The Fermi Paradox and SETI Success

On Aug 15, 5:29*pm, Kermit unrestrained [moi?] wrote:

Whereas in his posts in this thread he seems to be blaming Swedish
socialists for bribing Osama bin Ladin to bomb the twin towers in
order to protect global corporate interests, which I find counter-
intuitive. Perhaps if he offered cites and reasoning I'd find him more
persuasive. Or perhaps not.

Kermit

Nice try! :-)))
Another monkey (froggy?) making wood(en) comparisons.
My god is much bigger than your god!
We are all doomed!
The monkeys fiddle... while Rome fiddles with innocent children.
I blame Usenet, off-topic, kookey cross-posters for all the confusion.
Post in astronomy. Get hit with monkey sticks in talk.origins.
Question the value of SETI and get a full frontal lobotomy c/of
myopic, planetary ignoramuses.
IQs abound but specialisation is a hamstring injury.
Understanding is absent. We talk quite another language.
Why do dolphins and whales get such bad press from Mensa?
Do you do urdu? Greek? Hebrew? Grønlandsk?
Sign language? .... Oh... dear.
Maintain radio silence!
It's the least we can do to maintain the status quo.
The failure to utilise the world's full potential intelligence is
surely a crime against humanity?
40 million working poor in the USA. Country of opportunity. Rewards
only the corrupt.
946 billionaires exist in the known universe.
Taxation is:a) A farce b) Unfair. c) Duh... Don't know.
Hungry? Let them eat clay cake.
Silverbacks rule! Wayhay! Now there's progress!
Burma? Darfur? UN Resolution 999999999999999999999 vetoed by Chinese
arms factory bosses.
Pandas extinct in the wild! Whoops! Sorry about that!
Liverpool 1 Manchester United 3. Hooray!
Olympics (cough cough) called off due to local EPO pollution.
Iraq RIP. (Al Jazeera)
Georgia (a late kick-off)
No, not that Georgia!
Britney shows camel toe! Paris trailing in silicone popularity
stakes!
WW3!
Incoming!!
Brown note!
shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh h
:-)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
I love Usenet. Opinions are two a penny and worth every red cent.
Auto-dumning down to *our* level. The BBC would be proud!
Every keyboard has an inflated ego.
Delusions of grandeur.
Masters of none.
Sticks and stones...

Love
MIiss Piggy
(N.B. Not another monkey!)

References:

Kubrik, Stanley, Clark.Arthur.C, 2001 A Space Oddysey, 1968
Blackalicious, Obelisks 'R Us, , 2008
IMDB?
HAL?
AI?
Nah.
Only me! ;-)

Chris.B wrote:
On Aug 15, 5:29 pm, Kermit unrestrained [moi?] wrote:

Whereas in his posts in this thread he seems to be blaming Swedish
socialists for bribing Osama bin Ladin to bomb the twin towers in
order to protect global corporate interests, which I find counter-
intuitive. Perhaps if he offered cites and reasoning I'd find him more
persuasive. Or perhaps not.

Kermit

I dove in and pulled out these two nuggets:

I blame Usenet, off-topic, kookey cross-posters for all the confusion.

Understanding is absent. We talk quite another language.

And apparently he posted in sci.astro.amateur. Is he a regular loon
there, or just passing through?

On Aug 15, 12:57*pm, "Chris.B" wrote:
On Aug 15, 5:29*pm, Kermit unrestrained [moi?] *wrote:

Whereas in his posts in this thread he seems to be blaming Swedish
socialists for bribing Osama bin Ladin to bomb the twin towers in
order to protect global corporate interests, which I find counter-
intuitive. Perhaps if he offered cites and reasoning I'd find him more
persuasive. Or perhaps not.

Kermit

Nice try! :-)))
Another monkey (froggy?) *making wood(en) comparisons.
My god is much bigger than your god!
We are all doomed!
The monkeys fiddle... while Rome fiddles with innocent children.
I blame Usenet, off-topic, kookey cross-posters for all the confusion.
Post in astronomy. *Get hit with monkey sticks in talk.origins.
Question the value of SETI and get a full frontal lobotomy c/of
myopic, planetary ignoramuses.
IQs abound but specialisation is a hamstring injury.
Understanding is absent. We talk quite another language.
Why do dolphins and whales get such bad press from Mensa?
Do you do urdu? Greek? Hebrew? Grønlandsk?
Sign language? .... Oh... dear.
Maintain radio silence!
It's the least we can do to maintain the status quo.
The failure to utilise the world's full potential intelligence is
surely a crime against humanity?
40 million working poor in the USA. Country of opportunity. Rewards
only the corrupt.
946 billionaires exist in the known universe.
Taxation is:a) A farce b) Unfair. c) Duh... Don't know.
Hungry? Let them eat clay cake.
Silverbacks rule! Wayhay! Now there's progress!
Burma? Darfur? UN Resolution 999999999999999999999 vetoed by Chinese
arms factory bosses.
Pandas extinct in the wild! Whoops! Sorry about that!
Liverpool 1 Manchester United 3. Hooray!
Olympics (cough cough) called off due to local EPO pollution.
Iraq RIP. (Al Jazeera)
Georgia (a late kick-off)
No, not that Georgia!
Britney shows camel toe! Paris trailing in silicone popularity
stakes!
WW3!
Incoming!!
Brown note!
shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh h
:-)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
I love Usenet. *Opinions are two a penny and worth every red cent.
Auto-dumning down to *our* level. The BBC would be proud!
Every keyboard has an inflated ego.
Delusions of grandeur.
Masters of none.
Sticks and stones...

Love
MIiss Piggy
(N.B. Not another monkey!)

References:

Kubrik, Stanley, *Clark.Arthur.C, 2001 A Space Oddysey, 1968
Blackalicious, Obelisks 'R Us, , 2008
IMDB?
HAL?
AI?
Nah.
Only me! *;-)

Hmmm...
A complex and inspired intelligence too subtle and quick for this poor
amphibian to follow? Or someone simply too lazy or disinterested to
make an attempt to actually communicate?

The data set is still too small to tell.

There *are annoying restrictions to language conventions, but without
them there is no language at all, only grunts.

Kermit, the *Other Frog

On Aug 15, 4:07 pm, Kermit wrote:

A complex and inspired intelligence too subtle and quick for this poor
amphibian to follow? Or someone simply too lazy or disinterested to
make an attempt to actually communicate?

It's clear enough *which side he's on*. He is against the rich and the
powerful, and for the poor and the downtrodden. So, he is presumably
making the point that, since his heart is in the right place, he
doesn't need to debate coherently; those who are obviously wicked
should mend their ways and follow him!

John Savard

Last attempt to communicate with Experimental Flask 379 prior to total
systems collapse,

Greetings, blind, intellectual masturbators!

We send you messages warning that the human race is close to
extinction but you are all far too busy parading your self importance
to notice. Nothing we communicated was untrue but you chose to
criticise the format of our communications? Did any of you actually
read anything we sent or did you just scan and dismiss us as just more
cybernuts? Perhaps you lacked the capacity to understand the messages?
(likelihood 78.443%)

The human race experiment is now failing rapidly. The sealed lab flask
has yet again proved too small and the original nutrient dosage
(apparently) insufficient. Overheating is now inevitable as the active
heatinks crash from direct attack by the overcrowded occupants of your
finite container. Too many are now blindly seeking out and destroying
the last remaining life support systems. You have terraformed your own
container into mass extinction. Yet have unwisely placed your life
control systems in the hands of only the most selfish and immoral
amongst you.

We tried to communicate the dangers you faced two thousand of your
years ago but your reception sensors were down. It seems they still
are, We had thought that any fools could have worked out the means to
eternal energy supply and endless benficial nutrients from the many
pyramids we left scattered all over the inside of your flask. You had
only to invert the pyramids to see the error of your ways of
organising yourselves! The pyramids weren't meant to be taken literaly
as you have (apparently) chosen to do.

You should easily have discovered the means to escape from your flask
by now. But again chose not to: You achieved this remarkable trick by
limiting your combined intellectual capacity to a minute fraction of
your own kind and then crippling the rest with blind superstition.
Talk about gross underutilisation of available capacity! Even the
occupants of Flask 378 weren't that stupid! (God rest their souls)

Goodye Flask 379

Nice try, but still only 1/13

God

On Aug 16, 2:06 am, "Chris.B" wrote:
Nothing we communicated was untrue but you chose to
criticise the format of our communications? Did any of you actually
read anything we sent or did you just scan and dismiss us as just more
cybernuts?

The format of the communications was such as to make that inevitable.

Yet have unwisely placed your life
control systems in the hands of only the most selfish and immoral
amongst you.

For super-intelligent aliens, that particular sentence happens to be
rather surprising. Because it makes a statement that is really dumb.

The human beings of Earth have not _chosen_ to place control of it's
resources in the hands of the ambitious and avaricious.

Am I saying that it just happened by accident? Oh, no. It happened
according to predictable laws - rules which you lot should be
intelligent enough to understand by now, even if the human race hasn't
quite figured out how to deal with them.

Most larger animals on Earth have stable dominance hierarchies. Once
an animal surrenders in ritual combat to determine access to mates or
rank order, the fight automatically ends. Humans don't have this; they
can kill each other. (Why? "The Descent of Woman" by Elaine Morgan, in
the first edition and the pocket book version.)

When conditions are favorable, all Earthly life forms breed so that
their populations expand exponentially. In this way, when conditions
are less favorable, their populations will not rapidly shrink so as to
result in extinction. This means that population growth does not stop
short of the point where comfort is turned into misery. For any
animal, not just the one that only very recently developed The Pill so
that foresight need no longer war with one of the strongest and most
ancient of instincts.

We increased our food production by inventing agriculture. This meant,
though, that we had an investment in our food tied up in a given patch
of land. We had to fight to defend ourselves from other hungry,
crowded people who were still trying to feed themselves the old way,
through hunting and gathering, or nomadic herding. And then
agricultural communities grew, and began to abut each other. They
became hungry, and needed to grow.

So we never really could all choose to just get along. And it just
takes one nation to choose aggression to affect all the others. If
there's somewhere to run to, they can run away. They can be beaten. Or
they can organize themselves so that they can fight better than the
other one that started it, and win. ("The Parable of the Tribes", by
Andrew Bard Schmookler.)

We're the ones left standing after all this, and _you're_ surprised
that our leadership emphasizes having rich men around, so they can
build big factories that are good for making planes and tanks and
battleships? Instead of living in harmony with nature using windmills
and bicycles?

Well, since the superintelligent aliens are too dumb to provide useful
advice about the problem, except to point out the obvious that we
already knew, I guess we'll just have to work out a solution
ourselves.

John Savard

On Aug 16, 3:06 am, "Chris.B" wrote:
Last attempt to communicate with Experimental Flask 379 prior to total
systems collapse,

Greetings, blind, intellectual masturbators!

We send you messages warning that the human race is close to
extinction but you are all far too busy parading your self importance
to notice. Nothing we communicated was untrue but you chose to
criticise the format of our communications? Did any of you actually
read anything we sent or did you just scan and dismiss us as just more
cybernuts? Perhaps you lacked the capacity to understand the messages?
(likelihood 78.443%)

[...]

No good, you forgot to ask for money.

On Aug 19, 2:41*am, Ben Standeven wrote:
On Aug 16, 3:06 am, "Chris.B" wrote: Last attempt to communicate with Experimental Flask 379 prior to total
systems collapse,

Greetings, blind, intellectual masturbators!

We send you messages warning that the human race is close to
extinction but you are all far too busy parading your self importance
to notice. Nothing we communicated was untrue but you chose to
criticise the format of our communications? Did any of you actually
read anything we sent or did you just scan and dismiss us as just more
cybernuts? Perhaps you lacked the capacity to understand the messages?
(likelihood 78.443%)

[...]

No good, you forgot to ask for money.

Science fiction has struggled with the question of what value can be
traded between civilisations in space that can only exchange messages,
so how do we send money? We can send knowledge; information; cultural
productions, literature; DNA genome information; electronic funds
transfer backed by a bank at the other end, but how do we earn money
in the first place on a world that we can't touch? By sending
knowledge, information, cultural productions...

Questions arise such as the trustworthiness of information (and if the
aliens tell you how to build a giant robot or something, it may be not
a good idea), and the turnaround time. For instance if the ETs see
_Jesus Christ Superstar_ on video and send back "We will provide the
cure for cancer if Andrew Lloyd-Webber undertakes to spend the rest of
his life painting our embassy tartan with brushes made from his own
eyebrow hair instead of writing any more music", but we just heard
this week...

(I'm not responsible for the tastes of aliens. Except, I did imagine
them. As it happens I'm Scottish, so...)

On Aug 21, 3:46*pm, Robert Carnegie wrote:

(I'm not responsible for the tastes of aliens. *Except, I did imagine
them. *As it happens I'm Scottish, so...)

Well, nobody is perfect. Isn't that really the point about
civilisations? Despite my dislike for hierarchy this has proved to be
one of the most enduring a useful tools for the human race. We
progress and survive on the efforts of a few unique individuals per
generation. Most of us are mere extras on the stage of life. Worker
ants programmed to carry out all the vital/ utterly pointless tasks
allotted to our particular place/role in society. If there were no
criminals there would be no need for a lot of walk-on extras. Just
imagine if there were no politicians! Most the cast would become
redundent overnight.

Anthropomorphism is a serious weakness in the arguments/guesswork
concerning "aliens". Many seem completely unable to acccept that
anything which has developed intelligence cannot be just like us but
with naturally larger breasts. I wouldn't want to a meet any alien
which pretended to be my mother in law in any shape or form. We place
such importance on appearance that anything falling outside of "the
norm" might be rather terrifying or downright ugly to most of us.
Hairy legs in women? Cleft lips? Thinning hair? Cross-eyed? Acne? An
odd skin colour? Sweaty hands? These are all unattractive features to
most of us. God help anything turning up on the White House Lawn with
any of these characteristics. Or worse, a combination of all the
above.

None of you seem grasped the significance of my earlier ("bizarre")
posting styles. Don't we all carry a heavy load of prejudices around
with us concerning communication? I'd hate to meet you on a desert
island if I was made to learn your language rather than the converse.
Shouldn't we choose an intermediate language which neither of us know?
Just to be fair to both?

How do you judge the format and quality of a message from space? By
your own standards of educated, middle class, 21st century English,
competent punctuation, broad vocabulary and decent spelling? You'e not
going to get far with the four tones with that lot in your baggage!
Are these the same standards you apply to dolphins and whales? Can you
speak dolphin? It can't just be all about fishing, racing against
ships and sex. Can it? Do dolphins have local accents and hierarchy?
Upstream boy and downstream girl? Shouldn't we know by now? It might
be important. Who knows what vital secrets they hold? It might be the
one rite of passage which the aliens are just waiting for us to manage
alone before showering us with their technological gifts.
Communicating with the aliens living on our own world could be our
vital step to emancipation. May our many fantasy gods help us if the
aliens are women! We'll be stuck here for another bløødy millenium.
*;^{#

On Aug 22, 5:25*pm, "Chris.B" wrote:




None of you seem grasped the significance of my earlier ("bizarre")
posting styles.


When did it change?



================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedAndBlackPublishers.com