Would it be smart to alter a planet that is already inhabited?
56 replies, posted
Now, the idea of the philosophical (or not) debate/dilemma:
[b]A planet with clear signs of an atmosphere, blooming vegetation and water is found. It is estimated to be about 2-3 billion years old, and life would be easily found if we just landed on the planet.[/b]
[b]Also, space travel is greatly advanced and we could land on this planet[/b], possibly altering it or pretty much in a position to use the planet as we please.
SO, would it be smart, or ethical, to alter a planet's evolution in its early stage by landing and staying there? Just imagine if the course of our evolution was changed by some other evolutionary forerunners with their spaceships and intentions before humans were even born.
i think it would be ethical to go and live there
I hope for whatever species we might come across that we will have changed by then. For the better.
Wipe out any indigenous threats and yeah its fine.
[QUOTE=carcarcargo;35069615]Wipe out any indigenous threats and yeah its fine.[/QUOTE]
How is that any better than wiping out Native Americans because they were "indigenous threats"?
[QUOTE=King Tiger;35070181]How is that any better than wiping out Native Americans because they were "indigenous threats"?[/QUOTE]
I would say the same thing, but multiple times when I've brought up the fact that we shouldn't kill whales due to their intelligence, people have said that intelligence should have ntohing to do with whether something deserves to live or not, and seems to be based on whether something is human or not. If simply being human is the only reason why something shouldn't be killed, then brushing aside none humans isn't an ethical issue.
...and then we became the invading aliens.
Seriously though, eventually we will exhaust our resources by the rate we're going unless we expand. It all comes down to survival. So I wouldn't be surprised if everyone agreed on doing it.
[QUOTE=carcarcargo;35070240]I would say the same thing, but multiple times when I've brought up the fact that we shouldn't kill whales due to their intelligence, people have said that intelligence should have ntohing to do with whether something deserves to live or not, and seems to be based on whether something is human or not. If simply being human is the only reason why something shouldn't be killed, then brushing aside none humans isn't an ethical issue.[/QUOTE]
Whales don't make up intelligent societies that form civilizations that are capable of dominating the planet. They are nothing like humans.
If there's some sort of hostile alien species, then destroy them and \ or make peace.
If there's only space bears, settle the planet and worry about the space bears once they start rampaging through the colony.
[QUOTE=King Tiger;35072060]Whales don't make up intelligent societies that form civilizations that are capable of dominating the planet. They are nothing like humans.[/QUOTE]
Perhaps they're humble enough to live in tune with the natural surroundings they were born into :v:
Purge the foul xenos. Then place a summer home there.
But in all seriousness, I don't see why we shouldn't land. If the intelligent life is so undeveloped that we can't track it, then there isn't even a need to be afraid of possible implications. If low-technological level species do exist, well - they can be useful now, won't they?
[QUOTE=King Tiger;35072060]Whales don't make up intelligent societies that form civilizations that are capable of dominating the planet. They are nothing like humans.[/QUOTE]
Well its hard to form a civilization when you're under water and have flippers.
[QUOTE=imMonkeyGOD;35070387]...and then we became the invading aliens.
Seriously though, eventually we will exhaust our resources by the rate we're going unless we expand. It all comes down to survival. So I wouldn't be surprised if everyone agreed on doing it.[/QUOTE]
I think by the time we exhaust our resources we will have enough technology to make just about any planet habitable.
Of course it's ethical. Why would it not be?
[QUOTE=.FLAP.JACK.DAN.;35077527]I think by the time we exhaust our resources we will have enough technology to make just about any planet habitable.[/QUOTE]
You think in maybe two hundred years we can magically terraform any planet to be habitable?
I have a feeling we would be more likely to enslave or attempt to "tame" any creatures on the planet before being overthrown by the spacemonkeys.
[QUOTE=NicoleEmilid;35077739]Of course it's ethical. Why would it not be?[/QUOTE]
Because then we might halt the alien evolution, denying any future species it might grow in about two billion year time.
But this is us debating about questions relevant in far future, if ever. Coming to touch with a fellow evolution of different species is incredibly optimistic thinking, and the chances of that happening during our lifetimes is pretty much 0% unless miracles.
If we run out of resources soon, then yes we would do it. If there was another living species that is capable of creating technology but isn't as advanced as us and/or aren't humans we'd probably end up kicking them out since we did the exact same thing to the Native's for not being "civilized" like us.
I think maybe it might be good to go and try and contact local life(if its intelligent like humans). I think we should colonize if it is not too much of a problem or it doesn't involve killing large amounts of planet life to do so.
You all know we are going to kill them for resources anyway. Its not our decision really.
I'd say it's in the gray ares. I would only say colonize if necessary, but if it's not necessary, just stay and research it. Think about what we could learn from it!
For every natural resource you can find on small terrestrial habitable planets like our own, there are such unimaginably vast quantities of them elsewhere in space that it would be wholly unnecessary to farm natural resources from poor nonindustrial civilizations, given that if we had the technology to harvest from planets like our own, we can easily harvest elsewhere without pointlessly destroying potential habitable environments.
'Contact between primitive and advanced people' is the entire history of human interaction condensed into a sentence. It is our past, present, and future, for there are still unconnected indigenous people on this planet. Whether or not it is 'right' or 'wrong' is a nonsense topic, it doesn't mean anything. Contact happens, it is what it is, sometimes it's mutually beneficial and the vast majority of the time it's not. Ethics is imaginary. Contact is natural and, if our history is accurate, seemingly inevitable. Life is spurred by natural selective pressures, and contact is one of those pressures.
If you weren't talking ethics and you meant 'smart' as in 'in our best interests', then yes, it would be smart to colonize a foreign habitat. That is another thing that humanity has been doing for most of our history, and in the times we've undertaken that task, we've been at our greatest as a species, expanding the limits of science, technology, and our understanding of the universe. We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
If you want a decent primer into the idea of Contact, read up on [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact]Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact[/url]. Contact had been made and well-established in this hemisphere for hundreds of years during the Pre-Columbian era. Pale skinned people from across the Eastern void brought with them metal tools, written language, and many more technologies unknown to the indigenous peoples, and everything went relatively smooth. And then just a few hundred years later in the late 15th century, contact started becoming a lot more heated, but that just goes to show it's a mixed bag. It is what it is, 'bad' and 'good' and 'ethical' are totally relative.
No, it's not ethical, you're wiping out a lifeform who has just as much right to live as we do, that's unehtical. As for whether or not we SHOULD do it, I'd say it depends on how desperate we are. If we're just colonizing that planet because the nearest planet that offers the same thing and is uninhabited is a little bit farther away, then that's just laziness to an extreme. But if we were like desperate to survive and that planet was our ONLY choice, I'd say we should do it.
[editline]10th March 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=elowin;35078133]You think in maybe two hundred years we can magically terraform any planet to be habitable?[/QUOTE]
We're advancing REALLY fast, I wouldn't put it past humans to come up with that in 200 years. That's a long time, that long ago we were still riding horses around with flintlock muskets in our cities the size of a modern day shopping mall dying of all the diseases on the planet simultaneously. We've come a LONG way in that time.
[QUOTE=l337k1ll4;35086431]No, it's not ethical, you're wiping out a lifeform who has just as much right to live as we do, that's unehtical. As for whether or not we SHOULD do it, I'd say it depends on how desperate we are. If we're just colonizing that planet because the nearest planet that offers the same thing and is uninhabited is a little bit farther away, then that's just laziness to an extreme. But if we were like desperate to survive and that planet was our ONLY choice, I'd say we should do it.
[/QUOTE]
Corporations will not care if it's ethical or not. If that planet has a certain resource we want and we got the technology, we will go great lengths to obtain it.
If it was some intelligent species that was on the planet, I would definitely say back off, but how can we judge if they're intelligent or not?
I feel like we would not be able to live on any new planet if we believe we're preventing a species from expanding.
Well, [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive"]Relevent?[/URL]
We have no right to go fucking up other planets, I mean, Look how bad we fucked up this one
Don't settle unless you can do it without messing with the ecosystem, for the good of science the planet should be preserved as much as possible, and orbital station of some kind would be more feasible.
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;35081462]Because then we might halt the alien evolution, denying any future species it might grow in about two billion year time.
But this is us debating about questions relevant in far future, if ever. Coming to touch with a fellow evolution of different species is incredibly optimistic thinking, and the chances of that happening during our lifetimes is pretty much 0% unless miracles.[/QUOTE]
Well, if we don't know that three million years down the road, that bacteria would become a lovely species of tree, it wouldn't really be unethical. If we don't know that some form of bacteria on Earth today would evolve into a flying dinosaur, it would be more of a problem of ignorance, as we can't predict the future.
[QUOTE=Liem;35086658]Well, [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive"]Relevent?[/URL]
We have no right to go fucking up other planets, I mean, Look how bad we fucked up this one[/QUOTE]
Nope, it's not relevant at all. If we are lucky enough to be first ones (unlikely but w/e), then chances are, we'll go directly to reaping the prize, no matter the implciations.
[QUOTE=imMonkeyGOD;35086603]Corporations will not care if it's ethical or not. If that planet has a certain resource we want and we got the technology, we will go great lengths to obtain it.
If it was some intelligent species that was on the planet, I would definitely say back off, but how can we judge if they're intelligent or not?
I feel like we would not be able to live on any new planet if we believe we're preventing a species from expanding.[/QUOTE]
Oh yeah, I'm not saying humans wouldn't do it, of course we would, most humans are fucking horrible people, especially CEOs and directors of big companies. As for how to judge intelligence, we could just look at their behavior.
If it makes me money then sure.
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