Like, we’re destroying the one place we know is a sure bet on where we can prosper if we keep it healthy, but instead the world’s richest man is trying to expand to other planets while this one’s ability to sustain life is in jeopardy. IMO that makes us potentially a very stupid species compared to a species that doesn’t really care about meeting other aliens because they value the life on their own planet far more than we do.

  • wraekscadu@vargar.org
    519·
    21 hours ago

    Quite a few assumptions being made and quite a lot of hyperbole.

    • The richest man in the world is not representative of the human race. Also, settling Mars (within timelines that musk is suggesting) is not treated seriously by any institution with significant power.
    • We aren’t putting earth’s ability to host life in jeopardy. Not even close. Yes, human caused climate change is bad. Worst case outcomes lead to most human settlements going under water and extinctions in a manner that the planet has seen only a few times. But again, not even close where we need to abandon earth cuz we “ruined it” or whatever. Not even nuclear war would lead humanity to come to this conclusion.

    As for why a civilization should be interested in spreading out as much as possible in case it wants to survive:

    • spreading out reduces the probability of extinction. Right now, one gamma ray burst that’s close enough, and that is aimed at earth can render the entirety of humanity extinct. But if we were more spread out, not all humans would have to die. The same logic can be applied to relativistic weapons aimed at earth.
    • spreading out gives us access to a lot of resources. Earth’s gravity and atmosphere makes it hard to manufacture and launch megastructures. Megastructures can allow us to create really cool stuff.
    • many humans find exploring the universe really cool!

    If alien species are anything like us, I highly doubt that they’d come to the conclusion that you’ve posited.

    • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 hours ago

      Wish I had your optimism. I think the Earth is gonna shake humans off like a bad habit if we don’t stop climate change. Crop failure will kill everyone, not just poor people.

    • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
      3·
      13 hours ago

      Yeah. You don’t wanna carry all your eggs in one basket.

      Also, it’s human nature to explore. Show people a place they can’t go and they’re going to want to find a way to get there. It’s just what we do. We’re curious little monkeys.

    • Windex007@lemmy.world
      203·
      21 hours ago

      I can point to examples of many civilizational collapses based on comparatively minor climate abnormalities in the last mere 7,000 years, and can say with certainty the earth has gone at least 5,000,000,000 without being bombarded by even one gamma ray burst.

      I think any alien civilization with basic math would prioritize the bird-in-hand.

      • Shellofbiomatter@lemmus.orgEnglish
        221·
        19 hours ago

        Civilization collapsing doesn’t equal to species end. A gamma ray burst or yeah something that has already happened in the planets past, a big enough asteroid hitting us. Can mean the end of the species.

        Of course civilizations collapse should be avoided even just for the reason of avoiding lots of people dying. We shouldn’t completely discard expanding into space either. Our population and civilization is big enough that both things can be done at the same time.

        Working towards both will probably provide a better overall goal for common people as well instead of currently working just to line the pockets of CEOs and pedofiles.

        • edible_funk@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          10 hours ago

          At this point civilization collapse would effectively terrestrially lock us in. There aren’t enough easily accessible raw materials to reindustrialize to a space-faring point.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            5 hours ago

            Yep.

            If you burn through all the readily available energy resources, civilization collapses, then tries to rebuild itself…

            It can’t. Their ancestors kicked over the ladder of progress, and broke it.

            Attempt 2 at civilization now has to figure out another tech tree, because they cannot cost effectively lubricate an industrial economy and logistics with fossil fuel.

            Not strictly impossible, per se, but they have an even more difficult task.

      • Sir G'kar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        19 hours ago

        You can point to those civilizations because their collapse was not the end, life continued on. We haven’t been hit by a gamma ray burst or any other complex life ending disaster since we are here to discuss the scenario. But that’s no guarantee that we won’t be.

        The odds of anything happening to render Earth totally uninhabitable are very small… in our lifetimes. But as long as we keep existing, the time frame will keep growing, the opportunities for disaster will keep accumulating and the odds will keep multiplying. The basic math looks very different when you multiply by infinity. Even the sun won’t last forever.

        Obviously, this is no reason to neglect Earth and rush to other planets. But it is reason enough to reject the idea that we should never spread to other worlds because Earth will always be enough.

      • Aniki@feddit.org
        7·
        20 hours ago

        without being bombarded by even one gamma ray burst.

        you wouldn’t know that. deep-sea life would probably survive any gamma ray burst, i guess.

        and it turns out, there’s a surprising amount of deep-sea life: bacteria and complex life.

        on this diagram, it would throw us back by 300 mio. years max.

    • AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      151·
      21 hours ago

      Other positive things to mention about space exploration:

      • If humanity spreads out across the stars, there is less of a danger for us dying from ANY centralized disaster including the cosmic ones and those we might cause ourselves
      • Similar to the above, it will be harder to create centralized governments due to extreme distances and just communication limits set by the speed of light; ergo, if some colony falls prey to a dictatorship it is unlikely to spread easily across all of humanity
      • We have lots of questions about the universe which may be answered if we travel it. And, when scientific discoveries are made they often have applications outside their initial field.
      • We have lots of questions about biology that living in novel environments would teach us (also lots of other scientific fields too of course)
      • Forming colonies will force many small groups of people to work collectively, causing those colonies to form a sense of community—something that is lacking in humanity presently
      • Isolation caused by communication limits will be scary but also will decrease our access to 24/7 terrible non-local news (inhibiting our ability to doomscroll) which will likely have a positive impact on everyone’s mental health (…maybe not on earth but in the colonies at least)
      • Exploration becoming a possibility will also likely make people happier just by showing that humanity has a future. Also, knowing that there are places you can go to escape society all together is quite a freeing thought for some
      • Last but not least WE GET TO GO TO SPACE!
    • Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zipOP
      11·
      9 hours ago

      He’s as rich as he is because people agreed to give him money out of faith in what he claims he wants to achieve.

      He’s one of the world’s most supported humans according to humanity’s most dominant merit system.