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re: If our descendants feel "at home" in space...
JEKing — (archived)

"But then, they're not really ET, are they?"

Vous avez raison, Raoul .

Remember 'Star Trek?' The whole galaxy was made out to be a sprawling analogue of suburban Los Angeles. It was entertaining though.

Your other statement, "The planet is not the problem, it's what's in their mind," is exactly right. That is why the real frontier is to transform mind. We have seen the approaches used during the 20th Century: ideological bullying (still being promoted in some backward places). If mind “is what the brain does,” then brain architecture and epistemology become the postmodern or post-postmodern approach.

“If we go ahead with creating such creatures AND make them as intelligent or much more than we are, we will soon be erased.” Well, there will be a fairly long period of mutual dependence, during which human beings will actually come to prefer the relative impartiality and practical reason to be expected from what might be like linked myriad expert systems.

Here is how I see it: The artilect entities will evolve into an intellectual aristocracy with, relative to ours, extraordinary physical options and capabilities , and of course with an existential destiny sharply divergent from humans. This very likely will not make them our enemies, but they will become BORED with us. We will be loath to see them go! But eventually they will be on their way, to make the REAL star-voyage, leaving behind some lesser artilects who might be satisfied with servant positions.

Now here is something they might do just for fun, to deal with their mounting boredom: reconstruct the architecture of human beings, starting from the most fundamental level. This would result in a vast class division between archeo-humans and neo-humans—interesting basis for a story.

With respect to Socrates II’s statement: “In any case, there will be those
who will want to lead their own lives in their own society and
Earth and the Sol system will not be room enough.” I think the only way humans can have viable colonies away from the location of the collective gene pool (without going mad or dying from boredom) is if there is a grand “coming and going” to the colony, supported by a robust, pulsating, healthy civilizational core at home. Thymos, one element of Plato’s tripartite division of the soul ( the other two are reason and desire) can be translated as spiritedness. It is the location of such feelings as pride, shame, indignation, and the need for recognition for oneself and for others; thymos cannot be in a healthy state in an isolated colony (remember the fate of the HMS Bounty’s crew on Pitcairn Island).

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