Elon Musk's Space Future Is Way Too Conservative
Elon Musk is often lauded or denounced as a technological radical. In reality, his vision of the future is constrained by a surprisingly conservative assumption: that rockets advance, but minds do not (much). To be fair, as a mover and shaker, he is constrained by the edge of today's state of the art.
Most discussions of our future interstellar civilisation imagine propulsion technologies centuries beyond our own - while the travellers remain recognisably human. But the human brain is a somewhat tractable research problem located right here. Intra-galactic propulsions technologies seem somehow... harder.
One problem can be attacked directly in thousands of laboratories. The other requires mastering distances that are beyond our most elaborate technological dreams. In truth, the decisive breakthrough will not be humanity travelling to the stars; it will be neuroscience making that entire picture obsolete.
Neuroscience will win.
Long before human beings could contemplate founding a mature pan-galactic civilisation, they will understand enough about minds to modify cognition, redesign the traveller and create forms of conscious experience that no longer couple tightly to the current release of the human body.
Most people will never want to or need to leave the Earth. Once sufficiently detailed observation can be combined with completely immersive simulation, the distinction between visiting a distant world and experiencing it becomes an issue only of interest to philosophers.
The galaxy in its surveyed entirety will come here as information. Plenty of Jupiter and Mercury analogues to wonder at; lots of stars.
Boredom thresholds will prove to be low.
The entities that do physically expand into the galaxy will not be baseline humans. Rather, engineered entities adapted to environments and modes of existence very different from Earth savanna variants. Probably someone will think it worth the bother.
Elon Musk imagines humanity spreading through the galaxy. Actually, humanity stays largely where it is: our diverse successor species will spread outward - to our half-interested, muted applause.
Good to see some pan Galactic planning in this blog item!
ReplyDeleteI am not exactly sure what Musk would mean by "humanity" as he is part of the Silicon Valley group proposing various neurolinks as part of (a subset) of the future. So indeed later releases of that approach might - if it works at all - be a prerequisite for joining the Galactic Explorer unit.
"Completely immersive simulation" reminds of Zuck's Metaverse which may be cancelled or downgraded now. Maybe a future entrepreneur will get back to that for the immobile masses entertainment. Note that if Relativity still holds they won't actually be exploring those planets, as the histories will diverge.
We could do a super high fidelity Mars Experience simulator right now, or you could visit the Atacama desert, which has better gravity and air. Somehow these seem to be niche interests. The Galaxy is incredibly boring for the general tourist.
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