
It’s time to claim your piece of the final frontier - snadahalli
https://aeon.co/essays/it-s-time-to-claim-your-piece-of-the-final-frontier
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lisper
There is a discussion that ought to precede the discussion of space
colonization, but which almost never happens. Before we can decide whether or
not "we" should colonize space we first need to decide who and what "we"
actually are. The tacit assumption is that "we" are homo sapiens, that is, the
flesh and blood phenotype of the human genome. But that might not be the best
answer. Another possible answer is that "we" are our _ideas_ , our culture,
our art, our philosophy, our scientific knowledge, and that this transcends
our biology. In other words, maybe what matters is the software, not the
hardware. The reason this is worth considering is that it's a hell of a lot
easier to send our software to other planets than our biological hardware. Our
bodies have evolved to live on this planet. Sending human bodies into space is
rather like putting a fish in a ziploc bag full of water in the middle of the
Sahara desert and expecting it to thrive.

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pekk
Okay, so we decide that we are our art, and now we are shooting jazz CDs to
Mars. Or other art, sent to other places where there is no audience. What
then? Why? The logical conclusion of this thinking seems to be that we really
have no business in space at all.

~~~
lisper
Well, it's hard to lay out a complete agenda for this program in an HN
comment. But the vision I had in mind looked more like colonies of self-
reproducing artificially intelligent robots than a bunch of CD-ROMs.

~~~
zardo
Of course, part of the reason for wanting to be on multiple planets in the
first place, is how wrong things can go when you have the technology for that.

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kafkaesq
_Space is for sale._

No - it's up for seizure by force.

Just like every other "frontier" since our species climbed down from the
trees.

