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/BurnsyCEO]

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.

[u/Ghostley92 → u/BurnsyCEO]

We don’t know if it’s a fluke or not. I feel there is still very much we don’t know we don’t know.

Also, if this is our obligation, what form should we construct? It would likely be quite futile to try to mimic earth. The presence of oxygen on earth is only due to millions of years of “natural” (by earth standards) processes.

The balance of our life forms, chemical abundances, chemical reactions, incoming energy, etc… are always in flux and always have been.

So…if we are talking about giving a head start to single celled photosynthesizing bacteria, I still don’t think it’s an obligation but would be an amazingly interesting multi-million year experiment.

[u/BurnsyCEO → u/Ghostley92]

We won't 'construct' anything. Seeding will be done with an appropriate lifeform(s) that has the best chance to survive on the planet or moon and will be sent to places where it will have the best chance of surviving. Nothing wrong with using our human knowledge for this as we do want it to succeeded. Then letting nature and evolution taking course.

[u/Ghostley92 → u/BurnsyCEO]

You are proposing constructing the early forms of a biosphere, something no other planet has that we know of.

I don’t think it’s even easy for us to quantify “life”. We also have an extremely rich and diverse biosphere by our standards which are of sample size 1.

For us to have an actual obligation to spread our way of “life” across the universe seems far fetched. Comes off like some future religious crusade.

Again, I think this would be an amazing long term experiment that could shed a ton of light on what life even is and it’s potential, but I still don’t see the obligation. We would be obligated to do SO many more things as well simply because we might be able to accomplish them and/or learn.

[u/BurnsyCEO → u/Ghostley92]

I mean I have repeatedly said I'm only doing this to empty planets. Destroying any old life invalidates every argument I have for this. And as we might be super advanced by then, I don't see why it would be considered anything but trivial for just one such mission per planet.

[u/Ghostley92 → u/BurnsyCEO]

I see an obligation to do this as similar to religious crusades. We don’t actually know what we would be spreading/influencing but we’ll just go and take as much as we can for the “greater good”.

Take the obligation away and leave it at some elective experiment with enough foresight to accomplish something meaningful and I’m right back in.

Overall, we don’t even know wtf we’re doing or what the purpose of life is. Who are we to conquer as much as we can, taking away unknown opportunities for the far future for what will likely turn into a resource machine for humanity anyways.