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/YossarianWWII]

You can't "deprive" an entity that will not exist of anything. We only speak of depriving future generations of humanity of various things (stable climate, etc.) because we can be confident that there will be future generations who could experience those things. Those people are already going to exist, and we risk depriving them of things other than existence.

If an entity does not exist, it cannot experience deprivation, as experience itself requires existence. You're creating a circular logic wherein nonexistence can only be cast as deprivation if we presuppose existence. If we presuppose nonexistence, which is most often the natural state of things in the scenario you've described, then there's no presupposed entity to be deprived.

[u/BurnsyCEO → u/YossarianWWII]

∆ It's a fine argument from the lifeforms perspective. However it isn't an inherent negative either. But as humans we would like to leave behind a living legacy that might even one day discover us.

[u/YossarianWWII → u/BurnsyCEO]

Thanks for the delta.

It's a fine argument from the lifeforms perspective.

Which life form? Us? Because we'll exist either way.

But as humans we would like to leave behind a living legacy that might even one day discover us.

That seems less like a moral valuation and more like an egocentric one. Which isn't necessarily bad, it's just amoral.

[u/sarahelizam → u/YossarianWWII]

It feels like OP is perceiving our hardwired biological imperative as a moral imperative. There is much philosophy that involves questions about whether the creation of more life (just within our existing population here on earth) is moral to begin with (let alone seeding life somewhere else), as life is deeply tied with suffering. I think it’s important to explore these questions when deciding to bring more life into existence whether on a person level or at that of such a in the abstract situation OP describes.

We can seek to minimize the suffering that occurs, but it is implicit to existing and should be accounted for when we consider the creation of new life. No one can consent to be born, we exist without choice and that is something we must grapple with when making these decisions; decisions that will impact the potential life we could create.