In a message dated 6/9/00 7:32:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
emlyn_oregan@hotmail.com writes:
<< Be careful about declaring space "terra nullius". As well as the obvious
error, there might be the more time honoured difficulty with that term, that
the declared area is not empty at all...
Emlyn >>
Most of the area of space must be rather vacant of tool using life on a scale
which we are used to imagining in stories and cinema. Otherwise we'd have
evidence of it, Fermi-style. However, rather then say its uninhabited, I am
open to evidence and hope that there is tool users out-there and we can be
chums (to some degree). Maybe when our instruments improve and the room to
improve detection inventions and the room to improve the inventions must
really be phenomenal, we will see splashes of intelligence all over the
visible universe. But if its mostly dead, and mostly empty, then it seems
that our descendants to enliven the cosmos with their form, presence, works,
and spirit. Maybe its our duty, our ethics, to speed the plow; as long as
(you have suggested) there's nobody to 'plow under'.
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