Posted on 12/17/2002 2:21:52 PM PST by Polycarp
All the alien psychology in the world doesn't make them immune to the laws of economics. They can't squeeze more out of labor and resources than is there. And then, the overhead--what they need to survive--is large and invariant. They can push the limits of their resources, certainly, but that will take away from other things a civilization might want or need to do, and so reduce their long-term prospects for survival.
No, but hard is the same thing as rare. If something is rare enough and it's not worth worrying about, and this problem is exquisitely hard.
oh, there's lots of evidence...videos from different sources of the same event, records in sumerian texts, eyewitness accounts, removal of foreign matter, which cannot be identified, from those who claim to be abducted, and so on, and on, for over 5,000 years.
When you have huge ego assets tied up in belief systems, any threat which exists to that belief system, no matter how valid, will be discounted.
I know: ALL those people are making it up, all the videos are fake, and everyone who suffers ridicule by reporting these things do it for the glorious reward of insults and denigration by others.
However, even if the initial creation of the universe is stipulated to be a non-random event, the fact is that the universe as it exists now shows no sign of a "micro-managed" internal design -- and it is the latter notion upon which Mr. Wiker is hanging his hat.
109 posted on 12/18/2002 8:07 AM MST by steve-b
You might want to look into the Anthropic Principle.
I believe it was done by Fred Hoyle.
It clearly shows the micro-management of our world.
Baruch HaShem Adonai Yeshua HaMashiach
Praise the Holy Name of the L-rd Jesus the Christ
chuck <truth@YeshuaHaMashiach>
It wouldn't matter to people who didn't intend to go home.
My favorite answer to the Fermi Paradox is that, yes, they're out there, but it's impossible to break the lightspeed barrier and unreasonably difficult to travel at relativistic speeds. Any interstellar travel is by way of closed-system slowboats (a few percent of lightspeed). The inhabitants are adapted to that way of life, and so regard planets as items of purely intellectual interest (which is why they haven't colonized or left visible artifacts).
Well, that's a valid argument, and several pundits (I believe that T.A. Heppenheimer is one) have advanced it even further, saying that Great Works (such as the Pyramids) are actually the driving force of economic and technical advancement. I myself believe that large engineering feats are a waste of resources except in so far as they serve an economic or political purpose; the Pyramids may well fall into this category (impressing foreign vassal states into obedience, for example), but a starship would likely not. Opinion is by no means unanimous on this point, however.
Also, the limits of spacetime we now see as an insurmountable obstacle may not be so with future discoveries regarding the conjunction of space and time.
This I put in the category of "What if there's magic?" Certainly I can't rule it out, but if we're going to suppose that there is magic out there to solve problem x, then no amount of calculation or opinion serves any relevant purpose. All bets are off. The fact that we're discussing it at all means we are discussing it in the context of what we know.
Let's not forget that the biological limits we now recognize are on the verge of yielding to telomerase adjunct extensions, possibly netting nearly unlimited lifetimes.
I would never claim that we've reached the limits of material possibility, but nevertheless, such limits ultimately exist.
the universe is what it is, but our understanding is not yet complete.
The very existence of my profession is predicated on the truth of that statement.
The difficulty with this is that we can never know what might have been, had resources not been conscripted for such projects. If the US had "enjoyed" a centrally controlled economy for the past century, we would probably have several more projects like the Panama Canal and Hoover Dam, but -- for one obvious example -- would we now be communicating with personal computers over the internet? Egypt got its pyramids, but for all their glory, Egypt seems in retrospect to have been a remarkably stagnant society. So my guess is that the pyramids cost them more than they could ever realize. But as I said, we can never know.
My favorite answer to the Fermi Paradox is that, actually, they're here, but they're too small to detect. In the distant past, alien intelligences figured out how to transfer their consciousnesses onto non-living substrates that are fast and robust, have almost no material needs, and are immortal. Interstellar travel consists of launching pea-sized starships across the void with a rail gun, but as the minds have clock speeds that can be ratcheted down to nothing, they aren't necessarily in a hurry to get anywhere in any case. Because they are nanometers in scale, the solar system could be rotten with powerful alien intelligences of a thousand races, and we wouldn't know it until we got much more sophisticated.
It's certainly reasonable to assume that other civilizations may not see space exploration through the same set of lenses we do. We should always be prepared for the unexpected. Unforunately, we are not even prepared for what we think we expect.
What I was trying to get across is that the distances are so vast an ET civilization may be "stuck" within their solar system just like we are.
Thank you! :-)
LMAO!
Bummer indeed! Hmmm... Think the party would still be going strong after 3000 years? :-)
I've heard about "long-acting" Viagra, but 3000 years is just a bit excessive, don't you think?
I foresee a movie based on this being filmed in the near future; it will be called: "Invasion of the Nanoprocessor Snatchers".... Coming to sci-fi network near you soon.....
LOL, guess it all depends on your definition of excessive.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.