Astronomical Suffering and the Terran Diaspora

the corporation what you've achieved. But before you can initiate the command, the air shimmers with a strange energy. A flash of panic burns through you as you fear some unforeseen side effect of the engine's power reality parts, and a glowing vigor slips through the incision. It speaks to you in a voice like a whisper. Professor, Up, what are you? I am the messenger from the future age come to warn you. Impossible, paradoxical, no more so than

your engine. It must be destroyed. Then you have come to kill me. I cannot, but you can be activate this machine, scatter its plans to the four winds, and leave the future untarnished by its power. But why should I do that? I built it to open up the cosmos, to spread humanity beyond Earth, to safeguard us against destruction, and in doing so create hell worlds beyond number, places with the descendants of humanity writhe and poverty, misery and pain.

The mass of their collective suffering dwarfs all of humanity's achievements in my time, reducing the human experience to a median of immoral horror. And I know, for I have walked the mire and ruin of each world. I have looked into their eyes. And I ask you now, in the hope that no one else will retrace your steps, to please turn off the machine. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is

Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we wanted to talk about the question of, hey, what if we accidentally turned the Milky Way into a living hell? That's right, you were getting into this topic um of astronomical suffering.

And we we tried to make sure the title had a spin of far future science fiction to it, and we decided to kick things off with a nice hefty slice of original sci fi to you know, to firmly ground the conversation, because this is going to be a conversation that gets into a lot of far future territory, speculative science fiction territory, but ultimately wrestling with some some real philosophical considerations about the nature of humanity and and

how we go about our decision making. Yeah. Um, so, one thing that this topic makes me think about, maybe a good place to start is how much of future thinking among people, you know, people who like to think about the far future, just assumes space colonization as a given, Like, does not interrogate the idea at all, does not say, like, you know, would it be good to colonize other planets, other star systems and stuff. It just assumes Yeah, I mean,

of course that's what you do. Humans. You know, they spread over the surface of the Earth, and now they'll keep spreading on into other little rocks in space. But the science fiction was so concerned with the question of whether or not it could it didn't stop to think of it should. Yes, the the Ian Malcolm Uh factor often uh features into our conversations here, because yeah, for for many, if not most, of us, Colonization and of

other worlds has kind of always seemed humanity's destiny. And you know, part of it is simply the extrapolation of our terrestrial ideals and ambitions and just the sort of flow of of world history. We're just taking that in applying it to other worlds. Our species spread from continent to continent, finally overtaking every last, uh, you know, truly

habitable island in the global ocean. And so we've long dreamt a voyaging off planet to whatever islands of life or potential life we might find or create in this cosmic ocean. Now, I know most of you consume science fiction, so we don't have to tell you how pervasive the dream happens to be. You know, Star Trek continues to stand as a towering, optimistic example of how this might

play out. But we also see it in all manner of sci fi visions, you know, from the near future, gritty world of something like the expanse or altered carbon, you know, to far reaching worlds like Doom, Star Our Wars,

the Culture series, and many, many, many more. I think Dune might be a good example for us to keep in mind throughout this episode, though, because while I don't recall in Dune there being much of a question about the general project of colonizing worlds other than than humanity's origin on Earth, um doing at least does present a vision of a planet that is both inhabited and completely crappy, just completely inhospitable in every way, like we shouldn't be there,

and yet we're there because we have to be. Now, in Dune, that's because of demand for a particular resource that's only generated on this planet. But you could imagine other scenarios where there could be a planet that's just really not hospitable to human life in any way, except we just have to be there, maybe because it is the only rock that we can stand on within reach. Yeah.

And there's also that kind of nietzsche In quality to some of the world's too, like because there's of course i Racus, and then there's the home world of the Sarticre, the the you know, the elite soldiers of the Empire, which is described as a quote unquote hell world, the idea that it's just so brutal there that it it creates the super soldiers, and of course uh Oracus creates

their own elite um fighting force as well. Uh So, yeah, I think Dune is a great one to continually return to the I think the world of the Sarto Car Troops come from. It's supposed to be sort of like the planet where the Superman villain dooms Day comes from, right where it's just like made stronger and stronger by by being subjected to every form of punishment and suffering day in day out. Yes, yeah, exactly, and and that that idea is covered in I think some other works

as well. I know, uh in in Banks in the Culture series has a has a species it shows up that is biologically immortal, and part of that is tied to the fact that it emerges from such a hostile and competitive ecosystem. Uh that, like natural death was just never part of its of its physiology, you know. I will say there's another science fiction book that I've talked about on the show before. I think I recommended it one year for summer reading that I really enjoyed, specifically

because it asks a question along these lines. It's uh, Kim Stanley Robinson's novel Aurora, which is about a generation starship that has a colonization mission. Um, you know, trying to go to another star system and colonize another habitable planet. But a big theme of that book is the question of just like how how special Earth might be, and ways in which we we don't realize that leaving Earth is just abandoning everything that we depend upon and everything

that makes life good. And so ultimately there is kind of a question in the book like, well, maybe should we should we actually have our sight set on other planets, Maybe there's something inescapably perfect about Earth, and instead we should focus on making Earth as habitable as possible for

as long as possible. Um and and I remember, I think reading some reviews of this book that criticized it essentially as being like pessimistic and a down er for for in some ways being characterized as anti space exploration, which I'm not sure the book exactly is, but it at least explores possibilities in that space, which I which

I think is fascinating and very worth considering. Yeah, I think the and and you know, actually a Christian and I record an episode years ago called the Case against Space that went into some cases that could be made against UH spending time and resources and money on on space exploration, you know, just to explore the other side.

But but I think that one thing we get into here is the kind of like soft futurism that we sometimes engage in, like without really thinking long and hard about the rigors of creating an off world colony of say, colonizing and terraforming Mars. You just kind of tuck it away in the back of your mind, is like, oh, well, we have a plan and and and and in reality,

we we don't really have a plan. B. There is no earth to um you were talking about very um inhospitable worlds, extreme environments, places that are even the closest uh locations we could go to our far far away and we've touched on the the like the challenges of of Mars on the show before. But it's it's a danger to to just sort of categorize that casually in the back of your head as like a reason to

not fully invest in the health of this planet. Yeah, totally. Uh. Yeah, you don't want to be going around thinking like, well, we gotta backup plan. Yeah, I mean long term, we might, but that is in no way a guarantee. Yeah, but but I do want to stress that, you know, speaking for myself, I certainly still buy into this this future. I think it is an optimistic vision for the future

for the most part. But like all all things, considering the of the future, you know, we have to we have to have a balance of optism and realism, and you have to entertain some of the worst case scenarios as well. Oh, totally. I mean, I want to be clear that in talking about this today, we're not trying to make the case that space colonization is bad. We're

just saying, here are some questions to consider exactly. Yeah, because I think a large part of this whole dream's vision of expanding to other worlds, it's based in humanity's innate desire to explore and expand. It's our scientific zeal, uh, you know, and this is part of what makes humanity great. Though it also leaches into our vanity and pride, and more to the point, it is an eventuality that our space programs continue to work towards you know, such dreams, Uh.

Sci fi visions have animated the best minds among us for decades and decades, and it seems ultimately a question of when, not if a human being will, for instance, ever stand on the surface of Mars. Well, I think another reason that the idea of space exploration is so popular among like optimistic future thinking people is like it seems like it is the half of adventure that is not that is not antagonistic and violent. I mean, I

would say adventure has two main components. One is like exploration and discovery, and the other is kind of this violent conquest thing. And you know, and we like the sense of adventure, but maybe we we want a way to have adventure that doesn't involve subjugation and violent conquest of whatever you find when you get somewhere. And so uh the and so space exploration seems like a perfect candidate for that kind of spirit of adventure, right to

fulfill that drive without doing something harmful. Maybe there there are these dead rocks out in the universe that we could adventure two and we could explore without having to make it into a struggle of conquest in war. Does that make sense? Yeah? Absolutely, yeah. Now certainly you know there's sci fi visions that that drag those elements in and is we'll discussed there are some It's it's not

that that space colonization is a risk free venture. It's not like they're there are not things that we could potentially break while out there. But but yeah, it does seem an optimiss The idea of exploring Mars, for the most part, seems far less full of conflict and horror than say, uh, you know Europeans history of exploring the

New World right now. Another huge angle to this, though, is uh, is that there is this idea that humanity must eventually leave Earth in order to survive long term in a dangerous universe and to thwart various existential risks. Stephen Hawking was an advocate of this line of thinking, among many others. Yeah, I mean Stephen Hawking is not wrong in saying this. I mean there are risks to Earth.

And uh, here's here's an analogy maybe for for people who are trying to like plan the retirement savings or whatever. Is it good to put all of your retirement savings in the stock of one company. Any any investment manager or whatever would tell you don't do that. You need to diversify your investments in order to make sure that

you know your that your money is safe. You've got to invest in multiple different things because if something bad happens to one company and you're totally invested there, you could lose everything. Some people I think, look at you know, the planetary habitation of humans in the long term, the same way catastrophic things can happen to planets. There there can be catastrophic changes to the biosphere of a planet.

And so if you don't spread out to other planets over time, the risk just keeps accumulating more and more that something is going to happen that will cause us to blink out of existence. Yeah, and and we discussed many of these on the show before, you know, things such as near Earth objects potentially colliding with the planet. Also things bound to human technology like climate change, nuclear war, and another. Various exams upolth some some more futuristic than others,

but most given known potential existential risk. You know with them, there are there are certainly ways to attempt to safeguard against them, at least as far as as ones that are technologically within our limits of control. Uh. Now, can we control ourselves? Arguably, Yes, that's possible, even if it tends to not be the case a lot of the time in human affairs. Can we track and mitigate incoming in eos? Yeah, we're continuing to improve our capabilities in

that department. But as we get into long term concerns about say the life of the sun, UH, we'd really need to be higher on the Karda Chef scale to do anything about it. And then there's also the issue of outside context problems, which is a which are problems

that by definition, a civilization cannot anticipate. As then in Banks explained in the in his book Accession, which is where the term was coined, most civilizations encounter just a one outside context problem, and that is what does them in Now you might be thinking, well, wait a minute, what's an example of an outside context problem? I guess the definition of it would be that it's something that

we're not really envisioning right now. But maybe the easiest example would be an encounter with a with a totally uh incomprehensible alien species or something. Yeah. Yeah, that that's that's the big one. UM And certainly like one example that is often thrown out. I think Banks made this uh analogy as well is if you are one of the native people's of say South America, and then European show up on your shore in these in these ships with horses and all this technology. UM. It is not

something they anticipated. And there were and there were other aspects of that problem that they just could not anticipate, say the disease factor. And uh, and they ultimately, I mean they it's not that they were completely wiped out. But obviously that whole situation was was an apocalypse for

the people's of the New World. But another thing we should emphasize again that you just mentioned a second ago, is that, I mean, one thing we can be sure of, even if we don't encounter any outside context problems, is there's basically an expiration date for life on Earth that has nothing to do with like stochastic events like a

near Earth object impacts or something. It's just gonna be the the lifespan of the Sun. Eventually, the Sun is going to swell, it's going to turn into a red giant and and Earth will get too hot to live on there there will be no life here anymore. Yeah, and and a lot of times this can seem like ridiculous to worry about, right, but like, come on, humanity, let's let's get through July. Uh about the long term survival of the human race and what happens when when

the Sun burns out of energy. I mean, we think the the habitable Earth is already probably more than halfway through its lifespan. You know, Earth is about four and a half billion years old, probably within um you know, it's hard to put an exact number on it, but I think something like four billion years from now we can be pretty sure that that Earth is just gonna be done like that. There will be no more life

here at that point. It will just be too hot. Now, four billion years is a long time, right, you know that that was enough time to for single cells to evolve into humans who are capable of appreciating the RoboCop movies, you know, and so like, uh, it is a long time. It's not like something you need to worry about tomorrow. But at the same time, if you are trying to imagine the far future, something would have to happen if

we wanted to go on beyond that point. Yeah, and I think that's reasonable though also, of course it is we are talking about the far future. Um. So in this episode we thought we'd explore some of the moral arguments that are ultimately against the colonization of other worlds. The concern, again, to to quote Ian Malcolm, is not can we do it. But should we do it? What would the moral cost be uh to a true Tarran diaspora. If we were to expand beyond the earth, what would

it cost us? And would it be worth it? What are some of the philosophical concerns here? Well, maybe we should take a quick rake and then when we come back we can talk about them. All Right, we're back. So one of the key factors in this entire discussion it has to do with the morality of human existence and what you might think of a sort of the media and human condition. Uh So consider this question. Is human existence on average a reality worth sustaining and propagating? Uh?

You know, I know, obviously it's it's not like we could do anything but that, I mean, that's what life does. And we are we are life, no matter how self aware we've become or how you know, self aware we've come to believe we are, we are still just we are life and life propagates. Yeah, and there are of course people who believe, you know, that humans should voluntarily go extinct. That is actually a point of view some

people have. I kind of and I don't mean to question everyone who says this, but with at least some of the people who say that, I kind of question

their sincerity. I mean with some of the people who say that, I think they're probably just saying that to be interesting or to be shocking, not because they really believe humans should disappear right, or to sort of ext to over express a sentiment, you know, yeah, to to sort of drive home a point, like like I think I've probably in in the past, I've probably said something to the effect that I would I would be totally cool with the with the male gender going extinct and

the species become exclusively female. Um. But you know, now I have a son, and uh, you know I can't rationally make that argument, you know, um, and it and it was, ultimately, you know, not a completely rational argument. Maybe you know, a little attention seeking and a little uh, you know, trying to to to make a point, I suppose, but uh but still, you know, all these sort of questions and considerations do get into bigger questions about like what are we doing? Like what is the what? And

what are we doing wrong? And then what is the the overall shape of life? This is you know real, this is the meat of philosophy and theology. Uh, you know, why is there so much suffering in the world. Is life suffering? Does all the suffering make the good parts worth having? Is a miserable life better than no life at all? Are their fates worse than death? I mean this is These are questions we continue to wrestle with. And then there's also the big, big question of inequality here.

If only a small fraction of the human population, such as you know, the much talented one percent, or or even some larger percentile, depending on what your parameters are, if only this small fraction of the population has access to true comfort, health, happiness, or whatever your gage happens to be, then what does that say about the overall

health of the system. If the popular idea of what it is to be human is, say the lifestyle one season a popular television show, be it Friends or the Kardashians, or even like Seinfeld, you know, a nice sizeable apartment in all uh, then then how do we square how out of proportion these visions are with our reality, or sort of the standard reality on earth. And likewise we might wonder which ideal we're envisioning UH to be installed in an off world colony. What are we spreading to

other worlds? Beyond basic human presence and just sort of the staked flag of empire, or perhaps ideally we envisioned that such off world realities would encompass just a vast array of emotional states, uh, you know, and that things would even out tomorrow will be like today in the arc of the moral universe, you know, will will bend towards justice and so forth. So at this point I wanna I want to turn to this, this subject of astronomical suffering. Uh. And this comes from a paper by

Marco Covid. Uh. Not to be confused with Takeishi Kovaks, which we referenced earlier. This is a k O V I see, with the last part having a c H pronunciation like in chocolate. So uh. So Covid is a Swiss social scientist who is the co found owner and CEO of the consulting firm Ours Cognitanis, and whose work has been featured in Ian Magazine, among other places. He also has written extensively in German and the German language, and hosts a German language podcast titled Din Cautelier, which

you can you can actually you can look up. It is d E n K A T E l I E r dot x y Z. So if you were a German speaker, uh, check that out. It's uh, I would check it out if my German were not just the most basic level ever. Uh. So you wanted to do this topic today because you you read an article by Covids, right, Yeah, It published in UM. It's an

open science framework publication titled Risks of Space Colonization. You can access the full paper online and I urge everyone to do so because it's a thought provoking read and it really puts the whole enterprise of off world colonies under philosophical scrutiny. Not to say that he doesn't touch on ideas that I think are already out there in the in the zeitgeist, in the you know, the science fiction whole consideration of the future. But but it's really

a great ride up. We're not going to go through everything Covid discusses here, because he certainly discusses the risks and rewards of space colonization, including the notion that the acceleration of space colonization capability would just increase the existential risk coming at us, like all the technological ways that we could potentially destroy ourselves or make life worse on the planet that being able to to move at great speeds, to have orbital you know, supremacy, that these things would

just uh create more ways for us to hurt ourselves. I mean, I feel like we're doing a bad enough job already at avoiding species level risks. Yeah. Yeah, but when you consider potential technologies like you know, rods from God and the idea that you know, you wouldn't even need explosives if you had orbital supremacy, if you had enough just mass up there in orbit that you could

drop down things like that, it's the ultimate high ground. Yeah, exactly. Uh. And he also discusses contact with microbial extratractical extraterrestrial life, which we've discussed on the show before, secession and independence, reactionary colonies, intercolonial conflict, which is another topic we've definitely

uh produced episodes on, and much much more. But I wanted to focus in on some of the other ideas the outlines here, such as the risk of moral catastrophes quote massively undesirable outcomes of engaging in space colonization but without any intent for or complacency towards doing harm, and the first of these that he brings up is the astronomical populations ethics conundrum. And to better understand that, we

have to first consider what is known as the repugnant conclusion. Yeah. So, um, if if we got any moral philosophy nerds out there, you will recognize this immediately. The idea of the repugnant conclusion is, uh it's a very popular or question in the the domain of population ethics, this sub branch of ethics about how to know what's the right thing to do when considering the creation and maintenance of populations of people.

Uh So. The repugnant conclusion is also known as the mere addition problem, and it was famously articulated by the British philosopher Derek Parfit in his nineteen eighty four book Reasons and Persons. As often understood today, the repugnant conclusion takes the form of a paradox about our intuitions on

population ethics. Uh And there are a lot of ways of expressing or illustrating this paradox, but to make it as simple and as clear as I can, the repugnant conclusion is a statement like this, And this is a quote for from Derek Parfitt. Quote for any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with very high

quality of life. There must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though it's members have lives that are barely worth living. So that that sounds very counterintuitive, right, Like there's some number we don't know exactly what it is. Maybe maybe you know ten trillion people who might have all completely miserable lives, But it would be better for all those people to exist than for some smaller number of people

to exist, all having good lives. Now, how on earth could you arrive at that conclusion? Well, let's illustrate with an example. Um, And of course I'm slightly oversimplifying here because this arises in a discussion alongside another complicated issue known as the non identity problem. And with respect to the repugnant conclusion, Parfitt himself uses an argument with more steps and bar graphs and stuff representing hypothetical human groups

and qualities of life. I'm just gonna try to get to the heart of it in a simple and clear way. Let's say you're put in a weird experiment by a godlike consortium of cardassiev three level alien scientists, who are so technologically powerful that they can make realities come in and out of being at will. And they they give you two options. They give you the option to make one of two scenarios a reality. Robert, would you take this test? Yes, let's do it. Okay, So scenario one.

You get to exist, but I do not get to exist. Imagine again, not really me. You don't know me. I'm just some hypothetical other person yet to be born. In your existence, you have a pretty nice life. You get really good food, you have a nice house. You get to hang out with friends and family. You have free time, get to exercise and experience nature. You get to read interesting books and pursue creative work. It's pretty great. But I don't exist at all. Now here's scenario to both

you and I get to exist. You keep everything you had in the previous scenario. You get good material conditions, good relationships and social life, interesting creative projects to explore, et cetera. Nothing at all changes for you. I, on the other hand, have a less exciting existence. I have a few social relationships, but I only get to talk to people through a glass barrier, and I live in a kind of dank, concrete building that's always dimly lit and a little bit too cold, and I get enough

food to eat, but it's not very exciting. It's basically just like microwave frozen fish sticks and tater tots and a vitamin supplement to keep me more or less healthy. I can still sort of pursue my interests in my spare time, but I don't have a lot of spare time after all of my shifts at the Hollywood Acid Factory. Now, which scenario would you pick? Oh, this is hard because with the first one you've kind of had me like, okay, uh,

this sounds fine. All you know, my life and my connections and the things I'm invested in those exist and you don't exist. And so like there's you know there, you don't really have a dog in a hunt, right, you don't have any skin in that. You literally do not have skin in the game. But then scenario too makes is a lot more difficult because it's like now it's it's kind of this question of do you get to exist in this kind of like in this you know,

this more miserable state or not like quite miserable. I don't know, depending how you frame it. But yeah, it's like, then I feel like I am imposing on you if I say you can't exist. Right, So just imagine all of that is true. But if you asked me, I would say, well, of course I want to exist. I don't want to not exist. Yeah, And I do not feel it is my place to decide that someone should not exist, you know, due to the quality of their life in this case, you know, I mean, this is

a scenario to puts me in a very tough place. Yeah, And I think most people's intuition when confronted with this problem is that it would be unfair to pick scenario one. Even though my existence in scenario two is not ideal. You'd assume that if you asked me, I would still rather exist than not exist. Right, So scenario too, this context is, by most people's intuition, a better world. It's a more preferable world. If you had the option, scenario two would be the better one to bring about. And

it's really hard to argue with that reasoning. In order to argue with that reasoning, you'd have to say that you have the power unilaterally to say that other people shouldn't be able to exist and live lives that they might not rate as perfect but still would want to have. But this opens up a very dangerous logic because it means it's possible to increase the desirability of a world just by adding to the number of sentient minds that want to keep existing in it. Again, this is why

it's known as the mere addition problem. That you can create scenarios where it's better to have a world with more minds in it as long as those minds would say that they want to exist, even if the average quality of human life is drastically reduced. So like, if you took the average quality of my existence in your existence together in scenario two, then it would be lower than the average of your existence alone in scenario one.

And then if you obey this maxim that you've set out, now it seems like you're committed to a chain of logic that leads to the conclusion that the value of quantity can overwhelm the variable of quality when it comes to human life, as as long as most people would rather exist than not, some greater number of lives are preferable to some smaller number, even if the lives and

the greater number are pretty abjectly miserable. Now, I think we should know that this logic would not apply to lives that are so miserable that people would say themselves that they would truly rather cease to exist. You could think of some kind of like torture, like hell world or something, you know, like if hell existed, it would

just be better for that to not exist. Yeah, this is the the the option we're talking about here is more in line with to bring in us another great science fiction example, uh, the Martian cal and he's in total recall where most people have it pretty horrible there, or at least it's a rough existence, but they would still fight to survive. Yeah. Yeah, and they they get into how like the the early like the settlers were just basically living in caves. You know, it's just this

this brutal, primitive existence. And yet at the same time, like they you know, they're they're not in just constant torture. Yeah, exactly. Now, I want to be very clear, as we said at the beginning, the point of this is not that the repugnant conclusion is correct. It's actually you know, Derek Parfitt highlights this to say, like this really seems to be incorrect. It really seems to go against our intuitions. So the problem is figuring out what part of the logical chain

that gets you there is wrong. Because I mean, most people I think would say that this this conclusion is incorrect.

There are these practical moral implications to it. If it were actually correct, If the repugnan conclusion were really did have moral force, it would have implications like humans should engage in maximal natalism, right, like the idea that humans should reproduce as much as possible to create as much human life as we possibly can, because to create less than the maximum possible amount of human life would be immoral.

Under this view, if you didn't work to maximize the human population, you're denying future people the right to exist. And again, you know too many people. That seems intuitively absurd. Why would you trade a world with less people living fulfilling lives for a world with vastly more people living lives you know, at the edge of what resources they can get to barely survive. For instance, you could think about it in terms of cat ownership, you know, like

one one cat, in my opinion, is enough. Um. But you know, I could see myself talked into all right, we need to get a second cat. This cat needs a home. Let's let's let's do it. But then the more cats you add to a house, the more chaotic it becomes, the more work has to go into taking care of those cats, until you reach a point where it's it's just about quantity over quality, right right, exactly. Now, Again, this isn't to assume any particular correlation between the number

of people on Earth in their quality of life. I mean I think that, um, there are actually some naive assumptions going around about about increasing human populations necessarily always leading to bad outcomes. I don't think we should we should take those conclusions for granted, but just saying that, like, if you assume at some point, you know, if there were a hundred trillion humans on Earth, you can definitely say that that would that would cause problems for for

ecosystems and stuff, right right. And and also, just before anybody writes me if you have multiple cats in your home, I am not judging you. I am just saying that multiple cats, uh, does not feel right for me personally my personal household. But I know plenty of people with lots of cats and they seem quite happy with the situation. But but even they, I think, would probably admit that

there is there is some threshold cat ownership. Right, even if you're you're you're a sort of like cat maximalist in a practical sense, you're not really because you're not trying to get five hundred cats in your house. Yeah, because that's when, yeah, that's when law enforcement gets involved. Right. Um, But then okay, so so on the on the one hand, you're thinking, like, no, that that can't be right, But then compare it again to our other intuitions that got

us there in the first place. Even if you wish the quality of your life were much better, most people would prefer existing over not existing, even people who are in pain, who lack the things that we desire, we would mostly prefer to be able to exist rather than not exist. And so it would certainly be wrong of us to decide on other people's behalf that their lives are not worth living. Right. Yeah, I think there's a there's a strong argument for that. Um, you know, we

we do get it. We are getting into I know that there are all sorts of lights going off in people's heads about varying you know, issues, but but but still, I think that is a for the most part of rational argument. Well, at least it's it feels that way. It doesn't necessarily mean it's right. So this is a paradox we've got. It seems like we must choose between two conclusions that both feel morally wrong. So what are the ways of resolving this paradox? Because so the conclusion

is widely considered unacceptable. Parfit himself. Again, he articulates this, but not to say that the repugnant conclusion is correct. He brings it up to say, like, this is obviously wrong. We have to figure out why this isn't the case, and uh. Other philosophers have tried to find ways to avoid the conclusion by like questioning some of the premises

or introducing other considerations. So, for example, you could argue that maximizing the average quality of human life is the ideal and so so not like the number of people, but you just want to make the average human life quality as high as possible. But under this model you'd run into problems. For instance, you could improve the world by killing everyone except the happiest person in it, and

then it would have the maximum average happiness. Uh. Then again you could you could go back against that and say, well, surely killing everyone else would decrease this person's quality of life. But you can imagine like weird sci fi hypotheticals to get around this, maybe, for example, that the best possible world is the one with just one maximally satisfied person living in a simulation of real life for the wind howls around the you know waste land bunker that houses

that that person's real body. Yeah, that that reminds me of a There was a Zoom meeting that I attended this morning. There was like a like a like a dad's meeting. There's a line with the school where my son goes, and we were all asked to rate our current level of happiness from a one to a kin like one being like just I just just absolute misery, I guess, and tim being like awesome, and most of us put in sevens. I found I put on myself put in a seven. There was like a seven point

to someone had a seven point seven. I think somebody somebody was having a tough time, and you know, put in like a six or a five. And then one person put in a tin and I was I was just like wow, like who let let's hand ownership of the what are they doing where they have the you know, the tins? So in this scenario, it's like, just cut out all the sevens and let's just have only the guy with the tin and uh, and he shall be the uh the population of Earth. Right, So that obviously

goes against our moral intuitions as well. It does not feel right that you could you could improve the moral worth of the world just by eliminating all the unhappy people. That's obviously wrong. Uh So, yeah, you're still stuck with this problem. Is there are a bunch of ways the different philosophers have have tried to deal with it. Some have introduced like like sort of ad hoc ways of calculating life value that's somewhat favor average quality of life,

but don't totally put that above number of people. I mean, it's just like, this is clearly a difficult problem to resolve some things that we believe in our intent with each other. But however you try to deal with the problem, it is not hard at all to imagine how this thought experiment has an impact on the idea of space

exploration and space colonization. Because think about it again, Okay, imagine you're charting out to futures for humanity, and one is a is a future where we stay here on Earth and people you know, there there are varying qualities

of life. But let's say, you know, in a in a better future scenario, maybe we we implement some kind of social structure that gets basically everybody on Earth's quality of life up to a certain level where people have the resources they need, they can pursue creative work, they can they can hang out in a in a you know,

unpolluted natural environment, experience nature, have good social relationships. You know, take a best case scenario, there still the number of people who could live on Earth in that scenario is going to be somewhat limited. Meanwhile, you could have a

lot more potential for human life and human flourishing. And especially if you're playing the odds game against like you know what, if you know, we get a space impact or something really bad happens to planet Earth itself, you can have a lot more potential for human life if you were to spread out to other objects throughout the you know, throughout the Solar System or throughout you know,

other star systems in the Milky Way. But if you take a pessimistic view of what those would be like, you can easily imagine how those existences might be pretty crappy, you know, like you're you're trying to live on Mars, but the exploration of Mars is in one sense exciting,

but also Mars is a horrible place. It's just horrible, Like would you really would you really want to live there in say an underground bunker that had to shield you from radiation, and you know, you're you're eating these kind of bland foods, and you know, there's only a couple of other people who you can interact with face to face, and you can't go outside, you can't see

a tree, you know, and and and so forth. Yeah, and if you're also looking at a situation where it's not even like I'm going to make this this world,

this Martian world better for my children. If it's more like, well, in a thousand years, things will be much better, you know, it's it It becomes kind of difficult to imagine, you know, getting in the mindset of you know, of of the of that particular individual, right, and so this I feel like this kind of question, the idea of space colonization in a way is one particular scenario for making the

paradox of the repugnan conclusion kind of concrete. Like imagining these different options, both of them feel kind of wrong in a way, and this brings us back to uh

CO budges astro astronomical population ethics conundrum. He writes, quote, in the context of space colonization, the repugnant conclusion could mean that a dystopian future in which dozens or hundreds of billions of humans across different habitats in our Solar system and beyond live miserable, brutish, anguish field lives is a future that is morble preferable to, for example, a future in which there are only a few billion people

who live happy lives on Earth. Now, Covid points out that yes, this is an extreme possibility, but that it's not unreasonable to presume that life on the off world colonies would indeed be hard. You know, we've just been

discussing how brutal Mars is. I mean, heck um, I think it's a nanio degrass Tyson, for instance, has brought up look at Antarctica, and Arctica is infinitely more hospitable than Mars, and outside of what a few thousand people during the summer and barely a thousand people during the winter. We don't have human life on Earth's fifth largest continent. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think about how how uninhabitable not

just an Arctica like most of Earth is. This is funny, like, you know, Earth is the place we can live, but we can't even live on most of it. Most of the surface of the Earth is uninhabitable. It's either ocean is open ocean, or it is you know, desert or uninhabitable tundra, ice sheets like they are actually really just these kind of slivers of the surface that are good

for us to settle down on. Yeah, I mean when you consider like the hard surface of the Earth, most of the Earth's surface is a dark, high pressure deep sea environment where where we we have no place. Uh so, yeah, we're we're clinging to the you know, to the parts of the world that we can live and VR technology, you know, we're able to to live in a lot

of places that we wouldn't be able to otherwise. But but still yeah, we again, it comes kind of back to the Kardashi of scale, like in terms of technology and just sort of maximizing our planet, Like we're not even on wrong one yet, so you know, and trying to imagine people living on an world off world colony. People born into life in another world would not exist

at all if not for the establishment of that colony. So, on one hand of the paradox, colonizing other worlds is an inherently moral act because you know, because if you don't do it, they won't exist. But what if there are not places where happiness and peace are going to be easily found? What if these are harsh, frontier colonies, even hell worlds? Uh in you know, to varying degrees that expand the fact of human habitation, but do so

via the reality of human suffering. So Covac connects this to that other standard problem of population ethics that we already mentioned, uh, the non identity problem, which just to to reiterate that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that it quote raises questions regarding the obligations we think we have in respect of people who, by our own acts are caused both to exist and who have existences that are, though worth having, unavoidably flawed existence is that is, that

are flawed if those people are ever to have them at all. Yeah, so on the non identity problem. And this is part of the same context in which Derek Parfitt's discussion of the repugnant conclusion was described. It's another paradox. It's it takes the same form showing that where it seems like you have a couple of options and they both seem morally wrong due to our intuitions. So so he shows that there are three premises that are intuitively true,

but they're in conflict with each other. Uh So, first of all, there's the premise of what's known as the person affecting view, and this is the belief that an act can only be wrong if it harms someone in some way, and actually that does no harm to anyone cannot be morally wrong. And of course this doesn't apply just a physical harm. This would be, you know, any

way of making someone's life, for situation worse. And if you disagree with this, try to think of something that it's wrong to do but that would never hurt anyone in any way. The state off marshmallow man um I mean, And and so people might have views about that, I mean, some people might adhere to, like a what might be called a deontological view of morality where there are just certain things that are that are moral and immoral and it actually does not flow from consequentialism from how it

affects other people. But but I mean, a very common view among philosophers today would be that you know, there's something about morality that has to involve effects on people, and if something doesn't hurt anyone, it's hard to see how it's wrong. So that's the first idea, that that there is a person affecting view of morality, that something

can only be wrong if it harms someone. The second premise is that bringing a person into existence is not bad for that person, even if their existence is flawed, because being caused to exist is not a reduction in the quality of one's existence. There is no higher baseline from which you are reduced by being caused to exist in the first place. Does that make sense? So it's not like you were doing great but for you existed, and then once you existed, then that was like a

downgrading of how good you're doing. And then the third premise would be that some acts of bringing people into

existence are wrong anyway. Imagine, for example, creating an underworld space colony where the people there are going to be haunted by space more locks that hound them every waking second, like you would think it would be wrong to create that place, right, Yes, yes, I mean I'm try I'm trying to envision all the ways that you know, we can reach the space more locks and change them and and you know, bring space more locks and human colonists together.

But but it does sound pretty daunting. Yeah, And so this is another problem along these lines. To to a lot of philosophers, all of these premises seem correct, but they can't all be right at the same time. They're in conflict with each other. So COVID ways in on this. He says, in the case of our dystopian space colonization thought experiment, however, the horrible future or is not actually

bad for anyone. If it weren't for our dystopian space colonization activities, all those billions of people beyond Earth who live miserable lives barely worth living would not exist at all. From the point of view of those future people, then their miserable lives are still preferable to the alternative, which is not having come into existence at all. The fact that they were brought into their miserable existence was therefore

not morally bad for them. And and this basically is the second premise I mentioned a minute ago, that it's not bringing someone into existence can't be bad for them because it does not constitute a downgrading or reduction in their quality of life. They didn't have a baseline to start from. Yeah, so covid he ends up contending that, via these problems, enabling a future of space colonies is at least less morally desirable than other alternatives, but perhaps

even morally questionable. And this brings us to the next phase of his consideration, and that is astronomical suffering in off world human populations. All right, well, let's take a break and then we can come back and explore some suffering than alright, we're back astronomical suffering, deep hurting. If you were a centobyte, then you you may have skipped forward to this portion of the podcast because you just want some good suffering. Uh So Coverage contends the pain

of the Mars colony will be legendary even in Hell. Yeah, this is where they should have gone in. Uh imagine if if we could do a read a redo of Hell raised or three um four four, the space one three is the one with the with the like disco club and is it in England or I think it's in the US. Okay, I can't remember. The one with the camera head cinebite and the c D cinebyte. Yes. Yeah, the fourth one is in space and it's largely incomprehensible.

But imagine if it had decided to explore astronomical suffering instead. So Covid contends that increasing maximum total well being is questionable if the amount of suffering in the universe also increases, but he goes on to argue that the astronomical non identity problem is the question of suffering. Quote merely maximizing total well being is questionable if at the same time the amount of suffering is increased to such a degree

that average well being decreases. The problem. The increase in suffering through space colonization can be understood as a is a risk sue, generous or unique one, and that is astronomical suffering. So part of the you know, the certainty here entails suboptimal conditions for future humans and other worlds, worlds where any any of the sci fi scenarios we've

already discussed uh could potentially come to life. Like anything you've ever seen in the science fiction film where off worlders have it hard, you know, living in caves, depending on ailing or even failing technology, having to live with astonishingly eye levels of radiation, sickness, uh, having your health impacted by by microbiota on this other world or some sort of disrupted microbiota that you've brought with you. You know,

things are out of sync. Um worlds where humans have to endure harsh conditions due to heat, cold or both in the case of like a tidily locked world, high pressure, low gravity, high gravity, caustic atmosphere, resource scarcity, dangerous native biology, electromagnetic field anomalies, and heightened inneo activity, just to name a few. And he also mentions the idea of invasive biology brought by by the colonists themselves, as well as

a few technical possibilities. One the future simulations of sentient beings, which is something we've discussed on the show before. Uh, the idea that you know, you're you're dealing with a heightened level of technology to even establish these worlds. So does that also bring about all the the problems of say, creating sentient life inside of simulation and then putting it in a hell box and then copy and pasting that hell box, say a million times, you know. Um, like,

that's that's the horrible idea. I think we got into that a bit in the Basilisk episode. And then he also brings up misaligned artificial intelligence. UM. So we also have to deal with the possibility of of a I UH coming online and UH and part of the scenario and being part of the the overall uh unhappiness of part of the overall UH suffering of the universe. Still, the author contends that the scenarios that could lead to astronomical suffering are vague and the conclusions we might draw

not altogether clear. On one hand, it's possible that space colonization could result in astronomical human suffering UH, and then this would this If this were the case, it would obviously be a disvalue. On the other hand, it's possible that it that space colonization could result in an increase in human well being but huge decrease in non human well being in terms of um, you know, the well

being of of other organisms. UH. This you know, because potentially non human organisms, sentient and or non sentient digital entities that are denied human status, so I could also affect you know, general aies in this universe that we're imagining. On the other hand, he also adds that such colonization could be a force of good regarding Aiyes, I thought this was interesting quote. It is also possible that space

colonization could result in the reduction of astronomical suffering. If humankind were able to, for example, detect and correct misaligned extraterrestrial artificial intelligence, that could reduce or prevent enormous amounts

of suffering. Of course, the existence of extraterrestrial artificial intelligence is itself also a highly uncertain proposition, So I guess the idea here is like, if we if we were to venture out and we discover an alien AI that you know, for instance, has created digital hell worlds full oft of digital sentient beings that are being suffered, we could we could correct that AI. We could wage a holy war against that digital hell which is exactly Uh, this is actually a major plot point in the Nan

m Banks novel. Um. Uh that that that that's that's really explored wonderfully. I've discussed it on the show before. But but yeah, this would be this would be one specific and granted, you know, um far fetched scenario in which we could potentially, uh improve the state of suffering in the universe if we win. If we're there, that's right, because yeah, because I do know the idea of encountering extraterrestrials much less extraterrestrial aies. There's a lot of factors

to consider there. Or what if we're the bad guys and we win, then then of course, well I guess he acknowledges that could go both ways, right, Yeah, yeah, I mean we could the other side of his yeahs we we we sort of fulfill what has largely been the human nature of exploration, and we encounter the other

civilization and bring misery and horror to it. So he contends that there are so many unknowns that to avoid such colonization would ultimately be uh, it would be it would be Pascal's Wager all over again, right, Uh, the idea that Pascal's Wager essentially we discussed in more depth than the show before, but essentially boiling down to, well, should I believe in God or not believe in God? To be on the safe side, I'll just go ahead and believe in him just in case. Now Pascal's wager.

I think people who have boned up on their philosophy might notice that there are a lot of hidden assumptions and Pascal's wager that uh that make it maybe not as forceful as it would have seemed to Pascal's audience at the time. Yes, yes, so yeah. He ultimately says that we get into similar territory here, but that nevertheless, given the dimension of risk, he says, the problem of astronomical suffering is certainly something that we should pay attention to,

we should think about. Uh, you know that that in leaving the plan it or you just in considering the future of humanity like that is that is one possibility that is like one road to stagnation that we have to at least consider a few other ideas that he raises here. First of all, he says, you know, he drives home against space colonization is not a risk free

venture and shouldn't be approached as such. So yeah, even though it is often this kind of optimistic vision in the back of our heads that maybe we should we should try and counterbalance that with a little bit of of of of astronomical suffering. He also admits that it might actually be too late in some respects, as this dream is just so seductive to already be the implicit goal of public as well as private space related ventures

and ambitions. And also he drives home and this is actually I think something he gets into in that Ian magazine piec Road that a meaningful governance framework will be important. Oh yeah, well, I mean in that article he gets into the fact that, like, we just really do not have a political framework establishing authority in outer space. And we see that and even our current headlines stuff where we're like, who wow, there's just there's just really no

rules yet. And on one hand, like I can see how this might feel nice, like oh wow, you know what, you know, the government's reach stops at the planet and and outer space can just be this place of peaceful exploration without any you know, like laws and militaries and

all that. That would be great. But as space becomes more populated with you know, people seeking out their their own ends and their own goals there, without a legal framework for people to understand, you know, what is allowed, what they can do, and and you know, predict what other people will be allowed to do to them, it starts to become you know, less less of a final frontier and more of a wild West. Absolutely. Um, this

is how COVID rounds it all out. Quote the over view of risks in the outline of a potential approach to crafting governance presented in this article are preliminary at best. Both issues, uh, the identification of colonization related risks and the work on colonization related governance require more scholarly attention before we can begin addressing them in practice. That attention, theoretical,

though it may seem, is warranted. Space colonization is human kind's best bet for long term survival, and today, before large scale space colonization efforts are underway, we still have the capacity to develop the philosophical and practical guard rails that make the worst outcomes of space colonization less likely.

And and you know, I would agree with that. Yeah, I think that totally makes sense that, like, space colonization is something that that requires a bit of pessimistic forethought, Like you know, people should entertain ideas of what could

go wrong and uh and explore them and plan out contingencies. Um, especially you know, like people who aren't doing space exploration themselves, because you I think that there there are some cognitive and and group cognitive biases probably at work in organizations that are personally involved in space exploration and the exploitation of resources in space. Yeah. Plus, you know, when we have, you know, just sort of casual ideals of what the

future will be like in the back of our head. Again, it kind of comes back to we were talking about earlier with its linked to environmentalism and and and and and how one could sort of use it as a way to excuse harm to Earth's environment. You know. It's if you have just a completely optimistic vision in the back of your head, it can potentially skew the way you look at the real world or consider other political or technological issues. Yeah. Um, so, so this has been interesting.

It's got me thinking that this was a topic that that you turned up and wanted to do so, Robert, I'm curious, like what your opinion is, like, do you do you come down more on one side or the other. We obviously we've explored how there seemed to be, at least at first glanced strong moral hazards for both of the two options, either first staying on Earth or for founding colonies on other objects in the solar system and beyond.

Do you lean one way or the other? Yeah, I think reading about this has made me lean more towards just the idea that we should we should be cautious and we should think about the problems, because I guess, and you know, you know, through the consumption of science fiction and also you know, futurist thought on the subject, you know, I'd always just I think I'd always just kind of fallen into the category of thinking, well, you know, it's gonna be rough in many of these cases we

are talking about harsh environments, but it will be it will be worth it, Like, you know, this is just this is just what humans do without really stopping to to ask, well, you know, why is that the case? And does it have to be that hard, uh, you know, or or what should we potentially consider to mitigate the suffering on these other worlds, like these various sci fi visions, and not so much the really pessimistic and nihilistic ones, but the more middle of the road ones like does

it have to be that way? Could it be more? Could it be more Star Trek? You know, could you lean into Star Trek more? As again, coming back to the more utopian vision of the future. And and this is something that I feel like we may have a false sense that we have explored these problems more than we actually have in the practical space, because we now have lots of astronauts who have devoted their lives to getting into and spending time in space. You know, we

have astronauts that walked on the Moon. We have astronauts that trained to go to the International Space Station, and they all do it voluntarily, like they want to go there. They're not being forced despite all of the deprivations that the experience and and all of the you know, potentially negative health effects and so forth that come along with these experiences. But those are in the long run, these

are actually quite limited commitments. These are people committing themselves and themselves only to a period of I don't know, a number of weeks or months at a time, going

into these deprived environments, these altered environments. It is a very different thing actually to say we're going to found a permanent or semi permanent colony within these spaces, where you not only commit yourself for much longer periods of time, but you're also potentially committing future generations of people born there and so forth, and you're creating a a you know,

a fragmented off new culture in a sense. And in that we we have to engage in the sort of long term thinking that that you know, generally doesn't come naturally to humans, that we have to to work very hard at. You know. I also have to say this will probably uh factor into how I read uh future science science fiction treatments of off world colonies, you know, and and and like I said that, some of these concerns I think have already been reflected to varying degrees

in scientific science fictional creations. So um, you know, it's not like you know, I'm saying that this is going to to change other artists visions in all cases, but it is additional, um food for thought. In the meantime, if you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, well, previously I would have directed you to the mothership to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, but the mothership crashed and now we only have the off world colony of our our I

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