There is no other civilization in the solar system.
If it's humans vs alien slime mold, I stand for humans.
> ou aren't going to see anything "take hold" on a human timescale
Right. Seeding life onto lifeless planets takes a long time, but it is a moral imperative. We are the only life in the solar system, and maybe even in our galaxy.
BTW, the Earth is going to fry in 100m years. We'd better learn how to colonize the other planets.
What? It isn't a moral imperitive because it doesn't matter at all from a human perspective. It's not human vs slime mold, it's weird-specific-extremeophile-bacteria vs slime mold.
Life is a name we give to arrangements of matter we prefer over others.
There is no intrinsic "purpose".
The universe itself is perfectly content with dynamics over timescales we cannot even approach comprehension of, and never will. The only driving force in the universe is an evolution from a state with heterogeneous energy densities to one with homogeneous energy density. "Life" isn't even in the equation.
Interstellar travel is not possible for humans. Even if we could somehow induce perfect hibernation, scifi style, how do you maintain an engineered vehicle in the abyss for centuries?
Meanwhile, we can't even take care of the abundance of resources here on earth.
Consider that the only reason you exist (and have wonderful things like air conditioning) is because your predecessors did have a purpose.
> Interstellar travel is not possible for humans.
Yes, it is. Transcribe DNA, put it in probe, probe goes for centuries, orbits a promising planet, then employs nanobots to build humans from the DNA. I.e. a seedship.
> abundance of resources here on earth
Our solar system is brimming with resources. All we've exploited so far is just pond scum on the Earth's surface.
The purpose of any particular arrangement could be said to be to proliferate and dominate others, insofar as if it doesn't do that then it doesn't exist and will be overwritten by other arrangements. In this case we humans wouldn't want to spread an extremophile bacteria, we'd want to dominate it and minimize its presence. Human colonization is different from what you're talking about.
Why? For the foreseeable future we'd survive using a bunch of complicated tech. Not so for extremophiles. How's plopping a couple of unicellular organisms on a planet help us learn to do it ourselves?
If it's humans vs alien slime mold, I stand for humans.
> ou aren't going to see anything "take hold" on a human timescale
Right. Seeding life onto lifeless planets takes a long time, but it is a moral imperative. We are the only life in the solar system, and maybe even in our galaxy.
BTW, the Earth is going to fry in 100m years. We'd better learn how to colonize the other planets.