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Mars is my calling

  • We are humans, conscious, alive.
  • We ask ourselves, “What should I do?”
    • It is not immediately clear from known, first-principles physics. But it is clear we can make an effort towards discovering the right thing to do. Let’s do that.
  • First, should we go on living? (Spoiler: yes)
    • How can we measure existence against non-existence?
  • Let’s answer using Good and Evil as metrics, since they are concepts which only exist to a conscious being:

    • Consciousness means awareness of our existence, potential, and vulnerability in Time. We recognize our actions’ capacity to affect the future. Blessed (or cursed) with this knowledge, we carry responsibility to work towards Good and away from Evil.  
    • Evil is needless and voluntary suffering imposed on others.
    • Good is the opposite – the fun, play, adventure, and sacrifice in which conscious beings willingly engage, in the pursuit of meaning (which I believe can emerge in a democracy that protects an individual’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness)
      • This includes virtues like rationality, honesty, integrity, love, courage, curiosity
    • Good and Evil emerged at the birth of consciousness.
    • Source for definitions of Good and Evil
  • So asking whether consciousness should persist is the same as asking: is the expected value of consciousness positive, i.e., will humans bring about much more Good than Evil?
  • When measuring the expected value of a decision, we take the sum of all the consequences multiplied by their likelihoods.
    • The crux of this calculation is that we control the likelihood of each consequence, since we can choose to do Good or Evil.
    • Each action of ours that willingly and needlessly causes suffering for us and others contributes negatively to the expected value of consciousness; to act unvirtuously is to deny the value of your existence.
    • To act virtuously, i.e. rationally towards the sum of that which is Good, is to justify your existence.
    • Conscious actions can only be neutral if they have no effect on the freedoms of others, which is difficult in practice.
  • Based on the above:
    • A conscious being can work to produce abundant Good, and if it chooses to accept that responsibility, then it is self-consistent: its existence is in harmony with its actions, and the value of the Universe is amplified. Other actions are either self-dissonant or impractical.
      • Corollary: since there exists an apparent, rational thought process that allows conscious beings to choose justified actions, maintaining consciousness has a high expected value.
  • A new angle, briefly: what insight can we gain from history?
    • The Evil of the 20th century (Holocaust, Gulag Archipelago, etc.) is overwhelming
    • But past technological, social, economic, and political innovations show there are abundant possibilities for Good
    • Let’s go further back. What did it take for consciousness to arise?
      • 3 billion years of evolution, involving incalculable cumulative suffering by both those that could not survive and suffering anyway for those that could. Let’s not put the Universe in a position where the only hope for consciousness requires it to suffer that again.
  • How do we maintain consciousness?
    • We reduce the chances of civilization ending phenomena
      • Bio virus
      • Nuclear War
      • Environmental disaster
      • Cosmic disaster
  • The chances of all these doomsdays are reduced by becoming multiplanetary, because:
    • War and other deliberate self-sabotage become less likely because the collective conscious recognizes abundance rather than limited resources.
    • Countless predictable and unpredictable benefits to life on Earth will result from being forced to solve these problems on Mars (and I think short term conveniences exist on Earth that delay these innovations).
      • Power systems and energy storage
      • Robotics and construction
      • Air and water synthesis/collection and purification
      • Mining and manufacturing
      • Recycling and waste management
      • Agriculture e.g. vertical farming and lab grown meat (and animal welfare)
      • Medicine
      • Political systems
      • Culture and perspective
      • Scientific discovery
  • Why now? Because each civilization ending phenomenon has a shotclock of unknown duration, and right now we have the momentum to become multiplanetary, and we might not always have the chance.
  • My role is to contribute everything I can to making life multiplanetary while maintaining healthy and sustainable civilization on Earth. And I believe these goals are completely aligned.

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William Menken

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