Last Update - Wed Feb 12 2025
Cambridge IV 2020
Open Semi Finals 1
OG | DPM
80+
Hamza Tariq Chaudhry
Science
Youtube Link(Timestamped): HERE
Rebuilding LO’s Case
Three positive externalities of this motion which have nothing to do with the efficacy of space exploration:
A) You inspire a generation of new scientists. It's not a coincidence that the world's most famous physicists, chemists, and biologists showed up between the 40s and the 80s. It's because when we look up towards the cosmos, we are inspired to partake in science. It's no coincidence that astrophysicists now intersect with physicists, that astrobiologists and astrochemists now intersect with chemistry and biology. This is a positive externality about more science and more scientists, which stood independent of the round and received no response.
B) Second positive externality: more innovation. This claim received no response when we showed to you that the fucking microwave, that also poor people use by the way, was invented during the space race. A lot of technologies, because of the uncertainty that Opening Opposition identified, exist within the realm of science. You have to intersect with biology, chemistry, physics, and various other sub-disciplines. This means there are a lot of knock-off accidental discoveries which significantly improve the well-being of every single individual.
C) The third claim that we had was that people work together because it's a common project to get the fuck off this planet and ideally defend ourselves against a potentially superior civilization or just the common goal of looking outwards towards the cosmos. Their only response to this positive externality was, "You can't fiat in an international organization." Fuck me, the International Space Agency was cooperating between Americans and Russians even during the height of the Cold War. Halfway through the trade war between China and the US, you have Chinese and American soldiers literally sharing food on the International Space Agency. If there was ever a unifying project which exists for the human species, it's probably the idea of space exploration.
Firstly, what I'm going to do is to set the highest possible bar for myself. I'm going to assume still this doesn't benefit any people in the present. I'm going to give you five reasons why future generations should be cared about more:
A) Few generations should be cared about more because they're infinitely more numerate. Every single scientist points out towards the fact that hundreds of billions of us are likely to exist in the future. This claim means that we should care more about the hundreds of billions which will exist in the future on a utilitarian metric than perhaps people in the present.
Four other non-utilitarian reasons:
B) People in the future have no agency. Just because the accident of birth is spatial doesn't mean it's also not temporal—just like you don't decide where to be born, you also don't decide when to be born. In fact, people in the future have less agency because they're constrained by the past dependencies of the things that we do in the present.
Since more people will be born in the future, collectively their agency (if quantifiable) is marginally lower than people in the past as their their collective(total) agency is dependant on the actions of the small contingent no. of individuals in the past
C) Every single human obligation that we have, for instance, towards animal rights, racial towards equality, towards the environment are necessarily long-term obligations. If we want to fulfill those obligations, we necessarily need to guarantee the long-term prospects of the human species.
Other ethical issues require humanity prospers/exists in the long term, as such space exploration increases our likelihood of expanding longevity
D) Number four: this deals directly with their uncertainty point. If you're going to argue that it's uncertain what the long-term benefits are, I'm going to argue that your current actions might have uncertain consequences. Right? So for instance, if you help poor people now, it might lead to a genocide 50,000 years from now because the butterfly effect exists. So uncertainty is completely symmetric on both sides.
-Symmetry: it's impossible to know the long term consequences of your actions
-the poor child you help in the present (by donating via a charity) might turn out to be a murderer/dictator, i.e baby hitler analogy
The fifth thing that I want to point out, I think, is equally important. It's to do with obligations. Past generations have guaranteed that we have better well-being in our present, which is their future. It is equally our obligation to invest in the future to make sure that we upkeep our obligation towards the past.
Five reasons why future generations are better off in our world:
First claim from Opening Opposition: opportunity cost. Three responses:
This is a huge principle slippery slope. Right? Because if this is true, Srishti (Chair) shouldn't be working on floral poetry. She should only be working on fucking malaria nets. I shouldn't be doing a social policy degree; I should only be investing in malaria. And then say, logically extending this ridiculous opportunity cost argument, everyone should stop doing everything and only invest in the long-term survival of every single person on the planet. It's a fucking ridiculous argument.
It assumes the same pot of money. Like, it's unclear to me why development aid is being cut for NASA. Realistically, what we're looking at is a science budget—for instance, more goes towards a cancer institute or goes towards GPS development. That funding is all funneled towards outer space exploration. It's unclear to me when money from malaria nets goes towards NASA. That never made sense to me.
This also engages with our positive externalities about innovation and inspiration insofar as if more technologies are created on our side and we inspire a new generation of scientists, that makes everyone significantly better off.
The second claim from Opening Opposition is an intuition about complacency—that is, the point at which you start working on outer space exploration, you might focus less on the planet.
A) Note that this can't possibly be true if we have more scientists and more scientific innovation. But taking them at their best, this claim also can't be true depending on what sort of things you're working on on planet Earth. Right? So if you work on adaptation technologies, that is likely to cause mass complacency in the case of climate change. So it's unclear to me why there's complacency on our side and not necessarily on their side.
-Somewhat unclear but may be referring to focus in sectors like in deep sea research or innovation in technology also leads to the same complacency where people shift their attention away from exclusively earth/people problems
The third claim that I'm going to deal with is this sort of POI claim that came from CO. But just to clarify, CO, could I please engage with your extension?
Next: Opening Opposition—what? Quickly though.
"It is theoretically possible that the ten dollars I give to charity might cause, presumably, might cause someone to die as a result of ingesting—I don't know—a bad mosquito, of having a bad mosquito net. Does that make it more moral for me to spend the ten dollars on a Starbucks?"
That's the point—we don't know. That's exactly what I'm saying. You just said an intuition pump, but it's the same structural point.
Let's talk about the third claim on their side: the idea of the ethics of interacting with other species, which is sort of the thing that came from CO, but they gave me no opportunity to respond. You know, what if we encounter another civilization? What happens then?
Three things here:
One, Taha(PM) has already identified you: that having more planets means more resources.
Two additional responses:
A) Why should these species be part of our ethical circle? Like, it's already existingly ambiguous whether animals should be part of our existing ethical circle. Why should these species be treated any differently? So that claim is a bit of a non-sequitur—they have to prove that that species is worthy of moral concern.
B) But two, This interaction could go one of two ways, right? If they want to cooperate with us, we compound our benefits because now we can work with an advanced civilization. But if it doesn't want to cooperate with us—it wants to confront us—then in self-defense, it is completely ethical for us to obliterate them because otherwise, it will lead towards our obliteration.
Finally, what were the benefits in this debate? Two:
One track was we have to escape the planet. We showed you that climate change is inescapable and that habitability and population explosion are a huge problem.
But he said: even if these things aren't true—even if planet Earth is like paradise—there are three additional reasons why you should still favor outer space exploration:
Infinite resource mining. And this is extremely important because these resources aren't just coming from lots of planets—they're coming from uninhabitable planets. Because the comparative in their fucking world is going to Nigeria and drilling oil and systematically franchising the very poor that they want to protect.
There might be better habitats out there. The number of Earth-inhabitable planets is infinite in this world. The chance of a better Earth out there is extremely important to us.
Panel, we've shown to you that the externalities of this space exploration are positively numerous, and it's shown to you that there's a better path out there towards the cosmos. I am so proud to propose.