Comment by dmonitor
5 days ago
I can see the appeal of "colonizing mars as an extinction-proof backup plan", but I'm not convinced that it's a positive-EV play. Attempting to go to mars increases odds of our survival in case of earth going to shit by some amount, but it also increases the odds of earth going to shit due to the waste, energy expenditure, and missed opportunity cost of not solving pressing issues.
Mars as a backup plan isn't about the changes we are making on Earth, but about civilization-ending or extinction-level events (e.g., asteroid collisions). These types of events are inevitable.
In any case, going to Mars isn't mutually exclusive with solving issues on Earth.
Earth would have to go to shit by an unimaginable amount to be as bad as Mars already is.