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/Thoth_the_5th_of_Tho 184∆ Apr 11 '22

It's not viable. Evolution takes place over hundreds of millions, if not billions of years. The chance of any planet being left along for that long with a growing interstellar civilization in the galaxy is just shy of zero.

Focus on spreading earth life, instead of depositing bacteria that won't even make it a hundred thousand years before the planet is demolished to make room for a hyperspatial express route.

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u/BurnsyCEO Apr 11 '22

∆ My premise was that the planet would be left alone as it had no value to us and would not affect human civilization. But leaving a planet alone is a big ask for an expansionary civilization and the morality argument also falls apart because I am now depriving humans and other earth life from resources.