From: Pvthur@aol.com
Date: Mon Jul 21 2003 - 08:21:41 MDT
In a message dated 7/20/03 4:58:43 PM, lcorbin@tsoft.com writes:
> > 4) it has evolved, is here, and is undetectable.
>
> I've always thought that the most silly possibility. For what
> reason would they make their presence so difficult to detect?
> If they're made of ordinary matter, there is a lot of energy
> that they are willingly ignoring.
>
> I can just imagine Europeans in the 15th century asking,
> "how do we know that we have not already ourselves been
> colonized by a great Chinese fleet?", or wondering "should
> we obey the Prime Directive if we encounter other peoples
> below the equator or on faraway islands?".
>
This seems to me to be the most likely possibility. Clarke said any
sufficiently advanced civilization will be indistinguishable from magic. I don't think
he goes far enough ... indistinguishable from Nature, perhaps, or
indistinguishable from the vacuum of space, maybe. They don't have to be made of ordinary
matter at all. They could exist on many levels that we are unable to detect.
And they don't have to necessarily be hiding from us. That simply may be where
they live. And have you considered that they my not care any more for our
development than we do about the future evolution of a tick?
Whether we evolve to their level or not may be of statistical interest only
to critters who live within the quantum fluctuations of the hydrogen in your
coffee.
John
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