Replying to Avatar Daniel Wigton

My steelman is that I love people, all life really, but people are especially awesome.

Let's take a detour to discuss nostr. Nostr can only exist because some small fraction of the population is interested in freedom tech, but 8 billion people is enough that even that small fraction can have a community. Now extrapolate to even more niche interests you have. I am sure some haven't met critical mass yet. Imagine having enough humans that even your most arcane hobby was a large thriving community where people could make a living suppling quality content. We don't want billions of humans, we want Trillions.

This dovetails nicely with my faith. I am a Catholic. I believe in cooperating with nature to fill the earth with life. I have six children as a result. I don't believe earth is near carrying capacity for humans. More people = more solutions.

But if we aren't over-populated now, with enough Catholics doing Catholic things we will be at some point. So in a way I guess you could say that the logical conclusion to any faith, that makes cooperating a with nature a moral imperative, is that moving out to the stars is also a moral imperative.

The thing is that version on the future is awesome. Humans aren't going to go alone and strew candy wrappers everywhere, we are going to bring our plants and pets. We are going to bring panda bears and bald eagles. Everything that was on a track for extinction with the swelling sun will instead fill the universe with color, stories, and love. And that is what I want, a universe brimming with love.

there is a point at which a civilizaition is so far away that we don't benefit from any exchange with them. what good is it if there is thriving community 100 million light years away that we'll never interact with?

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Short term benefit does tail off with distance but long term prospects improve. It is all about how many trials you can run. Places that are too remote for data exchange in a lifetime can run some uncontaminated trials. The best ideas will spread through whatever slow channels exist.

With 10,000 stars you can fit plenty of humanity within 100 light-years, 100 million light-years encompasses over a thousand galaxies.