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Comment by im3w1l | Hacker News Reader

There is a pretty significant chance that ours will be a starfaring civilization and that our children will reshape the very heavens.

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Very doubtful when you really dig into what is involved. We probably will never make it out of the solar system. To another star is a pipe dream. We will wreck our planet soon enough and the likely outcome is our species will go extinct. This will probably happen in the next few thousand years or sooner.

I think the planet will do just fine without us but we will likely hit one of many great filters long before we colonize anything outside of Earth. The list of dumb things we do as a civilization are too long to list on HN. I am honestly very surprised we still exist and can still reproduce.

This is my position as well - people say we need to do things for the planet. Planet will be just fine - it's us who will suffer and honestly it's for the best. Just end this shit

Even if you colonize the entire solar system or even the entire galaxy, you will still be insignificant in terms of the universe. Also there is a pretty significant chance we destroy ourselves before any of that happens.

If by "children" you mean self-replicating viral robot swarms, then maybe. Nothing biologically descended from humans will ever leave the heliosphere in any form that could be considered living.

I suppose zero is a pretty significant number.

Without new physics that isn’t even remotely visible on the horizon and that utterly contradicts most of what we believe to be true, this isn’t going to happen. Robotic AI probes sent to other star systems to send back telemetry? Sure, fine. Flesh bags sent to self-replicate on terraformed worlds out in the stars? Not a whisper of a microscopic chance.

If you can sent probes to other star systems, you can include with it information of the DNA of life forms and a device to create terran life.

It takes far more than DNA to recreate a human.

important part: "and a device to create terran life".

@WalterBright, I've always preferred the idea that to explore the stars the only chance we have at doing so is by bio-growing humans (cloned?), and somehow uploading and downloading a current humans consciousness into the form.

basically 'seeding the universe' since we would just start sending little seeds of human life everywhere. :-)

> "and a device to create terran life“

… and all the devices and nutrition necessary to sustain that Terran life until it can become self sufficient—without the help of preexisting humans to teach them or impart physical skills—on a rock with either no life, inhospitable life, or nutritionally incompatible life.

You might as well call that device a magic wand.

> magic wand

With today's technology, sure.

I never thought I'd live to see AI. But here it is.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Clarke

Any sufficiently advanced imaginary technology is capable of performing anything you feel like imagining. That doesn’t make it plausible or convincing.

None of my proposal violates any laws of physics.

You’re forgetting food. And supplies, information, and know-how to get these lab-grown terrans to be capable of survival on a completely foreign celestial body that lacks soil, vegetable, or animal life.

And for what? What do we actually accomplish after pouring vast resources into the dystopian science project of bootstrapping a society of a handful of permanently isolated terrans on a planet we weren’t evolved to survive on light years away?

There’s zero hope of meaningful trade or exploitation of resources. Who is going to light the money on fire to make this happen and why?

This is fantasy material, not reality.

> There’s zero hope of meaningful trade or exploitation of resources

Probably correct, but the transmission of information can be very valuable.

BTW, you'll never know what the lives of your grandchildren will be like. But you make children anyway.

Our kids can't change a tire.

Oh come on man. That's just because they know we should be hovering by now ;)

My ex wife's parents couldn't change a tire. I had to do it for them, once.

Boomer moment. That's your fault for not teaching them.

You're off a generation. The boomer's kids have kids.

The boomers have great grand kids, so off by two generations.

My kid is in drivers ed, and part of the curriculum is changing a tire with a parent (class is mostly on zoom).

I don't know how many of the kids are going to retain the knowledge.

That said, what good is changing a tire, when there's no tire to change.

Sounds fine to me. Why would you need tires in interstellar space?

Okay Boomer

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