Posted on 01/07/2002 8:19:37 AM PST by dead
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As scientist extraordinaire and author of an empire of science-fiction books, Arthur C. Clarke is one of the farthest-seeing visionaries of our time. His pithy quotations tug harder than those of most futurists on our collective psyches for their insights into humanity and our unique place in the cosmos. And none do so more than his famous Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
This observation stimulated me to think about the impact the discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) would have on science and religion. To that end, I would like to immodestly propose Shermer's Last Law (I don't believe in naming laws after oneself, so as the good book says, the last shall be first and the first shall be last): "Any sufficiently advanced ETI is indistinguishable from God."
God is typically described by Western religions as omniscient and omnipotent. Because we are far from possessing these traits, how can we possibly distinguish a God who has them absolutely from an ETI who merely has them copiously relative to us? We can't. But if God were only relatively more knowing and powerful than we are, then by definition the deity would be an ETI!
Consider that biological evolution operates at a snail's pace compared with technological evolution (the former is Darwinian and requires generations of differential reproductive success; the latter is Lamarckian and can be accomplished within a single generation). Then, too, the cosmos is very big and very empty. Voyager 1, our most distant spacecraft, hurtling along at more than 38,000 miles per hour, will not reach the distance of even our sun's nearest neighbor, the Alpha Centauri system (which it is not headed toward), for more than 75,000 years.
Ergo, the probability that an ETI only slightly more advanced than we are will make contact is virtually nil. If we ever do find an ETI, it will be as though a million-year-old Homo erectus were dropped into the 21st century, given a computer and cell phone and instructed to communicate with us. The ETI would be to us as we would be to this early hominid--godlike.
Because of science and technology, our world has changed more in the past century than in the previous 100 centuries. It took 10,000 years to get from the dawn of civilization to the airplane but just 66 years to get from powered flight to a lunar landing.
Moore's Law of computer power doubling every 18 months or so is now approaching a year. Ray Kurzweil, in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, calculates that there have been 32 doublings since World War II and that the singularity point--the point at which total computational power will rise to levels so far beyond anything that we can imagine that it will appear nearly infinite and thus be indistinguishable from omniscience--may be upon us as early as 2050.
When that happens, the decade that follows will put the 100,000 years before it to shame. Extrapolate out about a million years (just a blink on an evolutionary timescale and therefore a realistic estimate of how far advanced ETIs will be), and we get a gut-wrenching, mind-warping feel for how godlike these creatures would seem. In Clarke's 1953 novel, called Childhood's End, humanity reaches something like a singularity and must then make the transition to a higher state of consciousness. One character early in the story opines that "science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now."
Although science has not even remotely destroyed religion, Shermer's Last Law predicts that the relation between the two will be profoundly affected by contact with an ETI. To find out how, we must follow Clarke's Second Law: "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." Ad astra!
Michael Shermer is founding publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com) and author of The Borderlands of Science.
Your concept of God is extremely limited.
The author could say that any ETI who can't convince you he's God is not sufficiently advanced, so the original assertion must be true (can't be false).
Exactly my point-- your language, your math, and your science aren't up to a true definition of natural phenomenon. If they were you would understand that a blade of grass is the antithesis of unstable.
I know this is true because I have never seen nor read of an orbital electron breakdown in grass. Therefore, its not the grass that is unstable but the scientific model attemping to define it.
Anyway, trick questions are only tricky for those who think in certain ways. There are different ways of perceiving the universe. And my perception is, ET is just another created being.
Here's your chance though Mr Hoffman--is math invented or discovered, and why?
The sky is blue.
One of your unstated premises is revealed in your use of the singular math, contrasted with maths. There are many mathematics related only by their common root in logic. For example, the math (probably better calculus) of RAMANUJAN. As I recall he, an untutored Hindu, invented a complete calculus of partitioning. Its utility was not recognized until computer technology was quite mature.
Another 'for instance' is statistics. Here lies the frustration that makes me say...
The conspiracy of ignorance masquerades as common sense.
My +4 sd whatever you want to call it excludes me from the vast conspiracy of ignorance. I am solely responsible for my errors.
Maybe early on, but later ... yuck!
Heinlein's later novels demonstrated that: he had an obsession with breakfast; was rather intrigued with the idea of incest (e.g., Number of the Beast; that he had extreme difficulties putting together a rational plot line (e.g., Friday).
Personally, I think he was a pathetic person writing pathetic books. Most of his characters were so supremely superhuman that the can only reflect a despair over his own physical disabilities.
I hope that the thought I gave to my response to The Rock isn't spilled on sterile ground.
The conspiracy of ignorance masquerades as common sense.
"No discovery made by science can deny the existence of God." Salvador Dali
Although it was always Dali's paintings I liked best about him I was impressed by the fact that he drew the double helix of DNA a few years before science discovered it.
However, a blade of grass is not unstable.
I was thinking about that the other night-- walking on water, raising the dead, the resurrection...
Why didn't he just write "Jesus was here", in bold type, across the face of the moon? I think that would of done it.
If you're going to do miracles, go for something big and indisputable I say.
Yes, it is. But tell me, what does blue look like?
For what it's worth I think you're the #1 conehead in that conspiracy you're so fond of.
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