This past weekend I attended the 2018 Social & Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology conference, an academic gathering for the discussion of social, ethical, and theoretical ramifications of humankind’s interactions with space.
Only about a hundred people could attend, but I’ve gathered my livetweet notes here so you can read up on all these amazing topics! I covered ~40% of the conference, so you should be able to find more notes across the internet via the #SoCIA18 hashtag.
All notes are in Thread Reader form. To read/comment in the original twitter, just click through. For a quick tour, * indicates my personal favorites.
- A few SoCIA members slipped away from the conference to go on NPR’s Science Friday and talk about communication with extraterrestrials
- “Logic, Ethics, and History: The Mistake is Thinking It’s a Mistake,” by Daniel Wueste
- “On aliens and robots: moral status, epistemological and (meta-)ethical considerations,” by Keith Abney
- “Things you didn’t see because you were looking: Blind aliens, science and inter- species miscommunication,” by Sheri Wells-Jensen*
- “Body Snatchers: What whole body hijacking reveals about our definitions of life,” by Lucas Mix
- “Life & Life Only: a radical solution to life determinism,” by Carlos Mariscal*
- “SETI & Christianity” by Greg Anderson, read by Kelly Smith
- “The Spiritual Quest in SETI Research,” by José Funes
- “Are We Ready for Space Colonization?” by Lori Marino
- “Ethics for Planetary-Scale Interventions on Earth and Beyond,” by Brian Green*
- “A Path to the Stars vs The Space Frontier: National Space Mythology in Soviet and American Newspapers,” by Christina K. Roberts
- “What Lives? Life, Consciousness, and the Eco-Systemic Multiversity,” by Kala Perkins
- “METI or REGRETTI: Scientific Paternalism, Informed Consent, and Alien Contact,” by Kelly Smith*
- “What Do We Owe The Galaxy? Ethical Considerations of Practical Astrobiological Research,” keynote by Elizabeth Bear*
- “A Selfish Case for a Non-Interference Principle,” by me. I couldn’t livetweet my own talk, but here’s the summary: “Alien cultures are valuable in to us in part because of their difference. As a result, we should try to avoid erasing inter-cultural differences. And if we don’t find aliens, we may want to create them.”
- “The Importance of Answering the Major Questions of Astrobiology,” by Jim Schwartz
- “The Time of Life,” by Jason Howard
- “Modeling Life on Mars,” by Erica Dietlein
- “Thinking like a Red: A Consideration of the Ethics of Terraforming in light of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars,” by Roberta Millstein
- “The Value of Astrobiology with or without Specimens,” by Gonzalo Munevar
- “Being Here: The Significance of Human Place in the Light of Astrobiology,” by Sarah Reynolds
- “Cops on Mars: Policing & Weaponization of Space – In the Imagination & Beyond,” by Lucianne Walkowicz
- “Neo-Liberal Space Ethics,” with Linda Billings
- Roundtable discussion on space settlement*
- “Is there a sensible way to say Life is alive?” keynote by Ford Doolittle of Dalhousie University