why we should be excited about artemis!

some things i said on Times Radio

I enjoyed appearing on Henry Bonsu’s Times Radio show on Thursday night, to discuss the value of space exploration and the question of moral progress, in the context of the ongoing Artemis II mission.

Here’s a link to the show, or you can read an AI-transcript extract below.

[Henry’s introduction to the segment posed the question of whether, since the Artemis mission is taking place during a time of strife on Earth, we “can be optimistic about human progress”.]

HENRY BONSU:  I began by asking Rebecca what might come out of this mission.

REBECCA: I’m a philosopher, which means one of the things I’m very interested in is value. So, what things are valuable? Particularly, what things are valuable for humans? I think space is a special source of value in many ways.

It offers us the opportunity for new kinds of experience. If you look today, there was the first photograph released from this mission. A beautiful photograph, where you can see Earth. This is a way for people on Earth to experience, in some limited way, what these astronauts are experiencing. It’s a chance for us to derive new knowledge. You can use new kinds of — medical advances are often achieved during space flight. It’s also just represents, I think, humanity’s ambition. It represents a certain kind of achievement. I think it’s a very exciting moment.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that it’s the only important thing, or that every facet of it is good. But if you believe in a pluralistic kind of conception of value, in which there are many things that are good for human beings, I think you can make a pretty strong argument that the kinds of achievements you see in terms of humans being able to go and fly around the moon are multiple.

[Henry then asked Phil Tinline, a writer and historian who was also on the show, about the tension arising between astronauts looking at the beauty of Earth, and the wars and aggressive political posturing that are taking place on Earth. Phil discussed how this feels “strange and rather jarring”, but also how “America in 1972 was not a particularly happy country”.]

HENRY BONSU: And Rebecca, as a philosopher, how do you account for this dissonance — this schizophrenia, if you might call it that? Between advanced bold thinking, moonshots, evolution, great technological advances, on the one hand, and then a carelessness, perhaps, about what happens on Earth? Whether it’s about the fate of some of our 8 billion fellow human beings, whether it’s about our planet, about the ecosystem. How does one explain that, given that we are homo sapiens — wise man, wise woman?

REBECCA: One thing I’d say is that since the period when humankind last went to the moon, we have experienced much progress. So, people live longer and healthier lives, on average. They have access to much better goods and services, on average. I think these things are undeniable. But as a philosopher, I’m anxious about these ‘on average’ kinds of calculations, although I think they are very true and I think we should celebrate them.

I also think the kinds of technological innovations that have enabled those achievements — look at the rise of AI — I think there are great goods, great benefits to be derived from this, particularly in terms of living longer and healthier lives. But this doesn’t mean that we should ignore, then, instances of bad. Bad things, wrong things, that humans do.

Unfortunately, I think if we’re going to live in free societies, we’re always going to have to understand that people are going to do bad things. Because any society in which people don’t do bad things is likely a place where people are oppressed, so that they can’t act in line with their own decision-making. We have to work out good ways to mitigate that. Whether those are at the level of crimes in free societies. Or whether they are when politicians act in ways that we feel don’t represent us.

But this is what it’s like to be a member of a species where we have the capacity to think about things, ruminate on things, deliberate, and come to free decisions. We have to work out good ways to cooperate, to coordinate, so that the bad people don’t lead us down the wrong track. But it’s a — yeah, it’s a human problem! If you were a member of a species where you weren’t free to make your own choices, and act on your choices, then quite possibly you wouldn’t have these kinds of concerns. But we do, and we have to do the best we can to mitigate.

One final thing I would say on the topic of moral progress, because it’s something I’m quite interested in. I would note that while I don’t think moral progress is something that is historically contingent in the sense that it can only get better as we exist for longer — I believe, for instance, maybe there was some civilization we’ve forgotten about, billions of years ago, where they had more moral progress than we do! One thing I’d say is that even though we do see instances, continuing instances of repression in our world, my limited empirical understanding is that more people understand that these things are bad and wrong.

So, even in the society, for instance. where women are still oppressed, more people understand that this is bad and wrong. This is partly thanks to great advances in communications technology. It’s very, very hard to be anywhere in the world as a human, and not know that it is considered to be bad and wrong to oppress people. And that is an important kind of moral progress that I think is sometimes underestimated.

[Henry then asked Phil about the rise and fall of multilateralism.]

HENRY BONSU: And just to conclude, Rebecca, then, when people sit in, let’s say in the UK, or in the States, or in South Africa, and see this Artemis II, the Orion rocket, and this mission, do you think they should broadly feel optimistic about where humanity’s going? Or should they feel, well, actually, we’re going to explore other planets or moons, maybe set up colonies there, maybe look for water there, meanwhile the one place that we do know exists and that is great for human life, we are neglecting! What do you think people should be thinking?

REBECCA: I would hesitate seeing this as some kind of zero-sum thing. Not least because I actually think there are many ways in which learning more about space, about what is up there, can be beneficial for life on Earth. So, I mean, you look at the rise of satellite technology. This kind of technology enables us, for instance, to learn about human-rights-violating camps in China. That’s thanks to satellite technology. It enables us to monitor things like climate change. It enables us to try to mitigate these problems. So I don’t think it’s zero sum.

One thing I do think, though, is that it can be very inspiring. I went to a bar last night, I live in America these days, and me and my friends tried to persuade the bartender to put the Artemis launch on the TV. And first of all he said, “No, no, we don’t show news channels.” In the end, we persuaded him, and everyone watched it!

HENRY BONSU: Sounds like a great party!

REBECCA: It was fantastic, and it was inspiring, and people derived great joy. And I think they derived some sense of pride, and some sense of — a sense of celebration around human capacity.

And yes, we also have obligations to know about the bad things that are going on in the world. But sometimes a little bit of inspiration like that — I don’t know, there were probably some kids watching who might have been inspired to pay a bit more attention in their science lessons. So, I think just because bad things are happening doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t derive happiness and excitement from good things.

You can listen to the whole conversation here.