tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post3069538269471438618..comments2024-03-18T21:52:45.757-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Are We Alone in the Cosmos, cursed by Fermi's Paradox?David Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger121125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-70817083534600080042013-10-31T15:31:18.669-07:002013-10-31T15:31:18.669-07:00I've actually either never under stood "F...I've actually either never under stood "Fermi's Paradox" or just think it's absurd.<br /><br />All the advances of the last 200 years, and we just detected our first PLANET outside our solar system in the last decade?<br /><br />How are we supposed to recognize any "structures" he's talking about?<br /><br />And why would they use radio waves? More then likely they became obsolete a long time ago. Either that, or because of the vast distances, haven't reached us yet.<br /><br />Or have reached us, but since it originated from a wholly alien intelligence, we couldn't decode it or even recognize it.<br /><br />I don't see "Fermi's Paradox as any problem whatsoever.SteveMcKnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-71330025255923228192013-05-27T05:33:58.708-07:002013-05-27T05:33:58.708-07:00Why we are so alone in the universe,this is imposs...Why we are so alone in the universe,this is impossible in statistics.it’s always confused us for a long time.but if we solve the following qusetions.maybe we can find the answer obviously.<br />Can we read our memory from our brain by some kind of technology?and can we write it to a new brain of a new body we make it by genic technology or others.let’s assume it’s ture.so there are a series of questions coming.they are divided three parts.<br />Part one: personal<br />1:if your memory have been removed,who are you?<br />2:if your memory have been replaced another one’s memory,who are you?think this question carefully,you can image that when you wake up in every morning.<br />3:do you think the memory actually is your soul.( It doesn't matter if you don’t think so)<br />4:do you want to prolong your life by this way that read and write your memory?if not,how about the time you will die very soon.I think if I will died and I will try it because I have nothing could be lost.<br />Part two:Human<br />1:if someone among us want prolong their life by the way read&write memory,does their life have huge advantage to normal person.because they are immortal,they can choose their body and etc.<br />2:if 1% person in the world want prolong their life by this way,can they finally replace all human’s life form like now .<br />3:if you can be immortal and change your body if you need.you live in the world a few thousands years after.what do you think about the meaning of the live.I have thought this question and I get a result that we will become observer from participator for nature.just watch,hear and feel the running of nature.<br />4:can you image where the genic technology or other technology lead us to.the standard of body we choose is more strong, pretty or simple but can receive enough information from the nature that we can feel it better to be a observor. <br />Part three: nature<br />1:why every one in the earth thought they have soul and the soul is they real life.no one had ever seen or heard it.whatever they have different faith,education,nationality or etc.why this theory is infused into every one’s brain?can we define it is instinct.and every intelligent creature in the universe like or better than human have this instinct?<br />2:if we calculate the length of human civilization from the birth of words.there have already been a few thousands years till now.let’s assume we will be observer within 5000 years.(it’s a very long time for human).so current human civilization is totally ten thousands years. The extinction of the Dinosaurs had occurred 66 million years ago.then you can image a scene that you have a book have 6.6 thousands pages.the kind of civilization of human just is one page among it.and we look for it in infinite space and time.the chance that we meet is very impossible.<br />3:we all aware not every creature can be intelligent like human.human thing just is occasionaly happening.so maybe other “human” had appeared in the earth in other page.we just missed.so dose alien.the civilization like human that we look for just is a transition stage from participator to observer,the length is very short for the universe.and if we become observer,we just feel the running of the nature.don’t want to interfere in it.<br />4:if we don’t like this future,can we stop it?I don’t think so.because no one can stop the science go forward.and there must have someone to try it when the read-mind technology is matured.<br />5:Is there other way we can go?no,because the memory is the only answer for the soul,not DNA,face or something else.and the soul is human real life.no one can deny it.so if we can ,we must do<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-8145413739067515642013-05-01T09:01:28.192-07:002013-05-01T09:01:28.192-07:00Quite late to the party, but...
Solving the Drake...Quite late to the party, but...<br /><br />Solving the Drake Equation will not, of itself, solve the Fermi Paradox. The reason is because the Drake Equation is simply a critical path representation for a single datapoint - the development of Human intelligence - which is presumed able to colonize, explore or interact with the galaxy. Block a critical path, and percolation can still occur via wide range of initial sources and pathways. Convergent evolution suggests that that may occur, just to name one element that could create a bypass in the Drake Equation. <br /><br />What evidence does satisfy the Fermi Paradox to the positive? The literature suggests the following:<br /><br />First contact<br />Signals that are not attributable to natural sources<br />Evidence of galactic engineering (or solar level engineering)<br />Artifacts in the solar system<br /><br />None of these require "life as we know it" to provide the evidence. The torus's in Sundiver, or the dark-matter Xelee in Baxter's universe, or a myriad of alternative (speculated in science fiction) life forms could provide each of these pieces of evidence if they had the intelligence and will. So I find the emphasis on the "habitable zone", or the importance of the moon, or particular evolutionary critical jumps, as arguments to why intelligence has only occurred once, entirely misses the complexity of the paradox. <br /><br />Here are two takes on solutions - both coming under the Singularity Solution approach, and both, even by science fiction standards, extremely speculative. <br /><br />The first is that by the time a culture has the technical ability to send out reliable probes, they are only a few years/months/hours away from going into their singularity. Once they do, they, or a garbage collecting post-singularity being (and it only takes one) stops the probe years before they reach their first system. Why don't they go and explore/build K3 engineering complexes? Simple. The logical extension of Moore's law, which is a critical aim for singularity beings, is to drive mechanisms towards smaller "bits" so they can improve "brain power", until they utilise the limits of space (or spacetime) itself. Entirely speculative, I know, but not how well it sits with this fact: the acceleration of the expansion of the universe results in a net increase in the energy of the universe (it is not conserved, as it would be for a flat non-accelerating universe). Given a second potential aim of a singularity creature/race could be to prevent long-term "death" or loss of function by reversing or bypassing the consequences of entropy, kicking the universe into an accelerating mode could have been an elegant solution. <br /><br />The second solution is that perhaps a singularity creature/race has sufficient power over time, that it can protect itself and its own development from external interference backwards in time.Brendannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-43720356486072998262012-11-29T16:47:38.395-08:002012-11-29T16:47:38.395-08:00What is the point of a "generation ship"...What is the point of a "generation ship" once we can make intelligent machines that live forever? What does a "generation" even mean to an intelligence that lives forever?David desJardinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15205200038718576331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-139351811732968012012-11-29T16:33:50.248-08:002012-11-29T16:33:50.248-08:00Based on global warming, my current estimate of &q...Based on global warming, my current estimate of "L" is 200, maybe 300 years.<br /><br />(And I'm using the test for whether we *hear* from anyone -- radio-capable civilization.)<br /><br />Given the other values, this makes our odds of hearing from anyone else out there really really really low, doesn't it?<br /><br />All we have to do is have enough eco-collapse to stop sending radio signals. Given that we're screwing with our food chains, this is tremendously easy; human extinction is quite likely.<br /><br />Tom Miller makes me reconsider this, though:<br />"The Fermi paradox may be more mundane than it looks. One of the problems with SETI is finding a needle in a haystack. The galaxy is a very, very big place, and with the inverse-square law, radio transmissions become almost undetectable within just a few light years unless extremely powerful, aimed right at us, and we are looking in exactly the right spot at the right time. "<br />This is a really interesting point. I thought, however, that our spray of radio signals into the ether was more detectable than that. (We don't have to be able to *read* them, just spot that they're not behaving 'naturally'). I'd love to see the numbers on radio signal decay.<br /><br /><br />Now, in response to everyone who expects a galactic empire: <br /><br />Interstellar travel appears to be essentially non-viable, so it can be completely counted out. The only possibility, given our current knowledge of physics, is a generation ship. There are many, many ways to screw up generation ships, so they probably mostly die in deep space. <br /><br />The generation ships aren't a very attractive thing to do anyway, since they take a lot of expensive resources and make them unrecoverable. We know now that any civilization which survives has to be recycling-based rather than extraction-based, which makes the entire concept even less attractive.<br /><br />The few survivors probably fail to colonize their target worlds, since there are so many incompatibilities which can make that fail.<br /><br />Exponential growth is not sustainable and self-replicating machines need energy and material resources.<br /><br />Regarding the rarity-of-sapience question: Surely y'all have read "Swarm", by Bruce Sterling? The problem is that sapience is *not always an evolutionary advantage*, let alone the most valuable one. So it takes some tricky circumstances for it to evolve and thrive. <br /><br />In contrast, the bacteria have a permanently successful evolutionary strategy: reproduce a whole lot and mutate really frequently. Most successful clade on Earth. If we find alien bacteria-like things on asteroids I would not be at all surprised any more.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-57689912833054295342012-11-29T10:48:46.504-08:002012-11-29T10:48:46.504-08:00Ian,
"In one - a series of short stories and ...Ian,<br /><i>"In one - a series of short stories and novellas published in one of the digests - it turns out that anti-gravity and FTL drive are ludicrously easy. Most species discover the technology while still in the bronze age"</i><br /><br />Harry Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken".<br /><br />I always liked the "taste their own medicine" aspect. The aliens that try to invade Earth previously had free run of the galaxy because all rival races discovered anti-gravity even earlier, giving the "late bloomers" more advantage. But it never occurred to them what would happen if they met a race which took even longer.<br /><br /><i>"The other was a novel set in a galaxy divided between [...] Alphas are our descendants - the Betas are the descendants of humans taken as servants by aliens centuries ago."</i><br /><br />This one I can't recall, and google isn't helping.Paul451https://www.blogger.com/profile/12119086761190994938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-47485871043057287112012-11-29T08:37:01.008-08:002012-11-29T08:37:01.008-08:00Read "Existence" - the last third of the...Read "Existence" - the last third of the novel actually focuses on part of this. Alternatively, you could read "Lungfish" (Dr. Brin's short story on the subject) but you'll get the general just of "Lungfish" with "Existence"<br /><br />Rob H.Acacia H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07678539067303911329noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-85369238034544304502012-11-29T08:10:52.864-08:002012-11-29T08:10:52.864-08:00The most likely explanation for the Fermi Paradox ...<i>The most likely explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that interstellar travel and communication is just too resource-intensive to do, leaving each sentient civilization as isolated castaways separated by distances that may as well be infinite.</i><br /><br />I just don't see how that's plausible. Once you have self-replicating intelligent machines, with exponential growth, converting the whole solar system or the whole galaxy into whatever form you want is just a matter of time. And not that much time, on the scale we're talking about.<br /><br />So you have to assume, more or less, that self-replicating machines are impossible. Is that plausible? It doesn't seem so to me. What's the obstacle?David desJardinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15205200038718576331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-60188925669963415762012-11-29T06:08:12.083-08:002012-11-29T06:08:12.083-08:00The Fermi paradox may be more mundane than it look...The Fermi paradox may be more mundane than it looks. One of the problems with SETI is finding a needle in a haystack. The galaxy is a very, very big place, and with the inverse-square law, radio transmissions become almost undetectable within just a few light years unless extremely powerful, aimed right at us, and we are looking in exactly the right spot at the right time. The most likely explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that interstellar travel and communication is just too resource-intensive to do, leaving each sentient civilization as isolated castaways separated by distances that may as well be infinite. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12591184110877822193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-7704949321318915542012-11-28T20:32:35.081-08:002012-11-28T20:32:35.081-08:00Unfortunately, Hansen doesn't say that CO2 emi...Unfortunately, Hansen doesn't say that CO2 emissions at a much slower rate than modern industrial society (or even at our current rate, or even at a significantly higher rate) can do anything remotely like boiling the oceans, or turning our planet into Venus. You should follow your own link, because Hansen's site doesn't say anything like what you say it does. It says we'll have more storms, mass extinctions, coastal flooding, etc. Huge costs, but not remotely like an extinction of human civilization.David desJardinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15205200038718576331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-27370504629946163722012-11-28T20:17:39.369-08:002012-11-28T20:17:39.369-08:00Since I was discourteous enough not to explain tha...Since I was discourteous enough not to explain that "Venus" was a bit of hyperbole, let me note that an extinction event does not require heating our atmosphere to that of Venus'; merely boiling our oceans would be plenty, but a good deal less would suffice to end its role in the renewal of oxygen. Nor is an atmospheric composition as that of Venus required to perform such feats.<br /><br />As for the math, I will <a href="http://www.stormsofmygrandchildren.com/" rel="nofollow">let Dr. Hansen explain</a>, since he's the actual scientist and expert on the subject. <br /><br />A world without a global civilization is quite capable of releasing sufficient stored carbon (and other greenhouse effectors) into the atmosphere, so long as it has enough non-global civilizations working on the problem; it just takes longer than we are observing in our reality. Historical speculation, such as what might happen in the absence of a global civilization, cannot argue that a thing cannot happen because it did not happen (<i>post non hoc ergo propter non hoc ;-)</i>). It is a fortunate historical accident that models such as Stable Medieval China did not sufficiently dominate the other land masses to develop our world as Eternally Feudal Earth, with no-one especially interested in studying the problem of increasing global temperature and (more importantly) capable of urging the other civilizations to cooperate in solving it (in a pre-nuclear world, forgoing the burning of carbon would have adverse military consequences.)<br /><br />But this is all speculation and if it's time to move onward, well enough.rewinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14008105385364113371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-21761492273730527252012-11-28T16:13:46.648-08:002012-11-28T16:13:46.648-08:00THIS WAS A GREAT DISCUSSION!
Only now it's ti...THIS WAS A GREAT DISCUSSION!<br /><br />Only now it's time to move on to the next posting.<br /><br />Onward.....David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-69429186615408496312012-11-28T15:18:25.298-08:002012-11-28T15:18:25.298-08:00It would take much more than all the carbon in the...It would take much more than all the carbon in the fossil fuels to get a heavy Venus-like atmosphere. I think you have to burn the limestone currently locked up in the Earth's crust. That's where most of it went when the water precipated out of the atmosphere.<br /><br />If I remember right, most of our second generation atmosphere is sitting on the ground or just under ground.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-84728971165372138052012-11-28T14:51:37.877-08:002012-11-28T14:51:37.877-08:00There's a couple of sf works that are relevant...There's a couple of sf works that are relevant to the discussion here but I've forgotten both the names and the authors.<br /><br />In one - a series of short stories and novellas published in one of the digests - it turns out that anti-gravity and FTL drive are ludicrously easy.<br /><br />Most species discover the technology while still in the bronze age - at which point outward expansion takes over as the main form of development and most other technologies stagnate. <br /><br />So when the first alien ship lands on Earth, they attempt to overawe the natives with the might of their match-lock muskets.<br /><br />The other was a novel set in a galaxy divided between alpha Humans and Beta Humans. The Alphas are our descendants - the Betas are the descendants of humans taken as servants by aliens centuries ago.<br /><br />(Actually if you were considering first contact, setting up a small offworld colony using abductees, letting it develop undisturbed for a couple of hundred years then contacting them might be the way to go. Ian Gouldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07666385933765478081noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-70441114266468246102012-11-28T13:52:16.999-08:002012-11-28T13:52:16.999-08:00The thing to remember is this: methane breaks down...The thing to remember is this: methane breaks down in the atmosphere. While it has a significantly higher heat retention ability, if significant methane clathrates levels are released, then when they run their course over a hundred years they'll break down into carbon dioxide, which has a lower heat retention ability. At this point, the plants that survived (and some would) would start pulling that carbon out of the atmosphere in greater and greater numbers.<br /><br />Assuming some form of humanity survives and that it retains some technology (very likely), then this would be encouraged by man and you'd see the terraforming of the Earth into a cooler environment. Seeing this entire worse case scenario would happen in probably a thousand years, it's likely the ultra-rich would be able to set up enclaves and try to wait out the massive climate change. Then they'd reemerge on a massively changed world as the lords and masters of all they see. And then go to war with other enclaves. ;)<br /><br />Rob H.Acacia H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07678539067303911329noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-13898524837344909702012-11-28T13:32:11.051-08:002012-11-28T13:32:11.051-08:00Hi Paul,
"Why it's crap is that we've...Hi Paul,<br />"Why it's crap is that we've had up to ten degrees warming in the past (possibly from a significant clathrate release, caused one of the five major extinctions, bad thing, very bad thing) without an unstoppable runaway feedback."<br /><br />But since then the sun has got brighter - if a similar event occurred now... - we don't know<br /><br />It's probably very long odds BUT a very bad prize<br /><br />As the sun ages it's output increases, the "Goldilocks zone" moves outwards,<br /><br />We believe that the earth is near the inner edge of that zone - certainly closer to the inner edge than it was hundreds of millions of years agoduncan cairncrossnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-68043102316882725732012-11-28T12:46:22.591-08:002012-11-28T12:46:22.591-08:00DdJ,
The "runaway greenhouse" scenario i...DdJ,<br />The "runaway greenhouse" scenario is that our emissions warm the oceans enough to cause the release of the methane clathrates, which causes enough warming to cause the oceans to release most of the dissolved CO2/etc (hot water dissolves less gas), etc etc, which causes enough warming to dissociate limestone, which feeds on itself until we're left with Venus II.<br /><br />Why it's crap is that we've had up to ten degrees warming in the past (possibly from a significant clathrate release, caused one of the five major extinctions, bad thing, very bad thing) without an unstoppable runaway feedback.Paul451https://www.blogger.com/profile/12119086761190994938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-23751896126017327622012-11-28T11:44:43.142-08:002012-11-28T11:44:43.142-08:00The rest of the paragraph is simply a failure of m...<i>The rest of the paragraph is simply a failure of math and of imagination, but to suggest that humanity could survive turning Earth into Venus without inventing some magic level of technology requires further explanation.</i><br /><br />Come on, Randy. You're going completely off the deep end. Venus's atmosphere weighs 4.8e20 kg, and 96.5% of that is CO2, so that's 4.6e20 kg of CO2. Human emissions today (this is at the peak consumption rate of a highly industrial society that extracts fossil fuels anywhere and anywhere we can find them) amount to 3e13 kg of CO2 per year. So at the current rate, it would take 15 million years to emit enough CO2 to turn Earth's atmosphere into Venus's. That's with all of our industrial society behind us, if you did it with a preindustrial society burning whatever coal they could easily find, it would maybe take 300 million years. That's if that much fossil fuel existed, which it doesn't, not remotely.<br /><br />Earth isn't turning into Venus. Regardless of whether humans extract and burn every molecule of coal and hydrocarbons that we can find.David desJardinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15205200038718576331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-19117839153002779502012-11-28T11:38:31.162-08:002012-11-28T11:38:31.162-08:00I don't think DdJ is suggesting we could survi...I don't think DdJ is suggesting we could survive turning Earth into Venus. He might be questioning whether we COULD turn it into Venus, though. I would join him in that doubt.<br /><br />I don't view climate change as an existential threat either. I see it as a moral threat. If I sit on my behind and do nothing, I'm morally culpable for the mega(giga)deaths that might occur.<br /><br />I think it is a stretch, though, to argue that humans will go extinct. The conditions that would lead to a runaway greenhouse that involve our input would all fail when our actions changed under climate pressures.<br />Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-43574552719935751062012-11-28T11:34:33.178-08:002012-11-28T11:34:33.178-08:00While it would be possible with today's techno...While it would be possible with today's technology to turn Earth into Venus, the level of technology a 100 years ago would have been very hard pressed to do that. What would happen is uncontrolled climate change that would devastate civilization and eliminate many species (and probably cause a number of human societies to fall)... but there is still a chance humanity would survive. And after a few thousand years the environment would stabilize. We probably won't be a technological species at that point... but humanity is if anything else... adaptable.<br /><br />Rob H.Acacia H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07678539067303911329noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-55799665954340302962012-11-28T11:34:04.275-08:002012-11-28T11:34:04.275-08:00I have to agree that use of fossil fuels with pre-...I have to agree that use of fossil fuels with pre-industrial tech wouldn't be much of a threat. Not only can we not burn the stuff fast enough to notice, we can't get at the stuff fast enough to matter. If I remember my history correctly, the steam engine was developed first as a pump for a mine to get water out. Without the feedback loop that connects tech innovations to access to fossil fuels, the costs associated with coal and oil would still be very high. That alone would prevent their widespread usage.<br /><br />On top of that, oil desn't burn all that nicely. Wood is far superior due to its form factor. If I want to do a backyard BBQ with chicken, the easiest way (for a very long time) involved wood. Look at the tech related to the gas bottles in use today and you'll see a complicated and costly set of innovations that would not have been done if an even more complicated and costly infrastructure were not already in place. Remove all that and our BBQ's would be firepits. <br /><br />A couple of nits now... 8)<br /><br />1. Hansen wasn't the first. Look through the history regarding the discovery of CO2 and shortly after they noticed its IR absorption spectrum, someone speculated that industrial production could alter the climate. The history is easy to look up and fun to read and use given the current skepticism of some of our politicians. 8)<br /><br />2. There is plenty of evidence that modern humans expanded away from the equator before the ice melted. You don't get Native American people here in time to match the evidence otherwise. Of course, there is also evidence that those who went far north also got isolated and killed/culled.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1353166837987131272012-11-28T11:24:10.687-08:002012-11-28T11:24:10.687-08:00David desJardins said...
"... Global warming ...David desJardins said...<br /><i>"... Global warming itself isn't an existential threat to human life...."</i><br /><br />In a paragraph full of wrong statements, that is the most mind-bogglingly wrongest. <br /><br />The rest of the paragraph is simply a failure of math and of imagination, but to suggest that humanity could survive turning Earth into Venus without inventing some magic level of technology requires further explanation.rewinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14008105385364113371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-25186148343515097022012-11-28T11:02:04.207-08:002012-11-28T11:02:04.207-08:00Errr, Rob, you do realise I don't in any way s...Errr, Rob, you do realise I don't in any way seriously believe that aliens created the renaissance or the scientific revolution? (Or science fiction for that matter.)Paul451https://www.blogger.com/profile/12119086761190994938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-13891123781359885732012-11-28T10:49:22.807-08:002012-11-28T10:49:22.807-08:00Once humanity figured out that coal and petroleum ...<i>Once humanity figured out that coal and petroleum burn nicely, it's just a matter of time before global warming kicks in; no need for a global civilization, merely for independent discovery or casual sharing of information.</i><br /><br />A pre-industrial society just can't burn very much coal, much less extract oil and gas from deep underground and use it in a productive way. You can't realistically get significant warming this way, not on our planet. And what if you did? Global warming itself isn't an existential threat to human life. Extinction of species, property damage, and the like, are big concerns for us, but they aren't going to eliminate human life. Humans survived Ice Ages with 200 feet of ice over where I'm sitting right now.David desJardinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15205200038718576331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-48595991983469956002012-11-28T10:18:29.219-08:002012-11-28T10:18:29.219-08:00You do know this claim that "aliens did it&qu...You do know this claim that "aliens did it" is no different than the religious claiming God created mankind and the universe in seven days, don't you? Seriously. Is it so difficult to accept the concept that humanity pulled itself up by its own bootstraps, that there are no ancient astronauts that guided us through the years, and that maybe, just maybe, humanity as a whole is able to do good things without an external force making us?<br /><br />Why did science fiction writers start writing about "good" aliens? Easy! Because they are contrarians! Because they decided to go "but what if..." and write the alternative perspective! Is this site not called Contrary Brin? Why? Because Dr. Brin... is a contrarian! Because he doesn't just go with the common perceived belief and says "yeah, but what if?"<br /><br />We don't need ancient astronauts. We don't need aliens. Humanity itself is a grand and glorious thing... and it is that because humanity makes itself great. Yes, we're not perfect. But you know something? We don't need Gods or Aliens to allow us to excel. We just need to believe in ourselves.<br /><br />Rob H.Acacia H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07678539067303911329noreply@blogger.com