From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Thu Apr 24 2003 - 10:30:17 MDT
Rafal said:
<<Since our data on either the likelihood of spontaneous life emergence, or
the future of average sentient interest development, or the actual
cumulative extinction risk for a civilization of our type, are woefully
inadequate, the optimist and the pessimist will reach their conclusions
according to their predilections, while the Bayesian will not conclude
anything at all, aside from the need to search for new knowledge and to
carefully incorporate it in his reasoning. ,>>
I am not in favor of considering the search for extra terrestrial
intelligence, the focus of a mathematician, nor even a philosopher. It is,
however, the focus of the astronomer. Astronomy seems to indicate an early
cosmos, one that is under 15 billion years old, to be a cosmos that is ladden
with gamma ray bursters, and comet and meteor strikes. As activities cool
down, multicelluar life arises, and develops, and through natural evolution,
and a lot of time, produces intelligence. With intelligence, we have
technology. Why not just consider this early universe, as one that is too
much the frying pan, too much in harms' way for intelligence to develop?
To parapharse Lord Arthur C. Clarke, in the his work, The Lost Worlds of
2001, we are, like the aliens in the novel, set against the after-glow of
creation, facing a lonely universe. Fits the bill anyway. We have our work
cut out for us, as a species, and a trans species, awaiting their birth from
our genes and our brains. But that's where the fun is! Mayhaps, we get to
help re-shape reality, or at least, our little corner of it.
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