X-Message-Number: 8016
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7993 - #7997
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 01:05:06 -0700 (PDT)

Hi again!

I don't have much time before bedtime, so I'll just say a few words to Mike
about his ideas, and maybe a sentence for Mr. Clark. 

I was not saying that these hypothetical aliens were at all inferior to us.
They could be SUPERIOR. Yes, if we take 2 human beings and find that one of
them has lots of trouble with math, we'd suspect that the one that finds 
math difficult has a problem. But when you open the door not only to other
species with totally different history and evolution, but also to what we
ourselves may become in 10,000 years or 1,000,000 years, it's far from obvious
to me that we will retain mathematics. Like I said, it may be forgotten as 
one of the crutches used by our savage ancestors to get some very dim idea
of how the universe works. 

And how would we recognize such creatures? We would recognize them for what
they could DO. And though in our blindness we might not at first see
just what they were, we might come to see that, too --- by the fact that all
our efforts for hundreds of years utterly failed to explain HOW they could
do what they could do. (Happily this is only hypothetical. I will say, though,
that given the age of the Galaxy it's far more likely that any other 
"intelligent!!!???" race would be so far in advance of us that we might not
even see, at first, that they were intelligent. But what I really think is
that we are alone, at least for megaparsecs around).

I like math, enjoy thinking about it, have written long papers on some 
sides of it, and all the rest. And as I said before, the best way we have
to someday pass beyond math is to continue DOIMG math. But I also think
that math has no more claim to universality than any other human construction.

And finally, to Mr. Clark: I do hope you have noticed that neurons, as are
all cells, are almost the classic case of nanomachines, and to raise the 
issue of nanotechnology here is just a little absurd. They are, in fact, the
current best example of what such machines might do... and I note that no 
one has yet actually built anything to match them, despite all the theory.

			Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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