I'm putting this in Debate and Discussion for two reasons. First, its framed as a debate/ discussion, so it fits. Second, this forum is woefully dry of interesting things (mostly Trump and Lewk the Troll response, dumbass Brexit notwithstanding).
So I read this article where the author argues that a space-faring humanity would *reduce* our odds of avoiding extinction. Yes, that's right, reduce. The core of his argument is that colonization (without FTL capability) would lead to speciation, and that level of diversity would guarantee total wars of extinction.
http://nautil.us/blog/-why-we-should...SS_Syndication
To repeat and complete the thread title teaser, If Humanity Colonized Mars, and Various Asteroids and Moons, and spread into the Oort cloud, and outward, eventually to exo-planets, -moons, -asteroids, other objects... If Humanity became an Interstellar Species, would it be a Net Good or a Net Bad for all involved?
I'm going to come down firmly on the Net Good side. Assuming no FTL, then yes, speciation would occur with time and distance (and technology!). Yes, our descendants would become truly alien to each other in every sense, except that of origin. And maybe there would be war (certainly *some* war), even war of annihilation, between some of these subspecies. Bummer for sure.
But I think the distances that allow speciation would also make warfare both less likely to *appear* needed, more costly to pursue, and *relatively* localized. And assuming colonization proceeds in every direction, and encompasses every sort of world, or world-let, (thinking of colonies literally wherever clever sub-humans can find a source of energy and requisite matter), there would be SO MANY colonies, largely SO separated by distance and time, that no way could a war threaten the survival of *all*, or even a significant portion of, our descendants.
Long term survival of life and intelligence would be virtually guaranteed and the scope of biological diversification (and engineering!) would be a Wonder beyond Imagining.
Right?