Is Terraforming Planets Ethical?
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- Опубліковано 6 бер 2024
- In the future we may be able to claim new worlds and forge them into paradises, but should we?
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Is Terraforming Planets Ethical
Episode 437; March 7, 2024
Produced, Written & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur
Editors:
Dillon Olander
Konstantin Sokerin
Graphics:
Jeremy Jozwik
Mafic Studios
Sergio Botero
YD Visual
Udo Schroeter
Music Courtesy of
Epic Mountain, "Wave", "Zero Gravity"
Sergey Cheremisinov, "Labyrinth"
Aerium, "Deiljocht"
Frank Dorittke, "Morninglight" - Наука та технологія
I can see Spain and Portugal's colony ships both arriving at the same planet and agreeing to divide it exactly in half
In Stellaris, this is a question you cannot afford to ask.
Tomb world is the best origin for this. Megacorp approves.
Terraforming is dumb.
Ah, another fellow fan! Stellaris is such a great sci-fi strategy game.
@@user-bh4ge1pm2t Terraforming is the long-term answer for climate change. All the necessary technologies required for terraforming are the same technologies, in their infancy, required for Geoengineering.
@KingBrandonm Sure you noted a suitable use for terraforming, repairing our climate. But for extraterrestrial living space, artificial habitats are a far better path.
I'm in favor of many types of planetary engineering, just not for creating a human environment.
For every planet you don't terraform, I'm going to terraform three.
Capitalists. Smh.
@@hibbs1712 that's the logic of right-wingers, not of capitalists
@@RandomGuy-lu1enNo that's simply life. evolution favors expansion. But you're so blinded by hatred that you'll find any reason to bring your political bias into a discussion and blame your enemy.
Well, you can tell an election cycle is approaching, huh? Everywhere you look everyone is drawing lines in the sand. Sometimes the bring their own sand...
Let's de-terraform this discussion by getting back to science and futurism.
Don't terraform at all! Dismantle and build a Dyson swarm! Then star lift for longevity.
@@RandomGuy-lu1en Isaac is the literral trad right-winder
Only Isaac Arthur could equate jack-hammers and h-bombs and have it make sense. Quite the consequence of "if brute force is not working, you aren't using enough"
Love your work. Please keep it up.
Any planet we are thinking of Terraforming in the future should be discussed on a case by case basis. Some planets which are little more than mineral rich rocks may not need to be terraformed to be exploited for their resources. We may find it easier as a species to just build enormous O'Neill Cylinders than to Terraform planets when looking to expand living space. It may be that Terraforming is nothing more than vanity project because we've built everything else in the Mega and Giga structure catalog and decided to make a Garden of Eden as our capstone.
I'm glad you have a view similar to mine.
But Terraforming is unnecessary for exploiting a planet. With the technology of the future tele-operated robots will due just fine.
If there is a pressing reason to be planet side then just build a localized habitat.
so f off and let me do my vanity project, tube tubby
So you will leave a planet alone if it has algy forever, but terraform it if has not developed algy on it ?
I'm *very* sure humanity will find *very* ethical to terraform, meaning export their corruption, diseases, idiocy, lies, or wars, to wherever they want to, when and if they will be able to terraform.
@@katarn848 Whether or not the planet holds life doesn't matter. Terraforming simply reduces what you could learn from the planet and even a lifeless planet could teach us a lot plus you may find life somewhere on the planet later. We simply harm our own opportunities to learn if we terraform a planet. Now there are resources on a planet but all resources would be more easily harvested from asteroids and comets whereas on a planer, we can barely scratch the crust for resources, think of asteroids as proto-planets that are all in bite sized chunks. So what do we need from a planet, if it's living space it would take less effort, less time and less expense to build O'Neill cylinders from resources mined from asteroids and comets and we could build more habitable space in the habitats then there is surface area on the planet or planets, if it's resources that we want, the resources on asteroids and comets are far easier to harvest as they are basically all broken up into more manageable sizes, we can even access what was probably once a proto-planetary corr with type M asteroids whereas we really can't hope of extracting resources from an actual planet's core. Basically, terraforming a planet is all negative benefits for us at much higher costs than the alternatives. We don't need to terraform other planets and doing so only destroys what we have yet to learn from whether there is or isn't life on them and terraforming requires more effort, more resources and more risks than the alternatives of building space habitats for the same goals.
"Mars Trilogy"
By Kim Stanley Robinson
Pro-terraformers vs Anti-terraformers is a key theme.
but Mars has no life and 1% of Earth's atmospheric pressure. What would be 'unethical' about changing an uninhabited, lifeless planet?
Do you know what the anti-terraforming stance was? I can't think of any good ones.
@@MrBacchus18
SCIENCE !!
A whole planet of pristine rocks and those greedy terraformers dirtied it up with... dirt.
@@shanerooney7288 can't have that ☹️
Good series, really interesting how Robinson did the cultural evolution of the colonists
Yes, do it. Start cooling Venus now.
I wish the rich would stop pursuing Mars and turn their eye to Venus. Much better prospects.
Let's start cooling Earth first !!!
I wish we'd start putting stations around asteroids instead, much cheaper and frankly, mining out asteroids to build spinning stations is way more efficient that what a planet can offer. @@toffeecrisp2146
@@toffeecrisp2146 Mars for the rich! Venus for the proles! ✊
@coreyander286 I'm down with that. While the rich are living in underground caves and glass domes, trying to grow stuff in the terminally toxic soil... the proles can walk around a cloud city with comfortable near Earth Gravity, sunlight and a mere respirator as they look around the floating hydroponics farms and solar arrays.
Looking down at the roiling clouds of death below.
Let the rich have their dirt and tunnels.
I do not think ethical concerns are likely to play a major role in planetary colonization. There are two options here: Either alien life is rare, or alien life is plentiful. If life is rare, there will be so many lifeless worlds out there to colonize that preserving the handful of worlds where we find with xenos critters would represent such a small cost that preserving those worlds would be uncontroversially supported. The scarcity of the critters would make them more precious than the ball of rock they lived on.
Alternately, if alien life is plentiful enough that preserving native biospheres represents a significant burden in terms of lost colonization opportunities, I suspect that mankind's attitude towards the value of life will change. After all, if it turns out that there's nothing "special" about life, and it just automatically pops up anywhere the right chemicals are present, then life is essentially reduced to the status of a mechanistic natural process no different than the formation of heavy elements in stars or the hydrological cycle on planets. If life is demystified through abundance, why worry about kicking over an alien anthill to build a colony?
Now THIS is a good view, but consider, life may be rare, but planets fit for terraforming may also be rare. For example, no one's terraforming Pluto or Mercury. Mars is VERY iffy and Venus would be a lot of chemical work.
So, it could be that life pops up everywhere possible, but the possibilities are just so few that it's still rare and there aren't plenty of worlds to terraform. Of course, that just makes orbital habitats all the more enticing.
If it were to be that scenario 2 were true and life was as trivial as you depicted, what would your position be on the ethics of killing humans for example?
Do you have normative intuitions that incentivize moral considerations for life? sentient or otherwise
what school of philosophy rates the 'value' of life based upon its quantity? Is that how current human morality operates? So.... Samoans are more valuable than Chinese? As we expand our technology is our moral compass going to contract?
@@Gwilfaweeven today we don’t have the best moral compass. We don’t think of the child miners in the Congo when we buy a diamond ring. I’m sorry to say this but unless we have a way of making all of humanity mentally linked together we will have many, many differences and that will be used as justification to “sacrifice” a group of humans to help another.
Geological anarchists in the mars series favour not terraforming any planet, even mars
I had a story where an abandoned, 'fossil' alien smart city adapted to subsidence where part of it was now underwater and the bay lit up from below as the sun set
Always happy to hear from Isaac in the morning.
at 25:05 indeed . . . I, too, favor human expansion throughout the galaxy by turning asteroids and comets into space habitats rather than being overly concerned with the planets of each star.
Once again, another excellent episode.
I'm in your camp, buddy
Space habitats are where it's at, heck we could even build one where people could fly under their own power.
@@user-bh4ge1pm2t right on. Here's Isaac Asimov's answer when he was asked about space habitats ua-cam.com/video/DM88sUBTTRM/v-deo.html
Watching from the beginning is recommended.
@robertgraybeard3750 Thank you very much for the thread. Planet chauvinist, huh. I know just how Mr. Asimov felt. Space stations were for transit or specific missions, planets were for living. It never even occurred to me that artificial space habitats could be the primary residence. Not until Mr. Arthur showed me the way as it was. Now I see both science fiction and science reality in a whole new light.
Thanks again.
9:00 - AR platform is still been used even when we colonize alien worlds.
Hey, when you found a good design, use it.
Well, technically the job of the gun is to chamber a round and we pretty much reached the peak of performance/price/reliability compromises in it. It's the sights and ammunition that are progressing.
Terraforming is dumb.
AK guy and FN boy are jealous😂
@@TheArklyteeventually we'll only need laser guns, velocity may be more important in space, cold welding of parts is an issue, recoil could be expensive
"Mer-MAN!" I honestly can't recall another time in years of watching that SFIA has made me think of Zoolander.
"They died in a tragic gasoline fight accident."
Also, the gender neutral Merfolk is also acceptable.
Asimov explored the repercussions of destroying lifecycles on other planets in the foundation and empire series. A number of computer generated issues turned out to be previous lifeforms messing around. The Asimov galaxy had been terraformed by robotic ships you see...
Scavengers Reign!
@@RoofAndAMeal4UsAllYES!!!!
Terraforming is dumb.
@@user-bh4ge1pm2t Why? It depends where it is dumb, how and why... saying something is bum with zero context, is in it's self, dumb!
I tihnk that was strictly in the novels that Brin, Benford, and Bear wrote after Asimov's passing though I enjoyed that plotline quite a bit.
I have a scifi setting idea where one of the core conflicts is that earlier rushed attempts at colonizing Mars leads to conflicts between people who wish to start the terraforming process of the world, para terraformers living in domes and caves, and people who just want to cannibalize the world to make more space stations. Earth is trying to manage these disputes but is more focused upon building extrasolar ships and asteroid colonies than Mars.
With the fears of contracting alien diseases, you'd think the more barren the surface of the rocky world is, the more sought after it would be.
Helmsman: "Captain, our sensors indicate that the second planet from the star is class M and is covered in lush tropical forests."
Captain: "Oh Great! Another plague planet! Helmsman, please tell me the first planet is at least Venusian and all of the germs have been chargrilled."
Before watching I couldn’t possibly see how terraforming could be worse than mining the whole planet or leaving it alone
Lots of people possess both materialistic desires and a strong hatred for life. It's not hard to believe they would come to such a conclusion.
I would say: If a planet has no life on it, terraforming is ethical. If it has life and the condition are just different, it would not be ethical
@@RandomGuy-lu1en well then our entire existence isn't ethical.
@@PhoenixLord777 Idk how you draw that conclusion from what they said.
@@roberthesser6402 it's a fact that we share our Planet with Many lifeforms
Let's set terraformers from 3 species with very different biologies upon one planet and see who wins.
Funny, but Terraforming is dumb.
@@user-bh4ge1pm2tMaybe, but it is kind of "Because we can" and the concept is funny as hell.
@marcelgrabowski5939 Yah, vanity is the only reason I can think of.
Vs. artificial habitats, which I feel is a far better and more likely route
A few hundred years later, anyone not in the know would think it’s yet another planet at war.
After that… maybe paperclips or multiple colours of goo?
There's plenty of space and surface area out there to live on without messing with existing ecologies, rotating space habitats are easier to build and maintain than terraforming and any existing ecology is more valuable as a scientific resource than a material resource.
Finally someone who gets it. Consider you could use trillions of tons of resources, thousands and thousands of years of time, all the while leaving the planet unsuitable for anything else in order to get a habitat that's almost kind of shirt sleeve.
Or for a few million tons and a couple of years you could create space habitats that can hold a billion people in living room comfort.
There is one good reason to terraform: some planets could be brought to a state that wouldn't require maintenance to remain habitable. These could be possible refuges for life following any civilization collapse. Mars does not qualify, though Venus might.
It's frustrating that even space enthusiasts still have planets on the brain; we could have a space frontier even if nobody ever lands on Mars.
@@user-bh4ge1pm2t Please stop discussing this. You're clearly biased, so your arguments are tainted. You are not being rational or scientific.
@@bugjams An argument is not tainted if it is correct.
@@user-bh4ge1pm2t See - you've just proven you're biased. Your argument is an opinion, "Terraforming is dumb." This is an opinion. Therefore it cannot be correct or incorrect.
Only egotistical zealots believe their opinions are matters of fact. Therefore, you are not engaging in any sort of scientific discussion here.
Now I want to write a story about aliens debating whether to throw a big rock at Sol III to wipe out the big lizards, so that they can more easily colonise it, and in the end the protagonists fail to stop the rock from impacting...
Do they have complex ecosystems with multicellular organisms? If yes: hell no!
Rocks with maybe some bacterial sludge: knock yourself out. (As long as you save samples.)
But what if it holds the potential for complex ecosystems to emerge? We would be destroying diversity by not letting things occur without intervention (not to mention we'd potentially miss out on invaluable observations).
Terraforming is dumb.
If you wanted to unethically crush multi cellular animals in an alien ecosystem, it would be difficult to predict whether you might disrupt a Keystone species, triggering the collapse of the very environment you are wanting to settle.
Why do they have to be *multicellular* organisms? You're just drawing an arbitrary line.
@WhoisTheOtherVindAzz I stick with my original statement on Terraforming being dumb and, in fact, you've helped make my point. To all those who said sure if it's simple life they need to remember it took billions of years of prokaryotes life to set the conditions for advanced life.
Ethics shouldn't be even considered; if the planet isn't inhabited, ethics doesn't come into the equation, the questions to be asked are; is it possible, practical, safe, other than those, nothing else should be a concerned!
Terraforming is not practical, it is dumb.
@@user-bh4ge1pm2tSometimes you just need to do something because you can....Like sending people to the moon.
But there's a certain stark beauty to the lifeless rocky landscapes of uninhabited planets. As a lifeform, I tend to agree that life is better than no life, but I can also appreciate the absence of life. The simpler side of nature. Nothing but geology and meteorology as far as the eye can see.
Of course, there are going to be A LOT of examples of planets like this out there, so junking up a few thousand of them with soil and oxygen and mold and gazelles and stuff isn't too big a deal. There are always a quintillion other pretty rocks to look at somewhere else.
There are natural wonders on so many worlds. Would you want to bulldoze Olympus Mons on Mars? Destroy the unique atmosphere of a planet that’s never been seen before?
@ghostdreamer7272 Especially when there's living space galore once you accept artificial habitats.
An issue other than ethical. Microorganisms often evolve to take advantage of new environmental resources. So when you start, the original biome might seem to be harmless and benign, give the native microbes 100-1000 years and they may have evolved to the point that earth life that was seeded onto the planet becomes quite tasty. 😃
Terraforming is dumb.
That sounds like a worthy application of neutron bombs.
Australian biome enters the chat ...
As long as they don't have complex lifeforms on them. Yes even Catachan like planets should be left alone for recreational purposes.
And if it's just simple indiginous life? What if it's like primordial Earth? Not convinced, I'd even leave Mars alone
@@imperialofficer6185 I think the limit would be intelligent life. Mars? Yes. Simple life on planets? Sure thing, make a preserve for it if possible, but make the place comfy for humanity. If we come across cave men on some Earthlike planet then leave it alone, in fact, I'm all for helping them along. Protect their planet, give them subtle direction to avoid some of the worst of our mistakes. If we meet peers or near peers, we trade (if they want) and leave them alone. Unless they want trouble, then we show them what humans are best at.
Terraforming is dumb.
@@sid2112
Are we allowed to give the cavemen gifts? If we see they are hungry, can we send them food?
I think we should treat alien cavemen much like humans. Welcome them into our civilization.
@@donaldhobson8873 That might prove to be harmful. I appreciate the sentiment, but to bring them in whole hog would damage them in ways we can probably imagine because we've seen the exact same thing on Earth when civilizations contact each other. See the Americas for examples. No, better we leave them as much alone as possible. Don't let an asteroid hit, plant good ideas in their heads to guide them through advancement... And then, after they've had a chance to mature and develop, we bring them in and give them the good tech.
Yes.
Next question.
Terraforming is dumb.
@@user-bh4ge1pm2t Commenting "terraforming is dumb" over and over is dumb.
Notification gang. Thanks Isaac
This reminds me of an old 1972 cartoon Yogi's Ark Lark.
Humans will look high and low in every star system to find the "perfect place."
We will likely never find it. Gravity too high, too low, too hot, high winds, heavy water that makes you dizzy, pressures too high or low...
nitrogen/oxygen the wrong ratio, radiation in air or soil (plutonium) , smells of rotten eggs, various acids, alien bacterial life harmful to humans..
It goes on and on...
It's far more likely that humans will terraform a planet, artificial ring or asteroid before finding a perfect place.
I always laugh when Star Trek sends an Away Team in sweaters and one piece and I love Star Trek.
"The Way to Eden" in TOS got it right with the acid planet.
Your productions I've always loved, but have become so much better over the years! I've always hoped you'd add in more focus on ethical or even religious hypothetical matters. Thanks for this EP!
A lifeless rock DOESN'T have any "intrinsic right" to remain untouched by life. Period.
Such notions of an "intrinsic right" are entirely a human philosophical construct, and as many such ludicrous constructs, should be cast into dustbin of history, like Fascism or Human sacrifice.
9:02 it's a long time ago you used that music in your videos. It's my favourite of the tracks you use. Reminds me of the early days of this channel where this was in mostly every episode. Thx for putting it in again😊
Yah I miss the old days also.
All the episodes are great and have certainly gotten more slick.
But the early episodes had a certain charm. The soft r's, the drink and snack the some what amateurish graphics.
After all it's the content not the production that keeps us coming back.
I'm worried if we start terraforming planets outside the solar system and find out there's a "Federation" that may not like what we're doing.
Haven´t watched the video yet. I predict, that Isaac Arthur will say that we will mostly just build habitats in space instead, because it is easier than terraforming.
Cool! I've gone through almost all the comments and we are among a small handful that see the benefits of space habitats vs the impracticality of Terraforming.
he does think that's how most humans will live, but since the focus of the episode is specifically on whether or not it's ethical, he doesn't sidestep the terraforming question.
The human cost issue reminds me of a story I read. I think it was called “time in advance”. All criminal charges were paid in hard labor, terraforming worlds to expand human living space and reach. There was no death penalty, so murder was 10 or 20 years (don’t remember).
The catch was you could call the police and turn yourself in BEFORE you committed a crime. You plead guilty and did half the time. If you finish the time (you could quite if you hadn’t done anything yet) you got a cert that said you could commit that crime free of additional criminal penalty. The survivability was low, but if you did the time at half rate you could penalty free MURDER someone when you got out.
Reminds me a bit of the book, house of doors, in which aliens survey our planet as well as others to colonize based off of how intelligent what exists there already is, kinda cool to see the other perspective of it
Every time you mention terraforming I think about the environment that is destroyed. Especially when talking about Earth. Glad you made this episode to discuss.
As is usual with a lot of the topics that Isaac explores, the question is way more complex than it first appears. A case by case analysis would be necessary, but I think the presence of multicellular life would be a good bright line to start that analysis with.
Is there an agreed on alternative word or fraise like biosphere building or something that implies there wasn’t a biosphere there already?
If not we should probably come up with one.
It would also cover bioforming etc because biosphere doesn’t imply earth like.
Short answer yes, unless xenos then it’s a depends circumstance
is letting xenos live ethical ?
@@isuckatusernames4297 NEVER suffer the Xenos to live. *qeue rabid emperor of mankind chanting*
@@isuckatusernames4297 Not if you're a Pak Protector. 🤔
@@isuckatusernames4297only if theyre hot
Terraforming is dumb.
If it's a lifeless, dead world? Dismantle it. If it's life bearing? Leave it be.
Why?
Why dismantle a dead world or why leave a life bearing one alone?
I'd say dismantle the barren dead world, because it's probably going to be too inefficient to terraform. More utility if used as building material.
Leave the life bearing world, as its a petrie dish of biological research and curiosity. I suspect life bearing worlds will be remarkably rare, relatively speaking and their unique biodiversity could be more valuable to preserve in the long run than to alter for human habitation.
Besides, planets are for primitives. Dyson swarms and black hole stations are the better real estate.
Wait, did my response to my own comment, get deleted? What is with the algorithm these days?
Incase it got deleted rather than hidden from me, dismantle dead world, more efficient and greater utility than terraforming.
Live world, biological and genetic research of greater value than a measly planet.
Who needs planets anyway if your living on a Dyson swarm.
If it has life forms but it's very good habitable to human beings then terraform and colonize and extinct the lifeforms if need be
Mankind must come first!
I like that the background music from the older videos is back
The webcomic Schlock Mercenary (and spinoff RPG Planet Mercenary) have a Terraforming War as part of the backstory. The planet Celeschuul is inhabited by aquatic sophonts called the schuul who leased the planet’s sole continent to human colonists. As the continent’s population grew over the centuries there was a movement to terraform a couple other planets in the system but the schuul rejected the idea. The tensions exploded into a brutal civil war among the human colonists about a decade before the start of the comic, with multiple main characters being veterans of the Terraforming War who became private contractors after it ended.
@10:00 in the Denver area of the Rockies there are many man made lakes, Many people didn't want to leave their homes ..Yet, in the end those valleys became lakes, those homes ended up under water .. and most of those who refused to move "no matter what" have living descendants ... so it looks like most moved regardless of their stubbornness.
If the family or Community at the bottom of a crater (Future Lake) refuses to leave .. let the rising waters convince them.
Excellent content, as always! As colonization and globalization of our own world has shown and as depicted in sci-fi media (s4 of The Expanse comes to mind as a good example), we should always think carefully about where we tread and what we may be picking up, leaving behind, creating, or destroying. I think your content about the ethics of futurology helps foster thought and discussion on these important topics, so thank you for all your efforts!
The great filter theory. Who arrime first ,with advanced technology, wins.
I feel simple life will be found very common, but circumstances will prevent life to evolve that state. I think it can be argued we may have a moral duty to nudge thier world to allow complex life to form, and we can watch it evolve while we build settlements every around the galaxy
It'll all have been talked about in depth by the time we get there, they will likely pull results from our time period because we've already done the leg work, being in the future is going to be lazier than people expect, most people look at time like we forget all the knowledge and forums from the past in the face of ultra advanced technology.
I love issac. Think the guy is a genius. Hard questions wont hurt him they will make him smarter.
I recall reading a now debunked concept of terraforming Venus through microbe seeding. If that was possible (and it might be in less hostile places than Venus), I think we will see individuals with considerable resources intentionally break quarantine to do just that.
Much like the religious missionaries who kept breaching the Sentinel Island quarantine, because their specific ethical framework makes it a moral imperative to "save those people's souls", I think we will see terraforming done against the will of societies sometimes.
Terraforming is dumb.
A good Arthursday video. Splendid work as always, Isaac.
Referancing Teraforming Mars. There is a good book series about the argument of change versus those that want it to stay as is. Red Mars and Blue Mars.
Some of our ethical dilemmas in this area require us placing ourselves "above" evolutionary considerations. Bacteria do not hold conferences on invading a new host, and lichen do not take a vote before colonizing a rock face. If a species can expand its territory, it will. Why should we be any different?
Because we hold ourselves to a different standard than a lichen, mold, or even an ape. Note that that doesn't mean you're wrong about whether we should expand, just that you don't give a very palatable rationale.
@@boobah5643In biological systems, there is only one standard: reproduction. Every trait that does not contribute to reproductive success is at risk of being bred out of the species. Species that fail wholesale at reproduction exit the Universe.
All of which is not to malign moral/philosophical/religious perspectives. But most of those perspectives are fairly tolerant of war, and it's hard to understand how it is acceptable to kill your own species but not organisms that aren't any evolutionary relation to you.
I argue your definition of evolution is too myopic. Firstly, for you to even have the opinion that only strong life outcompeting weak life matters can only be entertained because your and your neighbor aren't busy clubbing each other over the head in an attempt to appropriate the other's resources. Cooperation is an evolved behavior, and while we might not be able to place ourselves "above" evolution, we can absolutely place ourselves above bacteria. I think you'll find your existence as a human with a vastly expanded range of possible behaviors more preferable than a bacterium or a lichen.
In the skit at the beginning, why don't they just dome over the area with the alien centipede, and or extract it to a rotating habitat?
In practice, its probably okay to settle on just about any planet. If aliens came to Earth, some nation would probably let them settle here, and build para-terraforming domes if they had trouble adapting to the biosphere. (At least once the hysteria died down)
This is a theme in the Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson. The way he paints the different characters beliefs and opinions is wonderful and they all make excellent points highly recommend
It is not only ethical, it is a holy duty. Colonizing the universe is humanity’s destiny.
Very interesting topic and very glad you covered it so well ❤ Maybe there is another episode or future episode that deals with the concept of life already existing everywhere even at a microbiological level and how we might deal with that scenario if we encounter it on virtually every inhabitable moon or planet.
Terraforming is dumb.
@@user-bh4ge1pm2t I did not suggest terraforming, I asked a question about the approach we might take to every inhabitable world (i.e. one that doesn’t need terraforming) being inhabited. ;)
For the record, I'm sorry if I sounded insulting. And now I see the point you were making. It really is a moral quandary. Especially when you consider that habitatable planet is something of a chicken or egg phenomenon.
Two billion years of prokaryotes life is what it took for this planet to get an atmosphere of free oxygen and another billion for there to be soil for plants.
No offence taken at the brevity of the reply and appreciate you taking the time with the second reply. I agree, it is a moral quandary. I love the science and futurism of technology. Equally I am interested in the S&F of other subjects like psychology, morality, politics etc I think its possible to conceive of the approaches we might use with single celled life, multi-cellular life etc. what protocols are we likely to see develop. Not too dissimilar from exploring the topic of regulations we might have for space debris. We are likely to have different protocols, morality or whatever in place for different scenarios and I think it might be fascinating to explore that. My main question is had Isaac done this before? If so, I would greatly appreciate a link!
Great episode.........love the new music
We should terraform Acheron (LV-426).
Not only is it ethical it’s an ethical imperative to! It’s unethical to leave planets unused when it could serve humanity. Some planets should be left for their beauty or as preserves or whatever, ultimately still for our benefit, but otherwise the more we spread out and grow the better!
"the mentality of a cancer cell"
@@lenschwedt9646 I don't have a problem with humanity, artificial intelligence, or anyone who comes after us growing their population to preposterous numbers. So long as it serves a purpose beyond 'I can't think of anything to do with my life other than mindlessly breeding like a lower animal', such as, say, scientific research.
But even so, why PLANETS? As opposed to, say, space habitats or asteroids? What's with this fetish towards planets?
@@lenschwedt9646the imperative of microorganisms too
Oh wait it's the imperative of all life on earth to spread and reproduce
@@lenschwedt9646 That's life bud. Success is destructive.
@@lenschwedt9646 Much better than having the mentality of a victim.
I have contemplated for a while, outside of the ethical aspects of colonizing a planet with existing life, what are the social issues to be overcome when a second wave of colonists arrive and have opinions that differ from the founding colonists?
Looking forward to all of the new episodes.
No need to rush says it all I think. (Decisions need to be taken, but there shouldn't be any urgency in most cases, for a civilization that can cross between stars.)
I suppose this can be made very concrete in the short term, though. Maybe there's other life in the solar system? So we might as well begin the process of settling the preliminary thoughts on how to treat that life? (Seems pretty open and shut to me. It would be necessary to disturb it as little as possible, so that we can learn as much as possible from it. But that's said by an Earthling before Earth began to overflow, maybe.)
For now, there's time, though. So there's no urgency.
Moreover, unless there's some reason we can't live comfortably in artificial habitats (and there may be legitimate reasons for this) there's really no reason to rush. Park your colonization fleet in orbit and get comfy in some O'Neil Cylinders made from local asteroids while scientists get to work figuring out what the situation is planetside.
The Banders idea is very interesting. Would make for a rapidly expanding branches of humanity.
2 divergent planetary adjustments would be all it took for most humans to be of a difference species from each other lol
I don't think we hold any obligations towards the universe outside of where there exists living organisms. So sure it is absolutely okay to terraform planets, so long as there isn't life already living on it, or life that couldn't survive the process anyways.
Metallic Rouge,the Scientific fiction anime,is example on the issue of terraform on other planets as the dealing with the problem of have the artificial beings(Neans) for building home for other beings(spoiler). As the Neans are living in suffering situation, there are revolution against the human masters.
Rouge, Neans
@@nathanrathbun2619, thank you 🙂
I made a comment on a video awhile back that basically addressed the same issue as this topic. I wonder if it had any bearing?" Even if it didn't, which I assume it didn't, it's neat that Isaac and I seem to be on the same wavelength. Isaac's easily one of my favorite youtubers as a person.
I do read most of the comments on the first day of a video and many after, and they often influence future episides, but I don't always remember who said what, so it's possible
Aww thanks Isaac. Keep on keeping on brother. Your a swell fellow. @@isaacarthurSFIA
@@isaacarthurSFIA Then please for goodness' sake read this one. I've been trying to outreach to you throughout months multiple times: According to evolutionary biologists (but also Prof. Gary David O'Brien and Oskari Sivula argue the same), wild animals mainly suffer, and this means that if contamination can cause an exo-biosphere to exist for billions of years, it can be the worst kind of crime to ever happen, which is part of the reason why in early January from 8th to 10th, there was a closed space ethics conference at the International Space Science Institute. We cannot guarantee staying around for the majority of the time a biosphere can exist and to be sufficiently effective caretakers of it, especially not in ice moons like the more than 200 of our system. So we at the very least absolutely should hold back on space activities and have discipline, patience before we kick off an irreversible astronomically huge mistake. Query Ethics on Cosmic Scale if you want to know more. But even if evolution were good, its scale is huge and it can go millions of different ways, and any by random contamination started one would be abysmal. The window between the best and worst ones would be gigantic, and if by waiting just a 5% better one is possible, the difference in terms of well-being would surpass all large scale tragedies of humanity's history easily.
I loved how all four duskian factions merge into one another, except perhaps the retreat
Hey hey he said the “aforementioned host” thing! It’s staggering to think that humans might actually be capable of terraforming.
Yay, another great scenario to visualise topic! Benders sounds most interesting for me really, they can even simulate evolution of entire world for milions or even bilions of years assuming they have good enough computers (or request this simulation to be run on computers in place they are from and results sent back to them if they are in relative vicnity) and just kick the life there into the future, or modify the lifeforms from end of the simulation somewhat to fit more earth-like atmosphere.
To take an inanimate object, or a lower form of being. And making it useful for human survival or human comfort. Is the purest good there is.
Having not watched the video yet, is *NOT* terraforming every compatible planet we see ethical?
short version: dead rocks are fair game, rocks with life on them are more tricky. if the life is complex/sentient, we err on the side of letting them keep their homes because to do otherwise ethically requires us to be ok with being wiped out if some bigger, stronger competitor shows up. we'd forfeit our ability to complain and remain ethically consistent. If we find life somewhere that's not sentient, there are a few things to consider: if you don't care about wiping out alien fauna or microbes for empathic reasons, do you at least have a duty to keep them around to advance your own scientific knowledge? is there any middle ground between total sterilization and total quarantine? should humans adapt themselves to fit in with the locals instead of making everything earthlike? etc.
I don't think humans would terraform many planets in the future, not because its right or wrong but just because its not really worth it. In early stages of space-exploration it will be way cheaper to build and mine in space - we can build temp. space habitats already while we haven't built anything on any other planet/dwarf-planet/moon yet. In later stages of space-exploration it might get easier to build on planets but by then we will get so much better at building space-habitats that it won't be economically worth it to make other astronomical bodies habitable even if we mine them. Terraformed bodies would probably still exist but mostly as things similar to national parks or private penthouses of some ultra-rich.
I absolutely love your videos on ethics🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
A better question is, is leaving planets that we could terraform in their original state ethical?
It would depend on which ethical rules one applies, but that would often depend on if the planet is lifeless or not.
I think that, if we found human smart aliens at the pointy stick level, we should welcome them into our civilization. Get them eating burgers and watching TV or whatever. Treat them, as far as possible, like a human astronaut that got stranded and lost their memories or something.
If we are doing civilization well, our civilization should be a really nice place to live. Far nicer than the poverty and disease they are suffering.
it might not be possible for us to literally live side-by-side with an alien, our environment might be toxic to them or vice versa, but I agree with the basic sentiment. If it turns out we can get along with aliens, that's obviously preferable to picking a fight.
Now, if we could literally invite them home and let them live on Earth and eat our food etc. with no negative effects for anyone, I'd strongly suspect panspermia or ancient advanced humans seeded the galaxy with life or something along those lines. In that case you essentially are dealing with a long-lost cousin.
I feel that alien is saying, " You 'the man!"
Yes, squash it under your feet. Like aliens would not do that to us.
I know I'm throwing this comment in rather late, but here goes: What about the potential of mutual bioforming and partial terraforming? Example: The world, Caligula, that the colony ships arrive at is nowhere near as lifeless as they thought it would be. There's moderately complex multicellular life that breathes the CO2 that dominates the surface-level atmosphere, but it's a long way from intelligence, and the small amounts of molecular oxygen in the surface level atmosphere means Caligulan life will probably never become technically advanced due to the inability to easily make fire. Further, the equivalent of soil is rife with fluorine, in levels that are toxic to Terran life, but is commonly incorporated into the bodies of the "animals" that live on Caligula.
The solution found is to process the atmosphere and genetically alter Caligulan life, so as to replace the CO2 with O2, both in terms of the prevalence in the atmosphere and in the biological processes in Caligulan life. As for the fluorine, the humans and the Terran life they were planning to plant on Caligula after terraforming it, will undergo bioforming to be able to not only tolerate massively elevated levels of fluorine, but to also normally incorporate it into their bodies in the same way that Caligulan life does. The whole process will take some twenty thousand years to fully complete. At that point, there will be no Terran life nor Caligulan life, but, instead, Terrigulan life, being the two distinct branches of hybridized life that both breathe oxygen and have skeletal structures made of fluorine compounds.
The benefits for native life is that A.) it's not so much wiped out as given a massive dose of evolution, and B.) should the Native trunk of the Terrigulan dual-tree of life evolve intelligence (or get uplifted later), it's not held back by technological limitations such as inability to create fire.
The work gives us meaning.
The work gives us hope.
The work goes ever on...
Did anyone else catch how this entire episode could be about the future of earth instead of the future of some other rock?
Yes. People are hard wired to see the Earth and themselves as not just another rock crawling with apes
@@HuplesCatin the absence of evidence of other life, which we still don't have, we factually are special. Show me little green apes and then we'll talk. 😁
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx in the absence of life outside of Earth we can look at life on Earth and see we are not in anyway special nor have we been around that long. Currently we are acting suicidally
Unless a planet is already 90% or more of what it needs to be to support human life, is it even worth terraforming, instead of colonizing by building vast numbers of O'Neill cylinders in orbit of that planet instead? From the information Isaac has provided about space habitats, that sounds like a more practical way of supporting a vast human population than terraforming any planet that needed more than a few small "tweaks" to make it habitable to humans.
I watched on Nebula and then came here to comment. I think that one series of questions that need to be asked would start with "what would the Romans have done?" and then move on to "how did that work out?" and "so what about the Spaniards? The British?" and so on. Silly as it sounds, the real question is whether there is some uniquely human drive that pushes us to conquer and if so then how strong is that drive? Strong enough to do harm to others? Historically, yes. So how to be ethical and remain human then?
but it isn't uniquely human. all life on earth is expansionist to some degree. since we don't really have any exceptions to the rule anywhere on this planet, we can assume the same of other life until we find an exception. that doesn't mean different kinds of life never cooperate or respect territorial boundaries, far from it, but in the absence of any strong enough impediments, life always prefers to expand. this also applies to humans, fwiw. remembering the tyrants and warmongers of the past is important, but don't discount all the peaceful exchanges that happen between billions of people in-between the wars.
John Carpenter made a movie on this subject in 1974. "Dark Star" Humanity used AI-driven super-nukes to pre-sterilize planets they wanted to terraform.
“…but what are ethics in the face of an existential fall?”
Do not weaken your self with petty 'ethics'
(Explorers show up in a new place, take a look around, and immediately one announces): It'll have to go.
Nothing like a good Douglas Adams quote to start the video off right.
I am not thinking that humans should be a multiplanetary specie, until we manages to have the one planet we do have, working well under our massive present.
I have to be honest, even asking the question of whether or not bringing life to a dead rock is ethical betrays a truly bizarre and frankly dangerous mind set.
If it’s 100% barren yes, if it’s there is some form of life and we mess with it that’s when it gets unethical, imagine if a nitrogen breathing race showed up when our world was in cellular life or basic basic life forms, and started to change everything for THEIR physiology, destroying our ark millions of year before anything close to true life forms a river and they would have NO IDEA what they destroyed, or maybe someone did show up and manipulate us and that’s why we’re here, be it god or physical aLiEn bEiNgS
Does it? What if life shouldn't exist? I don't think that's bizarre or dangerous. It's not like those philosophies don't already exist.
I don't know about dangerous. The funny thing about nature is it's self-correcting, and these nihilists tend not to procreate.
Dangerous to who? Colonizing dead planets doesn't harm any living thing, but it helps ensure our survival in the long term.
Terraformers will be the heros of our war against entropy
I think it just depends on whether the planet or system is otherwise uninhabited. Wouldn't want to muscle in on someone else's home. We could not only create new places for us to live, but also all the animals on our planet.
the factory must grow...
This is one of the best episodes you made in a long time. You presented various perspectives on the topic and tried your best to be as unbiased as possible.
I will say that just as there might be some people that are ok with destroying a native ecology just so they can continue on with terraforming the planet, there may also be some people who engage in genetic engineering and later uplifting to produce an intelligent species from that ecology, with its own civilization and culture. They might do this for benevolent reasons but also so they can turn around and say “LOOK, THERE’S A NATIVE CIVILIZATION ON THIS WORLD AFTER ALL!!! Now you defiantly can’t terraform the planet because if you do, you risk committing genocide to them in the process! THEIR BLOOD WILL BE ON YOUR HANDS!“
An unlikely scenario sure, but a fun idea I thought up after watching this video.
I knew it was going to be something special when it came up in a poll, and I'm really happy how it came out.
Love this content ❤️🔥🙏🏽❤️🔥
The absolute case against terraforming is outlined pretty well in Asimov's foundation series (and also in the icky and dubious Hyperion Cantos), and it's not the use of 'Colony' (although it is tainted by the bloody and cruel history of most historical colonisation).
Life must continue on. Even if we see a million new worlds, all of them dead, we must spread life. To let it all fizzle out is the height of cynicism. What life we leave behind will change, and who knows, if we ever return we may make friends when we touch down.
In Britain, we have ‘listed buildings’ of cultural and historic significance that are not allowed to be modified without strict oversight, with the consequence that they are very difficult to put to commercial use and if they can’t be monetised as a tourist attraction in their own right tend to get either neglected to the point of collapse or “accidentally” catch fire, either way the end result is they get bulldozed and replaced with modern flats, seems like a plausible analogy for quarantines
Another humanitarian/Terran ethical concern is that every indigenous species that gets exterminated or smallpoxed can’t be studied for potential medicinal value. We’ve been exploring earth for thousands of years and still have a very incomplete picture of our own tree of life, even as a present day snapshot, and human exploration & colonisation has been a disaster for biodiversity
I think it's unbecoming to dismiss the discussions of shaping even the lifeless plain rocks in our universe to pavement
IIRC, Altered Carbon dealt with similar issues in the second season with the founders of a colony world having obliterated the intelligent entities they found there and kept it quiet.
Nice plot for a story, but Terraforming is dumb.
Still like and prefer paraterraforming and orbital habitats
I agree whole heartedly.
Paraterraforming and orbital habitats you could begin right away.
Terraforming would take who knows how long and would probably render the planet unsuitable for anything else in the meantime.
I'll tell you though, I'm going through all the comments and we are a small minority.
The gravity wells will be nice for space arks
As many lander missions as we’ve sent to other planets and moons I’m sure we’ve already seeded life on at least a few of these bodies. It may take a couple billion years but hopefully the end of earth isn’t the end of life
Video suggestion: Desert Planets
Terraforming is dumb.