<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(80, 0, 80); ">>I'm still pissed at Sagan for his hubris in sending a message to the<br>stars without asking the rest of us first, in blithe certainty that "of<br>
course" any recipient would have evolved beyond aggression and<br>xenophobia.<</span><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br>
</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">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.</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(80, 0, 80); ">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.</span></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">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.</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">A grand assumption, perhaps. But it has some validity. After-all, it remains to see if we're going to graduate.</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">d.<br>
</span></font><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 7:36 PM, Samantha Atkins <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sjatkins@mac.com">sjatkins@mac.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On 02/16/2011 09:41 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Keith Henson wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 12:38 AM, Eugen Leitl <<a href="mailto:eugen@leitl.org" target="_blank">eugen@leitl.org</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 03:13:18PM -0500, David Lubkin wrote:<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
I'm still pissed at Sagan for his hubris in sending a message to the<br>
stars without asking the rest of us first, in blithe certainty that "of<br>
course" any recipient would have evolved beyond aggression and<br>
xenophobia.<br>
</blockquote>
The real reasons if that they would be there you'd be dead, Jim.<br>
In fact, if any alien picks up the transmission (chance: very close<br>
to zero) they'd better be farther advanced than us, and on a<br>
faster track. I hope it for them.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
I have been mulling this over for decades.<br>
<br>
We look out into the Universe and don't (so far) see or hear any<br>
evidence of technophilic civilization.<br>
<br>
I see only two possibilities:<br>
<br>
1) Technophilics are so rare that there are no others in our light cone.<br>
<br>
2) Or if they are relatively common something wipes them *all* out,<br>
or, if not wiped out, they don't do anything which indicates their<br>
presence.<br>
<br>
If 1, then the future is unknown. If 2, it's probably related to<br>
local singularities. If that's the case, most of the people reading<br>
this list will live to see it.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<div class="im">
<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Well, not really an extra one, but I count four items in your 2-item list:<br>
<br>
1) Technophilics are so rare that there are no others in our light cone.<br>
<br>
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<br>
<br>
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<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
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.<br>
<font color="#888888">
<br>
- samantha</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
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