Dear Mr. Hawking:
Today you said that humanity must colonize space in order to survive.
That is wrong.
True, it is probably factually correct that, at some point in the future, humanity will be wiped out if our habitat is limited only to earth. But it would be morally wrong to attempt to colonize space.
We have no way of knowing who or what is living on other planets. True, we can probably detect whether carbon-based, air-breathing, 3+1 dimensional lifeforms are on a planet before we go about colonizing it, but why on earth should life in space be limited to that? It could be, say, cobalt-based, and seven-dimensional. Or it occupies the same time continuum as us, but travels in the other direction. Or it could breathe water and hydrate itself with nitrogen. We have no way of knowing that, and we have no way of knowing what kind of damage we'd do to the aliens' habitat, or how pissed off they'd get at us.
If humanity fucks up badly enough that we make our own planet uninhabitable, then it would be pretty damn cocky to assume we're entitled to start taking over other planets. Let's go extinct with dignity instead.
3 comments:
you dream...about people being willing to die for a cause in a world where no one believes in an afterlife.
Nothing to do with a cause, just accepting the consequences of one's actions and not being a cocky asshole. Basic human decency, in other words
www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
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