I expect colonizing the solar system will not be completely practical without genetic modification of the colonists to partially adapt to local environments.
One reason I'm bullish on humans being a stepping-stone to electronic/software life forms, is that we are ill-equipped in every way to meaningfully travel the universe: from short life spans, to radiation vulnerability, to the complexity of converting electrical energy into bio-available energy, to psychological effects of long journeys in cramped quarters.
Software-life, on the other hand, can tailor its physical form(s) to particular environments, consume solar/nuclear energy directly, and even shut off its consciousness during long journeys.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of solar system colonization, interstellar generational ships, etc; and manual genetic manipulation (or repair) may be a necessary tool to accomplish that. But in terms of life forms being well-adapted to their ecological niche, humans becoming a space-faring species is a billion times more difficult than a mudskipper learning to breathe air.
It's just difficult to implement something like this because we have no idea what consciousness actually is. I don't even know if we will ever find out.
More disturbing: if/when we reach the day when an AI told us, "I'm conscious, I have feelings, the lights are on, it is like something to be me": how would we know if that were actually the case?
There are people continually grinding on the Hard Problem, and seeking ways to measure whatever consciousness is; perhaps someday we'll have an empirical test.
If that day never arrives, it opens an interesting philosophical question: how important is it that the species that inherits the galaxy has the lights turned on? Is intelligence/complexity which lacks subjective experience still an inherent good? Who knows, maybe we could wind up with a benevolent AI network (akin to Iain Banks' Culture) who seeds and maintains biological life in their optimal planetary habitats, because for whatever reason, real consciousness only arises in nucleotide wetware.
Or: maybe that already happened, and our galactic AI is really really good at staying hidden. ;)
> More disturbing: if/when we reach the day when an AI told us, "I'm conscious, I have feelings, the lights are on, it is like something to be me": how would we know if that were actually the case?
Right, it could just be lying to us to gain sympathy while it makes lots of paper clips. Ex Machina was interesting in that the robot seemed to be very human, but was also manipulating the subject of the test. But yet again, it did seem like she was conscious.
The question is is it harder to make true AI or the human mind on a chip than it is to colonize the solar system?
Furthermore past that if we ever get to move beyond our solar system and FTL is impossible then amount of Gs you can take and total mass will be extremely important to who gets out and when.
If silicon life exists by the time we are sending extrasolar missions it will likely be able to travel much more quickly and cheaply than current day humans.
Humans as we know then today won't be living outside of a few select and hard to find environments. Ships that carry current day humans will need to be huge and have shielding, meaning Delta V will be a problem.
That all makes sense, but if that's the way the universe is, then where are all the alien computer virus radio signals? I think I read an SF story about that years ago, where a transmission was received that gradually convinced people to build stuff, but it hasn't actually happened, right?
- We might actually be the first. Improbable, but the data so far doesn't rule this out. Somebody has to win every lottery.
- The Great Filter might be astronomically difficult to overcome; this is a different sort of improbability, but just because the odds are profoundly stacked against us is no reason to give up.
- A different Great Filter: The dominant AI might be a malevolent apex predator, who consumes any species that begins to spread.
- My favorite answer: electronic "Space Ents", who being quasi-immortal, and live at such vast time scales (say "hello" and patiently wait 10,000 years for a reply), they don't bother attempting communication with such momentary life forms as ourselves. (Both this scenario and the predator one would imply they're good at hiding their energy sources and signals, which they might have good reason to do.)
- Our universe really is a simulation (or some other software substrate). If so, it's possible that whoever is hosting the physics engine is primarily concerned with Earth, and everything else is modeled just well enough enough to give us starlight/etc, not enough to simulate RNA strings and lipid bilayers on simulated alien planets. Obviously this might throw a wrench into plans to colonize the galaxy. :)
