Edit: A bunch of yall don’t seem to grasp the concept of a theoretical question
No. Slower than light travel will still enable a smaller amount of colonization of the local area. Where if we do anything that destroys the planet, that’s kinda putting all your eggs in one basket. If that goes catastrophically wrong, as things sometimes do, then everything gets fucked up.
It’s just an unnecessary risk.
Yes.
Why not extend our environmental destruction into the farthest reaches of the universe? The heat death of the universe will be humanity extracting every last bit of energy from it to sell ads for the most trivial bullshit imaginable.
I like the way you think.
Oddly specific… What are you doing OP? Should we be worried? Honestly “faster than light” travel is already too generic: do you mean going actually FTL or breaking the space barrier with wormholes or space displacement shenanigans that “look like” FTL? That said, Earth destroyed in a few decades because of the research or the PRODUCTION of such method? A little bit of context would made answering this question way more interesting…
The question is to make us think about the moral and practical aspects of advancing technology, leaving room for different interpretations to encourage diverse discussions. It’s like a ‘what if’ scenario, helping us explore the consequences of scientific progress without prescribing a single answer.
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Would you sell your house for a magic flying car?
Would you sell your house to be ejected into unknown and never have chance to go back?
I don’t have a house.
And you have no magic.
Not if I have good reason to believe I won’t get another one like the old any time soon.
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No. While faster than light travel might secure the human race’s survival and intergalactic presence, is the human race more important than our planet? I don’t think so…
While I value human life, we’re just hairless apes that are both too smart for our own good and still incredibly simple-minded and tribal. Our importance is self-importance. What is the benefit of human-kind for the universe? So far we’re making existence worse for other species. We’re already destroying our planet.
Emotionally and selfishly I want us to continue going, but I think our existence has been far more detrimental than neutral, and certainly far from a positive impact on nature. We’re parasites to this planet, and I think a life-supporting planet is more important than the selfish and detrimental endeavors carried out by one species.
The Earth is more important than our selfish asses.
we’re just hairless apes that are both too smart for our own good
By that same logic the Earth is just a rock floating through space with self replicating molecules on it. What makes it any more or less important than us? It’s all rather meaningless, no?
We’re a virus on Earth, but just like viruses don’t care about invading and killing the host - why should we care about killing the Earth? Don’t misunderstand me - I think we should try and stop climate change from getting out of control from a practical standpoint. We’re stuck here so rising temperatures will have serious long term impacts on our global society. But I think this idolization of nature argument falls flat - feels almost religious.
Main reason for me is that we are just as part of nature as anything else. To assume otherwise is arrogance.
What is the benefit of nature? Worth and importance are intrinsically human judgements, the universe doesn’t give a damn about birds and plants any more than it does about us.
If you value life in general, humanity is the best chance life on earth has of ever getting off planet earth and into the galaxy before the sun dies.
For some reason this discussion brings to mind that one very short episode in Love Death and Robots.
No way.
Earth is the homeland, it’s the botanical gardens, the tribal reservation, it comes first.
Now, if you could do it on, say, mars, absolutely.
Yea, FTL travel implies that we have somewhere else to go.
Now while I assume there are plenty of other habitable planets out there, strictly speaking we don’t know that.
Personally no. There’s so many other obstacles to overcome with populating other planets that getting there isn’t worth destroying the only one we have.
If we had others then maybe.
I don’t think a civilization which would destroy their home with the single-minded goal of spreading throughout the universe in the blink of an eye should be allowed to spread beyond their local star system at all. Maybe re-evaluate after giving them a few centuries to mature.
Where would we go? We don’t know of any other planets that we could easily live on.
Where are we going to get the infinite energy required to move faster than light? ONSHORE WIND FARMS?!?!
Free wormhole with every ipad.
That’s a very specific scenario.
I would say no. But there’s going to be a lot of factors that go into that decision. That I don’t have the data for.
I think it’s far more likely The Earth is going to live just long enough for us to have multiple planets colonized. Once we have multiple planets destroying a single planet becomes a viable military strategy. So that’s when the earth will die.
The Earth will be fine once it’s got rid of us.
Not if we hit it with a high velocity large mass!
Have you been playing Starfield? This is related to something in the game.
I feel like, maybe, you just watched Pandorum. As long as we don’t let Dennis Quaid drive the ship, we should be okay.
Depends what you mean by “destroy”
If you mean “make it uninhabitable for humans” ya sure, absolutely. It would mean we finally get off this rock and can leave it be. Earth will be fine without us and will soon enough (on the scale of time periods) return to business as usual.
Humans can move on like the parasites we are to new hosts, to extract and refuel and consume.
Starcraft tried to imply it was humans vs the zerg but we all have to accept the simple fact of the matter… we ARE the zerg
