From: O'Regan, Emlyn (Emlyn.ORegan@actew.com.au)
Date: Wed Jul 14 1999 - 21:23:12 MDT
Someone wrote (???):
> > Yeah right. We freely kill animals every day for our convenience. I'm
> > not
> > saying I have a moral objection to this, but why would a significantly
> > higher intelligence be so interested in our survival except for its own
> > convenience or curiosity. Perhaps such an intelligence might discover
> > that
> > it is to our own benefit that we should die (those humans are so messy,
> > and
> > live only to make their own lives harder... Some sort of euthenasia)
>
And Rob Harris wrote:
> A good point - We treat animals like shit, so why would aliens treat us
> well? Because were Humans (centre of the universe, in the image of god
> etc...) or is this assumption just yet another human piece of ridiculous
> shite? As Stephen Hawking said recently - An alien encounter is likely to
> be
> much closer to "Independence Day" (without the happy ending) than to
> "E.T.".....
>
I was thinking about M-brains the other day, and pondering the fact that
they would probably be highly aesthetically pleasing, if you were that way
inclined. Incredibly intricate, functional, beautiful.
Imagine super, super, super SIs seeding a world with primitive life, shaping
it toward intelligent life, then to trans-intelligence, singularity, to SI
(still lowly by their standards). Eventually the SIs get to the point of the
M-brain, and start building them all over the place.
So the SSSSIs swoop in, collect them all up, and pop them in a pet universe
with the others, maybe use them for decorative purposes, or a cosmic game of
marbles. Like we might pop an intricate piece of coral in a fish tank, or
use a sea sponge to scrub our backs, or seed an oyster to make a pearl.
Still, that's one big vote for our aethetic potential, which is better than
nothing.
Emlyn
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