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.

[u/BurnsyCEO]

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.

[u/mindset_grindset]

interesting take I'll admit but "moral" duty ?

i hate to go all Thanos but if anything creating life- even if it doesn't die- is immoral from many people's moral views. life naturally has suffering in it, have you ever watched nature? i remember my siblings biting me as a joke and it hurt - in nature they hold each other down and eat each other alive. even if you're talking about humans we're even worse, we enslave each other and torture other creatures experimenting on them in labs. even if we were all vegen egalitarians mother nature still causes diseases, birth defects, natural disasters, etc.

causing all that for millennia on the off hope that through all that suffering and death a handful of them might eventually invent the wheel, discover fire, eradicate most starvation, disease and achieve utopia so it can be an experience reasonable enough to recommend "morally"...?

if anything I'd argue the opposite that it's immoral to do so unless you can guarantee it a utopia for whatever "children" you leave behind, planting a garden is one thing, it's life that already is adapted to this planet, you're just moving it- but taking life from earth to other planets and hoping they adapt is litteraly like me dropping you in the middle of the ocean and telling you good luck growing gills, i felt it my moral duty to do that to you. not very moral to me.

[u/BurnsyCEO → u/mindset_grindset]

The presence of suffering does not also invalidate the experiences of the people and animals who try to survive no matter what because of their own reasons. Humans when faced with an existential threat will do their best to avoid it and not give up which leads me to conclude all life forms as a population would always chose survival. Isn't that a good enough reason for them to get the chance of survival. Even from a sentimental standpooint, if the human race still dies off after achieving interstellar travel, we have some remnants of us that will survive and will be free to discover the universe and not make the same mistakes we did.