The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: To realize humanity’s full potential, requires settling worlds beyond our own

Starting point is 00:00:01 There are options, and that's why we need to take this opportunity seriously. How many you can prevent global warming unless China is part of the solution? This is not normal male behavior. This is predatory behavior. We don't know how bad this bug is. We don't know what this bug does. All of that was thrown away in those eight minutes and 46 seconds, and that's the moment that I became an abolitionist. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Welcome to the Monk Debates. On every episode, we provide you with a civil and and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you, the listener, with enough

Starting point is 00:00:39 information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved to realize humanity's full potential requires settling worlds beyond our own. NASA's upcoming Artemis mission will mark a significant milestone in U.S. spaceflight history when it lifts off in late 2024. Not only will it be the first time that American astronauts have traveled further than lower Earth orbit since the 1970. and not only will it be the first opportunity for a female astronaut to step foot on the moon.

Starting point is 00:01:09 The Artemis mission will perform crucial groundwork needed for humanity to further explore and potentially colonize our nearest celestial neighbor. In order to make Mars work, we need kind of the next generation of rockets and spacecraft. We think we've got something that will enable people to move to Mars for approximately half a million dollars. An orderly and fair use of resources will produce wealth and make the moon Earth's eighth continent offering major benefits to humanity and contributing to world peace. The earth is finite. If the world economy and population is to keep expanding, space is the only way to go.

Starting point is 00:01:48 Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith. Well, this past year has seen an onslaught of disruptions that call into question our ability to coexist with our natural environment. Flash floods have swept across China and northern Europe. The eastern United States has been inundated by hurricanes and floods. well, the Western U.S. has suffered record forest fires and heat waves. All of this is happening as a global pandemic continues to rage on. The seeming growing instability and threats plaguing planet Earth has some of us asking if we need to start looking for a plan B to ensure the survival of humanity. A growing movement of astrophysicists, biologists, and space billionaires are doing just this, imagining that human beings.

Starting point is 00:02:34 imagining that humanity's long-term salvation lies off planet. Supporters of space exploration argue that we are at the beginnings of a new stage of technological revolution and development that puts the possibility of leaving this world for others tantalizingly within our reach. They're really two fundamental paths. History is going to bifurcate along two directions. One path is we stay on Earth forever, and then there will be some eventual extinction event. I don't have an immediate doomsday prophecy, but eventually history suggests there will be some doomsday event. The alternative is to become a space-baring civilization and a multi-planet species,

Starting point is 00:03:24 which I hope you would agree that is the right way to go. But detractors of the plans to settle space dismiss it as an immeasurably expensive. and unattainable fever dream. For critics of Going Galactic, it would be far more prudent to invest the scarce time and resources that humanity currently has into fixing the real and urgent problems here on Earth,

Starting point is 00:03:49 the only known terrestrial body that hosts life. Beyond the massive technological achievements required, there are simply too many unknowns about how and where life originated on this planet and in the rest of the universe, to assume that it can survive an inherently cruel

Starting point is 00:04:09 and threatening solar system and cosmos. People are saying, oh, this is like the era of the great explorers. No, it's not. Columbus could breathe the air when he got off his ship. He could fix his ship because the trees in the new world

Starting point is 00:04:26 were made out of wood, just as they were in Europe. On Mars, you can't do that. On this installment of the monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved, to realize humanity's full potential requires settling worlds beyond our own. Arguing for the motion is Malayan Cerkovich, research professor at the Astronomical Observatory Belgrade, an author of global catastrophic risks. Arguing against the motion is Lord Martin Rees, astronomer Royal

Starting point is 00:05:00 and former president of the Royal Society. He's the author of a number of internationally best-selling books, including On the Future, whose updated paperback edition is due out this October and the end of astronauts due out March 2022. Milan, Martin, welcome to the Monk Debates. Hello. Hello.

Starting point is 00:05:24 This is a terrific debate for us to be having today a kind of nice breakaway from everything COVID-19 related. Our debate motion, be it resolved to realize humankind's full potential requires settling worlds beyond our own. Martin, you're arguing against our debate resolution. Let's hear your opening statement. I think we've got to have semantics to start with, because the question is whether we're talking about humankind or the future of intelligence.

Starting point is 00:05:56 As astronomers, we realize that the time lying ahead is probably longer than the 4 billion years which has elapsed for Darwinian evolution. And therefore, if we think far ahead to when the Earth dies, still more to when the cosmos dies, we're talking about entities which are not human. They're post-human and maybe as different from us as we are from slime mold. So if we look that far ahead, then I'm prepared to accept that there's something in the resolution. But if we really, by we mean humans, entities which are flesh and blood like us, I strongly disagree with emotion.

Starting point is 00:06:36 The reason is that we are adapted to live on the earth and the kind of places where colonies are envisaged, like on Mars, for instance, are far less hospitable than the worst places on Earth. So to live on Mars is worse than living on the ocean. on the top of Everest or at the South Pole. So it could take many, many thousands of years to terraform Mars to make it habitable. And by that stage, I believe that genetic participation would have changed humans into a different species anyway. So as long as humans are human, I genuinely don't believe that we will have any reason to migrate.

Starting point is 00:07:21 And I would go further and say that it is a dangerous delusion. to think that we can escape the Earth's problems by going to Mars because dealing with climate change, though a big challenge, is a real doddle compared to terraforming Mars. So my view is that we are adapted to Earth. It's our only home. I may agree that we ought to perhaps export heavy industry into space, but the mass emigration from Earth to another planet, still less going beyond, is not for humans. It may be for post-humans who may be electronic and certainly very different from us. So for that reason, I think we as humans are destined to live out our lives and develop our civilizations here on Earth.

Starting point is 00:08:11 Thank you, Martin. These are big questions, and I really look forward to unpacking all of them as we continue this debate and conversation. Now an opportunity to hear the other side of our debate today, the resolution before us, be it resolved, to realize humankind's full potential requires settling worlds beyond our own. Malian, you're arguing in favor of our resolution today, so I'm going to put a couple minutes on our proverbial debate clock and turn the program over to you. Thank you so much.

Starting point is 00:08:45 It is a great honor and great privilege to be here and to participate in among debates, which are rightly so prestigious and authoritative around the world. world. I do believe that for human prosperity and for realizing humanity's full creative potential, we really need space. We really need space resources and we really need a kind of space expansion. First of all, humanity, as humans, we are migrating and expanding species. We have always been since the very beginning of our revolution or our primate ancestors, we have always been. And We originated in a very, very, very small area of our planet, the Old Wai Gorge in Tanzania,

Starting point is 00:09:34 which is like about 48 times 20 kilometers. This is like maybe six millionths of the total terrestrial real estate, even if we only count land surface area. So to impose an artificial cut-off in space would be completely arbitrary and unjustified to our migrations and expansion. We are also species surviving in time. And we actually, if we wish to achieve full human flourishing, we actually need more time than just a single cosmic habitat just our planet can provide. This would be a kind of an artificial, temporal cutoff. And of course, there is a whole bunch of arguments based on issues of risk and safety. I won't go there as much right now, perhaps to some of our listeners' surprise,

Starting point is 00:10:36 because I actually think that the arguments going from global catastrophic risks and existential risks are indeed important, but they are a little bit over-debated and over-discussed. There are perfectly sound arguments which do not invoke risk in general, but we need to acknowledge that we are safer when eggs are put in multiple baskets. There are other evolutionary advantages in expanding apart from mere survival. There are many worthy human achievements which almost by definition could never, be realized if humanity remains bound to Earth. So there is an expansion of future design space,

Starting point is 00:11:23 the space of what an intelligent species can achieve, which simply require more resources or different kind of resources than we have on Earth, which is nice planet, great planet, beautiful planet, but it is a very, very, very, very small part of the total real estate or the total number of habitats in the universe. And of course, space settlement will be enormously beneficial for Earth itself, for the terrestrial biosphere, and actually it will, in a sense, unburden the Earth from a part of a burden human activity, especially human technological and industrial activity imposed on

Starting point is 00:12:14 our biosphere, which unfortunately has already brought about extinction of so many of our fellow species. And with the prospect of serious space settlement and moving of at least some parts of human industrial capacities, at least to low Earth orbit, if not on moon, Mars near Earth asteroids, probably the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. with all that, we can actually go several steps toward making ourselves a real wardens of Earth's biosphere and preservation of many things which will be in due time if they are not already jeopardized by human civilization and human industrial activities. Thank you, Milan.

Starting point is 00:13:11 Fascinating ideas here. I'm now going to go to rebuttal. This is a chance for both of you to react to what you've just heard from the other person. Again, a couple minutes on the clock. Let's keep these rebuttals focused and tight because we've got so much to discuss in our three-way conversation coming up. So, Malin, over to you first for your rebuttal. Many thanks to you and many thanks to Laudries. The thing is that space settlement and space expansion does not mean, or at least does not necessarily mean, mass.

Starting point is 00:13:42 immigration or mass motion. Remember, even in the so-called age of European discovery, back in 15th, 16th, centuries, we didn't really encounter massive

Starting point is 00:13:59 migrations. There were some movements, there were some groups and maybe religious movements and religious sects who immigrated en masse, but that was a very small portion of the total European population, the population of European states at that time. And yet,

Starting point is 00:14:18 important ideas and important technologies and important intellectual resources were exported around the world. So we have on the rise of, say, countries like Canada or United States of America or Australia, which would have been impossible without intellectual resources which were drawn from Europe and not necessarily some mass migration. It wasn't the case that, I don't know, like 40 or 50 or 80% of Great Britain's population went to Canada and or to the United States. No, it was a small percentage. So actually, I expect things like that to occur in the future in the course of space

Starting point is 00:15:07 settlement. There will be a small percentage of pioneers or people who are either highly motivated or maybe desperate enough. That was also the case during the age of discovery. So they will create some new structures, including new social and political structures elsewhere. Thank you, Milan. Okay, Martin, your opportunity now for a rebuttal

Starting point is 00:15:31 reacting to Milan's opening statement or what you've just heard now. Well, two or three things, really, because Belan's last point is really talking about colonialism and the analogue there is if there are already aliens out there. And if that's the case, we ought to be cautious without encroaching in their territory. But the more important point I want to make is that we need to distinguish these different time scales. It's true that we have a civilization which has existed for a few millennia.

Starting point is 00:16:02 It has taken humans as a species several hundred millennia to emerge. but it has taken four billion years for us to evolve from the primordial protozoa, which started life by Darwinian selection. As I said in my earlier statement, the Earth has at least as long ahead of it, and the universe may be an infinite amount. Moreover, this future evolution will be far faster than Darwinian selection. It'll be what I like to call secular intelligent design. where creatures may be flesh and blood to start with,

Starting point is 00:16:43 but maybe eventually organic or electronic, they will design their progeny to adapt to these alien environments. And when that happens, I can well imagine that some of those progeny will be adapted to live elsewhere than the Earth, maybe an empty space if they don't need gravity or an atmosphere. So on that time scale, there may well be intelligence living far beyond the earth. But they would not, I would say, be humans. And for humans, the earth is going to be a sort of nature reservation, which is the one place to which they are adapted.

Starting point is 00:17:27 Hi, Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of. great benefits, including a 10-plus-year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world, and you get a specially curated Friday weekly Monk Members Only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world. All of that, again, free at www.w.w.munkdebates.com. I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community.

Starting point is 00:18:13 Now, back to our program. Okay, my opportunity to join the conversation now and think of some questions that are top of mind for our audience. And Malam, maybe to come to you first, what I'm sensing here from you and Martin is a disagreement over timelines and the periods within which the potential for space exploration, for humanities migration, from planet Earth to the stars will occur in. And I want to hear a little bit more from you about, I assume, why you're more optimistic that this is something that happens sooner rather than later. It happens before maybe Martin's view that it's really only a silicon-based life intelligence

Starting point is 00:18:56 that will own the stars possibly originating from this planet. It's not going to be a biological human in the sense that the three of us are today. So why are you more optimistic about the, immediate a term possibility of space exploration and human habitation beyond our planet. And more importantly, why do you think that can happen? Why isn't Martin right that this is something for the deep future, not the near present? Well, Martin himself has mentioned that the things are accelerating.

Starting point is 00:19:27 So actually, we shouldn't really judge ourselves and our creative potentials by the evolutionary timescales or some time scales which are very long, even historical timescales in the past when things unfolded very slowly. In a sense, I would say that most of the reasons which actually people are usually listing in opposition to space settlement are actually completely compatible with space settlement. Now, at least from the point of view of what Martin mentioned, about not necessarily colonialism in that negative sense of the world, we at least know that, for instance, moon and near-ear-earth space and perhaps also main-belt asteroids are uninhabited. There is no one there. There is no discussion about having intelligent, extraterrestrial,

Starting point is 00:20:33 anywhere near us or at least not that their interest will conflict with ours anywhere in the solar system. And the thing, but that brings me to another argument which is actually relevant for this debate, which is that if we do relinquish space expansion, as some skeptics, I don't mean that Martin is necessarily among them, but some skeptics argue we don't have lacking any knowledge of some kind of alien monk debates going right now or some

Starting point is 00:21:12 Zeta reticul or whenever we don't have any reason to believe other extraterrestrial beings will do the same. So actually it would be even prudent if we are thinking about ensuring our long-term survival that we at least set claim

Starting point is 00:21:28 to some cosmic real estate and cosmic resources, at least in our vicinity. And those resources are huge. That is one thing which should motivate people from a purely commercial and purely utilitarian perspective, because there are huge resources available in near-Earth space, say in the inner solar system between sun and the main asteroid belt. you have basically a single

Starting point is 00:22:01 M-type asteroid like 16 Psyche which has more more resources in form of heavy metals for a couple of orders of magnitude than what human civilization

Starting point is 00:22:17 has extracted so far from Earth and what human civilization has extracted so far from Earth is a lot there is a single mine at the north of Sweden called Kirunavara, which actually extracts enough iron to build six Eiffel towers per day, each day. So we are actually extracting lots of Earth resources and that is again a moral or ecological or eco-ethical point. I was trying to make that it is to Earth's benefit

Starting point is 00:22:53 to reduce our extraction of the terrestrial resources in favor of extracting resources from outer space, mainly from asteroids, and perhaps from the moon. There are huge reserves of

Starting point is 00:23:09 helium-3 on the moon, which we hopefully will one day use to obtain fusion power, which is a solution. And perhaps the only a real, durable, permanent solution to humankind's problems we have with obtaining energy in an ecologically sound and sustainable way. Thank you, Milan.

Starting point is 00:23:37 Now, to come back to you, Martin, with, I think, a follow-up question building on Milan's arguments so far in this debate, why isn't there a kind of risk mitigation strategy here regarding space colonization. You like Milan or somebody who's been thinking a lot in trying to get humanity to think more about existential risk. Why doesn't it just as a matter of a prudence and precaution makes sense to try to take one of our eggs out of this so-called basket earth and put that germ of humanity,

Starting point is 00:24:13 all of the knowledge, experience, everything that makes us unique as a species, Somewhere else, outside of this one fragile biosphere that we know as Mother Earth. I agree that we can make use of space to export heavy industry and perhaps to have a few people living away from the Earth has a sort of insurance policy against the worst possible things that can happen to the Earth. But so long as we remain as humans with the same physiology, and the same attitudes. I don't think any of these habitats is going to be as attractive as living on the Earth. People don't want to live at the South Pole. They won't want to live in a colony on Mars. I don't think they'd want to live in one of these massive space colonies, which Bezos and O'Neill have been visaged.

Starting point is 00:25:11 So I think the Earth is the favoured habitat, and people will not want to live in large numbers in these other places. And that's why I do think that it is going to be the post-humans who do this colonization. But to turn again to timescales, I think that post-humans may exist within one millennium by genetic modification and a few generations. And it would take longer than that to terraform Mars and to build these vast colonies in space. So I think humanity will have changed on a shorter time scale than Billy, these large engineering constructions elsewhere in the solar system. And of course, if you can have those big changes in a thousand years, then think of what could happen in a thousand million.

Starting point is 00:26:03 Indeed, we can't envisages at all. So we have no idea whatever of what things will be like in the far future. Yeah, thank you, Martin. So this brings up a good question, Milan, which is terraforming Mars or setting up a sustainable, human habitation on the moon just seem to be challenges of an order so much greater than the rather urgent challenge we face right now of stabilizing our own biosphere, of dealing with the effects of runaway climate change. I mean, both as a problem to solve and in terms of the opportunity costs, why isn't it just unfortunately kind of a realization that we've kind of broken this planet, we have potentially the tools to fix it, that has to be job one.

Starting point is 00:26:56 And until we've done that, trying these, you know, Herculean tasks of bringing permanent human habitation to extraterrestrial bodies be on our own, it seems foolhardy and maybe it seems almost a bit negligent or a bit out of touch in terms of the real challenges that we face as a species right now on this planet? Well, I do think that these tasks are mutually entangled and actually that you cannot really have one without another, even if you can somehow mask one so that it seems that you are not caring about the other. The most important source of our problems is the what can be called purpose.

Starting point is 00:27:46 permanent energy crisis. If we wish to resolve humanity's energy consumption once for all, we need to go to nuclear fusion, controlled thermonuclear fusion, which is an idea which has been pursued for like five, six decades by now. And ETER, which is the most advanced research facility ever created by humans, is nowadays they are just finishing it in

Starting point is 00:28:18 France which will try to recreate this process by which our sun and all other stars in the universe obtain their energy and one of the most promising fuels for fusion reactors is

Starting point is 00:28:35 as I mentioned helium 3 which cannot be found in any appreciable quality on Earth but is rather widespread in our cosmic environment. So with other things, we are now exerting industrial pressure on ecosystems exactly because of the fact that our resources on Earth

Starting point is 00:28:58 are by definition limited. Jared Diamond wrote this wonderful book, collapse, which argues and shows exactly explains why cultures of the Easter Island, of Mangareva Island or other isolated islands, which were

Starting point is 00:29:20 wonderful cultures, which created impressive monuments, which had impressive culture and cultural achievements, but they collapsed because they were isolated, because they were just limited to resources available

Starting point is 00:29:36 on some small portion of our planet and completely disregarded the rest of the globe. Why is Earth itself any different from a hugely magnified Easter Island? It is not. It is surrounded by other resources, and if we turn blind eye to cosmic resources and to possibilities offered by cosmic resources, then in the end we will end up just like Easter Island, like Pitcairn Island, like Mangareva Island and other isolated civilizations

Starting point is 00:30:15 which collapsed due to basically ecological ecosystem collapsed. And that's the same, this is basically the same drive which probably, although we cannot have any empirical proof of that, which motivated our ancestors to migrate from this small minuscule part of East Africa to cover almost the entire land area of the globe. So Martin is correct that people don't want to live in Antarctica or on Mount Everest. But I wonder whether if we asked our ancestor, that guy who lived in what is present day, Tanzania, like a couple of million years or even like half a million years ago, whether he would like to live in Tibet or in Japan or in, I don't know, Amazon or in Alaska or in Canada, for that matter,

Starting point is 00:31:20 I am not sure that he would be looking forward to that prospect. We think that our tastes, our perspectives, our culture shapes everything, and we think that we are the best representatives of human beings. as a whole, but we are probably not. And so actually people were willing to endure moving to some very unpleasant for them places, in the end, for various reasons, but this is what brought us today where we are. So Martin, Milan brings up this interesting idea now and earlier in this debate, that there's just something about our spirit, our culture, as a, as a, as a,

Starting point is 00:32:03 species. We are driven to explore. So an argument almost of inevitability here. Because we can, we will. So I'm trying to understand, Martin, if your pessimism about the colonization of other worlds, it all has to do with technology, is it more of a cultural argument? Where do you come down in terms of what are going to be the big breaks on what Malin rightly points out is historically, looking back over centuries, a relentless drive towards conquest and exploration that seems to be hardwired kind of into our collective psyche. Well, I think it was true to some extent, but I'd like to first make the point that I think Milan is making too much fuss about the problems of energy, because rather than having

Starting point is 00:32:54 a strip mine the moon and with great difficulty extract the less than one part in a million of helium three, we can surely depend on solar energy. and maybe getting that from space is a good use of space technology with robotic fabricators. But as regards the urge to explore, I certainly agree with that, and I would predict that by the end of a century, there will be a group of intrepid pioneers living on Mars, and we should cheer them on. We should cheer them on, because they will be the precursors of the post-humans. And this is why we are comfortably adapted to the Earth. so we don't want to modify ourselves and there will be, I hope,

Starting point is 00:33:36 regulations on the use of bio and cyborg techniques. Whereas those guys on Mars will be away from the regulators and moreover, since they're ill-adapted to Mars, they have a great incentive to modify themselves. So that's why I quickly think that they will become a different species. And that different species will have mentalities we can't predict even if they're flesh in blood. And of course, if they are near immortal electronic entities, then of course they will perhaps not want to be on a planet at all.

Starting point is 00:34:09 And they won't be daunted by interstellar voyages. So that would be quite different. But I think if we think about entities whose motives we can understand, then I still think that the Earth is the only place where they would prefer to live. And just one other point that we should think that these post-humans in the far future, they will be not evolved by Darwinian selection. They'll be evolving by design, as I said. And whereas Darwinian selection favours intelligence but also aggression, intelligence design may not.

Starting point is 00:34:50 And for that reason, these superhuman brains maybe just living conflict of lives. And this is my answer to the Fermi paradox. They may be out there thinking deep thoughts, having no need to expand and out there. And that may be the very far future for intelligence. But again, that's very different from humans. They won't have human emotions or human attitudes.

Starting point is 00:35:13 And of course, whether they have consciousness and self-awareness in the way that flesh and blood does is an issue which philosophers are still debating. Fascinating. I mean, Malin, do you have any objection to the idea that it isn't humanity, as we know it? I mean, why be hung up on the idea that the civilization that we create beyond our world has to look like the one on our world and that those intelligent entities have to be, in a sense, proximate somehow to our current biology and genetic composition?

Starting point is 00:35:51 I mean, in other words, why does space exploration have to be a human activity? Why isn't Martin right that this is something best left to post-humans to another phase of our existence? I would agree with Martin on that. I don't have any problem with that. The issue is that the only thing is that I don't really regard those post-humans as really, even if they are in some formal sense, separate species, I would still regard them as brothers, if you wish. I still think that we need to adopt morality, which is as inclusive as possible. And I think that we have a whole bunch of ethical arguments actually in favor of that and of space settlement in general.

Starting point is 00:36:42 if one subscribes to a kind of life-centric or even if you wish mind-centric or psychocentric ethics, which actually puts some large and intrinsic moral value on life and mind, that immediately leads one to conclude that we have moral duty to spread life and mind over non-living matter. And I wish to put emphasis on minds exactly because that is what after all was the beginning of astronautics and the beginning of space era with Konstantin Zilkovsky, who famously stated that the earth is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever. So actually, if you feel kind of brotherhood with all minds and in a wider sense with all living creatures, then in that sense you have even ethical and moral duty and ethical incentive to go around and spread life and mind throughout the universe.

Starting point is 00:37:49 So thus enriching the universe in real moral values. So our debate today for listeners joining us, it's been be it resolved to realize humankind's full potential requires settling worlds beyond our own. Let's gentlemen move to closing statements. Martin, this is your opportunity to kind of sum up the key points that you'd like to leave our listeners with and also maybe underline any of the particular disagreements that have surfaced in this debate and your interpretation of them. Thank you very much. I think perhaps the difference in our views is partly that we are thinking about different timescales. I think in the next 50 or 100 years, we may have small communities living away from the earth. under conditions of explorers in the past. But if we think very far ahead and we bear in mind that future evolution is going to be much,

Starting point is 00:38:49 much faster than the evolution that led to us by Darwinian selection and also may not favor aggression, then we've got no idea what it would be like. And although up to a point we should have a fellow feeling with creatures who aren't very like us, It's stretching things a long way to say that an amoeba or slime mold should have a fellow feeling with us. And the time it's going to take these things as different from us as we are from slime mold is going to be less than a four billion years it took us to evolve. Because it will happen on a directed rather than random evolutionary path. So I think we've got to be completely open-minded about what happened. in the far future, I would say beyond a few tens of thousands of years.

Starting point is 00:39:43 But up to that time, I think we've got to cherish our earth as the favoured home for humans unless they are drastically modified by cyborg or genetic technology. And we may benefit by exploiting space for some resources, but that can be done by robots. I don't think humans will ever want to go in large numbers beyond the moon at the furthest. And so I remain earth-oriented so long as I remain a human, although I accept that we are near the beginning than the end of the marvelous process of emerging complexity in the universe. and we shouldn't attempt to second-guess or constrain the ethical views of these far-future species, which will have mental capacities far beyond what we can even conceive. Thank you, Martin. Excellent summing up.

Starting point is 00:40:45 Well, we're going to give you, Milan, the last word in our debate today, be it resolved to realize humankind's full potential requires settling worlds beyond our own. Wrap up this debate for us. Many thanks. I would encourage any of our listeners to take up Martin's book, which is to own the future. I agree that in one sense, space exploration and space settlement will lead us into post-human future, but I don't see anything particularly dangerous, risky or repulsive in it in general. So I tend also to agree with Martin that future non-human intelligence emerging through non-Darvinian evolutionary processes will be rather more benign and less aggressive and less burdened by this evolutionary baggage of our past.

Starting point is 00:41:43 So in one way or another, utilization of space resources, our exploration of space and space settlement in one way or another, it needs. not be a kind of massive movement, massive immigration, mass migration, this is nonsense. It will always be a kind of slow, expanding

Starting point is 00:42:07 process of continuous improvement and continuous self-evolution and self-improvement, which will lead us into post-human era and I do think we should cheer for the post-human era.

Starting point is 00:42:23 Here, here for post-humans. Thank you, Martin Milan, for a terrific far-reaching debate. I feel my mind has been expanded, and I've just learned so much listening to you both. I feel this is the start of an intellectual curiosity for me. So we will have your books and a number of other suggested readings up on our website for this episode of the Monk Debates podcast. And again, on behalf of the Monk Debates membership, Martin Malan, thank you so much for coming on the program. Thank you very much.

Starting point is 00:42:58 Thank you as well. It was a great experience. And I do hope there will be more debates, more discussions on those pressing issues in the near future. While that wraps up today's debate, I want to thank our participants, Milan and Martin, for a fabulous debate. So many interesting ideas to unpack and think about. Again, greatly appreciated on behalf of the last. the monk community. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, send us an email

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The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: To realize humanity’s full potential, requires settling worlds beyond our own

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