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henry cordova on December 11, 2023 at 1:40
You do make valid points, Ben. Humans don’t necessarily want to go to
the stars, space enthusiasts want to go to the stars. And let’s face it,
when we get there, we are not going to find a planet as suitable as the
one we live on now. If we want to terraform, we can do that to Mars, or
just clean up our own world. Both will be cheaper, and faster..

We can hollow out an asteroid and take generational voyages to other
systems, but all we’ll find there are comets, asteroids and starshine,
and we have plenty of that here! Once we have the tech to build space
habitats, we’ll have no need to haul them out into the void. Just park
them right here.

On the other hand, if there are other cultures out there, they may feel
very differently about it…

To avoid extinction, it might be prudent to colonize a few nearby stars,
but after that, the need to expand further out rapidly diminishes.
Besides, as a species, we’ve never exhibited much talent for long term planning.

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Benjamin R Stockton on December 12, 2023 at 7:01
Henry,
“as a species, we’ve never exhibited much talent for long term
planning.” Exactly. Even worse, there is no “we” from a species perspective. I hope we can keep this planet and all of our
co-inhabitants alive long enough that the challenges considered in this
forum can actually arise!

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fred on December 12, 2023 at 12:54
Hello Benjamin

You wrote : “as a species, we’ve never exhibited much talent for long
term planning.” I don’t think we’re capable of envisioning the distant future (except on this website ;) because the human species needs a
certain “slowness” to develop, step by step, and there are an infinite number of possibilities for the future we are not able to imagine. It’s
the story of the butterfly that was crushed in prehistoric times… What
would happen if an ETI civilization suddenly brought us 10,000 years of technological knowledge? Would our current civilization be able to
withstand such a shock? Not sure…

in a way, we are IN the world and we let ourselves be carried along by
it, believing that the little impulses we give it make us its masters.
Fred

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Adam Crowl on December 12, 2023 at 8:10
Hi Paul
The idea of a garrulous alien probe has a certain appeal – Greg Benford
did it before Clarke with Nigel Walmsley’s brief encounter with the
Snark probe, a herald of the inimical machine intelligences that would
follow. The Snark itself was friendly, but with a covert agenda.
Starglider had no covert agenda, but was seemingly oblivious to the philosophical impact of its off-hand responses to the monuments of human reasoning. Not that St Thomas Aquinas didn’t have it coming – Starglider’s replies echo the kind of Humean scepticism that eventually rotted the core out of philosophical arguments for so-called “natural religion”. Bad arguments for a Creator haven’t gone away because the
need for ‘God’ hasn’t gone away. It’s just less of a scandal philosophically to admit the limits of human knowledge either side of
the question of God’s existence. As much as the Rationalist tradition
hates to admit it, but there are some things which we must just take on
faith, even if we can hope for future updates and revisions of our understanding. The Post-Modernist critique – and the post-Post-Modernism we’re now a part of – have taught us to be sceptical of the power structures and motives that are typically behind any philosophical position.

Which segues neatly into my next thought – that imagining alien
intelligences and how they might differ to our own, helps us gain
perspective on what we take for granted in our human point of view. Starglider’s revelation that intelligent species with sexual
differentiation and family life are the only ones that develop a concept
of God is a bit obvious. Human gods are usually in our own Image, just
like most imagined aliens aren’t much better than “Star Trek” humanoids. With such a diversity of animal life on just one planet, our ability to
relate to Other Life seems terribly parochial.

Which makes me wonder just how we’d relate to completely different evolutionary histories. Nature is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we CAN imagine. That’s why the quest for Other Life is so compelling.

As a side-note, I’m intrigued by the recent genetic detective work that
hints strongly that we have at least two independent animal lineages –
the one which led to the Ctenophores (Comb Jellies) and the lineage with
just about everyone else. What else can Nature dream up?

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Paul Gilster on December 12, 2023 at 12:13
I’m glad you reminded me of Greg’s ‘Snark.’ I need to write that one up as well.

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fred on December 12, 2023 at 13:15
This is where we realize the limits of our species. I don’t know if this point has already been made here, but many biologists are adamant that
it’s virtually impossible for any other form of life in the universe to
be similar to ours, i.e. to the fact that we’re symmetrical beings; from
the point of view of biochemistry in the Universe, it’s something quite disturbing (and it always makes me laugh to see movie ETs with 2 skinny
arms 2 legs and big eyes, they’ll never have that shape :) I reread
Solaris: the idea is much more appealing, and Stan LEM’s genius must be recognized.

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Alex Tolley on December 12, 2023 at 19:49
@Fred. There are both visible and invisible differences. Convergent
evolution resulted in sharks, ichthyosaurs, and dolphins taking on very
similar forms even though their internal biologies are rather different.
IOW, we might just find humanoid ETI if that form is highly adapted to technological development.

But even if that is not the case, is it possible that our intellectual
output = e.g. math, science, even engineering, take on the same forms as
ours, simply because much of it reflects the nature of the universe and
may be the best way to deal with it? ETI may be like spiders, but their technologies might be surprisingly familiar to us.

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Adam Crowl on December 12, 2023 at 20:15
Hi Fred
My favourite Lem is “Fiasco”, with all its insights into Alien and human motivations, as well as the tragedy of the misunderstanding between the
two. It’s a possibility that will haunt SETI until we do make Contact.
And there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to understand anything about
Alien consciousness or experience. We might be able to share universals
– if such exist – and completely miss the essence of what makes us different. Only an existence proof can settle the question.

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Fred on December 13, 2023 at 13:14
Thank you, Adam. It’s terrible, I realize that my “classic” SF section
in the library is very poor! I’ll take note of all your reading
suggestions. In the 60s and 70s we had a lot of great authors translated
in France, but it was their main novels like Lem’s, Bradbury’s or Clark’s; their other productions remained in the shadows. Some authors
are still not translated, and as I used to draw during my English
lessons, it’s a bit hard :) For the past few years, science fiction here seems to me to be more oriented towards fantasy novels – I personally
don’t like them – or towards a “social” side (I’m thinking of SILO). “Hard-fiction” literature, which I think is more interesting, is
becoming rare. I’d have to decide to come to the USA :)

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