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Comment by mistagiggles | Hacker News Reader

Very interesting, but this raises a point in my mind. If a colonisation trip takes several generations to reach its destination, would the human rights of the descendants of the original travellers be infringed?

They would be conceived, born, live out their lives and die without ever living anywhere but the ship (unless they are part of a generation lucky enough to reach the destination), and they would have no choice in the matter.

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If a couple joins a colonization movement and moves to the middle of nowhere, with limited chance to survive (make your time) outside the colony, in a land occupied by dangerous animals and savage heathens - say, New England in the early 1600s - would you consider the human rights of their children and grandchildren to be infringed? Isn't the difference just a matter of degree?

(n.b. actual savageness of heathens is left as an exercise to the risk-averse potential colonist)

I think our understanding of human rights has evolved since the 1600s. This is a very interesting ethical question.

At the level of technological sophistication required to send a probe to another star system, you could probably sequence/modify the genome of the eggs/sperm to produce humans that have a lust for exploration and pioneering.

Now it's just a question of whether genome modification is ethical.

Not quite: the 20 generations that are born and die on the ship don't get to explore anything. You'd want people content to live in a crowded can.

In a related point - what would the cultural mindset of the final descendants become, both individually and collectively?

They would have no shared experiences with those who first set off.

Ideals could be passed down, but with cultural evolution through the generations, would their priorities or preferences even be remotely similar?

Many science fiction stories written about this. The most popular theme is the breakdown of civilization and an ignorant crowd of savages set down on the destination world. Other authors have them undergoing violent revolution a dozen times over the centuries, recapitulating human history. The resulting world is populated by whatever form of government is extant at the time of arrival. Still others imagine them passing serenely by the destination, no longer interested in their progenitors plans and seeing no other future for themselves than perpetual ship-board life.

I would think it would be similar to living during war times, in terms of restriction. I'd also imagine that the kids would not really know better if they haven't tried anything else.

> I'd also imagine that the kids would not really know better if they haven't tried anything else.

An abused child may consider abuse perfectly normal and even miss it if it ceases, but that does not make abuse tolerable.

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