[unclebucknasty]

The real problem is that wherever we go, there we are. Earth is perfect for us, as evidenced by the fact that we're here. But, we've come up with a system of allocating our abundant resources that is unhealthy for the planet and, ultimately, our survival. Beyond just climate change, we're trashing the planet for money even as we expend precious few dollars on, say, the problem of extinction event level asteroids. There is more raw brainpower being applied to trying to get you to click an ad.

So, we have devised a system that directs our considerable resources (human, natural, and otherwise) almost exclusively per financial incentives and, oddly, there seems to little financial incentive in ensuring our own collective survival.

If we don't evolve in our thinking, we'll just reproduce the same problems wherever we go.

[QuantumGravy]

Perfection is a particularly anthropocentric concept. Earth was clearly a local optima, but our very capacity for trashing the planet suggests it was rather shallow. We've changed the fitness landscape like so many bulldozers in a landfill. There's no way to know what lies among the slopes beyond. Maybe we really are stuck here and defending our crapsack position from asteroids is as good as it gets. That just sounds depressing, though.

I expect we won't evolve our thinking, but if we could somehow reproduce the same problems wherever we go enough times, there's an opportunity for evolution and natural selection to operate on our societies at a galactic level. We'd buy ourselves the chance to roll the dice many, many, many more times. There will be misery and suffering along the way, sure, but that's been the cost of our existence thus far.

[unclebucknasty]

>our very capacity for trashing the planet suggests it was rather shallow

That strikes me as circular? I mean, are you saying that the planet was never fit to begin with because it is unable to withstand any assault we can muster and remain habitable for us?

We've evolved the capacity to split the atom, while being simultaneously limited by our own biology. We need air. We need water. Yet, we can easily create a blanket of fallout that will render virtually any environ inhospitable to our delicate biologies. We can't ignore that incongruence and think that our planet is the problem.

Wherever we go will require some stewardship.

>defending our crapsack position from asteroids is as good as it gets.

LOL. Well, given our difficulty in finding any other place that offers a baseline of accommodation for any life, I'd say it'd be even more difficult to find a place that works for us and is also immune to cosmic activity. So, we'd likely have to consider certain issues for any crapsack of a planet we populate.

It's kind of like saying, "we don't have the technology or will to ensure our survival on a customized-for-us planet, so let's go out and terraform another planet or achieve interstellar travel, and then figure out how to ensure our survival on that planet".

How's about we optimize on the stewardship-front here at home?

>if we could somehow reproduce the same problems wherever we go enough times there's an opportunity for evolution

More likely, extinction.