[ExI] Virtual Reality is where the aliens are (BillK)

[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:

>
​> ​
>  If they are a social species, then the range in which they
> ​ ​
> can interact with others of the civilization shrinks dramatically.
> made a case in an article you have seen that a civ will have to shrink
> ​ ​
> to 300 meters or less depending on how much the culture speeds up.
>

​All true, b
ut even in a social species some individuals are going to be more social
than others, it seems likely that some ET Daniel Boone
​ would set off into the wilderness a mile or two away and start his own
civilization.  ​

>
>
​> i
> f they were sunk in the deep oceans of Earth like planets, we would
> ​ ​
> never see them.

​ET might decide to move to the sea after technology was developed, but ​
I think it would be almost impossible for sea creatures, however smart, to
develop technology. The laws of Newtonian Physics were hard enough to
discover for humans who lived in
​an​
​
​
atmosphere not a vacuum, but it would be astronomically harder under water;
there
​it would look like ​
things NEVER move at the same speed unless a force is constantly applied,
and intelligent fish wouldn't have the motions of the stars and planets to
help them figure out basic physics. Even humans would never have discovered
Quantum Mechanics if they hadn't figured out a way to make a vacuum first.
And intelligent fish would lack one of the first and most important
inventions, fire
​. And without fire you couldn't make iron tools, or even bronze, or even
copper. ​

  John K Clark
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