Using Ancestral Species as Trailblazers

[Jeremy]

In the distant future Humans have identified an Earth like planet with promising aspects for colonization.

Would releasing populations of Homo habilis or Homo erectus be a productive method of testing the local environment's affects on Humans?

Would releasing them be ethical?

Would restricting their numbers, culling, or relocating them be ethical after Human settlement?

[Bob the Gunslinger]

If we have the technology and the time to travel to other planets and colonize them, shouldn't we have lab equipment that could test the local conditions far more accurately than using expensive clones as canaries? What possible benefit would there be in reconstructing our nearest ancestors vs sending an automated sample analyzer or even some lab animals? If you're ready and willing to send near-human creatures down to the planet just to test the water, why not just send chimps... or this future's version of death-row inmates if chimps aren't "human enough"?

[NecronLord]

In the distant future Humans have identified an Earth like planet with promising aspects for colonization.

Would releasing populations of Homo habilis or Homo erectus be a productive method of testing the local environment's affects on Humans?

Would releasing them be ethical?

Would restricting their numbers, culling, or relocating them be ethical after Human settlement?

Is this a joke?

[Jeremy]

Consider this from a general perspective, for this thread assume there is a living population of an ancestral species. Though chimps could work, I thought an ancestral, tool using, population which shares a rough parity to human hunter-gatherer practices would have more similar experiences to a human than a chimp.

Observing their interaction with the environment for a duration could yield diseases and poisons that would not be immediately obvious.

Genus extinction prevention is a point, though a weak one.

NecronLord.
No.

[Simon_Jester]

It would take a ridiculous amount of time to be sure of that. Also, hunter-gatherers may die in an environment where a civilized society could thrive, simply because they don't have the technology to cope with a threat.

[NecronLord]

So part of your question is: "Is it ethical to 'cull' near human species for no real reason"

Fuck no.

[Slybrarian]

Someone seems to have taken Stross' thought experiment with decorticated meat probes a bit too seriously.

[sirocco]

So part of your question is: "Is it ethical to 'cull' near human species for no real reason"

Fuck no.

Would you watch a movie based on it? with sam worthington fighting against an evil company that once seeded the planet with human life and now that the experiment is a success, wants to cull them all to build a space disneyland for Earth tourists ?

Fuck yeah no!

[NecronLord]

Would you watch a movie based on it? with sam worthington fighting against an evil company that once seeded the planet with human life and now that the experiment is a success, wants to cull them all to build a space disneyland for Earth tourists ?

Fuck yeah no!

It would require enormous justification of sending pre-human hominids as scouts to make that at all watchable.

[Gil Hamilton]

I don't understand. Why are we bothering with ancient humanoids when we can just colonize it ourselves with considerably less risk?

[Mr Bean]

I don't understand. Why are we bothering with ancient humanoids when we can just colonize it ourselves with considerably less risk?

Disease & Predators? Might be good to know if our meat puppets can catch something horrible on this new planet or the native wildlife love the taste of man meat.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

In the distant future Humans have identified an Earth like planet with promising aspects for colonization.

Would releasing populations of Homo habilis or Homo erectus be a productive method of testing the local environment's affects on Humans?

Would releasing them be ethical?

Would restricting their numbers, culling, or relocating them be ethical after Human settlement?

Why the fuck would future humans, who could apparently resurrect wholly extinct species, resort to this sort of utterly retarded method of probing? And that's the nicest thing I could possibly say about your scenario.

For one, the biochemistry is almost certainly going to be incompatible, so anything we send there unmodified will be poisoned and/or starve to death. For another, if we could resurrect an extinct hominid (either through some really fortuitous fossil DNA find, or a truly impressive feat of backward genetic engineering,) we'd be better off altering the DNA of the human colonists going to live on that world so they'd already have the necessary adaptations needed to survive on the local biochemistry.

And, finally, the aforementioned hominids will likely be demonstrably sapient. Far moreso than the any of the currently-living great apes, cetaceans, elephants, and large bears. What you're asking is about as offensive as asking whether or not we should use a bunch of people suffering from Down's Syndrome as meat shields probes under the same circumstances.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I don't understand. Why are we bothering with ancient humanoids when we can just colonize it ourselves with considerably less risk?

Disease & Predators? Might be good to know if our meat puppets can catch something horrible on this new planet or the native wildlife love the taste of man meat.

Incompatible biochemistries. They're more likely to find us foul-tasting and poisonous. If we were to ever colonize a planet with fauna large enough to consider preying on humans, they'll quickly learn that we're not very good to eat. Instead of using meat probes to teach them this lesson, we could teach (if you define 'teach' as 'render extinct through much of the species' former range') it much faster with large caliber rifles and bulldozers. Pretty much like what we've done to the large predators here on Earth.

[Jeremy]

Is there really any chance of finding an existing planet with similar biochemistry?

[Serafina]

Is there really any chance of finding an existing planet with similar biochemistry?

Within what distance?

Given the sheer amount of stars (and therefore planets) out there - yes, there absolutely is.

[Temujin]

I'm sorry, but if we're that advanced to resurrect extinct species, travel to other star systems, etc., then we don't really need to live on a planet, we could use orbitals. And even if we do want to live on the planet, at that point nothing biological (either predators or diseases) should be of any concern to us.

[sirocco]

Would you watch a movie based on it? with sam worthington fighting against an evil company that once seeded the planet with human life and now that the experiment is a success, wants to cull them all to build a space disneyland for Earth tourists ?

Fuck yeah no!

It would require enormous justification of sending pre-human hominids as scouts to make that at all watchable.

well the usual

"You have been found guilty of [insert stupid crime here] and have been sentenced to death. But we do have an alternate solution : a nice little planet we just discovered. You will be shipped there with every thing you need to live and even some friends/chicks to have fun with. In [insert number of years], you will be release and come back on Earth. If you do well, we may even add a little bonus."

At first SW (Sam Worthington) wanders aimlessly and avoid the other new inmates/settlers, just bidding his time. He may even start building a house but fail miserably each time. Until he meet THE girl (action girl or mary sue), marry her, finally finish building the house and even start liking the new planet.

We see them [insert number of years] after, he's got the lady, 2 kids (often a teenage boy and a baby girl) and a cool house in the middle of the village. And that's exactly the day when the Evil company/government comes to retrieve them. At first, all the inmates are happy to see new faces, until those people start taking blood samples and building barracks and desecrating their new home and treating them like crap lab rats.

From there, Sam goes from simply upset to Avatar angry. He's going to make them understand that he's the alpha male and nobody f*** with the alpha male.

Well you already know how this is going to end : At some point, the little girl is going to get captured because she's special, the teenage boy wants to bring the fight to the invader, his best friend dies protecting him and they discover that it was the Evil Company that framed them for crimes they didn't do. Well, except the serial murderer/rapist/mugger/etc. that never liked Sam and sided with the company to be able to hunt him down.


As to why use convicts instead of your usual scientist, probably because this is soft scifi. You can always find a double PhD guy in whatever you want among any kind of outcasts and you will only pay him for his job if he comes back alive. You don't even have to ask permission because you are the world company. And nobody cares if the Evil Company saves some people from the death row and relocate them on the future new home of the human race.

[Jeremy]

Is there really any chance of finding an existing planet with similar biochemistry?

Within what distance?

Given the sheer amount of stars (and therefore planets) out there - yes, there absolutely is.

The Milky Way.

[Junghalli]

Is there really any chance of finding an existing planet with similar biochemistry?

I imagine probably pretty low unless you assume a panspermia scenario.

If you want it, best bet is probably to say aliens introduced bacteria to both planets billions of years ago for ... some reason. Wouldn't even necessarily have to be deliberate, it could just be some bacteria spores falling off a robotic probe and then proceeding to outcompete the more primitive native lifeforms.

[Gil Hamilton]

Disease & Predators? Might be good to know if our meat puppets can catch something horrible on this new planet or the native wildlife love the taste of man meat.

Disease isn't that big a problem. Viral infection is extremely unlikely, since viruses are extremely specific to the species they infect. Microbes would still be a threat, since they can still squirt out chemicals that might be harmful and feed on ours. However, modern space-age astronauts colonizing a planet already would know expertly how to deal with microbes. In fact, if worst comes to worst, they know how to boil water to sanitize it. Homo erectus and homo habilis doesn't have the first idea of micro-organisms. What would be a trivial problem for us might be a death sentence them.

Predators are about the same, except a homo hab might have a chance against them. However, astronauts with guns and the ability to build fences are alot better at dealing with predators should the predators on the planet have similar enough biochemistry that they respond to us as "food". That's a big assumption there, but then again, protein and carbs be protein and carbs at the end of the day.

So I don't think dumping a bunch of cavemen on a planet to see what eats them is particularly effective. I have trouble seeing it as much more than pointlessly murdering them.

[Serafina]

Is there really any chance of finding an existing planet with similar biochemistry?

Within what distance?

Given the sheer amount of stars (and therefore planets) out there - yes, there absolutely is.

The Milky Way.

Well, we've got at least 25 Sagans of Stars Spoiler

(one Sagan being 4 billion)

in the Milky Way Galaxy.
I can not give you any odds, since we do not yet know how many have habitable planets, nor what biochemistries are possible, how likely they are respectively and how similar they must be for compatability.

Of course, we should be able to either terraform the planets or adapt ourself to these planets at the point where we are actually capable of reaching them

[Zixinus]

Why sent near-sapient people out there when you can just send regular humans? I mean, its not like there aren't any crazy people that will deliberately go to an unknown land, with unknown fauna and flora, possibly high in natural resources and with no previously-established law&order?

I mean, just crazy experimental-societies (hippies, commies, fundies, libertarians, whatever) would go just to find a favorable land-mass that they can claim their own and be far from any government's supervision.

Then there's the somewhat-insane urge of various people to set foot where no man has set before. Just because they can.

Then scientists wanting to study the local biology.

Then Starbucks.

Would releasing populations of Homo habilis or Homo erectus be a productive method of testing the local environment's affects on Humans?

No.

[Junghalli]

If you want to send expendibles down to "test the water" it would seem easier and more straightforward just to use criminals or some other reviled class.

[loomer]

It'd be more interesting to send them as a sort of 'nature reserve', really. Chimps instead of our ancestors, perhaps - somewhere they can develop 'safely', without interference from man's expansion. Alternatively...

Send the Amish! That way, they get to live their plain life away from temptation, and we get to be rid of the Amish. Win-win.

[Razor One]

The problem with the scenario is that it's too complex.

Would it be productive? No, not if you factor in the costs or resurrecting from extinction a viable breeding population worth of hominid ancestors.

Would it be ethical? Hell no.

Why send near-human ancestors when you can just send regular humans at a fraction of the cost, effort and risk?

You can dredge up nigh unlimited numbers of malcontent's, unwanted, outcasts, criminals and so on from an interstellar society. Throw up an ad, an honest one, explaining the whys, the wherefores and the risks. Even the bleakest ad that says "You have a 99% chance of dying" will likely draw in enough "Volunteers" to put down a small seed colony to see how things go.

Occams Razor can be quite handy here. The simplest solution is to put down a party of amply equipped humans and see how they fare. Volunteers aware of the potential risks of colonising a virgin planet address the ethical factors.

Is there a specific, very important reason why humanity in this distant future would bother using ancestral hominids in place of actual human beings?