Replies

It’s not a waste of time if we find an intelligent life form out there.

What do we do if we find any? Complete lack of warp-drive technology on our end pretty much excludes any chance of weekend visits.

And I'm not all that encouraged if we discover that they have it. What (if you'll pardon my asking what appears to be a common-sense question one might ask about the family that has just moved in down the block) do we know about these putative star-guys? What if any radio waves we detect from them are just bait, and they’re just waiting for low-level low-tech suckers like us, life forms still trying to communicate on the EM band because they don’t know about anything faster (which means we’re totally ignorant of subspace except as a concept in science fiction, and therefore have no FTL engines or the threatening forms of weaponry derived from attendant technology)--which means that we are prey--or worse, sales contacts?

What kinds of culture-ruining technology would they try to sell us--or, once we've learned of its existence, withhold from us, "for our own good," or until the "right price" was met?

"Immortality elixirs? Why, yes, we have those in stock--but our monitoring of your cute little radio broadcasts has shown us that one of your prime concerns is your self-described out-of-control population growth and the ability of your planet (and other species) to maintain such unbridled reproduction of a single species at the cost of your environment and other life-forms which share your planet! To give you anything that would prolong your lives at the cost of almost everything else in your world (as you repeatedly express it) would be participatory in the perversion of your biosphere to a level of our own criminality! But let us suggest a compensatory deal: we will make the immortality elixir available to your entire species at the cost of, let us say, every third child among you (we will provide the recipe)--an arrangement which will provide an immediate reduction of your species' numbers, and will have the longer-term effect of removing potential breeding members of your species and any children they might have had, in hopes that you will learn responsibility in controlling your breeding instincts--and if you cannot, well, then, we will simply refuse to sell you the elixir until you have shown the virtue--or at least practical wisdom--of learning to do so, or until you allow us to harvest--I mean, to correct--the excess numbers of humans who are causing the ecological distress you are all continually going on about. We will even let you choose who among you should be (heh!) corrected, based upon your own values of ecological and social usefulness, and we will even provide you with the means (painless and humane, of course) to do so--at a very mild cost to you--because, of course, and above all, we prefer satisfied customers with whom we can regularly do business . . . "

There’s certainly not one [i.e., an intelligent life form] on this planet.Hey--I'm intelligent enough not to assume that anybody we meet out there is likely to be benevolent space brothers, brimming with interstellar bonhomie and just as eager as all get-out to induct us into the Star Club, and augment our technology until we get all Star-Trekkian and Jetsonian and live lives of unearned peace and plenty without any cost to ourselves--at least, not without stronger evidence than supplied by air-headed Hollywood movies and unrealistic and ardent wishing that it be so.

It's a great big old dangerous universe out there, and if it contains beings who are utterly unlike us, we can have no conception of their values or designs--and may not even be able to do so--and we will have to tread very, very carefully, if we are to tread there at all--

--or (perhaps worse) they may be altogether too much like us--which is also no cause for optimistic encouragement.

At the risk of sounding Neantherthalic (and you know what happened to those guys), maybe we ought to work on weapons technology before we develop star-drive.