X-Message-Number: 11210
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 19:59:18 -0800
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: The wrong end of the telescope.

It just doesn't seem all that hard to build Drexlerian assemblers. It's plain 
that every intelligent civilization will upload itself into nanite form 
just a few millenia after inventing the wheel. 

So if this is true then the universe is full of either Godlike intelligences 
or swarming Borgish assimilators. Since we're here to observe that the 
latter don't exist, the former must. Why don't they contact us? 

Well, perhaps as speculated we're just too dull. To God-Goo, we're about as 
slow and simple as lichen. 

Since we're not afficted by Borg-Goo, however, it's more likely God-Goo
observes some kind of Prime Directive. It's not warp drives that get you 
into the God-Goo Federation, it's working assemblers or maybe some 
technology after that. 

Then again perhaps God-Goo does contact us regularly, something like Arthur 
C. Clarke's cosmic two-by-four in 2001. Heaven knows we have enough records 
of miracles, angels, and generally spooky phenomena. The simplest 
explanation is that these are all the inventions of human gullibility 
and connivance ... until you factor in the Fermi Paradox, whereon the
simplest explanation is that miracles are just God-Goo slumming.

What about GRBs? Well, God-Goo are tough buggers - they can predict and 
survive GRBs without raising a sweat. Just burrow into the nearest rock;
no problemo.

What about transmissions? Why don't we pick up signals? Well, nanites have
a problem conserving bandwidth. There's a whole heap of them, remember? So
they only use coherent light - multicast, not broadcast. And rather
than sit in gravity wells making nice regular orbits they're constantly 
in intentional motion, so we notice no patterns.

What about galactic engineering? Well, what's to say the galaxies aren't
engineered? If Drexler's visions of immortal nanites exploiting solar sails
to go from A to B are correct, doubtless what we see in the night sky suits
God-Goo down to the ground.

So the whole SETI thing is ass-backwards. Rather than looking for 
intelligent life through telescopes, we should be looking for it 
through microscopes. Ever seen an electron micrograph of an ant?
What's to say those funny bumps on its head aren't ambassadors from
the galactic federation? 

Peter Merel. 

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