RE: We can dare to dream of the stars again, if only we can achieve this small thing.
May 17, 2012 at 1:50 pm
(This post was last modified: May 17, 2012 at 1:55 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(May 17, 2012 at 1:42 pm)Annik Wrote: Generation ships are not only for survival, but for exploration. It would be a totally different situation if we had no planet to return to. If we do, generation ships are insanely unethical. What are we if not the sum of our choices? Being born on a ship to continue a mission, just as Hovik said, is a vast limitation of personal choice, which is why it's unethical.
I don't think it unethical at all. We do all sorts of things everyday to limit the personal choices of our descendants. For example, your choice of whom to marry, where to live, how many offspring to sire, what career to pursue, all have serious implications on the range of choices available to your descendants. We simply make a caprious choice to allow ourselfs the right to limit the choices of offspring in ways that we've by historic contingency become comfortable with, and troop out the spurious argument about the ethics when essentially the same thing appear in a different format that again, by historic contingence, we have not yet become comfortable with.
To add to this, the distinction between survival and exploration is again a complete arbitrary one. Survival through generation ships require prior exploration and experimentation. If there were no sound prior exploraiton, the chance of success through generation ships is corresponsiding greatly reduced. So if generation ship is ethical when survival is at stake, then generation ship is ethical when exploration contributing to the later success of generation ships is at stake.
