[X] My Assistant

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

...Richard might well point out that that means I have some spiritual leanings after all.

Yes. When I mean spiritual, I mean mainly dealing with our mind. Dealing with our psychological defects, with our motives in life. Anybody who engages into such a path feels as if he is going from fundamental breakthrough to other fundamental breakthrough. A society based on spirituality will do the same, and be completelly unrecognizable in only two generations.

Often when we speak of spirituality, people understand beliefs, like literally believing in Adam and Eve, or mindless rituals, like bearing symbols. This is basically not the point (and I agree with Doug that we should even not speak of this here) and it is at best a degenerescence of true spirituality (I quoted above the vast spiritual progresses in India, but those progresses halted about 1000 years ago, to lead to a very supersticious society. It is because the spiritual evolution engine was broken at about year 1100, by fundamentalists, and the destruction of its great universities. I am afraid too that there was also some elitism, as this spiritual knowledge was not available as a basic education for all the people.)

Also when speaking of spirituality, often people understand spiritual powers (parapsychology). This is not much more the point here, but, given that some serious scientific works showed the reality of some intriguing phenomena, this allows us to make some speculative hypothesis as what this will play a fundamental role in the evolution of a society, beyond a certain level of intelligence or wisdom. I describe this in my novels "The Missing Planets" and "Dumria", where "quantum telescopes" allow to see a mouse at the other side of our galaxy. What they find is really not like in Star Wars...

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Seti is a fascinating project, even if it produces a negative result. Finding life in our galaxy would be a profound discovery. And if we are the only intelligent technological species, that is pretty damn profound too.

Personally, I think high-technology civilizations are rare. Anyone can play the game of plugging guesses into Drake's Equation, and when I do it, I get 0.1 civilizations in our galaxy. I'm not surprised that no radio signals have been found.

I'm a fan of Evolutionary Psychology, which suggests some speculations about intelligence in general. First, it is tricky to maintain a social species. The "Free Rider" program is lethal, so any successful social species must have a solution to that or it will evolve into a non-social species. That is, you have to eliminate criminals, slackers and cowards from the gene pool, or you're doomed as a species. It suggests to me that the more highly cooperative a species becomes, the tricker it is for them to remain viable for a long period. Look at H.G. Wells' story of The Time Machine, with its amazing concept that different economic classes might evolve into different species. Who knows how long a cooperative high-tech-capabile species even remains biologically stable?

Evolutionary Psychology also suggests that high intelligence evolves, not to solve problems of competing against Nature, but to solve problems of sexual politics and competion with the species. All this makes me thing that an alien intelligent species will not remotely look like us, but their atttiudes and personality may be similar to ours (just as pack animals such as dogs have easily recognized emotional attitudes, similar to our own). That could be good news or bad news!

[Bob Shaw]

Don:

If the Dogoids come to Earth to have sex with our furniture, that's certainly bad news; still, it could be worse - they could be interested in our legs! Eeek!

Bob Shaw

[helvick]

All this makes me thing that an alien intelligent species will not remotely look like us, but their atttiudes and personality may be similar to ours (just as pack animals such as dogs have easily recognized emotional attitudes, similar to our own). That could be good news or bad news!

That's an interesting point. It is also interesting to think that ~2500 years after the ancient greeks we still find shared insights and philosophies in their thoughts. Despite the fact that we're only 80-100 generations separated from them and we are the same species it does imply that some things are pretty universal.

Where I start to get the wobblies though is when i start thinking about what kind of other intelligences are we likely to see. Our experience so far of intelligence is that it tends to be better developed in predators rather than prey, and not at all developed in entirely benign lifeforms (like how many smart trees are there). The argument that highly intelligent species would need to be social and cooperative is good up to the point where you only consider lifeforms composed of individuals (like ours) but a hive intelligence could get around that as could a massive single coordinated lifeform (such as the the distributed intelligence MorningLightMountain in Peter Hamiltons Pandora's Star\Judas unchained). The philosophies that a hive\distributed intelligence would "believe" in could be truly alien to us - having no concept of individuality, cooperation or "socialisation" would make small talk pretty challenging.

Personally though I'm happy to think that the speed of light limitation is actually sufficient to prevent interstellar travel and we'll never need to worry. We may someday find evidence of intelligences from beyond the solar system but we'll never actually have to deal with them, we'll probably be having too much trouble dealing with new intelligences that we develop here anyway so it's not as if we'll be bored.

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

I loved Peter Hamilton's books. But I don't think a hive species would become intelligent, because there is much less sexual competition. Look at how extremely primitive the nervous systems of all Earth-based hive species are.

And consider how smart Dolphins are. But their intelligence evolved to solve sexual politics and did not generalized to complex manipulations of their evironment. They just have a lot of sex and eat a lot of fish. Not saying that's a bad thing. But maybe our species is a freakish aberation.

[ljk4-1]

I loved Peter Hamilton's books. But I don't think a hive species would become intelligent, because there is much less sexual competition. Look at how extremely primitive the nervous systems of all Earth-based hive species are.

And consider how smart Dolphins are. But their intelligence evolved to solve sexual politics and did not generalized to complex manipulations of their evironment. They just have a lot of sex and eat a lot of fish. Not saying that's a bad thing. But maybe our species is a freakish aberation.

Remember the quote in Douglas Adams The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel, New York, wars and so on – whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same reasons."

http://www.workinghumor.com/quotes/hitchhiker.shtml

What I wanted to say was this. I think that given all available information, we are, for all practical purposes, most likely the only folks like us in the galaxy. Or am I wrong?

I think there is movement of chemicals out there in all sorts of wierd arangements (is this, "life" ? ), but the only place I can get up, walk across the street to the 7-11 and buy a slurpee is right here.

And just how many other worlds have you actually tried walking on and such?

[ljk4-1]

The economic alien
---

People continue to seek explanations for why evidence of
extraterrestrial civilizations continues to elude us. Gregory
Anderson suggests that the odds of detecting such civilizations
depends on their economic acumen as much as their technological
prowess.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/633/1

[ljk4-1]

The current issue of Skeptic Magazine has an article entitled:

"ID & SETI: Can Intelligent Design be Considered Scientific in
the Same Way that SETI is?" by Robert Camp

It is not available online, but here is the magazine's Web site:

http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/index.php

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

"ID & SETI: Can Intelligent Design be Considered Scientific in
the Same Way that SETI is?" by Robert Camp

we cannot compare those two things.

Intelligent Design is a religious dogma that some fundamentalists try to mascarade into a science "known fact". At best it is a speculative hypothesis, which much suffers of such a "support". SETI starts from a hope (which is not strictly speaking a science hypothesis, but it can be correctly posed as a working hypothesis) and check this hope with valid observation and analysis methods.

The ID guies are NOT scientists, while the SETI guies are.

The ID guies are lobbying to enter by force into the science/education system, the SETI guies don't.



About skepticism, I would say, after Descartes, that it is correct not to start a science investigation by "accepted known facts" such as taking the ancient Bible stories as literal facts. Skecticism is also useful all along the science process, where, when we find some unexpected result, we must first check for trite explanations before brandishing a new discovery. But, when evidences point at some unexplained things, and that all checkings cannot contradict this, then skepticism is no longer the correct attitude, and we MUST accept the novel result. Also when we have hopes, such as finding ET life, or finding that theres is something after death (NDEs), skepticism is useful to avoid false hopes, but it MUST NOT state a priori that it "cannot" be true.

You see, it is like with a car: it has two controls, throttle to go faster, and brake to go more cautiously. Hope is the throttle control, scepticism is the brake. In science, if we go forward without brake, we are soon a nutter. If we all the time jam on the brake from abusive scepticism or social conformance, we simply go nowhere and it is no more science than with the nutters.

[ustrax]

They're among us!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/02...rain/index.html

Very good discussion on this topic...

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

They're among us!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/02...rain/index.html

Very good discussion on this topic...

hmmmm... there was a thread on this on this forum, but I am unable to find it again.

After some discution, members were able to find more complete analysis results made in the UK. What was found is that theses cells were lichen spora of a common local species, which was identified, and this phenomenon happens sometimes in the place, when damp is especially heavy and the lichens release their spores all together. Anyway, even without that there was serious reasons to say that it was not fallen from a meteorite.

It is somewhate pervert that an enigma which was solved beyond doubt still resurfaces again and again as a "new mistery", even in medias like CNN. Do they really check their infos?


Please ustrax don't take this harsh remark against you, I think your participation is worthy.

[ustrax]

It is somewhate pervert that an enigma which was solved beyond doubt still resurfaces again and again as a "new mistery", even in medias like CNN. Do they really check their infos?

Or they don't or they a had a gap in the science page to be filled...

[ljk4-1]

hmmmm... there was a thread on this on this forum, but I am unable to find it again.

The Kerala thread can be found here:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...indpost&p=29922

As for the media's level of science knowledge, it is in strong need of improvement.

[ustrax]

The Kerala thread can be found here:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...indpost&p=29922

As for the media's level of science knowledge, it is in strong need of improvement.

Thank you ljk4-1.
Is there any thread already discussing the Wow! Signal?
I didn't want to disrupt the rythm of this conversation that is being very interesting so maybe it is better to start a new topic on it. Or not...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow_signal

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

<side remark>We rely on CNN to know what happens in Irak and somilar topics. If they are not serious about ET life, how can they be serious about Irak? (assuming of course that ET life is obviously much more important than war)</side remark>

Thank you ljk4-1.
Is there any thread already discussing the Wow! Signal?
I didn't want to disrupt the rythm of this conversation that is being very interesting so maybe it is better to start a new topic on it. Or not...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow_signal

As far as I know no. I think you should ask Doug to add a new topic about SETI and similar. Unfortunately he is absent for some days. Anyway this thread already focused on many different SETI related stuff, and it was intended to gather SETI related discutions.

The wow signal remains a mistery until now. Many other strong signals, statistically unlikely, were picked by SETI since, but never in the same place in the sky. They all are one-time events, so they are not retained by the SETI team. The most probable conventionnal explanation is that satellites sometimes send back powerfull Earth emissions, which then seem to come from space. But as far as I know this was not checked (correlating strong signals with passage of satellites in the field of the antenna). Unconventionnal esplanations can be many, but none was checked. They could be of alien source, but this is far of being proven, and at least not after the SETI criteria.

About the wow signal, its power curve versus time matches very well the reception pattern of the antenna, hinting at the signal coming from space. But the antenna had a double pattern, and when the second pattern passed over the same region of the sky, there was no more signal... Also the signal had a narrow band, lesser than 10khz. Its frequency was constant within this range.