From: Freeman Craig Presson (dhr@iname.com)
Date: Mon Jul 12 1999 - 07:10:50 MDT
On 12 Jul 99, at 2:14, Alintelbot@aol.com wrote:
[...]
> 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.
Economics =/= money, necessarily. Substitute energy for money, make
no assumptions whatever about the rest of the economic systems out
there, and there's still something to the argument in favor of ETIs floating at
home with a hot quarkbrew petting the family noogle while the computer
crunches EMF data looking for replies to their laser-mediated personals ad
that's sweeping the galaxy, either instead of or in advance of a probe or
expedition.
Maybe they're shy, and don't want to touch fronds until they've been
properly introduced. Maybe they only care about information. Or maybe
what they sent out was a notice of intent to build a structure using all the
matter in their observable universe, and they want to make sure there's no
one out there advanced enough to stop them. In that case, their skeptics
are probably saying that the fact that they haven't been disassembled into
the leading edge of someone else's construct means that Universe is
empty except for a few bands of savages who aren't using the space
anyway, so it's Outward Ho! and Manifest Destiny ... just be sure to pack
the trade beads, and if those don't work there's always the nanopox
blankets.
Or maybe they'll answer if we send them some of Natasha's pictures :-)
-- fcp@traveller.com (Freeman Craig Presson)
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