I’m trying to find out how short-term or long-term your thinking is. Moving to Mars seems very fragile, depending on constant input from planet earth. The challenges of moving to another star system where you could have a self-sustaining life are immense. Neither option is available in your lifetime. I think quantitative estimates of the survival of sapience on earth are pretty much useless—the uncertainties of individual estimates are way too high. As a young man in 1981 I debated moving from the US to Australia as a hedge against nuclear war, a much more modest proposition. I decided not to, partly because I could be a more effective activist against nuclear war in a superpower that was my native culture. So if you go down this path, you could think of your utility in terms of preventing the destruction of sapience on earth.
I’m trying to find out how short-term or long-term your thinking is. Moving to Mars seems very fragile, depending on constant input from planet earth. The challenges of moving to another star system where you could have a self-sustaining life are immense. Neither option is available in your lifetime. I think quantitative estimates of the survival of sapience on earth are pretty much useless—the uncertainties of individual estimates are way too high. As a young man in 1981 I debated moving from the US to Australia as a hedge against nuclear war, a much more modest proposition. I decided not to, partly because I could be a more effective activist against nuclear war in a superpower that was my native culture. So if you go down this path, you could think of your utility in terms of preventing the destruction of sapience on earth.