[ExI] Lethal future was Watson on NOVA

[Darren Greer]

>I'm still pissed at Sagan for his hubris in sending a message to the
stars without asking the rest of us first, in blithe certainty that "of
course" any recipient would have evolved beyond aggression and
xenophobia.<

I'm not sure NASA was so happy with the idea either. It was a last minute
thing, and they gave him three weeks to come up with it. Had he had a few
weeks longer, he might have reconsidered giving them the 14 pulsars info by
which they could triangulate our location.

Also, I think gay rights activists weren't happy about the hetero-sexist
Adam and Eve thing. I personally think he should have included a lemur or a
monkey on the plaque too, to show that we had evolutionary ancestors and
they could, in the event of an attack, be called upon to defend us.

Seriously though. Sagan did have a 'blithe certainty' that was reflected
obliquely in most of what he wrote that any civilization that could get
through its technological adolescence intact would have had to get past its
stone age evolutionary programming to do so. I always got the sense that the
two for him were connected. Re-phrased: if you don't evolve past those
ancient brain applets of aggression and tribal dominance, you simply don't
make it past the nuclear stage of your technological development.

A grand assumption, perhaps. But it has some validity. After-all, it remains
to see if we're going to graduate.

d.

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 7:36 PM, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

> On 02/16/2011 09:41 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote:
>
>> Keith Henson wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 12:38 AM,  Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>  On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 03:13:18PM -0500, David Lubkin wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  I'm still pissed at Sagan for his hubris in sending a message to the
>>>>> stars without asking the rest of us first, in blithe certainty that "of
>>>>> course" any recipient would have evolved beyond aggression and
>>>>> xenophobia.
>>>>>
>>>> The real reasons if that they would be there you'd be dead, Jim.
>>>> In fact, if any alien picks up the transmission (chance: very close
>>>> to zero) they'd better be farther advanced than us, and on a
>>>> faster track. I hope it for them.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I have been mulling this over for decades.
>>>
>>> We look out into the Universe and don't (so far) see or hear any
>>> evidence of technophilic civilization.
>>>
>>> I see only two possibilities:
>>>
>>> 1)  Technophilics are so rare that there are no others in our light cone.
>>>
>>> 2)  Or if they are relatively common something wipes them *all* out,
>>> or, if not wiped out, they don't do anything which indicates their
>>> presence.
>>>
>>> If 1, then the future is unknown.  If 2, it's probably related to
>>> local singularities.  If that's the case, most of the people reading
>>> this list will live to see it.
>>>
>>
>>
> Well, the message sent by Sagan was a single transmission aimed at a
> globular cluster 25,000 light years away.  Traveling at near light speed to
> send a ship back is very expensive and would not happen for a long time.
>  And for what?  A lower level species that may or may not survive its own
> growing pains long enough to ever be any kind of threat at all?     The
> chances that a highly xenophobic advanced species would pick it up and
> choose to mount the expense to act on it is pretty small.
>
> Hmm.  Of course if they are particularly advanced they could just engineer
> a super-nova aimed in our general direction from close enough.    Or as some
> film had it, send us the plans to build a wonder machine that wipes us out
> or turns us into more of them.
>
>
>  Well, not really an extra one, but I count four items in your 2-item list:
>>
>> 1)  Technophilics are so rare that there are no others in our light cone.
>>
>> 2)  If they are relatively common, there is something that wipes them
>> *all* out (by the time they reach this stage they foul their own nest and
>> die), or
>>
>> 3)  They are relatively common and they don't do anything which indicates
>> their presence, because they are too scared that someone else will zap them,
>> or
>>
>> 4)  They are relatively common and they don't do anything which indicates
>> their presence, because they use communications technology that does not
>> leak the way ours does.
>>
>>
> My theory is that almost no evolved intelligent species meets the challenge
> of overcoming its evolved limitations fast enough to cope successfully with
> accelerating technological change.   Almost all either wipe themselves out
> or ding themselves sufficiently hard to miss their window of opportunity.
>  It can be argued that it is very very rare that a technological species
> survives the period we are entering and emerges more capable on the other
> side of singularity.
>
> - samantha
>
>
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-- 
*There is no history, only biography.*
*
*
*-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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