[ExI] Should we still want biological space colonists?

[Adrian Tymes]

"Who 'we', kemosabe?"

What benefits will a space colonist bring me, that is worth giving even the
most minimal of support (moral, via taxes, or otherwise)?  Something that
"represents (humanity's/my nation's) legacy" will, beyond any reasonable
doubt, solely represent the legacy of those who select the mission
personnel and otherwise set up the mission - not me.

So it has to be something more material that returns to Earth (or it has to
be me or individuals that I know and care about, which by definition means
they are biological, save for post-Singularity scenarios which by
definition of "Singularity" are impossible to concretely usefully speculate
about).

This side of the Singularity, any effort doing things in space that returns
any matter or energy to Earth is either drones that are too unsophisticated
to meaningfully be deemed "colonists", or it has people on-site and
therefore, to the extent that it has space colonists at all, has biological
space colonists.

Iterate across the vast majority of people who are in any position to
provide meaningful support of space colonization (e.g. people who are able
to vote in Western democracies, or the small subset of people in China and
Russia who have any control over space policy), and "we" have no reason to
support nonbiological space colonists.

As to the argument that there could soon be sentient AI, that flies in
blatant contradiction with observed reality.  Even with all the advances of
late, to claim that we may be about to have true AGI - to a degree of
likelihood that means we should hold off on things that having AGI might
obsolete, lest we waste any effort - is like the historical claims that
fusion was right around the corner.

On Fri, Feb 7, 2025 at 3:27 AM Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> This is my latest article on Mindplex magazine. Should we still want
> biological space colonists? I think the question is important, and the
> answer is not obvious.
>
> https://magazine.mindplex.ai/should-we-still-want-biological-space-colonists/
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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