From: Alintelbot@aol.com
Date: Mon Jul 12 1999 - 00:14:29 MDT
>Note -- the evidence doesn't stack up for them messing around in
>our local vicinity. [They may be observing, but they aren't
>interfering [regligious miracles & alien abductions excepted].
"Excepted" in the sense that "they're of no consequence and not worth looking
at" or excepted in the sense that "these are some examples that may well be
evidence of interference but I'm not going to launch into detail about them"?
>The evidence as I read it, best says, once evolved, a "stand-off-ish"
>position is adopted that allows them to inexpensively observe
>further evolution.
Why "hands-off"? I can certainly see many reasons for this approach, but at
the same time I'm forced to wonder if an arbitrarily advanced civilization
wouldn't have a plethora of artificially evolved civilizations at its
disposal. Perhaps the "supreme" civilization uses some as controls and some
as test subjects. My money is on us being the victims of some cosmic test,
but that's neither here nor there.
Also, why "inexpensively"? I understand the concept of available resources,
etc., but the notion of "expense" has an anthopomorphic ring to it I'm not
sure I like--especially if the hypothetical civilization we're dealing with
is arbitrarily advanced, as postulated above (i.e. has molecular
nanotechnology). "Expense" was Carl Sagan and Frank Drake's big argument for
the feasibility of SETI, but their reasoning was (arguably) based more on
depicting alien motives in popularly understandable terms than dealing with
really _alien_ aliens.
I'm not bashing SETI; far from it. But the "SEMANTICS" light on my monitor
starts blinking when I read words that seem to insinuate an earthly monetary
system on a nonterrestrial civilization.
Mac Tonnies
alintelbot@aol.com
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