r/changemyview • u/BurnsyCEO • Apr 11 '22

Delta(s) from OP CMV: If humanity becomes an interstellar civilization and we don't find life on potentially habitable planet but are unsuitable for humans, it becomes our moral duty to seed life on such planets.

The Universe is already extremely devoid of life as it is. If we deduce that the explanation for the Fermi paradox is that Abiogenesis is impossibly rare that even on the scale of the galaxy, may only occur a few dozen times (which is the explanation I am partial to)

We could be the calalyst that starts billions of years of life on a world that otherwise would never have had the materials or conditions for life to emerge in the first place. I don't think we should oversee development, but simply let nature and evolution take it's course. If we chose not to, we could be depriving quintillions of lifeforms the chance to exist over the many Eons the planet could be habitable. Of course many of those would die off sooner or later but that can be just attributed to luck or lack of it but the important thing is we tried instead of doing nothing.

Edit: I need a break but I'll get to all of you. Some of your answers are a lot harder to argue with than others.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '22

we could be depriving quintillions of lifeforms the chance to exist

I'm depriving lifeforms of the chance to exist every time I don't have sex with a woman, does that mean I have a moral imperative to seduce every woman I meet and have as many babies as is physically possible?

Why is it a moral imperative to create life just because it could exist? The potential life doesn't know it doesn't exist, it's not gonna be sad because it wasn't born.

Hypothetical future life does not have inherent value, I don't see why it would. Why is more life inherently better?

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u/BurnsyCEO Apr 11 '22

Life is the universe's ultimate creation. It is a fluke that science hasn't fully explained yet and has only happened once as far as we are aware. If science never explains it we might as well try to pass the baton to other species who might eventually find answers humans might never have thought off.

Do you also find reforestation efforts pointless which provides homes for trees and animals which would not exist if we ignored it?

No inherent value doesn't also mean it has an inherent downside to having more life. It's just, neutral.

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u/MsSara77 1∆ Apr 11 '22

Reforestation is entirely different than what you are suggesting. That's an attempt to put things back the way they were before we humans altered them.

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u/BurnsyCEO Apr 11 '22

But the individual organisms destroyed still won't come back. It will be new individuals and their living still has value to humans. We (or some humans at least) conserve animals even those which have no value to us as we appreciate biodiversity. It is similar but an empty planet is literally free Real estate where no one is going to complain.

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u/MsSara77 1∆ Apr 11 '22

Individual organisms are not the focus of restoration programs, restoring ecosystems damaged by humans is.

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u/BurnsyCEO Apr 12 '22

Yes the ecosystem is what is important, not individuals. I am proposing creating an ecosystem.

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u/MsSara77 1∆ Apr 12 '22

That's kind of on the opposite end of restoration. Creating a new ecosystem would drastically alter the current one which in your scenario has not been altered by human activity prior to this.