12-03, 15:00–15:20 (Europe/Luxembourg), Banquet Room
Background
Directed panspermia involves the deliberate spread of life between planets by intelligent actors. While it was originally proposed to explain the origins of life on Earth, recent advancements in space and bio-technology suggest that humans could soon attempt this over interstellar distances – and perhaps even succeed.
Objective
Analysing the ethical impact of humans undertaking directed panspermia.
Methods
Analytic philosophy and evolutionary biology. The paper uses two of the most opposing ethical views to bracket the field of ethical theories.
Results
Panspermia is different from deliberate settlement in that humans cannot directly intervene once it is underway. Biocentric ethical theories support attempting this project to secure life’s continued existence and increase its cosmic abundance. However, given its vast effects and irreversibility, directed panspermia also carries serious moral risks: if what matters is protecting and promoting the welfare of sentient beings, then attempting this project could create astronomical levels of suffering in the long-term future.
Conclusions
Taking into account normative uncertainty, the cost of waiting, and the "unilateralist curse", we argue that both views can agree on a temporary moratorium on directed panspermia.
Dr. Anders Sandberg is a researcher at the Mimir Centre for Long Term Futures at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm. His research at the centers on management of low-probability high-impact risks, societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement, estimating the capabilities of future technologies, uncertainty, and very long-range futures. Topics of particular interest include global catastrophic risk, existential risk, cognitive enhancement, methods of forecasting, neuroethics, SETI, transhumanism, and future-oriented public policy.
He was senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford 2006-2024. He is research associate of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and the Center for the Study of Bioethics (Belgrade). He is on the board of the non-profits ALLFED and AI Objectives Institute. He is on the advisory boards of a number of organizations and often debates science and ethics in international media.
Anders has a background in computer science, neuroscience and medical engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, Sweden, for work on neural network modelling of human memory.
