Open Letter Against Reckless Nuclear Escalation and Use
There’s been ample interest in the probability that the Ukraine conflict escalates into a nuclear way, ranging from predictions on Metaculus, Manifold and Polymarket to estimates by David Orr, myself and others. Aside from estimating this probability, what can we do to reduce it?
Current discourse is often framed as if there were only two options:
Be forceful
Deescalate by appeasement, effectively capitulating to nuclear blackmail
This is misleading, because there’s more than one way to stand strong (including going on the offense militarily): (a) pursuing or (b) eschewing escalation that has negligible military value. Suppose a bully punches you. If you choose to stand strong, I’d encourage you not to combine it with spitting in his face, poking fun of his appearance and goading him to pull out that gun you see he has holstered. Unfortunately, the Ukraine conflict has seen many instances of analogous escalation without significant military benefit, and arguably not only from one side. Stigmatizing such reckless behavior can in my opinion reduce the risk of nuclear war without any appeasement or concessions. I’m therefore inviting you to join me and many others as a signatory on an open letter that aims both to de-normalize nuclear threats and to re-mainstream non-appeasing de-escalation strategies that reduce the risk of nuclear war without giving into blackmail.
Would you like to join as a signatory? This would be wonderful, because it would help reduce the probability of the greatest catastrophe in human history. To read and potentially sign the open letter, please click here.
There have been “Nuclear first-use and threats or advocacy thereof” and those are easy to condemn. But as far as I know they are coming unilaterally from the Russian side and already being widely condemned by those not on the Russian side. But it sounds like you are looking for some broader consensus to condemn escalation on both sides.
Unfortunately neither this post nor the open letter you linked give any specifics about what other behaviours you are asking us to condemn. I’m reluctant to risk endorsing a false-equivalence argument by signing a blank check.
Is blowing up the Kerch bridge escalatory? Is Arestovich trolling the occupiers to sap their morale and bolster the morale of the defenders escalatory? I’m not qualified to determine whether the tactical or psychological benefit is justified by the escalatory risk of these sorts of actions and in the Kerch example, we don’t even know if it was done by the Ukrainian government, provocateurs, or sympathizers acting independently.
I agree that it’s not a binary choice between appeasement and escalation, and I am very curious about the non-appeasing de-escalation strategies you allude to. That’s what we should be brainstorming and what you should lead with in your letter for it to be convincing.
I agree that specifics would be useful. It’s bad to be too vague to be wrong. The more vague an open letter happens to be the easier it is to ignore it.
As it stands the effects of the letter likely don’t go beyond signaling because in the abstract anyone can agree with it, but that’s not going to change anyone’s actions.
When it comes to nuclear first use, the US does threaten Iran with a nuclear first strike by saying:
Nuclear first strikes capability is one element of US national power. As far as I know, past attempts to get the US to explicitely rule out using a nuclear first strike against Iran and North Korea always failed.
If you actually want the US to stop making nuclear first strike threats, being explicit about the threads against Iran not being okay would be taking a stance. You would likely get some opposition for taking the stance, but at least it’s something concrete.
When it comes to “reckless escalation” I find it likely that neither the US nor Ukraine would say they engage in reckless escalation. If you want them to change what they are doing you likely need to be more concrete.
Unfortunately no one from Russia has signed so far.
I signed it.
Pacifism is really not in trend. Both sides of the conflict are convinced that they are absolute right: paranoid Russia, and a defensive Ukraine.
Public pacifism is in the minority. Almost everyone has taken one side, or is silent and seeks safety.
For an individual Ukrainian or Russian, it might be danger to sign this.
Like in ancient Roman Empire. People are either for Blue chariots or for Green ones. No one is interested in the opinion that death races are nonsense.
Anyway. It’s irrational, but I signed
Are there any links we can read about non-appeasing de-escalation strategies?
Either theoretical ones or ones that have been tried in the past are fine.
If you’re sure you’ll win, why not? Draw him out and knock him down, with as much force as the actions you’ve led him into will plainly justify to the witnesses.
I’m wondering why not just call for mutual disarmament under IAEA supervision? There’s an old, but now very relevant episode of 80000 hours with Daniel Ellsberg;
https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/daniel-ellsberg-doomsday-machines/
I didn’t keep the time stamps, but he gets in to the approximate number of warheads a state should need as a deterrent, and says it’s probably not more than 100.
Luisa Rodriguez has an excellent post on the EA forum with fairly current estimates of the downstream effects of a nuclear exchange between US and Russia with the 2019 arsenal. She estimates a US-Russian nuclear exchange would result in a 5.1 to 58 Tg of schmutz entering the atmosphere, best guess is 31 Tg. (A NATO-Russia exchange would likey be more since would also involve France and the UK.)
31 Tg would put us in a “nuclear autum” but would be very close to a nuclear winter, just another couple Tg from a full NATO-Russia exchange would likely put us on the winter part of the sigmoid curve. (LW isn’t letting post images in the comment like it usually does, but relevant graphs are in the paper).
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pMsnCieusmYqGW26W/how-bad-would-nuclear-winter-caused-by-a-us-russia-nuclear#December_19__2019_Update
Taking Statista’s numbers and assuming the megatons about average out
Russia (5,977), USA (5,428), China (350), France (290), United Kingdom (225), Pakistan (165), India (160), Israel (90), North Korea (20).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/264435/number-of-nuclear-warheads-worldwide/
Let’s say we capped everyone at 100, there’s less than 900 warheads in the world, we’re well under nuclear winter if the exchange is between two states. Even if the US and Russia just come down to 350 for parity with China, we’ve still substantially reduced the risk.
The ultimate recklessness I see here is that we haven’t discussed mutual nuclear disarmament in earnest as part of this war. When are we going to have a better opportunity? And if Putin is asked and he does anything other than enthusiastically agree, doesn’t that tell us everything we need to know?
Can you give at least one example?
I have read this letter with pleasure. Pacifism in wartime is an extremely difficult position.
Survival rationality, humanity is extremely important!
It seems to me that the problem is very clearly revealed through compound percent (interest).
If in a particular year the probability of a catastrophe (man-made, biological, space, etc.) overall is 2%, then the probability of human survival in the next 100 years is 0.98 ^ 100 = 0.132,
That is 13.2%, this figure depresses me.
The ideas of unity and security are the only ones that are inside the discourse of red systems. Therefore, the ideas of security may well fundamentally hold together any parties. I think the idea of human survival is a priority.
Because it is clear to everyone that the preservation of humanity and rationals is extremely important, regardless of the specific picture of the world.
world peace!
If we take 1000 and 10000 years, then the result is unambiguous, survival tends to 0.
Therefore, I would like not to miss the chances that humanity can get through Artificial Intelligence or through Decentralized Blockchain Evolution, or quantum computing, or other positive black swans. We really need a qualitative breakthrough in the field of decentralized balancing of all systems.
Nevertheless, 86% of this game is almost lost by humanity
As we can see, the chances are small. Therefore, future generations of intelligent species will probably be happy if there are some convenient manuals for deciphering human knowledge.
What does the map of the arks look like? Can you imagine how happy it will be for a rational chimpanzee to hold your manual and flip through the pages of distant ancestors?
And to be amazed at how such an aggressive subspecies, thanks to aggression, intelligence developed faster and they defeated themself.
It is unlikely that they will have English. Language is a very flexible thing.
Probably the basis should be that basic development of Feynman and Carl Sagan, I’m talking about a satellite with the decoding of humanity, from “H”. I think on Earth you can pick up points for such arks.
Due to the variety of risks, it seems to me that intelligent life will logically arise again under water, especially due to the fact that there are internal energy sources. Are there scientific arks for dolphins?
world peace! Respect for each other. We need great leap in another Integrity and Sustainability Ecosystem Equilibrium. A common understanding that this is the last century for mankind when it can overcome its natural aggression. Well, do not forget about the heritage of the following species.
peace to you! , I would be glad if you tell me where I’m right and where I’m wrong! Kind Regards!
We need to openly collaborate to save planet Earth.
Fun fact: the russia placed nuclear weapons in Belarus and 0 f**ks given by signers of this letter 😸
So far or ever? I suppose you mean that, if it happened, it would then become the worst thing that had happened so far. That’s not an unreasonable position, but maybe what happened in 10,000 BC on this graph of quality-of-life was worse:
(This is an image from the Cold Takes blog post “Did life get better during the pre-industrial era? (Ehhhh)”.)
Also, don’t forget that even if it is worse, it would only be the worst thing to happen in human history so far! If MAD-style nuclear escalation does not lead to extinction (which I don’t believe it would), then there’s always the potential for far worse things later.
I’m curious, about what you makes you decide, that this is the place to discuss whether or not a nuclear war would be a smaller or bigger catastrophe than the invention of agriculture?
The sentence sticks out to me as not clearly true; and it seems like an important sentence.
Saying it’s an important sentence implies to me like changing it to less extreme wording would change whether or not one is supposed to support the letter.
It’s hard for me to understand how someone might think it’s important in that sense.
No, I mean important for one’s world-model.
Similarly, suppose someone said that Apple is the most valuable company in history (current market cap of 2.14T), I would ask whether they knew about the East India Company that was so big it had its own armed forces of about 260,000 soldiers. They imply a bunch of different things about the shape of history. As does the claim about whether the worst catastrophe ever in history would be an all-out nuclear war, or whether something worse has happened.
I indeed meant only “worst so far”, in the sense that it would probably kill more people than any previous disaster.
Russia escalates “nuclear threat” 2 times per week in their public TV per their neighborhood countries. How this letter encourages stopping their madness ?
I am not sure if I should condemn the sabotage of Nord Stream. Selling gas is a major source of income for Russia, and its income is used to sponsor the war. And I’m not sure if it’s really an escalation, because it’s effect is similar to economic sanctions.
Putin will lose, do not fail to comprehend this. It’s a question of physical-material resources of a tech-weapon superiority, sub-nuclear variety. The West has scared Putin from utilizing a tactical nuke, at present. The writing is on the wall: WWIII comes from China over Taiwan not Putin via Crimea. Do you think Zelenskyy will relinquish portions of Ukraine he is currently winning back via accurate/precise/munition resources Western provided? No. Xi fails to realize Taiwan was never a part of China but he’s too entrenched to manifest otherwise. Regardless, nuclear winter is demonstrably undesirable and I concur in a feeble manner befitting a passive bystander sympathetic to those oppressed via authoritarian regimes. God bless y’all! :-)
The West didn’t really scare Putin from using a tactical nuke. The response is more like “So what? We’ll just give Ukraine more weapons. Good luck with your relationship with India and China.”
The problem with using a tactical nuke is that it wouldn’t help Putin to win the war. He would actually need to deploy bigger nukes to have a significant effect on the battlefield.
You underrate the impact of Western satellites on Ukraine’s successes. While it isn’t easy to recall weapons the West provided, we can easily stop the satellite support.
Ukraine also can’t pay its military without Western support. Zelensky is dependent on Western support so the West can essentially decide what war goals Ukraine can achieve.
As much as I would like to agree with this (since that would mean the existence of a far smaller upper bound to the worst that humanity could ever do), it is scientifically objectively false. The true, also very urgent, and by any mundane solely earth crust matters related entirely unchallenged, uniquely highest threat that humanity will ever encounter is that humanity ends up (in whatever manner, intentional or by accident) kick-starting evolution(s) of life on other celestial bodies, especially if that happens to cascade further and further by natural means such as litho-panspermia or in combination of ice moon geysers spewing material out to space from where it can be caught & carried by space rocks.
For humanity to try to spread physical space exploration across the universe were to be among the very most macro-criminal worst unethical courses of humanity’s trajectory that it could at all possibly take, and—especially after having by now sent e-mails to almost 5.000 worldwide institutions and professors within the last half year to emphatically warn them about this impending danger—I’m baffled how ethics-detached scientists still dare to even advocate or advertise and support such astronomically gargantuan, massive crimes worse than all crimes from humanity’s past together, but it is worthy of condemnation and absolutely ought to stop as soon as possible, and here is 1 among many reasons for why:
It is rather irrelevant if we could ever colonize other stars(′ exoplanets), because humanity—like any civilization in this universe—has the utmost important macro-ethical imperative to safely make sure to never even try to do so.
1. Axiom: The ethical importance of an issue or decision axiomatically is proportional to the difference in generated well-being depending on it. Or in other words (using proxies to the definition), the ethical importance of a decision increases alongside the number of by it affected sentient lifeforms, the time duration during which they are affected by it, and the vastness of the affected space to the extent to which changes of it affect the lifeforms.
2. Extremal case: By the standard that is set in the above statement, according to the current body of humanity’s knowledge, general forms of evolution of life (if on earth or on other habitable celestial bodies) forever constitute the most ethically important issue to exist in the universe: With billions of species—each with innumerable individual lifeforms—together with durations on the scale of billions of years, and spacial extension of at least a whole planet, it dwarfs any other conceivable ethical issue’s level of importance.
3. Valuation Axiom for the extremal case: According to many scientific studies, such as by Richard Dawkins, Brian Tomasik, Alejandro Villamor Iglesias, Oscar Horta, pain and suffering dominates over joy for animal wildlife in general forms of Darwinian evolution of life due to the global, near eternal war-like situation commonly framed as survival of the fittest (rather than the demise of all unfit), and therefore—when accumulated across all logically entangled parameters such as duration and count of involved individuals—instances of such forms of evolution of life has to be kept at a minimum in the universe, as there never was and never will be anything that could be more important, to change the conclusion of this Anti-Panspermia-implying directive. To cite sources from Wikipedia on this matter: “Wild animal suffering is the suffering experienced by nonhuman animals living outside of direct human control, due to harms such as disease, injury, parasitism, starvation and malnutrition, dehydration, weather conditions, natural disasters, and killings by other animals,[1][2] as well as psychological stress.[3] Some estimates indicate that these individual animals make up the vast majority of animals in existence.[4] An extensive amount of natural suffering has been described as an unavoidable consequence of Darwinian evolution[5] and the pervasiveness of reproductive strategies which favor producing large numbers of offspring, with a low amount of parental care and of which only a small number survive to adulthood, the rest dying in painful ways, has led some to argue that suffering dominates happiness in nature.”
1. Special Cosmos Ethics Theorem: Exoplanet-Wildlife-Development-Control-dependent Anti-Panspermia Directive for Humanity
The current state of the art of scientific evidence and ethics without exception imperatively demands that humanity does NOT engage in outer space activities of kinds that could even just infinitesimally likely risk introducing life to for any kind of lifeforms habitable worlds, for at least as long as humanity’s practical capability of controlling the up to astronomically vast consequences of interstellar space projects doesn’t sufficiently improve in a for interstellar space endeavors safety guaranteeing, critical manner.
Proof (by contradiction):
This conclusion deductively follows from the concerningly plausible, by many scientific studies supported, Axiom that general animal wildlife—not only as it has been throughout evolution on earth, but on a more general level that would apply to exoplanet life of our biological kind, too—for the vast majority of it is dominated by pain and suffering rather than joy (reference: Center for Long-Term Risk).
Assume the existence of a counter-example:
It could be argued that IF overall worthwhile to exist life on a larger scale were to rely on previous evolutionary animal wildlife’s existence and that the former were to safely come from the latter, that THEN it could possibly be better for evolutionary animal wildlife to come into existence than not.
Proof (by Ethical Dominance Principle) of the impossibility of the existence of counter-examples:
However, given that aforementioned, dominant wildlife animal pain and suffering in its amount and hence importance and priority for macro-scale decision-making increases by the duration throughout which such a miserable, in itself unwantable state persists, and that in the case of general forms of evolution of life, we have to expect that it can last for extraordinary long times of what essentially is involuntary, if avoidable unnecessary torture by the banal means of nature’s own ruthlessness, namely that it can last for billions of years, and furthermore that these time-spans are unavoidable if it shall lead to intelligent species, we can therefore conclude that the severity of this issue dominates every other to this date conceivable, plausible ethical issue, since all other ethical issues absolutely pale in comparison to the magnitudes of magnitudes by which this central ethical issue overshadows them all, in such a uniquely outstanding way that risking billion years full of suffering for thousands of individuals of at any time billions of wildlife exoplanet animals each can for nothing in the world be a by any standards reasonable sacrifice to make.
Therefore, by humanity’s current full body of knowledge, what happens to wildlife animals part of any actual, prospective, or potentially risked to exist instances of evolution of life constitutes the single most dominating, for ethical macro-scale decision-making behavior sole determinant factor of consideration.
Corollary 1.1: Time-Global Anti-Panspermia Directive for Humanity
If humanity is never able or can never be able to safely control exoplanet wildlife’s entire development for the purpose of guaranteeing its & all by its own activities potentially emerging foreign exoplanet wildlife’s pain-less flourishing, for any exoplanet wildlife risked to emerge or exist as consequence of humanity’s outer space activities, then it follows that humanity shall NEVER engage in activities that risk causing such.
2. Central Cosmos Ethics Theorem: General Anti-Panspermia Prime Directive
If the result of wildlife well-being evaluations of enough and sufficiently in time extended initial or lasting portions of expected or prospective cases of evolution of life is generally among all other ethically relevant factors the dominant ethical concern, and if furthermore a large enough unavoidable negative expected wildlife well-being has to be assumed of sufficiently common forms of expected or prospective cases of evolution of life, then imperative necessity of complete prevention of all preventable forms of contamination or panspermia follows.
Corollary 2.1: Anti-Panspermia Directive on local Star System Contamination
Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking contamination of a celestial body within the local star system with (not necessarily extremophile) micro-organisms is to be prevented. This includes causing the emergence and spread of micro-organisms on a celestial body of the local star system, potentially followed by eventual interstellar transportation of by it emerging (extremophile) micro-organisms on the celestial body via natural panspermia, such as meteorites entering such celestial body’s atmosphere to pick the organisms up and continue towards interstellar space via sling-shot.
Corollary 2.2: Anti-Panspermia Directive on Space-Faring
Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking space-faring activities are to be prevented. This includes not only space probes, satellites, solar sails, and light sails but also von-Neumann-Probes (self-replicating Spacecraft), (replicating) seeder ships, and space-faring of individuals where the Anti-Panspermia abiding behavior of them and later generations after them cannot be ensured.
Corollary 2.3: Natural Anti-Panspermia Directive
Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking, preventable natural litho-panspermia processes are to be prevented. This includes (extremophile) micro-organism transportation methods via space dust, meteorites, asteroids, comets, planetoids, planets, and debris ejected into space upon celestial body collisions.
Corollary 2.4: Anti-Panspermia Directive on Mega-Structures
Any construction of a mega-structure that at least infinitesimally—due to literally far reaching psychological influences—risks contamination or panspermia being risked or pursued via outer space activities from any other—for the detection of such mega-structure in astronomy engaging—alien civilization is to be prevented.
Corollary 2.5: Anti-Panspermia Directive on Super Volcano Eruptions
Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking, preventable natural super volcano eruptions on a by life inhabited planet that can reach beyond its exosphere are to be prevented, or altered so they safely don’t risk contamination or panspermia anymore.
Corollary 2.6: Anti-Panspermia Directive on Space-Flight Infrastructure
Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking, preventable space-flight infrastructure construction or use is to be prevented, or at least sufficiently restricted, controlled, and regulated.
Corollary 2.7: Anti-Panspermia Directive on Science, Technology, and Knowledge
Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking, preventable scientific or technological activities or knowledge is to be prevented or irreversibly deleted, or at least sufficiently restricted, controlled, and regulated. This includes solar sail and light sail related technology, science, and knowledge. This may at first glance seem to be excessive, but for comparison, by magnitudes far less in their potential damage severe dual-use technologies are classified & are subject of strict continual control, too.
Corollary 2.8: Anti-Panspermia Directive on (Mass) Psychology
Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking, preventable psychological influence is to be prevented, or at least sufficiently restricted. This includes the propagation of news of any astronomical discovery of a bio-signature or techno-signature or celestial body of special interest such as habitable exoplanets.
Remark: The importance of prevention measures for types of panspermia (according to the above general line of reasoning) depends on the level of (lack of) controllability of the potential long-term consequences (in terms of kick-started evolution of life) that may emerge as result from such, and for the purpose of differentiating in a reasonable manner that has this control-related parameter in mind, it makes sense to differentiate between interstellar and interplanetary panspermia, as at least it seems more plausible that interplanetary panspermia—if it were to happen—would be easier and more timely to control (although not necessarily sufficiently controllable).
Since it is tightly related, here is the macro-ethics-based key component that dominantly shapes the form of the compound solution of the Fermi paradox:
It is possible that ethical assessment of general forms of evolution of life in the universe constitutes the central issue which intelligent alien species’ macroscopic decision-making, such as for the topic of natural panspermia, directed panspermia, space colonization, megastructures, or self-replicating spacecraft revolves around. If the result of generated well-being assessments of enough and sufficiently in time extended initial or lasting portions of expected or prospective cases of evolution is among all other ethically relevant factors the dominant ethical concern of intelligent alien species, and if furthermore a large enough negative expected generated well-being is assigned to sufficiently common forms of expected or prospective cases of evolution, then foregoing directed panspermia, space colonization, the construction of megastructures as well as self-replicating spacecraft, but also active attempts to mitigate the consequences of interplanetary and interstellar forms of natural (litho-)panspermia and abiogenesis may (and ethically ought to) follow. While in the case of space colonization it might ultimately stay too uncontrollable to—by technical or educational means—ensure settlers or emerging space colonies themselves consistently keep acting in accordance to the awareness of by colonizer considered major ethical dangers accompanying physical interstellar space exploration, and for the case of interstellar self-replicating spacecraft, due to potential prebiotic substances in interstellar clouds and exoplanets’ atmospheres and soils, it may forever stay impossible to ensure their sterility to avoid contamination of celestial bodies which may kick-start uncontrollable evolution processes, reasons to forego the creation of a megastructure, even if such may be beneficial to an intelligent alien species itself and also to some other intelligent alien species imitators of their behavior, may mainly have psychological origin. Since certain megastructures may be identifiable to be of unnatural, intelligent design requiring origin by foreign intelligent alien species, for as long as the by an intelligent alien species expected number of (especially less experienced or less far developed) from them foreign intelligent alien species capable of identifying their megastructure as such is large enough, the by them rather uncontrollable spectrum of interstellar space endeavor related influences this may have on those foreign intelligent alien species might constitute a too strong ethical deterrence from creating megastructures that are from outer space identifiable as such, until eventually a lasting state of cosmic privacy may be attained by natural or technological means.
So if in this critical current time, the continuation of humanity makes sense or not mainly depends on if humanity were to otherwise be cause of more suffering in the world, or less. The more humanity risks playing god on celestial bodies, the worse humanity’s situation gets. But on the other side, the higher the natural rate of evolution of life triggering processes in the universe via e.g. abiogenesis and litho-panspermia is, and the higher the ethically viable capabilities of humanity are and can get to inhibit these processes, the more (macro-scale) grounding reasons for justification for humanity’s continued presence on earth is. And (though on a far lower level of importance compared to the number of astronomically gruesome evolutions of life to happen or be prevented by humanity), to the extent to which humanity could otherwise eventually employ advanced ethical breakthrough technologies such as lab-grown meat in order to feed humans and meat-eating animals alike, in order to approach an (albeit temporary, local, due to the all-powerful cosmic forces long-term unstable) utopia on earth, the more important it is also for humanity to stay present as caregiver of life on earth.
If space agencies and others that light-heartedly play with the thought of projects that may lead to forwards-contamination within the next hundreds of millions of years dare to risk further forwards-contaminations such as the by NASA Science Directorate Associate John Grunsfeld confirmed contamination of Mars, they will in unprecedented ways by their recklessly bold, respectless, anti-humble actions become by magnitudes worse criminals than the worst criminals humanity has ever encountered.
As reminder: The climate, biological and nuclear and chemical threats, autonomous A.I., microplastics, and other topics—in our history, humanity had to learn after mistakes were already made, which often times turned into burdens that later generations had to carry. While for these cases the—still devastating—consequences may be more limited in scope, I think when it’s about the cosmos, it’d be wiser to approach this matter in a more reluctant, mindful manner, with long-term foresight, and without forgetting about ethics. Power & knowledge demands responsibility in its use, and it cannot be allowed for anyone to play god with exoplanets by kick-starting evolution of life there. And just because the universe contains so far uninhabited but habitable hells, this doesn’t mean we should even just infinitesimally risk populating them, especially in those instances in which they are so far away that it is utterly impossible to control what happens there. Contamination of celestial bodies with rapidly exponentially in numbers growing multi-cellular microbes would constitute a forever irreversible point of no return, especially for those several very near-future missions aiming at those moons estimated to be most capable of allowing life on them & therefore carrying the highest contamination risks: Enceladus, Europa, Titan, Ganymede, Callisto, Triton. As reference, even the microbes on the ISS eventually started to for their metabolism consume the cleaning substances meant for sterilization. And according to John Grunsfeld, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Mars already has been contaminated with microbes by accident. Let’s think of the possibly thousands or even millions of future generations that will judge us, our behavior. If nothing’s done about it, the clock until forwards-contamination happens keeps ticking down. The entirety of humanity together—including whatever the future can be—does NOT sit on the most populated Trolley Problem track, and we ought to better know our due place in this universe and act accordingly. Those who do not understand the all-species-encompassing, dominantly widespread extent of pain can never understand true peace. To express the matter in a metaphor, a chain is only as strong as its weakest element, and for ventures into new technological and scientific frontiers, history repeatedly demonstrated that the weakest element is at the beginning, when the knowledge and experience with a subject matter is the smallest (without the entirety of people being entrustable to act carefully enough, namely in accordance to this circumstance), especially regarding long-term consequences and far away, subtly and with delay accumulating large-scale effects of which their prevention can require having predicted them long ago already. So it seems extremely concerningly plausible that if (interplanetary or interstellar) forwards-contaminations happen ever at all (until finally never anymore), that it happens within this very—new space rush mentality plagued—century (which then were to negatively affect generations across thousands of future centuries). Positive & negative (alike other SI-units of measurement very well quantifiable) feelings—by the precise causal means of emergence via a specific set of neuro-chemical processes—contribute to and in summation determine the development of the value and meaning generated within our universe, independent of who experiences those feelings—it solely matters if they actually happen and therefore need to be accounted for. And absolutely no principle ought to get in the way of the in its logical position unique axiomatic principle of total sum of overall generated scalar levels of well-being maximization across all time, not even the principle of justice (as it isn’t absolved from scrutiny in ethics either and isn’t allowed to cause misery), though just solely precisely in those instances of it in which following it were to be required to come at an unavoidable cost in terms of reducing the total sum of overall generated well-being, since otherwise, justice serves the well-being maximization principle as well. To quote the most famous physicist: “Compassionate people are geniuses in the art of living, more necessary to the dignity, security, and joy of humanity than the discoverers of knowledge.” Interstellar directed panspermia en masse, if ever perpetrated, potentially causes up to a—once initiated naturally self-feeding and out of control—near eternal chain-reaction of cosmos-wide calamity, and therefore this warning message is about nothing less than saving the Milky Way galaxy (or even the world beyond it) from the worst possible case scenario that could ever befall it. Here is a quote attributed to Hunter S. Thompson: “For every moment of triumph (and for every instance of beauty), many souls must be trampled.” Furthermore, in case appeals to reason or negotiations may fail, interception of forwards-contamination-risking spacecraft enacted by nations on earth’s crust that grasp the non-negotiably imperative importance of preventing kick-started entire evolution of life processes by irreversible biological forwards-contamination may unnecessarily risk international misunderstandings of (far less harmful but still) grave consequences alike mutually assured destruction.
Here is my empathic advice for humanity, as the ethically most educated, intelligent person in the solar system:
MAKE FINALLY ASAP SURE THAT HUMANITY IS NOT A FORWARDS-CONTAMINATION RISK TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM OR INTERSTELLAR, TO MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE NUCLEAR ESCALATION CANNOT POSSIBLY HAVE ANY CHANCE WHATSOEVER TO BECOME AN UNNECESSARILY EXTREME MEANS OF AVERTING GREATER SUFFERING!
Furthermore, in case humanity may be too heartless to help banning physical outer space exploration for the ethically utmost important reason of averting the impending s-risk of octillion wildlife animals part of hundreds of millions of species beneath ice moons suffering for hundreds of millions of years in the future as result of humanity recklessly happening to play god by kick-starting naturally cascadingly multiplying instances of evolution of life due to forwards-contamination, at least help banning it for averting that several further nations with spaceports soon turn into global superpowers by virtue of realizing their own capacities to bring about DART-mission-like, deliberately earth-directed giant-impact using near-earth asteroid-belts.
So many disagreements to my message, and not a single attempt to explain which point on the basis of what reasoning is disagreed with, so that I can refute it by specifying the fallacy in such reasoning, but if I had to guess, then cognitive dissonance should explain the origin of most of these disagreements:
”In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information, and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person’s actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things.[1] According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent.[1][2] The discomfort is triggered by the person’s belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.[1][2][3]”
So that is backbone-less and disappointing, but supposedly an appropriate commonplace level of mindset for humanity in the 3rd millennium, in the 21st century. But I’ll warn again: Humanity must get its act together and wake up out of its forwards-contamination puberty!