(1) Sentience beyond Earth and after biology (2) Conditions for an extinction-proof civilization

Sentience beyond Earth and after biology

Three ideas--suggestions or personalizations by the mentee are welcome.

1. Focus on extraterrestrial intelligence: Intelligent life in a star a hundred light years away would be a ground-breaking discovery but it would probably not change geopolitics or our everyday lives. On the other hand, what if an extraterrestrial civilization were discovered to exist on Europa? How would this affect geo (or astro) politics? What if the aliens and humans ended up collaborating? How would we protect the rights of terrestrials and extraterrestrials? How do we prevent either a war or forced colonization of either side? For this version of the project, the mentee will write or help write essays or research papers outlining scenarios and suggesting possible protocols for how to communicate with an intelligent extraterrestrial species discovered in our own solar system and how to navigate communication, astropolitical, ethical, cross-cultural, philosophical, and other challenges.
2. Focus on planetary sentience: Can planetary processes be sentient? It is possible that sentience emerges at the planetary level in the presence of increasing thermodynamic disequilibrium and system complexity. This has implications for planetary protection (avoiding biological contamination to prevent harm to either living or sentient systems on extraterrestrial bodies or Earth). In this version of the project, the mentee would develop or help develop a white paper or tiered planetary welfare classification and protocol for planetary protection/welfare based around the inherent complexity and uniqueness of planetary systems rather than how likely they are to support Earth-like life. The goal is to remove Earth-centric bias and create a protocol for planetary protection that protects planetary bodies that are unique and complex but are unlikely to support Earth-like life, such as Jupiter's moon Io and Saturn's moon Titan.
3. Focus on post-biological intelligence: Becky Chambers' books "A Psalm for the Wild-Built" and "A Prayer for the Crown-Shy" depict a world where robots live in forests and exist to study nature out of pleasure and curiosity, reflecting a positive vision of the relationship between AI and the natural world. For this version of the project, the mentees will write stories or essays about AI that explore the universe off-Earth out of their own curiosity. Examples include but are not limited to robots that explore other planets and stars or an AI that tries to understand alien life just for the sake of understanding it. The writings can be human- or AI-generated.

Conditions for an extinction-proof civilization

• How do we make a civilization that will last over geological timescales (>10,000 years)? What are the conditions to make a civilization very unlikely to go extinct on a planet? For this version of the project, the mentee will write or help write a series of essays or papers exploring the economic, ecological, political, and cultural conditions that would allow for a civilization to become extinction-proof and have a healthy relationship with its planet. Also required for this project are concrete policy suggestions that would move current civilization towards an extinction-proof civilization. Policies and visions can be partly utopian (aspirational) but should have at least some prototopian (practically achievable) elements.