From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sat Mar 24 2001 - 10:44:02 MST
In a message dated 3/24/2001 11:33:08 AM Eastern Standard Time,
DaleJohnstone@email.com writes:
<< Stellar engineering sounds to me like one of those old science fiction
ideas that may well prove to be utterly naive as our understanding grows. I'd
rather take the lack of visible stellar engineering as evidence it's not
needed. Surely if it was, we wouldn't exist.
A more interesting question to my mind is why, if they exist, have they not
uplifted us? Even if their Singularity has an attractor other than
Friendliness, it will in some form have a sub-goal to ensure their existence.
At the very least they would want to make sure we don't turn into a
replicator explosion.
I can't believe we're the first, there must be more to the puzzle than we
can see right now.
Regards,
Dale Johnstone. >>
I believe your points on Kurzweil's essay are indeed cogent, and for a place
(the universe) that appears to be at least 12 billion lightyears in extent,
the jury is clearly,still out! However, even supercivilizations, as the
Russian, theorist Kardashev, imagined them, would still be focused on quite a
lot of stellar engineering. We would then be able to find anomalies, that
would change our world-view. Right now, nobody has hit the SL2 level, in the
sciences; and proclaim that 'somebody is restructing the Sombrero Galaxy, for
example.
Moreover,Some species would have already downloaded(Kardashev 3) while others
would still be in the process of transfering to 100% Net-Habitation, and
would likely, still have need of stars, planets, dust, and energy, to further
insure their cosmic survival.
I suggest a compromise. That compromise is aristotelean, in that I suggest a
current universe, sparsely populated with technological civilizations. We
may be 1st or 220,937th, among equals. Most might still be at our technical
level.
Hence, detection at this distance is very difficult at this distance,
utilizing, the radio telescopes and computers we possess. If the universe
contains 50 billion galaxies, then one might limit the development of
technology producers to only in barred spiral galaxies, like our own. This
still leaves us with 2.5 billion galaxies in which to distribute techno-
life. Thus, space aliens are few and far between, but truly still exist now,
and will exist in the Post Singularity future.
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