Innovation linearly increases existential risk creation.

Achieving space colonization capabilities means obtaining sufficiently advanced technology for venturing beyond Earth and permanently sustaining human life there. In order to achieve that goal, maximizing the pace of technological development seems like an instrumentally desirable goal: The faster we technologically innovate and develop, the higher the probability of obtaining space colonization capabilities. However, the problem with such a technological push is that the increased pace of technological development might also result in an increased pace of existential risk creation.

As I argue above in subsection 2.1, anthropogenic existential risks correlate with human technological development. All non-natural existential risks are the result of our technological progress, and more technological progress is likely to beget more existential risks. Of course, this should not be misunderstood as a quasi-Luddite argument against all technological progress in general. Scientific and technological progress has made life enormously better and removed tremendous amounts of suffering from the world, to the bene t of current as well as all future generations. However, existential risks are an unprecedented challenge, and the more numerous and probable they are, the more difficult it is to mitigate them in time. In the context of space colonization, this issue is of elevated importance because, as I argue above in subsection 3.1, delaying space colonization has an almost imperceptible impact on the long-term future of humankind, whereas existential risks and our attempts at mitigating them (or failing to do so) has an enormous impact.