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"Matt Giwer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
There have been many posts as to why a civilization which would not expand into the galaxy. I have posted at least one. They are all based upon social assumptions. The basic question is why would a civilization want to split off. But then the question is why do we not see that as a basic impulse.
There are a couple of SF models, the Protectors and the K'zin. Intelligent species that have strict blood line loyalties.
Protectors with no surviving kin could become interested in the survival of the whole species as they become their more generalised 'family'.
And after enough millenia of civilization the Protectors realize there is no long term survival for their descendants as eventually they fall to another group. Thus taking one's group to another planet is the only way to at least start with one's survivors. Although the home world situation will eventually repeat itself in the far future on all colonized planets it satisfies a short term impulse.
If such species can make progress to the point where they realize interstellar colonization is possible and if they realize their genetic disposition to kill off members of other clans is holding them back they might agree to head off to the great beyond for their own worlds.
That is much too simple but it is not quite possible to envision what an intelligent species might do in a fully populated world. Say an ant or bee society runs a planet and as they rule it when a nest sends out new queens and drones, nothing happens as there is no place to settle as their world is settled. Such a species cannot get along with neighbors. When they understand themselves enough spreading themselves across the stars to new habitats is the normal thing to do.
McCaffrey: 'Damia' ~ 'The tower & the hive' series - un-controlled reproduction with no malthusian balance, until they meet their match...
Niven & Pournelle: 'The mote in god's eye' - uncontrolled & apparently uncontrollable reproduction for any individual whilst trapped within a single star system with the only malthusian balance being racial suicide leading to a cyclical return to barbarism and beyond.
It made a good read. But it implies the total absense of any instance of reproductive dysfunction. If they dysfunction exists then in some barbarism cycle it will come to dominate until the dysfunction becomes normal. Else in the context of the ecology major changes never recur. In practice there can only be a finite number of such cycles as in each new cycle there are fewer and fewer readily available natural resources for concentrated energy, coal and oil and uranium deposits are eventually depleted. Eventually recycled uranium is depleted. At some point the transition has to go directly from wood to solar cells to fusion to produce a technological society. This mitigates for the reproductive dysfunction to become the norm. At some point on the route from lemurs to primates litters stopped being the norm.
Once it is realized as being possible it becomes part of the procreative drive much more than a rocket as a phallic symbol.
This is just one scenario as opposed to our generally cooperative species as long as we can kill off 10% ever decade or so to get rid of the bad blood. And species that simply cannot get along and which takes may 100 million years after achieving intelligence develops the knowledge and ability to start over some place else will do so. It only takes one and another 100 million years to be here in the Fermi sense.
My thoughts on Fermi's 'why aren't they here';
My only sort of original thought on it is in another thread. We do our damnedest to debunk all evidence of them being here every time there is a UFO or alien abduction report.
1) Maybe they are but they're so alien we haven't recognised them as yet. Eg. Ken MacLeod's 'gods' in many asteroids.
2) Maybe this is a 'melting pot' planet where every form of life, past & present, is thrown in by some sort of 'god' local to this galaxy - we, the current dominant lifeform on earth are, after all, a symbiosis between many forms of single & multiple cell lifeforms. (IMNSHO.)
3) Perhaps the rules for physics are more localised than we currently know. (Vernor Vinge, 'Fire upon the deep' & it's prequel.) We theorise endlessly on the evidence of our senses, extended by instrumentation or otherwise, but who has actually been there to prove, or disprove all these theories empirically..? Are there 'zones' in a galaxy with different physical "laws" that drift with time and some influence beyond our knowledge..? Who would want to come visit us in the 'slow zone', when thought, travel & and communication are so much easier in the 'beyond' - methinks any sensible race would avoid the petri dish 'penicillin' of the 'transcend', which assures a quick demise for any civilization that ventures there, and simply enjoy life in the beyond, or high slow zone, just for a change of pace. ;-)
Or perhaps it is a matter of "seen one M Class planet you have seen them all" and there is nothing interesting to learn from Earth. When a new plant species is discovered researchers study it to death. But after everything is said and done on the species they do not examine every example of the species. There is no more than a casual glance to ascertain it is of the same species. So too with Earth maybe.
I have three or four other posts in the last month with the premise that a million years is next to nothing that I think show every reason why they are not here can have alternate. All of our reasons are anthropomorphic. I gave one based upon our approach to science not even us as a species. So that was localized to just our current approach to science.
So we are left with
1) if we are average then there are a very large number of intelligent species and we see no signs of them.
Greg Bear & many others have speculated on the advisability of advertising one's presence to the cosmos - I'd say one thing for sure, there are as many bastards out there as nice guys and the cavalry _doesn't_ always get there in time.
Absent knowledge of what, if anything, is out there it is a coin toss on transmitting or not.
2) if we are unique then there is something unique about this particular planet and solar system which is eluding us.
Our position in the outer reaches of this old galaxy with sufficient time to develope significant tool using intelligence perhaps, but I personally doubt it.
What is a 100 million years among friends? A new class of grad students every five years doesn't take long to run out of candidate "M Class" blades of grass on the lawn for their training, like cadavers.
3) if we are statistically unlikely there are so many stars that it has to be a very small probability
True, if we are alone in the universe, but it seems highly unlikely to me - we just haven't invented sub-space radio as yet. ;-)
But everything we have learned since Fermi supports 1).
4) there is no excuse with survives the extra 100 million years of progress option without assuming we are the first and most advanced.
You lost me a little here as written - "excuse with" = 'reason which' perhaps..?
Perhaps, as with newsgroup 'gurus', they get fed up with answering the same old same old repeatedly..? Perhaps the 'local parochial' federation has a 'prime directive' to allow unhindered self developement to a certain level so that a new culture can develop it's own identity(s) averse to all becoming good little cookie cutter members of 'The Federation' before a certain maturity is reached. eg. demonstrate ability to go FTL or any form of extra solar system travel. (Perhaps that same premise works on the larger scale too, ie. a certain maturity is required of a parochial federation before the likes of the 'Q' introduce themselves...? ;-) ) Perhaps they are simply enigmatic like the advanced beings in both the film & book versions of Carl Sagan's 'Contact'.
The presumption of "Prime Directive" thing is false on its face. It is based upon a self-serving view of the western influence in the age of exploration. In fact mere knowledge never had a negative impact. And there were few problems with peaceful trade. The problems have been when the technologically advanced cultures have forced intrusions into the local cultures. This does not differ significantly from organized crime moving into town.
4a) someone always has to be first and will ask the same questions.
Looking at the sheer scale of the local galaxy, letalone the electro-magnetically visible universe & postulated sheaves of universes not visible using the EM spectrum - the liklehood of our being the first intelligent tool users is, IMNSHO, almost infinitesimaly small...
and finally
...
99) this is all a virtual reality program and we will likely return it to the store and demand a refund as this game is boring and does not make sense.
"I think I am, therefore I am, I think."
"Of course you are my bright little star, I've miles and miles of files, pretty files of your forefather's fruit, and now to suit our great computer, you're magnetic ink."
"I'm more than that, I know I am, at least, I think I must be."
"There you go man, keep as cool as you can, face piles of trials with smiles, it riles them to believe that you percieve the web they weave, and keep on thinking free."
Moody Blues, 'On the threshold of a dream', 1960s...
99a) in the middle of seeing Matrix Revolutions it will end and this will
be seen as a
trailer for Earth II: The Final Chapter
<LOL>
Which leads us back to 4a as the only reasonable option if we continue to
continue to
discount every one of the reported encounters with other intelligent
species.
Daydream / hallucinations under the influence of alchohol Et al and over-driven mental processes can seem quite real - experiences can seem to match up because of the wide disemination of 'witness accounts' - I'm not an 'unbeliever' in alien abduction but then again, I'm not a believer either. As I wrote in the long "Vita brevis tempus longa" 'philosophy' thread ( http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewtopic.php?t=744 ) on the ClimatePrediction.NET message boards; "Personally I prefer to describe myself as a confirmed agnostic in all things. ie. I believe that nothing is imutable or final - there are no physical or spiritual laws, only theories that remain workable until the paradigm shifts yet again."
The discounting should be some day on a rational and consistant grounds of physical evidence and amateurs should be be permitted to participate. Not that I expect this to be fruitful.
The problem is in 1976 life was detected on Mars. And the overwhelming response was to explain it away. We explain away all UFOs. I expect if [EMAIL PROTECTED] detects a series of prime number we will suddenly discover how nature can produce them naturally and the detection will be explained away.
There is a middle ground between Agent Mulder and Agent Scully.
And that statement is a problem. As a species were are perpetually into
two sides only.
Can there not be a third, fourth, fifth, and so forth position? As a
species we do not and
perhaps cannot deal with more than two position, Prime Wolf and Wannabe
Prime Wolf.
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
Everything has a flip side but there _is_ a third, & many higher orders, point of view - from the middle ground, zero or absolute, where one exists &, IMO, they always do but absolutes & zeroes may shift as soon as you look any distance away from yourself. Einstein's 'everything is relative' doesn't remove absolutes, just localises them to the observer's spacetime.
But as scientists we are hardly allowed the simplistic luxury of light and
dark,
good and evil, that was created around 1000-600 BC just because it is
comfortable.
Even black and white are merely shades of grey when you take the full EM spectrum above and below the visible into account.
BTW: I do wonder if there is a maximum possible frequency within Einsteinian spacetime - a wavefront implies motion at some angle to the axis of progress, anything from zero to approaching ninety degrees dependant on waveform. (Usually random polarisation in nature, polarised either mono-directional or helical by intelligence - unless 'they' are hiding their transmissions amongst the natural 'white noise background'.) - thus the higher the frequency the lower the maximum possible amplitude because of the upper bound to speed, 'C' or lightspeed, until the universal (?) lower boundary to length is reached, the Planck length..?
Sometimes my brain Hertz... <LOL>
-- The most important thing never said about Ghandi is he chose non-violence because he decided he could not win using violence.
Perhaps true but I prefer to think he deliberately used non-violence as a political weapon to avoid any possibility of an attrition war - methinks that form of 'use of weapons' took more courage than standing firm, gun in hand, refusing to obey others likewise armed.
Non-violence is not peace. It is a strategy for victory.
True...
BTW2: If anyone wonders at the many refrences to "Sci-Fi" novels then you should know that I like the open minded nature of that form of writing - I prefer the term 'speculative fiction' myself - not so much the 'space operas', although some of them can be fun - more the many speculations on possible futures using extant knowledge with a little 'magic' stirred in - after all, any sufficiently advanced technology will appear magical to those not cognisant of it's means of operation. John Barnes essay "
Ciao...
[UK]_Nick...
--
I love the smell of C4 at night in Iraq.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2912
-- It is really very easy to understand Islam. Just look into Orthodox Judaism and take every word they as exactly what they believe. -- The Iron Webmaster, 2911
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