>> As numerous people have said, this is *the* reason we need to get self-sufficient colonies *off* earth.<<
Well, that would be some use against a cracked planet, and possibly even a flung space station, but not against decrystalizing the universe. We're nowhere near what it would take to even try salvaging that.
>> That way we won't have all our eggs in one basket.<<
Always a good plan.
*ponder* You know what we could do now? Bank some stuff on the Moon and Mars. Information at minimum, biological samples would be better. Resources for colonists if we're lucky, refugees if not.
>> Also what we'll learn about closed ecologies will be needed to terraform earth. :-(
Yyyyeah. No, actually, we've already seen that the best thing we can do here is back the fuck off. Not even a nuclear disaster was harder on wildlife than humans. You want to fix something in the biosphere, just keep everyone well away from it.
Humans are terrible at that.
>>If we can get over that hump (and regardless of how folks feel about Branson, Bezos, et al they *are* working on getting us off this rock) then destroying humanity gets a lot harder.<<
*shrug* You rarely see more than one type of genius per person. It can happen, but it usually comes at the cost of even more weird shit. Because the human brain is finite and just not really all that big when it comes to storing something as massive as a soul. If you want to upgrade one area, you're going to have to throw out something else -- maybe a lot of somethings. I have a linguistic coprocessor that does things other people insist are impossible. I also have the shareware version of the memory module that normal people use for names-faces-dates-etc. instead of their nice factory model. I wouldn't trade it. And I'm pretty sure those guys wouldn't trade whatever they tossed for what they wanted to pack into this life. People should STFU and let them work. So they're assholes, so what? Most genii are. We need genii, the popular people aren't doing jack to save us.
>>Not so silly thought. In a widespread interstellar civilization there are going to be horror stories about colonies that accidentally killed a critical link in the local ecosystem before they could get a sufficiently large "terran" ecosystem established.<<
There are colony failure horror stories in every settled space. Including Earth: "Croatoan."
One of my favorites is "The Catch." <3 whimwham trees. If that doesn't teach people not to plant invasive species, nothing will.
Re: Thoughts
Well, that would be some use against a cracked planet, and possibly even a flung space station, but not against decrystalizing the universe. We're nowhere near what it would take to even try salvaging that.
>> That way we won't have all our eggs in one basket.<<
Always a good plan.
*ponder* You know what we could do now? Bank some stuff on the Moon and Mars. Information at minimum, biological samples would be better. Resources for colonists if we're lucky, refugees if not.
>> Also what we'll learn about closed ecologies will be needed to terraform earth. :-(
Yyyyeah. No, actually, we've already seen that the best thing we can do here is back the fuck off. Not even a nuclear disaster was harder on wildlife than humans. You want to fix something in the biosphere, just keep everyone well away from it.
Humans are terrible at that.
>>If we can get over that hump (and regardless of how folks feel about Branson, Bezos, et al they *are* working on getting us off this rock) then destroying humanity gets a lot harder.<<
*shrug* You rarely see more than one type of genius per person. It can happen, but it usually comes at the cost of even more weird shit. Because the human brain is finite and just not really all that big when it comes to storing something as massive as a soul. If you want to upgrade one area, you're going to have to throw out something else -- maybe a lot of somethings. I have a linguistic coprocessor that does things other people insist are impossible. I also have the shareware version of the memory module that normal people use for names-faces-dates-etc. instead of their nice factory model. I wouldn't trade it. And I'm pretty sure those guys wouldn't trade whatever they tossed for what they wanted to pack into this life. People should STFU and let them work. So they're assholes, so what? Most genii are. We need genii, the popular people aren't doing jack to save us.
>>Not so silly thought. In a widespread interstellar civilization there are going to be horror stories about colonies that accidentally killed a critical link in the local ecosystem before they could get a sufficiently large "terran" ecosystem established.<<
There are colony failure horror stories in every settled space. Including Earth: "Croatoan."
One of my favorites is "The Catch." <3 whimwham trees. If that doesn't teach people not to plant invasive species, nothing will.