What do you think?
Rate this book
Should We Colonize Other Planets?
As humans continue to degrade and destroy our planet's resources, leading to predictions of total ecological collapse, some (such as the entrepreneur Elon Musk) now suggest that a human colony elsewhere may be our species' best hope for survival.
Adam Morton examines extra-terrestrial colonization plans with a critical eye. He makes a strong case for colonization - just not by human beings. Humans live relatively short lives and, to survive, require large amounts of food and water, very specific climatic conditions and an oxygen-rich atmosphere. We can create colonists that have none of these shortcomings.
Reflecting compassionately on the nature of existence, Morton argues that we should treat the end of the human race in the same way that we treat our own deaths: as something sad but ultimately inevitable. The earth will perish one day, and, in the end, we should be concerned more with securing the future of intelligent beings than with the preservation of our species, which represents but a nanosecond in the history of our solar system.
Adam Morton examines extra-terrestrial colonization plans with a critical eye. He makes a strong case for colonization - just not by human beings. Humans live relatively short lives and, to survive, require large amounts of food and water, very specific climatic conditions and an oxygen-rich atmosphere. We can create colonists that have none of these shortcomings.
Reflecting compassionately on the nature of existence, Morton argues that we should treat the end of the human race in the same way that we treat our own deaths: as something sad but ultimately inevitable. The earth will perish one day, and, in the end, we should be concerned more with securing the future of intelligent beings than with the preservation of our species, which represents but a nanosecond in the history of our solar system.
- GenresPhilosophyScience
140 pages, Paperback
Published October 22, 2018
16 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 18, 2019
Mission to Mars
Our intelligence and imagination are rooted in the biological history which limits our thinking. There are lot of things we don’t understand in our own backyard let alone the cosmos. We have not comprehended the other co-inhabitants of this planet. Life on earth is associated with geological and cosmological consequences in solar system. Earth and moon are a tidally connected system that affects stability to earth’s biological evolution. The human possibilities in Mars colonization is a great challenge to human thinking not only in terms of technological advancement, biological endurance but also inter-planetary economics. Earth’s species cannot exist elsewhere without with the help from home planet. We are not well adapted for life away from earth. They cannot live outside this planet unless they are equipped with high-tech modifications such as Artificial Intelligence (AI)-human species (semi-organic beings, neuralink, brain-machine interface, etc. ) that combines machine intelligence and human nature.
In this book the author provides an explication of Mars colonization and the obstacles in these plans including estimates of costs and future of intelligent life. But it is curious as to why a philosophy professor would be interested in humans colonizing other planets. Because, with the progress made in colonization of Mars, we must start discussing the nature of life elsewhere; the challenges to existence would be very different from earth.
This is a short little book of 120 pages with a trove of information about additional reading, this is informative, and the text is engaging. There are numerous books about travelling to Mars and colonizing other planets in literature, and this book certainly adds some value to this growing field.
Our intelligence and imagination are rooted in the biological history which limits our thinking. There are lot of things we don’t understand in our own backyard let alone the cosmos. We have not comprehended the other co-inhabitants of this planet. Life on earth is associated with geological and cosmological consequences in solar system. Earth and moon are a tidally connected system that affects stability to earth’s biological evolution. The human possibilities in Mars colonization is a great challenge to human thinking not only in terms of technological advancement, biological endurance but also inter-planetary economics. Earth’s species cannot exist elsewhere without with the help from home planet. We are not well adapted for life away from earth. They cannot live outside this planet unless they are equipped with high-tech modifications such as Artificial Intelligence (AI)-human species (semi-organic beings, neuralink, brain-machine interface, etc. ) that combines machine intelligence and human nature.
In this book the author provides an explication of Mars colonization and the obstacles in these plans including estimates of costs and future of intelligent life. But it is curious as to why a philosophy professor would be interested in humans colonizing other planets. Because, with the progress made in colonization of Mars, we must start discussing the nature of life elsewhere; the challenges to existence would be very different from earth.
This is a short little book of 120 pages with a trove of information about additional reading, this is informative, and the text is engaging. There are numerous books about travelling to Mars and colonizing other planets in literature, and this book certainly adds some value to this growing field.
October 13, 2020
Essentially tackling intriguing topics, the book unfortunately does not go into deep analysis and the whole feeling after reading it was like "well, that was some biased amateur writing". Nonetheless, it did raise some questions and thoughts, like extended colonization via surrogate experience where a possibility of uploading a human mind into computer memory and being used in space exploration is discussed as a viable although still very futuristic alternative.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews