strvgglecity t1_jchfeju wrote on March 16, 2023 at 9:13 PM

Reply to comment by Chemical_Ad_5520 in Discussion: the goal of human existence should be avoiding the heat death of the universe by Mickeymousse1

The hubris here is astounding. The universe is unaffected.

Chemical_Ad_5520 t1_jchv9ql wrote on March 16, 2023 at 10:59 PM

I'm just explaining that the distant future can be affected by current events, and that some people do place value on those future outcomes. You're the one claiming that this is absolutely untrue and impossible. That sounds like a better example of hubris than my analysis is.

I get that your message is that you'd prefer to focus on nearer-term outcomes, and that's valid, but that doesn't mean it's pointless to talk about how distant futures could be affected by near-term developments.

Most of what you're doing here is just expressing your emotions, hyperbolically claiming absolutes and adding nothing to an actual analysis of this topic. I'm being literal and a little more specific about the content of this topic, which I think is a better contribution than what you've made here.

strvgglecity t1_jcjbmwu wrote on March 17, 2023 at 6:35 AM

I am saying that talking about a billion years from now is not only useless for planning purposes, but actually meaningless as an exercise, because a trillion things will happen that you could never have conceived of. If some remnant of humanity exists in some form that far in the future, who's to say it still exists in 3 dimensions? Or experiences time? Or cannot travel to other universes? Yes, I'm confident that saying you want to save the universe from a death that may not occur for a trillion years is the pinnacle of hubris.

Chemical_Ad_5520 t1_jckgs4o wrote on March 17, 2023 at 2:17 PM

What we do with technology in this century can determine whether life gets off this planet and survives the death of the solar system. If earth life can colonize space, then the organizing forces of life and intelligence may persist until entropy is defeated.

For people who are interested in preserving life in the universe for extremely long periods of time, these topics are interesting to think about because of how many future events hinge on the present - the fate of the only life we know depends so much on what we do today, it's awesome in a literal way.

I'm not saying that we can definitely accomplish anything particular, I'm saying that a lot is possible if life and intelligence continue to exist, possibly including extending the lifespan of the universe. Thus some people feel it's important to do what it takes to preserve life.

I'd be happy to debate this in more depth if you'd be willing to provide an argument grounded in evidence and logic. You just keep saying "it's too much time for anything to make a difference." Based on what? Give me a real argument to respond to.

strvgglecity t1_jckw3u7 wrote on March 17, 2023 at 3:59 PM

Not a single word of this has meaning. I am telling you flat out it is impossible to predict that far in the future. All the things you dream of could be the exact reasons for our extinction.

Chemical_Ad_5520 t1_jcra7g7 wrote on March 18, 2023 at 11:18 PM

Since you're not giving me any substantial reasoning to argue against, I'll just elaborate about my position. I'm not claiming any absolutes, but I do think that what we do now can affect the probabilities of one or another long term outcomes.

I basically feel like a dead universe is less interesting than one with life in it, because a dead universe is going to decay and destroy itself relatively predictively, but a universe with intelligent life existing for long periods of time is more dynamic and might do some pretty interesting things. There's no apparent objective meaning about the two possibilities, it's just my opinion that the dynamic nature of intelligent life is more interesting.

In light of this, I prefer that human life survives and figures out how to colonize space without destroying itself, because that would increase the potential longevity of earth life in the universe, which is the only life we have reasonable evidence of. If we can achieve space colonization - a near-term goal compared to our timeline of the lifespan of the universe - then the probability of earth life/intelligence organizing the universe such that the nature of its demise is affected goes from zero to potentially non-zero. You don't know that there is definitely no way for this to happen, except that it's obvious that life or intelligence can't change the universe if it doesn't exist. Thus if we colonize space, we are creating the possibility of outliving the solar system, which allows for some potentiality to affect the universe at extremely long time scales.

On the topic of determining what the best moves to prevent our extinction in this century are, I'd say that being very careful and wary of ethics in the development of AGI, nanorobotics, and genetic engineering are probably most important. Mitigation of ecological damage feels like it'd be next, then probably climate change, then probably we need cheaper desalination to curb conflict as we get past the middle of the century, and hopefully the risk of all-out nuclear war doesn't get too high. It would be nice to have a backup human colony in case something goes really wrong on earth during this dangerous period of technological development, but not at significant expense to these priorities. But on that note, society is nowhere close to optimally addressing humanity's risks and desires. Whether or not you think space colonization is worth any of our resources or not seems secondary to the ridiculous waste and inefficiency of the economy in general, which begs the question "how would you actually want to try to change things?"

It's already hard to see how we can even get future technologies developed with equity in mind, I really can't see how someone could expect it's possible to get all powerful people to forever abstain from creating incredibly powerful technologies, short of killing everyone, which defeats the purpose. So we have to deal with these risks and challenges, and we don't seem to have the option of doing it in an optimal fashion, so it's best to focus on what can actually be done to improve the future. Contributing to certain social movements or technological developments is the bulk of people's options for how to make impactful contributions. Working to make the development of technologies safe and their implementation ethical, and mitigating risks to communities and civilization at large are good ways to try to contribute in my opinion. If space colonization is something you can find a way to contribute to, I see that as being positive.