http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw8dcb8iKSM

I think the question is not if but rather when mankind is uplifted to a new level. God is only a personal concept; race, creed, culture and nationality are only by-products. We let go these attachments and suddenly light starts pouring in.

Please feel free to question my theory. I do not have the real answer either…:)

SETI: complete waste of time and money. A radio signal? Really? Carl Sagan obviously never read Vernor Vinge, is alls I’m saying.

(1) Cody says: “Our civilizations seem to evolve towards greater equality, greater care and empathy for one another as well as other species, away from exploitation and violence.” – The most primitive known society, the Kung San in Africa, displays almost perfect equality and a high level of empathy. Recent examples of modern civilization: Genocide in German in the 20th century; slavery abolished in the U.S. less than 200 years ago (a fraction of the time the Kung San have been around, happily subsisting in the desert); genocide, child armies, and slave workers on chocolate plantations in the Third World (20th-21st centuries). I see no evidence of a trend toward greater compassion.

(2) Cody says: “I think our petty squabbling over proto-historical superstitions could be quelled a bit by an indisputable demonstration that we are not the only organisms in the universe capable of sophisticated thought/communication/technology.” – I can’t help but think that different countries, political parties, and ethnic groups would all try to draw the alien civilizations into taking sides in our local petty conflicts. I also think the alien civilizations might have petty internal conflicts of their own, and maybe we would get caught in the crossfire.

Differences of opinion welcomed! Impossible to expand intellectual horizons without experiencing new ideas.

Just as small mammals survived the Chicxulub impact/K-T extinctions, how could the mighty humans with their canned-goods not survive a similar event? Same with all-out nuclear war—though neither a large-scale nuclear exchange nor a serious impact seem too likely to occur anymore. (The cost-benefit of a Russian-American nuclear war is essentially infinite cost & virtually zero benefit, and the LSST is expected to find all the remaining NEOs (unless one really sneaks up on us), and even a few years notice could be enough for our species to divert most rocks, let alone decades or centuries of warning.)

If there ever is an ‘approximate apocalypse,’ I predict the next few generations will be strongly dominated by the families of the few truck-drivers who had the good sense to divert their canned-good cargo to their rural homes.

For me, the excitement of finding extraterrestrial intelligence would be in part due to the insight into the likelihood of a planet developing life/intelligence/technology/etc., and in part due to the potential to advance our knowledge of mathematics, physics, and greater science in general. Unfortunately, the Fermi paradox (or more appropriately, the lack of von Neumann probes), suggests to me that there ain’t no one nearby with anything like our level of sophistication.

I suppose I do also find it a bit sad for the reason that I think our petty squabbling over proto-historical superstitions could be quelled a bit by an indisputable demonstration that we are not the only organisms in the universe capable of sophisticated thought/communication/technology/etc.. I do expect us to discover strong evidence of extraterrestrial life in my lifetime (next 3, 4, 5 decades hopefully!), with the increasingly powerful telescopes eventually resolving atmospheric spectrums with clear chemical markers—but intelligence, and even multicellularity, are likely far rarer than microbial life. (Based on the one data point of Earth life.)

I don’t really buy into the “they’ll be a threat” like Stephen Hawking and Kraig suggest either. It seems that any organism capable of traveling the unfathomable span of interstellar space must solve all its resource needs completely independently of any planet and star, and so will not be resource bound in the same way we are. Traveling from the nearest star to Earth for resources would be like driving from the Yukon to the southern tip of Chile for the last few drops of gasoline left on the planet—or really much worse. And this is all assuming interstellar travel is even possible, though it does seem likely given the enormous amount of time our species appears to have in the future.

The historical lessons of exploration/exploitation are lessons after all, and may not apply to advanced civilizations. If in a million years we are out exploring the galaxy and come across a planet with an intelligent civilization roughly equivalent to 21st century humans, how compelled would we be to exploit or enslave them? (Right now we even try to avoid contaminating other celestial objects with terrestrial organisms—like avoiding crashing probes into Europa—so we can be sure if we find life that it’s unique. Though we might not be competent at it, we are making an effort!)

In the movie Contact, Ellie says, “it’d be like going to Africa to step on an anthill…” to which her opponent replies, “and how bad would we feel if we stepped on an anthill in Africa?”, to which I always wanted to hear her reply, “I’d feel really stupid for paying thousands of dollars in travel fees just to squash a fascinating phenomena of insect culture!”

And one last point about the matter—our civilizations seem to evolve towards greater equality, greater care and empathy for one another as well as other species, away from exploitation and violence. And many of the most intelligent individuals throughout history seem to be ahead of the curve in this respect, with the greatest visions for peace and progress. I think technological progress is closely tied to the safety and security individuals feel in a society, and mixes of cooperation and competition operating on all scales. It may be naive optimism on my part, but it is hard to imagine these same trends wouldn’t be visible in other intelligences, whether extraterrestrial or artificial even.

How likely is that, really? When has humanity ever been united about anything? It seems far more likely that all kinds of factions would have different plans for interacting with the alien civilization. Some people would want to blow it up, some people would want to start an import business and get rich, other people would want a cultural exhange program, etc., etc., etc. Good science fiction stories would have to take that into account . . .