iiit-sh@cybaswan.UUCP (Steve Hosgood) (08/25/88)
I've been reading the discussions about SETI, the silence we seem to be receiving, etc. It seems, however, that we're up against some pretty stiff problems dealing with ETs, partly technological and partly due to the fact that we may not be able to comprehend an ET's message if we *did* receive such a thing. Wouldn't it be sensible to spend some effort looking nearer to home? The seas contain several species of (presumed) intelligent life, yet I don't know of any sucess at communicating with them short of training dolphins to poke messages into computers on giant keyboards! This can hardly be regarded as communicating with the creatures can it? I would suggest that we have little chance at dealing with ETs until we can talk to the other intelligent life on *this* planet. Comments, anyone?
adrian@cs.hw.ac.uk (Adrian Hurt) (08/26/88)
In article <1988Aug19.212031.24023@utzoo.uucp>, henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: > A poor assumption; our own lifespan is likely to increase dramatically within > the next century or so. During a series of TV programmes last Christmas, it was demonstrated that life expectancy has been levelling off. I can't remember exactly why; something to do with the cells making up the body. I think it may have been that they can only be replaced a certain number of times, but I' not sure there. Anyway, the conclusion was that lifespan would probably not exceed 100 by much. Diseases can be beaten, but old age is much more difficult. > >3) Advanced societies have limited budgets and would expect a return on investment > > Again, check out the pattern in our immediate past. Emigrating to North > America -- just the passage and the necessary startup supplies -- took > every cent the Plymouth Rock colonists had, and drove them so deep into > debt that it was 20 years before they were in the black again. But did anyone launch a multi-year enquiry when a ship was lost? People were much more willing to risk their lives then. Having challenged this optimism about the human species, I should also say that these examples do not necessarily indicate what an alien culture might see in space exploration and/or colonisation. Science fiction provides such options as exterminating life, assisting fledgeling races, escape from a doomed world, and more. Finally, to try to open a few minds, who says we haven't been visited? Would you believe anyone who said we have? Would you believe anyone who claimed to have seen or met the visitors? In other words, how do you react to people who believe in UFO's? Simply saying "They're nuts" or "They were fooled by something" isn't open-minded. As Henry said somewhere else, I don't believe and I don't disbelieve. Can anyone conclusively prove whether we have been visited or not? -- "Keyboard? How quaint!" - M. Scott Adrian Hurt | JANET: adrian@uk.ac.hw.cs UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian | ARPA: adrian@cs.hw.ac.uk
kevin@gtisqr.UUCP (Kevin Bagley) (08/27/88)
In article <1685@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu>, trn@warper.jhuapl.edu (Tony Nardo) writes: > Or, on a more grim note, let's say that there's a species which [Highly abbreviated] > 1) fairly developed civilization, > 2) developed very effective weapons > 3) bit overcrowded, > 4) believing themselves to be the "roughest, toughest [stuff deleted] I do **not** believe this garbage, but lets say there is a civilization out there with the above type of mentality, (I personally think that type of mentality is far more obnoxious than our own and that our civilization is teetering on the brink of self destruction.) why couldn't this super tough highly teched civilization did exist, they may be capable of doing severe damage simply through communcation. i.e. 1) They could communicate to us a cure for cancer that was actually a very subtle poison that was airborn and did not take affect for n years. 2) Tell us of a new and safe energy source that is actually a quark bomb. (Kills / destroys buildings etc. but does not destroy atmosphere or produce radiation.) 3) Mass hypnotism followed by mass suicide. 4) Help me here folks. How else do you cause genocide by remote control? I find this no more bizarre than the concept of this type of civilization and a hell of a lot cheaper than sending their starfleet.
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (08/28/88)
In article <1944@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk> adrian@cs.hw.ac.uk (Adrian Hurt) writes: >> A poor assumption; our own lifespan is likely to increase dramatically within >> the next century or so. > >During a series of TV programmes last Christmas, it was demonstrated that life >expectancy has been levelling off... Our *natural* life expectancy is unlikely to increase much further. That wasn't what I was talking about. >Diseases can be beaten, but old age is much more difficult. Agreed. On the other hand, there is a lot more motive for tackling it. Old age is 100% fatal and happens to everyone; AIDS is insignificant by comparison. Understand, I don't expect major improvements in lifespan tomorrow, or next year, or even next decade. But we are starting to understand the detailed biochemical functioning of a few very small portions of our physiology. It is fairly safe to predict massive progress in this within a few decades. The biggest problem with old age is simply that we don't understand the details of why it happens. That will change. >> Again, check out the pattern in our immediate past. Emigrating to North >> America -- just the passage and the necessary startup supplies -- took >> every cent the Plymouth Rock colonists had, and drove them so deep into >> debt that it was 20 years before they were in the black again. > >But did anyone launch a multi-year enquiry when a ship was lost? People were >much more willing to risk their lives then. Nonsense. You're looking at a pathological phenomenon in a persistently- underfunded branch of the US government, not a general trend. If access to space were adequate to permit an attempt at, say, a lunar colony to be made *without* having to beg approval from government bureaucrats and a Congress full of fat lawyers, there would be half a dozen of them already, risks notwithstanding. There is no shortage of people willing to risk their lives for what they see as a worthwhile cause; the problem is that spaceflight is currently too expensive for such people to fund it from their own resources. >... who says we haven't been visited? Would >you believe anyone who said we have? Would you believe anyone who claimed to >have seen or met the visitors? In other words, how do you react to people who >believe in UFO's? Simply saying "They're nuts" or "They were fooled by >something" isn't open-minded. As Henry said somewhere else, I don't believe and >I don't disbelieve. Can anyone conclusively prove whether we have been visited >or not? "It is good to have an open mind, but not one that is open at both ends." It is not possible to state definitely whether we have been visited or not. However, the weight of the evidence is against it. Clearly, if we *are* being visited, the visitors are being very furtive and cryptic about it. This is quite peculiar behavior by our standards (and we have no others to judge it against). It is possible to imagine explanations for it, but they are sufficiently strained that good evidence would be needed to justify them. None is on hand. For all the reports of UFO landings, contacts, etc., *NOT ONE* unquestionably extraterrestrial artifact or hitherto- unknown-but-verifiable fact has come out of them. There have been sightings of phenomena that are arguably difficult to explain, but there are plenty of natural phenomena that are still poorly understood; it is not necessary to invoke extraterrestrial spaceships as the reason for our inability to explain such sightings. There are people who claim to have seen or been contacted by extraterrestrials, but people have been known to lie or be mistaken before; it is not necessary to take such claims at face value to explain them. The most prosaic -- and hence, most probably correct -- theory is that we are not being visited, and have not been in the past. -- Intel CPUs are not defective, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology they just act that way. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
dant@mrloog.LA.TEK.COM (Dan Tilque) (08/29/88)
Kevin Bagley writes: ]Tony Nardo writes: ]> Or, on a more grim note, let's say that there's a species which ] [Highly abbreviated] ]> 1) fairly developed civilization, ]> 2) developed very effective weapons ]> 3) bit overcrowded, ]> 4) believing themselves to be the "roughest, toughest ] [stuff deleted] ] ]I do **not** believe this garbage, but lets say there is a civilization ]out there with the above type of mentality, (I personally think that ]type of mentality is far more obnoxious than our own and that our ]civilization is teetering on the brink of self destruction.) why ]couldn't this super tough highly teched civilization did exist, they ]may be capable of doing severe damage simply through communcation. ]i.e. ] 1) They could communicate to us a cure for cancer that was ] actually a very subtle poison... ] 2) Tell us of a new and safe energy source that is actually ] a quark bomb. ] 3) Mass hypnotism followed by mass suicide. ] 4) Help me here folks. How else do you cause genocide by remote control? Why not just send blankets infested with chicken pox germs? It's worked before... --- Dan Tilque -- dant@twaddl.LA.TEK.COM This article gave me an idea. If we do run into a "berserker" type machine intelligence, couldn't we just feed them some software containing a virus. Worth trying anyway.
chiaravi@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Lucius Chiaraviglio) (08/29/88)
In article <430@gt-ford.gtisqr.UUCP> kevin@gtisqr.UUCP (Kevin Bagley) writes: >In article <1685@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu>, trn@warper.jhuapl.edu (Tony Nardo) >writes: >> Or, on a more grim note, let's say that there's a species which > [Highly abbreviated] >> 1) fairly developed civilization, >> 2) developed very effective weapons >> 3) bit overcrowded, >> 4) believing themselves to be the "roughest, toughest > [stuff deleted] > >I do **not** believe this garbage, but lets say there is a civilization >out there with the above type of mentality, (I personally think that >type of mentality is far more obnoxious than our own and that our >civilization is teetering on the brink of self destruction.) Why do you think it is more obnoxious than our own? We seem to meet all four qualifications to degrees ranging from fairly (#1, #3, and #4) to excellently (#2). > why >couldn't this super tough highly teched civilization did exist, they >may be capable of doing severe damage simply through communcation. >i.e. > 1) They could communicate to us a cure for cancer that was > actually a very subtle poison that was airborn and did > not take affect for n years. Fred Hoyle (and maybe a co-author, I don't remember) had the same idea in _A is for Andromeda_ and another book, in which aliens in the Andromeda galaxy send instructions on how to build a self-aware computer with a mission to convert Earth to be like the aliens' planet or destroy it if the inhabitants (us) see through the plot and quit cooperating. While the scientific premises in this particular dilogy are less than sound, it is impossible to prove that the same sort of thing could not be accomplished by better-thought-out methods of the same general idea. > [. . .] > 3) Mass hypnotism followed by mass suicide. > > 4) Help me here folks. How else do you cause genocide by remote control? An elaboration of #3 is as follows: send over a religion or a political ideology which will spread to everyone on the planet and which preaches lethal intolerance of anyone not converted, and then optionally does a Jim Jones job on a massive scale, or sets up something like that portrayed in George Orwells _Nineteen Eighty-Four_. To ensure that it takes hold, tempt the original recipients (most likely to be scientists, the government, and the military) with means to great power (insights into how to build superweapons, etc.) which can be used most effectively if they participate in the religious and/or ideological program. >I find this no more bizarre than the concept of this type of >civilization and a hell of a lot cheaper than sending their >starfleet. You could be right. The problem with this kind of approach is that (unless the perpetrators travel considerably from their home to broadcast the message, thus negating at least some of the savings), they give away their location. And if the plot doesn't work, they run the risk that their intended victims might be sufficiently enraged or feel a sense of duty sufficient to cause them to take the trouble to come over physically and do their very best to blow the perpetrators out of existence -- and if they have their act together, they will do everything to keep their own home planet secret, so that the perpetrators will not know who is taking revenge on them if they tried this in more than one direction. If responses are expected, they wouldn't be too hard to fake. -- Lucius Chiaraviglio chiaravi@silver.bacs.indiana.edu lucius@tardis.harvard.edu (in case the first one doesn't work) Villainy knows no bounds. . . .
knudsen@ihlpl.ATT.COM (Knudsen) (08/30/88)
In article <430@gt-ford.gtisqr.UUCP>, kevin@gtisqr.UUCP (Kevin Bagley) writes: > 1) They could communicate to us a cure for cancer that was > actually a very subtle poison that was airborn and did > not take affect for n years. > > 2) Tell us of a new and safe energy source that is actually > a quark bomb. (Kills / destroys buildings etc. but does > not destroy atmosphere or produce radiation.) > > 3) Mass hypnotism followed by mass suicide. > > 4) Help me here folks. How else do you cause genocide by remote control? Carl Sagan's not-too-bad SF novel _Contact_ alludes to this problem. The signals we receive give detailed instructions to build a complex machine whose construction lies within our capabilities but whose operation we cannot fathom. Some opposition groups raised the fear that this machine, once built and turned on, might blow up/sterilize/poison/jam all TV channels with "Love Boat" reruns or otherwise destroy human civilization. Just as home computer users who download programs from bull boards have toworry about Trojan Horses and viruses. I think that in this novel's case, these fears were very justifiable. The machine was benign but did play a dirty old trick (no spoilers here). BTW, a perfectly well-intentioned set of technological messages could end up killing us -- we could screw it up and/or leave out some "assumed/taken for granted" safety feature. If all our lawyers died we couldn't even sue 'em. I'd also be very careful about anything instructions of a biological nature (like cancer cure) -- how much can "they" know about our body chemistry? Half the folks over on rec.pets are trying to convince the other half that chocolate can kill a dog.
iwm@asun3.ic.ac.uk (Ian Moor) (08/30/88)
There may only be a small time interval during which a civilization radiates RF at an easily detectable frequency. How long before we all have cable tv over fibre optic links ? Or maybe satellites which direct all their output at the planet. Should we be looking for something else like Infra-red from power plants?