Re: Fermi "Paradox"

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Jul 22 2003 - 19:27:14 MDT

  • Next message: Robin Hanson: "Re: Fermi "Paradox""

    On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Kevin Freels wrote:

    > OK. I haven't quite got the hang of this list yet. It's hard to tell
    > sometime who said what. One of you said:
    >
    > > "Doesn't mean that a few civilizations might not get it wrong from
    > > time to time -- but if there is a "Galactic Club" established it
    > > seems likely that it will quickly crack down hard on such foolish
    > > civiliztions."

    I think the author party may have been me.

    > We could solve this one quite easily. Let's send a probe and see if the
    > "Galactic Club" steps in!

    And my response to this is:

    a) Sending a simple probe may not be sufficient -- they may be
    allowed under "galactic club" rules -- its a self-replicating
    probe (with directions to replicate whenever possible) that
    may bring down lightening from the gods...

    b) Do you *really* want to do that? It seems to be a very
    small step from eliminating the probes themselves to eliminating
    a civilization foolish enough to send probes.

    A point that I think I made at Extro 3 (or at least I've made
    at some SETI conferences since then) is "we don't talk to nematodes"
    (whch have only something like 360 neurons) and "advanced civilizations
    don't talk to us" (because the intelligence scales don't reasonably
    connect). I consider it to be a very small distance from
    "we don't talk to you" to "you are a danger to the ecology and
    need to be eliminated".

    Hopefully we get a somewhat smarter between now and the time
    when we might have the technology and spare cash to send a
    self-replicating probe...

    Robert



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