Inspired by the ingoing thread My G-G-Generational Ship. The premise (as I read it) is that something really bad is gonna happen in ten years that will presumably destroy the planet, and the only way to assure the survival of our species is a massive global effort to build a “generation ship”, load it up, and send it away from the solar system.
Let’s assume that you and I both know that we and our friends and family aren’t going to be among the lucky few who get to go. Actually it’s a pretty big assumption to call those travellers ‘lucky’ because there’s pretty good odds they won’t survive either.
My question is – if you have to work tirelessly for the next decade and make significant sacrifices to make the project possible, knowing that the only conceivable reward you might have is that they’ll take a sample of your DNA with them and cook up some future test tube ‘you’, would you do it voluntarily?
Let’s say there’s another option. Instead of this massive project with a low chance of success, the governments of the world decide to make the world a more pleasant place to live for the time we have left. So they put a lot of resources into making food and drugs (good ones!) and shelter available to all of us, and screw the “save the race” project.
I’m necessarily vague on what either scheme would mean for the individual human, but what I’m really trying to get at is whether you feel we have obligation to preserve our species and send it out into the universe by whatever means it might take to do this?
Personally, I don’t think so. I would rather spend the decade making things a little more comfortable for all of us for the time remaining, than for all of us to make ourselves into slaves so a few lottery winners, rich fucks, and some other undoubtedly skilled and knowledgeable people get away with a tiny chance to create another Earth somewhere else, some day, maybe.