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Comment by Nadya | Hacker News Reader

A sufficiently sized meteor could wipe out all life on Earth as we know it - or play "Pick your end of days scenario" between WW3, superviruses, or whatever. Having a few backup humans on the Moon or Mars is more beneficial to the survival of the human race than curing cancer is. Curing cancer saves individuals - establishing an off-Earth colony of humans could save all of humanity. Are the chances of a mass extinction of humans slim-to-none? Yes, but currently all of our eggs exist in a single basket: Earth.

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Unfortunately, super plagues still have a chance to propagate and Mars (even more so Moon) still can be bombed in the course of WW3.

That is assuming the colony actually is reasonably self sustainable, which is quite a high bar.

The chances are arguably smaller though - which is the point of having more than 1 basket to store your eggs in.

It could not save "all of humanity". Humanity would be down there on Earth dying. In the end who you would save would again be individuals -- a few people on the moon. The question is could you save more people in space in a hypothetical end of world scenario than you could people on Earth dying in a very real scenario today.

I refuse to argue against pedantry. You knew exactly what I meant by saying "all of humanity". 0 humans alive after mass extinction on Earth = humans are extinct, humanity has ended vs 100 humans living in a space colony after mass extinction on Earth = humans are not extinct, humanity has been saved.

>The question is could you save more people in space in a hypothetical end of world scenario than you could people on Earth dying in a very real scenario today.

There is no certainty of an end-of-world scenario but there's also no certainty that a cure for cancer actually exists or would be found. There is reason to believe and enough supporting evidence that a space colony would be theoretically possible - even if not self-sustaining for quite some time. So the question is a very real fix to a theoretical problem vs a theoretical fix to a very real problem.

You argued that on one hand we could save individuals with cancer, and on the other we could save all of humanity. Only that doesn't include the individual with cancer, or anybody else on Earth! I knew exactly what you meant which is that a non-zero number of humans would be alive, but to me that doesn't live up to the grandiose idea of saving humanity.

I don't want to divert money from cancer and presumably other medical research as well, so that the last N humans can live in a space capsule. Mortality rates for cancer have been on the decline for decades, so the issue is not theoretical.

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