What do you see as the long term (100,000 year) future of the Human race?
The species you are describing (us) evolved to be successful in the specific environment of the earth.
We know enough about our solar system from terrestrial based observation to determine that there is no other habitable planet for humans within our solar system.
Moving us somewhere else without significantly changing our biology or having the unlimited resources to terraform and build synthetic atmospheres would be an exercise in futility given the insane costs.
On the other hand if we are able to live long enough to build Fusion ("free" energy), build superhuman AGI to help us optimize our decisions and activities, and become blended with technology such that our biological limitations are removed, space exploration is trivial.
That's valid, but why do individuals have to live long enough? Are our current lifetimes not enough to work on this? Is dying at 90 the thing that's holding us back from creating those things?
I want to live forever as much as anyone else who makes this claim, but if an asteroid hits in 20 years, the difference between humanity being completely wiped out and being able to eventually re-start is whether we've got canned apes somewhere off the vulnerable surface.
That's valid, but why do individuals have to live long enough?
So that we can build the technologies that will preserve their "information."
Think about it like this, all great breakthroughs were enabled because people were able to transform their thoughts to written or spoken word. Most people do not have this ability, yet the amount of insight worldwide is innumerable. For example first hand accounts of the 1920's are very quickly going away. If we can extract these insights and extend their metaphors longer, the pace of our breakthroughs will expand because we will have better data to compare to.
> significantly changing our biology or having the unlimited resources to terraform and build synthetic atmospheres
> build superhuman AGI to help us optimize our decisions and activities, and become blended with technology such that our biological limitations are removed
We are pretty far away from being able to do either of those, far enough away that there could be a major barrier stopping us from doing one or the other that we haven't really seen yet. If that is the case, maintaining both research tracks in parallel seems perfectly rational to me.
If that is the case, maintaining both research tracks in parallel seems perfectly rational to me.
Agree completely, which is part of the whole transhumanist thing. I was simply stating it as a condition for exploration - one that few explorers acknowledge.
What do you see as the long term (100,000 year) future of the Human race?
The species you are describing (us) evolved to be successful in the specific environment of the earth.
We know enough about our solar system from terrestrial based observation to determine that there is no other habitable planet for humans within our solar system.
Moving us somewhere else without significantly changing our biology or having the unlimited resources to terraform and build synthetic atmospheres would be an exercise in futility given the insane costs.
On the other hand if we are able to live long enough to build Fusion ("free" energy), build superhuman AGI to help us optimize our decisions and activities, and become blended with technology such that our biological limitations are removed, space exploration is trivial.