[Sudetenland]

"Carl Sagan always held firmly to his belief in benign aliens. He was convinced that any advanced civilization had to be friendly by default — that overly aggressive or misguided aliens would have destroyed themselves prior to advancing to such a stage. His theory suggested that an interstellar selectional effect was happening, and the only advanced aliens left standing would be the good ones. "

Sagan, like all liberals, understood nothing about human nature, or about nature in general. Anyone who did could never make the claim he made. There is nothing in nature or in man's history to indicate that advanced civilizations do anything other than despoil inferior cultures and supplant them with their own--mostly in the name of conquest.

Siemion and Cirkovic seem on a more likely track. My personal beliefs run along the line of Edward Harrison's solution to the Fermi Paradox.

The Fermi Paradox states:

The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist. However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.

Harrison's solution?

An intelligent species beyond a certain point of technological capability will destroy other intelligence as it appears, as is exemplified by the theorised extermination of Neanderthals by early man. Such behavior would be an act of prudence: an intelligent species that has overcome its own self-destructive tendencies might view any other species bent on galactic expansion as a kind of virus.

We should keep our heads down. :)

[GraceG]

Sagan was a dreamer, we need dreamers, but we don’t need everyone making policy to be dreamers, we need realists too.