Atheism

Politics

Memes

Mind

Matters

String

Random

Interact

Feedback

Email

Links

Debate

Home

The Cedars of Lebanon

The Big Problem

Pollyanna Meets Captain Kirk

Does God Bless America?

Ticket Touts

The Great Teleport Debate

If you want your great-great-grandchildren to live out among the stars you buy the ticket. I will not be brow-beaten into considering that the existence of mankind out beyond the confines of the Earth's atmosphere in the distant future is somehow a benefit to me.

I don't get it. I don't get it because I actually ask the question, those that think they do get it think somebody else has answered the question they haven't even asked. What is in it for me?

Consider an analogy here. How is my great-great-great-grandfather enjoying the benefit of modern Australia? What is in it for him now he's dead that copies of genes from strangers who once lived nearby to him now exist in a culture that he would barely recognize on the other side of the planet? Does this make his non-existence more pleasant and worthwhile? How much should he be expected to pay for that satisfaction?

I hope that makes your head hurt. The simple fact is that we the phenotypes, the individuals, the people, obtain no benefit at all from posterity. We don't owe posterity anything. What has posterity ever done for you? Would posterity sacrifice itself for you? Of course not, don't be absurd.

We don't owe the future the possibility of limitless human expansion into the universe, we owe a duty of care not to make life needlessly difficult for them, that is all. When you camp in the woods you should avoid damaging the trees and avoid picking all the fruit or flowers. Bury your latrine, mark the spot in such a way as the mark will last as long as it takes the contents to vanish into the soil, no more. That is reasonable behaviour. You don't have to build a permanent hut, bury tins of baked beans and a gas stove for the next lot of campers to find. That is silly.

Allowing more and more human life is not the purpose of your life. We have no purpose. Throughout history people have invented purposes for their lives such as serving kings, empires, companies, churches, races and gods. All purposes are artificial not intrinsic. You owe no fundamental loyalty to a football team, a city, a country, a monarch, a corporation, a party, a musical genre, a sect, a race, a regiment, a language group, an industry, a union, a gang, a god or a species. All loyalties and identifications are voluntary, even those to your family. There is no duty to perpetuate the species. There is certainly no duty for you to pay taxes so the great-great-grandchildren of the ruling class can sip Martinis on Mimas.

This dream of space colonization is common among physicists and engineers who don't know enough biology and philosophy to understand that they are making a false assumption about the utility of genetic spread. The human race no more has a manifest destiny than the aryan race does.

Free the Phenotypes

Understanding that we are created by genes as their survival machines doesn't mean we have to act on that knowledge and see our lives in that context and adopt the strategies we perceive our genes as having as being our strategies and purposes. Our selfish genes have created us for their selfish reasons but we are selves to ourselves. We are the phenotypes, the people. Genes have no rights to propagate and exist in the future, they are just dumb chemicals. They have no real purpose, the purpose they appear to have is created by our understanding of them. They have no consciousness, they are not capable of desire, or purpose, or scheming. They cannot feel pain, they cannot suffer and they cannot enjoy existing. They are not real people. We are. They have no right to exist, we have no duties to them.

To understand that our genes made us is not to accept them as our masters or to adopt their goals as ours. Our goals are goals we set ourselves. Naturally they will tend to be inline with the interests of our genes because our genes have decided what we want, because they have invented want, pain, boredom, hunger, thirst, ambition, loneliness, nausea and despair specifically as rods to beat us with. Oak trees don't need wants and fears and ambitions because they do the acorn's biddings fine without them, with just a simple set of conditional growth instructions. We have urges we have inherited from our animal ancestors that have been refined over millennia living on the savanna as apemen. The effect of civilization on our genes has been minimal. We don't have to fulfil the whims of our genes any more than we have to follow the career or marriage plans laid out by our parents for us, but just as empathizing with and understanding our parents aspirations for us is helpful in deciding whether to make them our own so it helps to understand what our genes would like us to do, always understanding that the decision is ours. The interests of the son are not identical with those of the father, and neither are our interests identical with the interests of our genes.

Genes 'want' to be propagated far and wide in large numbers. It makes sense for human genes to want humanity to spread out into the universe and to want to stay home and look after the planet that gave rise to us. Both strategies should be pursued because either one of them could be doomed to failure. If we accept this gene's view strategy as our own we should be clear that this is a potential speciation event. It makes no sense for the species that stays behind to make sacrifices for the long-term good of the species that goes to the stars because that isn't their species. Think about it in relation to more traditional colonies, why should the American colonies make sacrifices for Georgian Britain? More to the point why should Georgian Britain make sacrifices for the American colonies? Once colonies pass a certain point mutual support breaks down because of the lack of mutual interests and it makes sense to separate, like a daughter or son setting up a new household which looks to have a different focus.

If you want to set up a new colony in the outer planets feel free to buy your own Mayflower, we will sell you provisions, don't ask the taxpayers of the old planet to pay for your passage or to feel particularly proud or pleased that you have gone and they haven't. Unless you can explain how those who stay behind actually benefit from some people going don't expect us just to believe that there has to be some benefit to us.

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

mwillett.org: Debate Unlimited