X-Message-Number: 14480 Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 10:09:08 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: still more on other intelligences Once more on the issue of other civilizations: Apparently my comment on the combination of other intelligence Apparently my comment on the combination of other intelligences PLUS an infinite past has set off lots of thinking. Several comments in the most recent Cryonet again try to escape the problem I discussed. 1. If we suppose that by some means we learn to think far faster than we think now, will this affect our interest in interstellar travel? I would say NO. The simplest reason is that we won't really get a deep understanding of what's out there unless we go there ourselves. But there are others on top of that: perhaps we want lots more REAL space for our activities rather than just cyberspace (which basically comes from our imagination and history alone, while REAL space comes out of Reality... and if you think that we are able to work things out purely by thinking, then you're simply wrong). Could we already exist in the construction of some(one,thing, whatever)'s imagination? Until someone comes up with evidence for that, such a belief is just like a belief in fairies. Not only that, but if such lengthy travel felt like it would take millions of years, at least two solutions exist. The first is called suspended animation, of which you must have heard as a reader of Cryonet. The second simple solution is to take along lots of friends, so the trip will then seem much like normal life. 2. Could those other intelligences be living between the stars? This idea runs into the simplest of engineering issues: a sufficiently advanced civilization, no matter of what materials its members consist and what temperatures and speeds they prefer, can easily take apart whole stars and turn them into areas of more favorable existence. A civilization which existed in space would have eaten up the whole Solar System millions of years before human beings even existed. The really essential point to keep in mind is that these other civilizations came into existence millions of years prior to us ... and if we assume that the past history of the universe is infinite, then the time would easily be far longer than that. So both of these ideas don't really deal with the problem. It's still worthwhile, though, to also consider their value if we suppose that the previous history of the Universe is FINITE. I'd say that the interest in going to and inhabiting other systems would still exist; after all, there are at least two ways to deal with the (apparent) time for travel, even if we speed ourselves up by a high factor. I'd also add that a civilization, no matter how powerful, which simply vanished into its own imagination would ultimately find itself destroyed by one which did not. Yes, that other would probably have to be at least as fast if not faster, but to assume that fast thinking would let us escape the errors due to a total lack of acquaintance with reality is an error, and if such a civilization ended up staring at itself through its own mirror, then it migth not even take one as advanced to deal with it. Reality is hard, imagination is soft. Best wishes and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14480