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1.8 KiB
Markdown
28 lines
No EOL
1.8 KiB
Markdown
# Joseph Gottlieb
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**Domain:** space-development
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**Type:** person
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**Role:** Philosophy professor, Texas Tech University
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## Overview
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Joseph Gottlieb is a philosophy professor at Texas Tech University who has published academic work defending Mars colonization on existential risk grounds, arguing that space refuges provide protection against location-correlated extinction events that Earth-based alternatives cannot match.
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## Key Positions
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**Pro-Mars colonization on existential risk grounds:**
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- Argues existential risk mitigation is a countervailing moral consideration that overrides environmental preservation concerns
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- Thesis: "Stoner has failed to establish that we ought not to colonize Mars because there is a weightier countervailing consideration: the opportunity to create a space refuge that mitigates existential risk"
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- Key framing: "even if terrestrial shelters offer effective protection against almost all possible risks," a Mars refuge still provides what bunkers cannot — Earth-independence for location-correlated extinction events
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- Addresses philosophical questions about discounting long-horizon projects (how to weigh Mars colonization costs against future existential risk benefits)
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## Publications
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**Academic papers:**
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- "Space Colonization and Existential Risk" (2019) — Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Volume 5, Issue 3, pages 306–320
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- "Discounting, Buck-Passing, and Existential Risk Mitigation: The Case of Space Colonization" (2022) — Space Policy journal
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## Timeline
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- **2019-09** — Published "Space Colonization and Existential Risk" in Journal of the American Philosophical Association, rebutting Stoner's anti-Mars PSC argument
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- **2022** — Published follow-up paper on discounting and long-horizon existential risk mitigation in Space Policy journal |