

~~~
Banthum
Catastrophes are only catastrophes when they happen to conscious beings.

Every days, stars explode and planets are torn to pieces. None of it matters
because there's nobody for it to matter _to_.

Moreover, any catastrophe on the table that humans can forseeably produce is
nothing compared to nature. Pop off every nuke we've got in coral reefs, burn
every forest into CO2 and dump all our toxic water in pristine rivers - the
total effect will be _nothing_ next to a decent-sized supervolcano eruption or
asteroid strike. And that's not even getting into stellar events.

~~~
imsofuture
It will still cement our position as catastrophically prolific assholes
though...

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jwilliams
Seems more likely to me that the AI and machines we build will colonize space.
In that lens the fate of humanity is less critical.

~~~
throwaway91111
What does motivation look like in AI? Why would AI care about _anything_? What
does an AI caring even mean?

AI is just a bundle of humanity's fears/hopes about being replaced. Silly
humans! There is nothing more human than a human.

~~~
anigbrowl
This doesn't sound like something you've thought about in great depth.

~~~
throwaway91111
Really, do say more!

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daxfohl
The ending of Space Balls seems particularly apt here.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD516OENN7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD516OENN7s)

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standup75
A night of December 2013, I was walking towards the waterfront from our
apartment on S1th and Berry in Brooklyn.I saw the spectacle of this ultra lit
cityscape. What we're capable of doing with nature was somehow telling me that
we have to do it. At the time it was a simple intuition. Now I can better
piece things together, as if the cause of this intuition unwinds in front of
me, with a fake air of truth. And I thought about the big things that mankind
achieved. I thought going in space was one of them. But why? It's just what
our species do. Space is just the new unknown territory. The trees grew higher
to reach more sun and survive. We conquered all territories of this planet,
that's how we survived. Also, we never had to look at leaving the place clean
behind us, this has never been a survival instinct. But now, that we just
settled, we grow out of place/resource, we start messing things up dangerously
here. There is no telling how this will end, but now more than ever, we know
that things must change. The way of caring about Nature that this situation
requires is something we never experienced. One of the problems is that there
is no direct payback for good behavior. Now that we're outside of the food
chain in our leaky man-made biosphere we call cities, we are too far from the
consequences of our actions on nature. Really this sucks. There is no turning
back. The march of the civilization on our landscapes is devastating.
Recycling plastic bags is not gonna cut it. We're just too many, each of us
taking too much space, and growing. We need to be better at knowing nature as
much as we need to have an escape. Let me insist on "as much as", otherwise
this would just be another escapist rational and doesn't have anything to do
with the highest good. So how could colonizing the galaxy be the highest good?
Well, the highest good is not an expression I'm personally very fond of. This
suggests the universality of virtues, which I am still struggling with. But
let's assume that the highest good is to follow what we're programmed for,
what we're good at, what we can call, inspired by Arthur Schopenhauer, our
will as a species. Searching to understand nature and exploring new
territories is a game we like to play. The excitement of discovery is so
deeply ingrained in our species. This really is our life instinct. Whereas
keeping things static, finding comfort in not questioning or enforcing our
representations of the world is our death instinct.

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dbaupp
This is a very similar sentiment to Octavia E Butler's Earthseed (from her
series of the same name), a fictional religion where one of its central tenets
is "The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars".

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AlphaWeaver
I wonder how ethical it may be to try and force humanity's idea of happiness
in the universe...

~~~
DesiLurker
well when we find an alternative viewpoint then we can have an honest debate
about it but until then whats the point in waiting.

I mean if you just look at all the energy sun is 'wasting' at every moment
throughout its 5B yr lifespan wouldnt that be better utilized by creating more
life and more branches for evolution? if thats true for one star then imagine
what can be achieved throughout the galaxy!

~~~
politician
Please go on and elaborate on that point, would you? The folks at home fret
about recycling while the Sun is busy wasting 99% of the energy we might ever
be able to use.

Surely, the star at the center of our solar system is the biggest polluter.
Can you argue otherwise?

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basicplus2
Looking at the arseholes who run the world I would not wish them upon the rest
of the universe.

This article is nonsense, a rock is a rock and is in perfect balance with the
rest if the universe within its space time, and needs no interference by
egotistical selfish humans

