[ExI] Are Dyson swarms a good idea?

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 3:50 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 27/01/2026 18:30, Jason Resch wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 10:46 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> >     On 27/01/2026 14:51, Jason Resch wrote:
> >     > We see the aliens from the movie independence day as evil for
> trying to wipe out life on Earth. Is it not an equivalent evil to build a
> Dyson swarm around an alien star and preclude any chance of life from
> emerging on any planet in that system?
> >
> >
> >     No it is not.
> >     Doing harm to something which exists is totally different to doing
> hypothetical harm to something which doesn't exist.
> >
> >
> > If you consider life in earth a net good, then any action that precluded
> life on earth is actually more of a wrong than stamping out life after it
> had some period of time to exist.
>
> Are you serious?
>

Absolutely.

An action that precludes X is not the same thing as an action that destroys
> X.


I know. The one that precludes X is worse in my example.


In one case, X exists, then doesn't exist because it is destroyed. In the
> other, X never came to be, so there is no way to even tell what it might
> have been.


What ever good comes from there being life on earth boils down to the
experience-years for all the beings that are conscious and alive on this
planet.

One day life on earth will end. But that future state doesn't cancel out
all the good that can be done and experienced a all the lives, meaning,
enjoyment, pleasure, joy, that are had.

Let's say that in the end, there were a quintillion experience-years had by
all the conscious beings in earth. Any net positive good that life on earth
has, exists within those experience-years.

Agree so far?

Now to my argument:
"0 (overall good) experience-years" is *more favorable* than any positive
number of (overall bad) experience-years)

That is to say, it is better that a hell world never exist at all, than
exist for any positive number amount of time.

And further "0 (overall good) experience-years" is *less favorable* than
any positive number of (overall good) experience-years.

That is, "it's better to have loved and lost than never loved at all."

It is on this basis that I make my claim:  precluding life from ever
existing on earth is less favorable than life existing for some period of
time and then being wiped out, so long as the experiences are overall good.

It is simply a matter of counting and weighing the experience-years for the
two scenarios.


Doing something that results in someone not being born is different to
> killing them. You have to exist for your existence to be taken away.
>

This is a very different example and the analogy to planetary sterilization
fails for any number of reasons that should be obvious.


> An action that precluded life on earth has no moral content whatever.


A lifeless planet that has no potential to ever have life has no moral
value, I agree. But that's not the example I am considering.

Here I am considering a planet that will develop life, but through some
intentional action, is rendered to a state where it never will have life.

My claim is that such an action is a moral wrong (absent other some
mitigating factor).


Every time I brush my teeth, I'm preventing countless lives that
> theoretically could have been created from the cells that I destroy. Does
> that make me a mass murderer? This is basically what you are claiming.
>

No that's a very different example. Please stick to my original example and
explain why it is morally acceptable to sterilize a planet that will one
day harbor conscious life (whose net experiences we stipulate to be an
overall good).


> If you want to talk about the potential lives that never came about if a
> Dyson swarm is built, you have to also talk about the potential lives that
> never came about if it wasn't built (which would be far more),


Right this is a potential mitigating factor.


as well as the consequences of not doing a dozen other different things,
> like maybe using the planetary masses to create habitats for biological
> life, using the whole system to make a gigantic transmitter for mind
> patterns, to send them somewhere else, and a whole bunch of other things
> that we can think of, not to mention the many more things that we can't
> think of.
>

Right. I agree all such consequences to the galactic ecosystem should be
considered by any moral civilization, in the same way we make sure we
aren't extincting some species by draining a swamp to build a highway.


> >
> >
> >     You're talking about the kind of thinking which leads people to
> conclude that contraception is evil and similar bonkers ideas.
> >
> >
> > There are too many differences between contraception and the preclusion
> of life on earth, to that make the situations incomparable.
>
> I think you'll have to explain that. Preventing something from happening
> on a small scale is exactly equivalent to preventing something happening on
> a larger scale. The end result is the same: Nothing.
>

The difference is earth has a finite carrying capacity and one person not
being born at one time makes room for someone else to be born.

I the case of the planet being made to never just life, that doesn't make
some other planet become hospitable. It's just all downside.

The analogy doesn't hold for this reason.



> Bear in mind that we're not talking about thwarting someone's wishes,
> which is a different issue.
>
> Do you think that the Big Bang was the greatest evil ever, because it
> precluded who-knows-how-many-or-what different other universes from coming
> into being instead of the one we're in?
>

According to inflation, the big bang did not preclude anything. New big
bangs are occurring constantly throughout the eternally inflating space. As
Alan Guth said, it is the ultimate free lunch.



> >
> > Try to explain from first principles why it is morally acceptable to
> prevent life from ever forming on earth. (Assuming we agree life on earth
> is a net good)
>
> Morality doesn't even enter into it. You might as well ask whether it's
> morally acceptable for me to drink a cup of coffee before bed, thus
> potentially changing the number and type of dreams I might have.
>

It's more like whether it's morally acceptable for someone to poison that
coffee and thereby preclude you from ever dreaming again.

Remember we were talking about sterilizing a planet, not tweaking the
genetics early on to get one form of life instead of another.


> The point here, I think, is that stuff that doesn't happen, doesn't
> happen. I can only agree that life on earth is a net good if life on earth
> actually exists.


That doesn't follow. All moral philosophy involves consideration of
potential futures which are not presently real.


If it doesn't, there's nothing to talk about.


This thinking leads to nihilism.

If the theorised supernova that precipitated the collapse of a nebula into
> our sun and solar system never happened, can we meaningfully talk about the
> moral value of life on earth? An earth that never formed around a star that
> never existed? Could we blame some aliens that somehow averted the
> supernova because it was threatening their existence, for the 'loss' of all
> life on earth?
>

You are introducing mitigating factors. Of course the conclusion may change
if you change the situation.


Can we meaningfully assign a moral value to the loss caused by a specific
> person wearing a condom on the night of the 31st December 2010?


Possibly. More information is needed. Would that person have invented a
cure for cancer, or started WW3? But since we can't anticipate such things,
we must hold harmless those who act under such ignorance.

I.e., "forgive them, for they know not what they do"

To what might have happened if that lady in the supermarket had turned her
> head to the left instead of the right when she sneezed? Or if she had got
> her handkerchief out in time?
>

〃


> Far, far, far (to the power of a stupidly huge number, to the power of an
> even huger number) more things never happened than did. If you ascribe
> moral significance to this, you're headed down a rabbit hole there's no
> coming back from.
>

This is needless complication for my simple example:

Sterilizing a planet that would otherwise have been a net good, absent any
mitigating factors, is a moral wrong? Y/N

You can add mitigating factors, add multiverses, and what not, and that may
make the question more or less difficult to answer, but I am trying to keep
it as simple as possible.

Jason
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