[extropy-chat] Please don't feed the trolls!

Tue Feb 14 23:11:18 UTC 2006

Robert,

I’m sorry about my last post.  I got angry at you and I wrote a really
lousy, emotional and rambling reply based upon traumatic experiences in my
past.  My previous response to your challenge was motivated by fear and I
have spent the day making sense of my emotions.

You challenged me by asking, “If you believe that advanced civilizations
cannot play "god" with solar systems then I would like to see some very
carefully reasoned arguments as to precisely why that is the case.”

I don’t have to argue with you,  I agree with you.  I believe that advanced
civilizations exist and can and possibly do play “god” with solar systems. 

The question that underlies my emotional attack on you is: do these
civilizations act as “gods” or “devils?”  Are these intelligences playing
Chess, or Risk or Go or Dungeons and Dragons with the solar systems?  Do
they have morals? 

Do you have any arguments that require an advanced intelligence to have
developed an advanced morality,  to recognize that another intelligence has
a right to exist and to do it no harm?

  _____  

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Robert Bradbury
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 10:43 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Please don't feed the trolls!

On 2/14/06, Peter K.  Bertine, Jr <pkbertine at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you BillK !
> 
> New to the list, I was wondering how far the discussion was going to go 
> before someone stepped in and "moderated."
> 
> Until someone introduces an alien to NASA for a debriefing I don't want to
hear another word on the subject.
> 

Peter, until someone comes up with a *really* good explanation for the
"missing mass" you have to admit that our current picture of reality is
quite incomplete.  There is a *very* legitimate argument based on
Lineweaver's work that ~70% of the Earth's in our galaxy are *older* than
ours -- some by billions of years.  I don't have any axe to grind with
regard to whether our specific solar system (or we in it) might or might not
have been created by aliens.  I can make quite valid arguments for (1) why
more advanced civilizations than our probably exist; (2) why they might not
be "here" (the Fermi Paradox) because they migrate to the coldest parts of
the galaxy [1]; and potentially (3) why they might want to create and/or
influence the development of solar systems and/or life within them as
inexpensive sources of experimental information. 

My message earlier this morning pointed out the scientific underpinnings of
Raelian perspectives.  The debate regarding those underpinnings is *still*
ongoing -- though I will admit that right now the "Big Bang"ers have
significantly greater throw weight relative to the "Steady State"ers.  I do
not feel that discussions related to that debate should be off-list topics
because they relate, in part, to "What are the limits of extropic
capabilities?".  As Question #6 in the Matrioshka Brain Paper [2], now
almost a decade old, asked " What do Matrioshka Brains 'think' about?"  An
immediate follow on to that question is "How do they go about optimizing
such thoughts?"  One perfectly legitimate way is to play "god" with solar
systems. 

If you believe that advanced civilizations cannot play "god" with solar
systems then I would like to see some very carefully reasoned arguments as
to precisely why that is the case.

When discussions cross over into the land of "believe me because I say it is
true" that is when the moderators may want to take action (IMO). 

Robert

1. Cirkovic, Milan M.; Bradbury, Robert J.,
"Galactic Gradients, Postbiological Evolution and the Apparent Failure of
SETI"
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/
<http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2005astro.ph..6110C
> cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2
<http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2005astro.ph..6110C
>
<http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2005astro.ph..6110C
>  005astro.ph..6110C
2.
http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/MatrioshkaBrains/MatrioshkaBrainsPaper.html
<http://www.aeiveos.com/%7Ebradbury/MatrioshkaBrains/MatrioshkaBrainsPaper.h
tml> 

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