X-Message-Number: 11195
From: 
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 09:27:06 EST
Subject: Where are they?

First,  what is the relevance to cryonics of conjectures about the "Fermi
paradox"--"where is everybody?" Part of the relevance is that, if we downgrade
hopes of seeing advanced aliens, we are more likely to rely on our own
resources, rather than wait for rescuers. Another part is that, by looking at
possible doomsday scenarios (that might account for the demise of techno
civilizations) we help avoid such a fate ourselves.

George Smith and Brook Norton speculate that we have not seen advanced aliens
because they are so far advanced that we would not recognize them if we saw
them, and they totally lack interest in us. While conceivable, this seems
implausible to me.

My guess is that, long before we become inhuman beyond recognition, we will
achieve technical capabilities that will allow ANY INDIVIDUAL the power to
send robot probes to other star systems, probes able and eager to assist any
intelligent (or even sentient) life they might find. Surely some among us will
have the curiosity and the empathy to do this. 

Mr. Smith said that the advanced aliens might regard us as no better than
flatworms. I doubt that. First of all, we are qualitatively different than
flatworms; we have passed the threshold of consciousness, communication,
complex cognition, and self-improvement. Secondly, the advanced beings (some
of them, at least) surely can be expected to have advanced in empathy as well
as capabilities. If you had the power, and could afford it, wouldn't YOU do
something to mitigate, say, the suffering of all the wild animals on earth? 

I think I would. I might create, say, antelope heavens where there were no
lions,or possibly only robot lions that never made a kill; and lion heavens,
where the antelopes were "robots" without feelings. 

One of our CI directors, Dr. Michael Hart, was co-editor and contributor to
the book EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS: WHERE ARE THEY? published by Pergamon in 1982.
His calculations indicated that, based on studies of atmospheric evolution,
the chance of  life developing on a habitable planet is only around 10^ -30.
This implies that, if the universe is finite, there are probably no other
planets with life; or if the universe is infinite, while the number of planets
with life is also infinite, almost certainly all of them are extremely far
away, with only a tiny chance of there being another one in our galaxy.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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