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Mars, by necessity

  • We are humans, conscious, alive.
  • We ask ourselves, “What should I do?”
  • We think, “Not sure. But I should at least pursue discovering what is the right thing to do.”
  • One datapoint: we will die and lose everything. Should we bother being alive in the meantime?
    • How can we measure existence against non-existence?
  • Let’s measure using Good and Evil, concepts which only exist to a conscious being.
    • Consciousness means awareness of our existence, potential, and vulnerability in Time. In other words, 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 that conscious beings willingly engage in, 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.
  • 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
    • 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 (rationally towards the sum of that which is Good) is to justify your existence.
  • 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, with unimaginable cumulative suffering by both those that could not survive and suffering anyway for those that could.
  • Based on the above:
    • Thesis: since consciousness can produce abundant Good, it is its responsibility to preserve itself and work towards that outcome.
  • How do we maintain consciousness?
    • We reduce the chances of civilization-ending phenomena:
      • Bio virus
      • Nuclear war
      • Environmental disaster
      • Astronomical disaster
  • The chances of all of these are mitigated by becoming multiplanetary.
    • Reduced chances of war and other deliberate self-sabotage, because the collective conscious recognizes abundance rather than limited resources.
    • Countless predictable and unpredictable benefits to life on Earth, by being forced to solve these problems on Mars.              
      • Power systems and energy storage
      • Robotics and construction
      • Air and water synthesis/collection and purification
      • Mining and manufacturing
      • Recycling and waste management
      • Agriculture, in particular, 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 shot clock 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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