EA - Kurzgesagt's most recent video promoting the introducing of wild life to other planets is unethical and irresponsible by David van Beveren

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Kurzgesagt's most recent video promoting the introducing of wild life to other planets is unethical and irresponsible, published by David van Beveren on December 11, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Kurzgesagt, in their recent video "How To Terraform Mars - WITH LASERS" (just came out a few hours ago as of writing this post), promotes the idea of seeding wildlife on other planets without considering the immense suffering it would cause for the animals on it. Instead of putting thought into the ethical implications of these actions, the video (as par for the course) focuses solely on the potential benefits for humans.Sadly this problem isn't an isolated incident either, the pattern of ignoring the real risk for immense wild animal suffering is common in almost all major plans and discussions involving the terraforming of planets or space colonisation.Sure, a new green planet with lots of nature sounds cool in theory, but it would very likely mean subjecting countless animals to a lifetime of suffering. These animals would be forced to adapt to potentially hostile and unfamiliar environments, and face countless challenges without any choice in the matter. There's no way around it that I can see.You might argue that in these proposed worlds, we'd create an environment for wild animals where there wouldn't be food scarcity, predators, disease, or even anthropogenic harms. Setting aside the immense improbability of such an world (imagine convincing a rhinoceros not to fight to the death for their territory against a wild boar or elephant), none of the terraformed videos or articles I've read have even hinted at wild animal suffering as a potential issue to be concerned about.Also setting aside the conversation of whether or not we should extend human life into other planets and galaxies (for those who don't particularly follow longtermism, or the staunch antinatalists that might be reading this), wouldn't we be far better off just seeding these terraformed planets with plant life instead?If the key decision makers of the future decide they have to bring animals to other planets (and we can't convince them otherwise), then just introducing herbivores would be preferred, at the very least. I'd still be staunchly against this unless we could somehow guarantee that the lives of every individual animal would be net-positive, but sadly— we're not even close to getting people to include this kind of consideration into these types of conversations. At least, not that I know of.Don't get me wrong, Kurzgesagt has always been one of my favorite educational channels to watch. I'll continue to stay subscribed because I think they spread a lot of good, but their promotion of seeding wild life on other planets, without any consideration of the consequences, is unethical, and irresponsible.Instead of blindly pursuing our own interests and trying to populate every inch of the galaxy with life, we should consider the impact of our actions on other future beings and strive to minimize suffering whenever possible— or in this case, preventing it from happening at all.Thanks for reading.Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.