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The ethics of terraforming Mars

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Awesomelyglorious
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18 Apr 2009, 2:38 pm

Sand wrote:
From your posts in general and this evaluation of right and wrong I am discovering deep suspicions you are not human. Your location is indicated within the USA so, within that limitation, it seems reasonable to assume that you must be a colony of anaerobic bacteria in some subterranean enclave that has acquired a bit of expertise in entering the internet. How else could it be that a normal human could consider murdering an innocent child, woman or man as being wrong but that murdering all life as we know it makes you totally indifferent? Ruveyn, of course is exceedingly strange in having no conscience about incinerating millions of unfortunately disoriented Muslims to preserve his family in New Jersey and perhaps a few of his Jewish brethren because they use primitive military techniques instead of the high tech murdering equipment employed by the Israelis and several other advanced countries but to calmly accept the total destruction of all oxygen breathing life on Earth as not having any moral consideration requires an entirely alien psychology.

Well, here's what the OP states:

"We as people have taken our planet for granted, not caring how much we have polluted it, or changed the climate over the years. Would it be ethical to do the exact same thing to another one? "

My response is that this wasn't unethical behavior, it was just the usage of resources. Killing off a person is different than polluting a planet. Let's say that instead of colonizing Mars we blow it up. Have we done anything immoral? I argue not, we've just destroyed a planet, therefore if we can destroy planets at will and be moral, then we can colonize them and pollute the crap out of them while being moral.



hester386
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18 Apr 2009, 2:58 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
My response is that this wasn't unethical behavior, it was just the usage of resources. Killing off a person is different than polluting a planet. Let's say that instead of colonizing Mars we blow it up. Have we done anything immoral? I argue not, we've just destroyed a planet, therefore if we can destroy planets at will and be moral, then we can colonize them and pollute the crap out of them while being moral.


If our current actions are affecting the well being and quality of life of future generations, then how is this not an ethical issue? I guess I’m still struggling to see that point.

EDIT: I would like to add one thing. It could be considered unethical and immoral to blow up Mars, because for all we know, future generations of people may be forced to move there. We can't kow for certain the future living conditions of earth, because like I said in an earlier post, we are in uncharted territory right now.



Last edited by hester386 on 18 Apr 2009, 3:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ruveyn
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18 Apr 2009, 3:12 pm

Glencannon wrote:
Space is infinite, therefor there are an infinite number of planets that we can colonize, totally screw over and then move on to the next.


That is not self evident. While there may be many planets, it is not clear how many of them can be terraformed for human use.

At least one condition must be met; the candidate planet must have sufficient water in some form.

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hester386
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18 Apr 2009, 4:11 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_terraforming

Here is another wikipedia article about the actual ethics of terraforming, rather than specific Martian terraforming. There are interesting views on both sides.



Awesomelyglorious
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18 Apr 2009, 4:20 pm

hester386 wrote:
If our current actions are affecting the well being and quality of life of future generations, then how is this not an ethical issue? I guess I’m still struggling to see that point.

EDIT: I would like to add one thing. It could be considered unethical and immoral to blow up Mars, because for all we know, future generations of people may be forced to move there. We can't kow for certain the future living conditions of earth, because like I said in an earlier post, we are in uncharted territory right now.

Everything affects the well being and quality of life of future generations. You can thus say that all actions involve ethics. You can thus say that all actions are unethical because they fail to maximize the well being of future generations.

When it comes down to it though, because people are functioning under enormous limitations and cannot predict the future to any great accuracy, I am not sure I will make too many moral cases one way or another as the only way to make a single case is to argue that one is behaving in a manner that is clearly economically inefficient.



John_Browning
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18 Apr 2009, 7:04 pm

I think it all comes down to if mars has any life or not. If there is any life, we would have to not terraform. If mars is completely dead, we can terraform and then trash the place if we wanted and there would be no moral dimension to it.


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greenblue
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18 Apr 2009, 8:15 pm

Well, wouldn't terraforming mars be a neccesity for the survival of the human especies anyway? if that is so, then well, I would say that the mere existence to be unethical in the first place, then we will have to ask, if wether perpetuating the species by procreating to actually be unethical or not, I would say, likely.


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claire-333
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18 Apr 2009, 8:39 pm

...



Last edited by claire-333 on 21 Apr 2009, 5:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Awesomelyglorious
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18 Apr 2009, 8:46 pm

greenblue wrote:
Well, wouldn't terraforming mars be a neccesity for the survival of the human especies anyway? if that is so, then well, I would say that the mere existence to be unethical in the first place, then we will have to ask, if wether perpetuating the species by procreating to actually be unethical or not, I would say, likely.

I can see how procreating might be unethical in and of itself. I mean, by procreating, you are creating a being whom will inevitably suffer, but whom you cannot guarantee any level of pleasure, so by doing it you are knowingly doing a harm, and only hoping for a benefit.



hester386
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18 Apr 2009, 11:15 pm

greenblue wrote:
Well, wouldn't terraforming mars be a neccesity for the survival of the human especies anyway? if that is so, then well, I would say that the mere existence to be unethical in the first place, then we will have to ask, if wether perpetuating the species by procreating to actually be unethical or not, I would say, likely.


We already have the technology to send a few very small-scale colonies to Mars without terraforming. When I say small, I mean 4 to 5 people each. The colonists would be able to live in small man-made habitats and would only be able to leave the habitats wearing full protective spacesuits. The only thing preventing this from happening is a lack of political and economic will. Basically I’m saying the colonization of Mars is possible without terraforming, but the question really is whether or not that type of colonization is practical and worthwhile.



Sand
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18 Apr 2009, 11:35 pm

claire333 wrote:
Sand wrote:
Not to worry. Probably all planets aside from Earth are already pretty much uninhabitable. No need to bother our little heads. Nature has done the job for us.
One can only hope. Nature should keep us contained to our own little petri dish...festering blight that we are. The discarded garbage we have orbiting our own planet is worrisome though. It would appear we are already spreading.


All forms of life have their positive and negative qualities. As much as I am dismayed by humanity's performances acting with all the collective intellect of a colony of bacteria in a petri dish there remains, nevertheless, a residuum of uniqueness and even beauty that I would hate for this universe to lose totally. My feeling is surely tainted by some form of species loyalty and the fact that I have three grandchildren that I admire and hope will prosper in a human world basically controlled by idiot thugs and violent mindless murderers. Nature cares not at all for individuals or even species as to whether they survive or not. If there is a God (which seems to me to be most unlikely) He is the most despicable Son-of-a-bitch conceivable. Life and the future is more and more in the hands of humanity which consistently proves how badly this trust is placed. But there is, at his point at least, no one else and somehow we must prove worthy.



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18 Apr 2009, 11:50 pm

It would be easier safer and cheaper to colonize the oceans here on Earth then to terraform Mars, for one
thing, Mars has a dead core, hence no magnetic field to protect colonist on that planet. We don't at this
time have the technology to restart a dead planet, maybe in the far future we will but Mars is such a
insignificant world, it wouldn't be worth the effort. Before we start thinking of rebuilding worlds, for people
on earth,we should learn to maintain and repair the one we are on.



ruveyn
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19 Apr 2009, 7:55 am

claire333 wrote:
One can only hope. Nature should keep us contained to our own little petri dish...festering blight that we are. The discarded garbage we have orbiting our own planet is worrisome though. It would appear we are already spreading.


There is no Ought and Should in Nature. Nature is. There are no moral laws embedded in the physical laws of Nature. Not one.

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Sand
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19 Apr 2009, 8:09 am

ruveyn wrote:
claire333 wrote:
One can only hope. Nature should keep us contained to our own little petri dish...festering blight that we are. The discarded garbage we have orbiting our own planet is worrisome though. It would appear we are already spreading.


There is no Ought and Should in Nature. Nature is. There are no moral laws embedded in the physical laws of Nature. Not one.

ruveyn


Second that.



claire-333
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19 Apr 2009, 9:24 am

...



Last edited by claire-333 on 21 Apr 2009, 5:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

hester386
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19 Apr 2009, 2:45 pm

silentbob15 wrote:
It would be easier safer and cheaper to colonize the oceans here on Earth then to terraform Mars, for one
thing, Mars has a dead core, hence no magnetic field to protect colonist on that planet. We don't at this
time have the technology to restart a dead planet, maybe in the far future we will but Mars is such a
insignificant world, it wouldn't be worth the effort. Before we start thinking of rebuilding worlds, for people
on earth,we should learn to maintain and repair the one we are on.


I agree that we need to learn how to maintain and repair the planet we have, but at the present this doesn’t look promising. Countries are all self-interested actors who say every other country should cut down on greenhouse gases, but aren’t willing to do so themselves because it would impede on economic progress. The only thing that could change this collective mindset is a united world, which obviously won’t happen any time in the foreseeable future. Despite the fact that people have the potential to be extremely intelligent, when it comes to things such as working together as a collective whole, we tend not to excel perhaps because of our evolutionary survival trait of selfishness. Therefore, space colonization in any form, terraforming or not, may be inevitable in the future.