End futile search

"Ool" wrote in message
...
"Chosp" wrote in message
news:rTuRb.11279$F15.1148@fed1read06...
"Ool" wrote in message
...

I'm wondering what all this "finding alien life" craze is about. Is
it about wishing we could find someone to hitch a ride with who's al-
ready done all the work because we're too lazy to build spaceships of
our own?

Is it that?? If it were it would be *pathetic!* SETI as a bunch of
would-be hippie freeloaders.

Your lack of insight borders on the astonishing.

Nah, actually I'm just a mind-bogglingly wise, intelligent, and well-
educated troll.

Well, there we go.

And I'm sorry.

Ok. That's another definite step in the right direction.
I accept your apology and thank you for it.


I've been having stressful times the
last few days, taking steps to hopefully get closer to space explora-
tion projects myself, out there in the real world, when what I'm doing
now is finished. And it occurs to me now that putting down other peo-
ple's plans of exploring, even if they're based on motivations I don't
share, perhaps isn't the wisest approach to rallying support and get-
ting anything accomplished.


That much is certainly correct. You were not on the
road to getting anyone to back your action.
There may be hope for you yet.....

Sorry!

Ok. Thanks.

"G EddieA95" wrote in message
...
Never cared much about aliens and strange, new worlds containing civi-
lizations!

I agree with you there. I'd like to know what the 'craze' is, meself.

IMO, those who yearn most for alien contact are philosophers who want to
prove
that we are nothing special, but rather commonplace and pathetic.

Utter bull****.
There are as many reasons as there are curious people.

I don't get
what proving that philosophical point does for anybody, to be worth that
expensive effort.

That is quite the hideously superficial assessment of the situation.

On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 19:58:15 +0100, "Ool"
wrote, in part:

I'm wondering what all this "finding alien life" craze is about. Is
it about wishing we could find someone to hitch a ride with who's al-
ready done all the work because we're too lazy to build spaceships of
our own?

I guess it can happen in one of two ways. Maybe we will get lucky, and
find on Mars, as innumerable science-fiction stories have presented,
an intact library containing the secrets of FTL travel as discovered
by a civilization that flourished for tens of thousands of years...
millions of years ago, and then vanished.

Or maybe we will just find rock, and not even microbes, but in making
the effort to get there, we will have learned better to build our own
spaceships.

Finding alien microbes will let us better understand what life *is*,
because we won't have only one example. And encountering alien
intelligent beings will, even if there is technological parity, allow
us great new insights into what is truly universal, as opposed to what
we cannot see because we are humans.

Of course, unlike fish, who know not water, our science has already
let us study that thing called "air".

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

we might be like China, which had its chance to explore and to ex-
pand but then suddenly outlawed sea-going vessels and built walls in-
stead. Which is why today we have America while all *they* have is
Canada.


The Chinese have Canada?

Why do I have a feeling that it is YOU and not these philosophers who
believe that we are "commonplace and pathetic"? After all you said it
above, where now you say that we are only worthy of pets or target
practice.

I didn't say that we are "worthy" of that. Rather, based upon the history of
Eurocentric colonisation, that seems to be what animal-evolved, technological
races might likely *do* to their technological inferiors. The Indians, etc,
were not "worthy" of extermination, but that is what happened.

I am sure that we would have something to trade with aliens even if it
was just "shiny beads" or their own version of "tentacle sex".

I doubt that interspecies sex would be desirable at all to either side.

As I
mean all the stuff that is on our planet, then there certainly must be
something.

That "stuff" is being rapidly exhausted. Let's hope we have ships plumbing the
rest of Sol system before the aliens come.

Ool wrote:


Never cared much about aliens and strange, new worlds containing civi-
lizations! I can't even deal with the fact that people insist on not
speaking English everywhere, and English is not even my own native
language.


I enjoy the diversity of races and cultures on this planet. It sure
would be boring if we were all the same.

If there are aliens out there we'd meet them soon enough once we
started spreading across the galaxy. And that's when all the culture
clash problems would begin, and the squabbles and wars about resources
and ethnic differences...


You mention some nightmares from history that could well repeat
themselves. But history has also shown us great explosions of creativity
from meetings of cultures.

Much of our cultures have music and images. If we meet a race with
either eyes or ears it would be a whole new universe of culture to
explore. We could trade them M.C. Escher and Leonardo DaVinci for
Xlorgon and Miloskongi.

(If they perceive different ranges, our music or colors could be transposed)

It doesn't have to be all bad.


--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

"Ool" wrote in message ...
"Chosp" wrote in message news:rTuRb.11279$F15.1148@fed1read06...
"Ool" wrote in message


Nah, actually I'm just a mind-bogglingly wise, intelligent, and well-
educated troll.

Not troll, but Troll!
(You under-estimate your own Troll-dom!)

Ool wrote:
"G EddieA95" wrote in message ...

In my opinion, the later that happens the better! An America without
the dark chapters involving the eviction of the "Indians" into barren
territories or an Australia without the Aboriginees would have been a
much better deal, guilt-wise.

Unfortunately, we are probably going to fill the role of the Indians or Abos in
any interplanetary conflict.

Quite possibly, if all we keep doing is splash around a little in LEO.
Or we might be like China, which had its chance to explore and to ex-
pand but then suddenly outlawed sea-going vessels and built walls in-
stead. Which is why today we have America while all *they* have is
Canada.

Another interesting fact is that when the Native Americans' ancestors
first arrived in their new home they hunted most of the big game to
extinction within a few thousand years, including the horse. So when
we finally arrived there they were a bunch of nomads who didn't have
horses while we did. I think there's a lesson there for all of us.

Only bunch of nomads? You must be thinking of some other continent than
northern america.


(Though I'm not quite sure that that last bit is of any use as an al-
legory for anything to do with space flight...)



--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

"Sander Vesik" wrote in message ...
Ool wrote:

Another interesting fact is that when the Native Americans' ancestors
first arrived in their new home they hunted most of the big game to
extinction within a few thousand years, including the horse. So when
we finally arrived there they were a bunch of nomads who didn't have
horses while we did. I think there's a lesson there for all of us.

Only bunch of nomads? You must be thinking of some other continent than
northern america.


Up north. Larger cultures in the south, granted. At any rate, they
had no horses, because their ancestors had eaten them all, which went
around to bite them in the ass eventually...

Which just goes to show that before you sink your teeth into something
you ought to try out sitting on it first!

(But I don't want to bring my personal problems into this...)



--
__ “A good leader knows when it’s best to ignore the __
('__` screams for help and focus on the bigger picture.� '__`)
//6(6; ©OOL mmiv :^)^\\
`\_-/ http://home.t-online.de/home/ulrich....lmann/redbaron \-_/'

I'd like to know what the 'craze' is, meself.

'Craze' implies something new and faddish. The question of life and
intelligence elsewhere goes back centuries.

On a philosophical level. But philosophy and US$2.50 will buy a cup of
Starbucks coffee.

I would call the UFO subculture and SETI a craze, though.

Daydreams about exotic trade goods and commerce in wildly new
technology are just fantasy.

No one has seriously proposed such, either.

OK, so your interest in this issue is philosophical. That's fine, but not
worth public expense on, and most definitely not worth revealing our existence
to potential slavemasters.

Why should someone whose technology allows interstellar travel
require slaves?

Why would a culture that had the steam engine require them?

A cognizant species of "lower rank" could easily be used for mind-work. Or,
rather than slavery, biological experimentation.

But as you said, what are we likely to have that they need? Earth has
finite land area.

Which, if the planet was attractive to them, they could use once they had
pushed us aside.