In the case of colonization of the universe, the likelihood of the destruction of the human race may actually increase, rather than decrease.
There are many reasons why the colonization of outer space may seem necessary. Renowned astronomer Neil deGrasse believes that this will stimulate the economy and also serve as an inspiration for future generations of scientists. Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, believes that "there is a strong humanitarian case for creating multi-planetary life to guarantee humanity in the event of any catastrophic events." Former NASA chief Michael Griffin views this perspective as a matter of "the survival of the human race." And the late astrophysicist Stephen Hawking suggested that if humanity cannot colonize the universe in the next 100 years, it could face extinction.
Of course, humanity will ultimately be forced to leave Earth in order to escape, since the Sun will make our planet uninhabitable in 1 billion years. However, for many "space expansionists" leaving Earth means much more than dodging a deadly bullet, the bullet of disappearance - for them, in this case, it is about using the vast resources of the universe on the basis of astronomical data to create a kind of utopia. For example, astrobiologist Milan Cirkovic made the following calculation: about 10 to 46 degrees of humans could appear if we colonize our Local Supercluster Virgo. This leads Nick Bostrom to the conclusion that the consequences of refusing to colonize the universe would be tragic.because as a result these potential and "worthy" people will never appear, and this is morally bad.
But can we say that these trillions of lives, in fact, have any value? Or will colonization of outer space lead to dystopia, to dystopia?
In a recent article in Futures magazine, inspired by political scientist Daniel Deudney's upcoming book Dark Skies, I decided to take a closer look at this issue. Here's my conclusion: in colonized outer space, the probability of the destruction of the human race will actually increase, not decrease.
This argument is based on the ideas of evolutionary biology and the theory of international relations, which proceed from the fact that there is no other technologically advanced form of life that can colonize the universe (this is the conclusion of another study author).
Imagine what could happen if humanity migrates from Earth to Mars, and from Mars to such exoplanets as Epsilon Eridani b, Gliese 674 b, or Gliese 581 d (Gliese 581 d). Each of these planets has its own environment, which will contribute to Darwinian evolution, and as a result, over time, new representatives of the human race will arise, as well as such species that will migrate to new islands, and they will have features different from those possessed by related groups. The same applies to the artificial environment aboard a spacecraft such as the O'Neill Cylinders, which are huge cylindrical structures that rotate to create artificial gravity. As long as future human beings meet the basic conditions of evolution based on natural selection - we are talking about differential reproduction, heredity and variation of special traits among representatives of a particular population - evolutionary pressure will generate new forms of life.
However, the process of cyborgization, that is, the use of technology to modify and strengthen our bodies and our brains, is likely to influence the evolutionary trajectories of future populations living on exoplanets or in spaceships. As a result, human beings can arise with completely new cognitive architecture (or intellectual abilities), emotional perception, physical capabilities, lifespan, and so on. In other words, natural selection and cyborgization will lead to human diversification as humanity spreads in space. At the same time, the spread in space will also cause ideological diversification. Human populations moving in outer space will create their own cultures, languages, governments,political institutions, religions, technologies, rituals, norms, worldviews, and so on. As a result, different populations over time will experience more and more difficulties in understanding each other's motivations, intentions, behavior, decisions, and so on. It is possible that communication between individual representatives of the human race, having different languages, will become almost impossible. In addition, some groups may start asking themselves how advanced the notorious "others" are. This matters, and here's why: if members of population Y are incapable of feeling pain, then members of population X may not feel obligated to worry about members of group Y. Ultimately, we are not particularly worried when we kick stones on the street, because we do not believe that these stones can experience pain. Therefore, as I emphasize in another article, phylogenetic and ideological diversification will create a situation in which many populations will become "not only strangers to each other, but - more importantly - alienated from each other."
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This raises certain problems. First of all, these kinds of extreme differences will undermine the trust of one group of people in another. If you are not sure that your neighbor is not going to steal something from you, does not intend to harm you and does not try to kill you, then you will be suspicious of her. And if you are suspicious of your neighbor, then you may want to have an effective strategy to stop her attack if something like this happens. However, your neighbor may reason in the same way: she may not be completely sure that you are not going to kill her, and therefore she also begins to organize a defense. The problem is that her defense is actually part of your attack plan. So you start carrying a knife with you,and she perceives this as a threat to herself, and as a result she is forced to buy firearms and so on. In international relations, this is called a “security dilemma” and the result is a spiral of militarization that can greatly increase the likelihood of conflict - even if all actors have genuinely peaceful intentions.
So how can actors get out of a security dilemma if they don't fully trust each other? At the individual level, one of the solutions has to do with what Thomas Hobbes calls "Leviathan." The key idea is that people get together and say, “Look, since we can't fully trust each other, let's create an independent management system - a kind of referee - that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. By replacing anarchy with hierarchy, we can also replace the existing constant threat with law and order.” Hobbes did not believe that this happens by itself in the course of historical development, and believed that it was this problem that justified the existence of the state. According to Steven Pinker, "Leviathan" is the main reason whythat the incidence of violence has decreased in recent centuries. The point is this: if individual individuals - you and me - are able, with the help of the ruling system, to get rid of the constant threat of harm from our neighbors, then the future representatives of the human race may come together and create something like a system of cosmic government, which will also be able to guarantee peace by replacing anarchy with hierarchy.which will also be able to guarantee peace by replacing anarchy with hierarchy.which will also be able to guarantee peace by replacing anarchy with hierarchy.
Unfortunately, this is not very likely within the "cosmopolitan" space. One of the reasons is that the state, in order to maintain law and order among its citizens, must appropriately coordinate its various departments - the law enforcement system, the courts. If you call the police about a robbery and the police don't show up for three weeks, then what's the point in living in such a society? You might as well be able to live without it! But then the question arises - will all these departments of the system of space governance be sufficiently coordinated in order to respond to emerging conflicts and make top-down decisions about how to respond to a specific situation? This question can be formulated differently: if a conflict arises in some region of the universe,then will the relevant authority be able to respond quickly enough for it to matter itself, to change the situation?
Perhaps this will not happen due to the colossal distances in outer space. Take, for example, the already mentioned Epsilon Eridani b, Gliese 674 b and Gliese 581 d. They are 10.5, 14.8 and 20.4 light years away, respectively. This means that the signal sent at the time of this writing in 2018 will only reach the exoplanet Gliese 581 d in 2038. A spacecraft traveling at ¼ the speed of light will not arrive until 2098, and a message with a simple confirmation of its successful arrival will only return to Earth in 2118. At the same time, Gliese 581 is relatively close in comparison with other exoplanets. Just think of the Andromeda galaxy about 2.5 million light years from Earth, and the Triangulum Galaxy about 3 million light years away. Moreover, there are about 54 other galaxies in our Local Group, the length of which is about 10 million light years, and they are located in a universe stretching for 93 billion light years.
Given the cosmic distances, all these facts make effective coordination of law enforcement activities, legal decision-making, and so on within the government system hopeless. The universe is simply too big for any government to establish top-down law and order.
However, there is another strategy for achieving peace: future civilizations can use a policy of intimidation to prevent other civilizations from making a first strike. This kind of policy (it must be convincing in order to work) is formulated as follows: "I will not attack you first, but if you attack me first, I have the ability to destroy you in retaliation." This was the problem in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which was called mutually-assured destruction (MAD).
But can this work in the cosmopolitan realm of the universe? This seems unlikely. First, you need to think about how many different groups of the human race may be in the future - we are talking about many billions of people. Some populations will be too far apart to pose a threat to each other - however, the following considerations should be borne in mind - and yet there will be a huge number of people inside the galactic backyard. And the sheer number of them will make it incredibly difficult to find out who initiated the first strike in the event of an attack. And without a reliable method of identifying the instigators, the intimidation policy will not be credible. And if your intimidation policy is not credible, then such a policy does not exist at all!
Secondly, one should take into account the types of weapons that may be available to future civilizations moving in outer space. Redirected asteroids (called planetoid bombs), kinetic "arrows of God" (rods from God), sun cannons, lasers, and, of course, numerous extremely powerful weapons that we cannot imagine today. There is even talk that the universe may be in a "metastatic" state and that a powerful particle accelerator could bring the universe to a more stable state. As a result, a bubble of total destruction may appear, spreading in all directions at the speed of light,- and this option opens up an opportunity for representatives of some suicidal cult to use particle accelerators to destroy the universe.
In this case, the question arises as to whether protective technologies can effectively neutralize such risks. Much can be said on this issue, but within the framework of this article we will only note the following: historically, defense technologies often lag behind offensive weapons, and as a result, periods of high vulnerability arise. This is an important point because, when it comes to existentially dangerous weapons, it only takes a short period of vulnerability for the threat of total annihilation to arise.
So far, I can only say that such an option significantly undermines the reliability of the intimidation policy. And if population A cannot convince representatives of population B that in the event of an impact from population B, population A will be able to carry out an effective and destructive counterattack, then population B can take a risk and attack population A. In fact, population B does not have to be malicious in order to do so, it just needs to be concerned that population A will attack population B at some point in the near or distant future, and then population B receives a reasonable justification for a preemptive strike (to eliminate potential threat). If we talk about this problem taking into account the radically multipolar conditions of outer space, then it seems quite obvious thatthat it will be extremely difficult to avoid conflict.
The lesson arising from this argument is not to think uncritically and assume that mastering heaven will make our existence more secure and secure. Therefore, organizations like SpaceEx, NASA and Mars One should seriously consider. How can humanity move to another planet without taking our problems with them? And how can various human populations settled in outer space maintain peace in such a situation where it is impossible to create a sufficient amount of mutual trust, and the most modern types of weapons are capable of destroying entire civilizations?
Human beings have made many disastrous decisions in the past. Some of the consequences that have arisen could have been avoided if the decision makers had a little more thought about what could go wrong - that is, by performing a “premortem analysis”. We are today in just such a privileged position with regard to the colonization of outer space. Let's not jump headfirst into a body of water that may actually be shallow.
Phil Torres is the director of the Project for Human Flourishing and author of Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks.