July 11, 2008


Discovering Life on Mars: Bad News?

Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University thinks so:

Discovering traces of life on Mars would be of tremendous scientific significance: the first sign of extraterrestrial life ever detected. Many people would also find it heartening to learn that we’re not entirely alone in this vast, cold cosmos.

They shouldn’t. To the contrary, if we discovered traces of some simple extinct life form – a bacterium, some algae – it would be bad news. If we found fossils of something even more advanced, like the skeleton of a small mammal, it would be horrible news. The more complex the life we found, the more depressing. Scientifically interesting, yes, but dire news for the future of the human race.

Here’s the basic argument:  There is a conspicuous silence “out there,” and this suggests that there is a “Great Filter” (Robin Hanson’s term and idea). This means that the filter may lie in our past (as a highly improbable step in the early development of life) or in our future (as a highly improbable leap needed for a civilization to populate the galaxy and survive extinction. Bostrom’s argument holds that finding evidence of even simple life on Mars would tend to place the GF in out future. And, as he also points out, there may be filters in our past and future.

I have to say that I would still be excited and pleased to hear that life–simple or complex–is or was present on Mars. If we decide to see everything in terms of our potential survival as a species, who needs the threat of a Filter to see our prospects as slim? In many ways I think we have the most to fear from our own egos–our sense of dominion over a galaxy we can’t even reach. News of other life elsewhere may itself be a step that leads to just the sort of curiosity we need to get through the next Great Filter.

posted by Daryl Scroggins in anthropology, astronomy, consciousness, general, humans, intelligence, science, space, technology, the world come of age, wisdom 

comments

2 Responses to “Discovering Life on Mars: Bad News?”

  1. Mike D. on July 12th, 2008 at 9:30 am

    Well put, Darryl. Seems like this would only be “terrible news” to the handful of futurists who see it as our Darwin-given destiny (surely not god) to conquer the galaxy with faster-than-light travel and OMG lasers. I like the pictures of the plants in y’all’s backyards; I’m happy to spend my threescore and ten on this rock, with the folks around me, and leave be those other twinkling lights in the heavens.

  2. Deron Bauman on July 12th, 2008 at 10:06 am

    I’ll second that. I’d be joyed to see signs of life elsewhere, whatever the implications.

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