Terraforming in the OTU

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

But there aren't "any number of reasons" for that. It's completely idiotic to waste trillions of credits and spend years and years to terraform a borderline world when a perfectly (or at least "much more") habitable one is within easy reach in the next system.

The standard assumption in the OTU seems to be that people (and/or Ancients) are phenomenally stupid and irrational.

'Rational' is a relative thing. An action is rational or irrational depending on the underlying motive, and motives can be nearly infinitely various. Just for a single real-world example, imagine a (technologically) primitive tribesman from a Bronze Age tribe, contemplating Mount Rushmore.

In one sense it's fully familiar, a monument to the tribal king might be completely part of his frame of reference. But the scale of it! It's totally irrational, it would require the effort of the entire tribe to the exclusion of all else for years on end if it could be done at all (which it could not, at is tech level). No sane tribe would carve a mountain into such a thing, when there are so many easier, cheaper ways to make a monument.

Motives don't have to make sense to anyone else, esp. once resources reach a certain level.