A Disturbing Read...

[Bob Schroeck]

Read why Nick Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, hopes that our attempts to disover extraterrestrial life fail, and why that would be good for humanity. And no, it's not because he's afraid we'd be invaded or culturally overrun. I can't decide if this is an optimistically pessimistic viewpoint, or a pessimistically optimistic one...

-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Necratoid]

I'd call it an article written by a silly, depressive guy. His basic theory is that if we find signs of failed life (or even less evolved life) anywhere
in the universe, but on Earth, that humanity is doomed to slaughter itself or get smited out of existence by bad luck... and that if we are the first and only
livable planet everything is super, special awesome. He has a very simple black and white view of the universe.

He basically writes off the idea that we could be on the same rough tech level as the other intelligent life... which means he has the idea that we are the
UBER of the universe or the dust mites of the universe. He also has the idea that if there is more advanced life than us its has to instance zoom directly
towards us... for some reason we MUST be the buglight of the universe or other intelligent life is non existent. Nevermind that the theoretical more advanced
life could go towards one of the other theoretical intelligent life forms out there besides us. Alien intelligences are on his lawn demanding Starbucks and
Bacoes or they can't exist or their existance means time of humanity is doomed to end soon.

Its a black and wihte, simple, 2D view of the universe. One that seems to be unable to comprend that we could just be out of range of communication... or that
they are filming us in secret for their version of Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel or they went to a nearer star first. I mean we can barely see most
planets as sensor echoes or gravitic dibs in the EM spectrum... and nevermind the light we see reflected off those planets is centuries old in most cases if
not older, so its old news to see the new images (from the light that just got here at lightspeed) anyway... I find his knowledge of our ability to see extra
solar planets dubious.

Its bad logic... and assumes that the presense or absense of other lifeforms is completely responsable whether or not humanity obliterates itself. In
otherwords he presents the view that if extra terran life exists then we have proof that We Are All Going To DIE!!! (as a species)... and if Earth has the only
life in existance... then Humanity Can Hope To Continue Existing... and there is still a chance that We Are NOT All Going To DIE!!! (as a species). Which is
basically irrelevant to if humanity wipes itself out. It provides the view that other life (or proof there ever was other life) is the determining factor in
whether or not Man can/will obliterate itself.

[Ayiekie]

I wish he'd stop making philosophy majors look bad.

People who do not understand the math involved in both the timespans we're talking about and the spaces we're talking about sound very silly when they
comment on the probability of extraterrestrial life. As if experiments done in laboratories in the last century somehow can approximate the conditions that
occured over hundreds of millions of years; as if our piddly knowledge of a few planets around us is any more than infinitesimal fraction of what's in the
Milky Way, as if the Milky Way itself is not the equivalent of one grain of sand on a beach.

He also, like most people, has no comprehension of how ridiculously hard "colonising the galaxy" would be even for a civilisation significantly more
advanced than our own.

[Logan Darklighter]

I pretty much agree. I mean - I see where he's coming from. But I think it's based on a false premise. I think it's entirely possible that we are
the first species in our galaxy or local group that have evolved to the point of getting off the planet or seriously contemplating moving out beyond our solar
system. Unlikely, but possible.

One thing we've recently discovered. That whole idea of our I Love Lucy reruns being beamed across space? Turns out it's not really possible to discern
anything intelligible about them or that they are anything beyond random noise. IIRC, this is based on experience with getting signals to and from the Pioneer
and Voyager craft. Yes, the raw radio noise would be there, but you wouldn't be able to reconstruct anything from it. So most likely we are NOT
inadvertently broadcasting our presence to the Saberhagen Berserkers or the ID4 aliens. Basically, the whole notion of SETI is flawed. It's unlikely in the
extreme that we're going to be able to pick up on anything at all in regards to any alien species or empires that way.

Either they can't see us/we can't see them, or they may be using something other than radio to communicate with. Gravity Waves maybe? There was an
interesting short story from Larry Niven in the 70s concerning an old Gravity Wave Comm system left on Mars by a departed alien civilization.

[Disruptor]

There was a theory(wild one) that we contacted and were contacted by an alien species.

The problem here is that we sent gibberish and could not undersatnd the messgage they sent.

Communicating by volcanic eruptions is a bit hard.
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Tom Mathews aka Disruptor