Psychological Impediments to Collective Space Colonization

It is a well-known psychological fact that when human beings value activities for their hedonic components, we exhibit time biases. This can be near-directed: we often prefer painful activities to be distant and pleasurable activities to be near. This can also be future-directed: we often prefer painful activities to be in our past and pleasurable activities to be in our future. Another well-known (albeit perhaps less so) fact is that when human beings value activities for their non-hedonic components, we exhibit social biases. That is, we do so in a way that biases the perceived social distance between you and who else might benefit from those activities. My aim is not to question the rationality of these biases, although this has been questioned. Whether or not they are irrational, we still exhibit them, and this can have serious consequences for what we plan to do now, and what we can do in the future—especially when considering complicated projects with long time-horizons. This paper focuses on the impact of time and social biases on space colonization. Supported by historical evidence, I will contend that we need to view the project of space colonization in the face our tendency towards deep positive discounting, a tendency undergirded by temporal and social bias. And I contend that, absent unforeseen scenarios, our tendency to positively discount amounts to what is perhaps the most insoluble impediment to space colonization, and one that is psychological, rather than technological, in nature.