[extropy-chat] cosmic silence

[kevinfreels.com]

I sorely disagree with you on this one. I think that our minds are the means
to overcome the bad parts of our programming. That is why we are the only
surviving member of the hominid family. H. neanderthalensis may have been
pretty smart, but they also may have hunted themselves out of food, burned
themselves out of land, or taken on some other similar self-destructive
behavior. As of now, there are few explanations for the extinction of H.n
since they seem to have lived peacefully alongside us. It is possible that
they simply destroyed themselves.

As humans, we have evolved the ability to think several steps ahead. It is
one thing we are very good at that separates us from other animals and we
recognize this in people such as Kasparov. We may be reaching that point
where the changes will occur faster than we can think ahead, but we already
know the solution to that.....build a machine to do the thinking ahead for
us. :-)

It is interesting to note that your fear is common. It is natural for human
beings to be afraid that we are going to destroy ourselves. We have been
obsessed with doomsday predictions since before we were able to write them
down. So many books and movies have been written on the topic that I
couldn;t even begin to name them all. It is a very popular topic in both
fiction and non-fiction. Could it be that this fear you have is the very
evolutionary device employed to keep us from destroying ourselves?

I like to think of human beings as playing the same role that single-celled
organisms played in the early stages of life on this planet. We are set to
enter a new and glorious age with infinite diversity. Yes, the human species
itself may not survive any more than the original single-celled organisms
have survuved to this day. But we will be the common ancestor of things as
different from us as we are from cyanobacteria.

Kevin Freels

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Samantha Atkins" <sjatkins at gmail.com>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 3:00 AM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] cosmic silence


> I think it very likely that most technological species do not survive
> the stage in their history that we are now entering.    Consider the
> odds that any species that evolution had programmed haphazardly to
> reach this level of intelligence would also have naturally evolved or
> acquired the means to debug/overcome those parts of its programming
> that make it unfit to wield such technological power without the
> likelihood of self-destruction rapidly converging on certainy.  We are
> far too driven by old programs and not necessarily smart enough to
> debug ourselves and our institutions quickly enough.    I am not at
> all hopeful as to our prospects.
>
> - samantha
>
>
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 23:32:30 -0800, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
> > > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Russell Wallace
> > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] damien's psi book
> > >
> > > On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 22:43:29 -0800, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > So where are the others?
> > >
> > > I've never understood why people are so unhappy with this idea; what's
> > > to be unhappy about? It's not as if we have any practical need for the
> > > existence of aliens...
> >
> > Want or not want is orthogonal to my puzzlement about
> > why they are not there.  Even still, I disagree with
> > the notion that we have no practical need for the
> > existence of aliens, but that's a whole nuther topic.
> >
> > > However, one doesn't particularly need to assume their nonexistence
> > > either; one can simply postulate that the speed of light is as
> > > absolute a barrier as it appears to be...
> >
> > I do assume that the speed of light is absolute, and that
> > we have no magic physics yet to be discovered.
> >
> > > Then the nearest
> > > extraterrestrial civilization could be a billion years older than we
> > > are and be perfectly consistent with observation, provided they're at
> > > least a billion light years away so signals or probes from them
> > > haven't had time to reach us yet. Would you be happier with this
> > > explanation?
> > >
> > > - Russell
> >
> > Well, no.  I'm focused on the galaxy for now.  I'm
> > not ready to accept the notion that technological
> > civilizations are short-lived.  The Drake equation,
> > as I understand it, suggests tech-capable civs must
> > be short lived.  Otherwise we are hard up for an
> > explanation for why we aren't hearing or seeing
> > them.
> >
> > spike
> >
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> >
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