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Comment by bovermyer | Hacker News Reader

I dunno, if it gets us off this rock, I'd be willing to put up with a Weyland-Yutani.

because you want immense suffering to expand outward undefinitely, instead of being confined to one dot where there's a hopeful chance of it being put out?

> immense suffering to expand outward undefinitely

Reminded me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O5h4enjrHw around the 2:30 mark.

Certainly one possible way human suffering might be "put out" on this pale blue dot is by the extinction of H. sapiens, either by our killing ourselves off, or by some kind of serious natural catastrophe (large meteorite strike, supervolcano, etc.). So I'd suggest that it would be better to colonize the solar system before we make whatever developmental leaps that could let us transcend suffering. Otherwise we may never get the chance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism

Humans killing ourselves / extinction events are incredibly unlikely over the time frame that SpaceX will exist for. They're also easier to survive or avoid than it would be to colonize Mars. Except maybe surviving a gamma ray burst -- but who knows, since it looks pretty impossible for humans to colonize a planet.

On the other hand we have a chance to save the tens of billions of people who will live and die in the 21st century and experience genocide, starvation, disease, child abuse, imprisonment, other violence, etc. We're already doing it -- it's achievable. It can't wait for a Mars colony!

> On the other hand we have a chance to save the tens of billions of people who will live and die in the 21st century and experience genocide, starvation, disease, child abuse, imprisonment, other violence, etc. We're already doing it -- it's achievable. It can't wait for a Mars colony!

i don't follow. why do you think those horrible things wouldn't happen on an extraterrestrial colony?

I don't think we should put any resources into colonization activities right now. In case it's unclear, I'm agreeing with you and responding to blacksmith_tb's suggestion that "it would be better to colonize the solar system before we make whatever developmental leaps could let us transcend suffering".

It sounds like you have much more faith in the longevity of Earth as a viable life-supporting planet than I do. I'd love to see what data you're looking at that supports such optimism.

I'm just saying we shouldn't abandon or postpone progress on Earth to start an impossible colonization project on Mars.

Any opinion you or I have about how long Earth will remain viable is irrelevant. There's nothing else. Mars and every other body are not viable at all and we have no way to make them so.

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