From: Ken Clements (Ken@InnovationOnDmnd.com)
Date: Sat Sep 11 1999 - 12:50:50 MDT
Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
> I am betting that Technology -Building life is extremely rare. Not because
> they decide to polute or to huff nukes or to nano-crap on themselves. I am
> suspecting that the initial conditions that promote tool users are
> vanishingly rare. Items such as Yellow stable stars, a local sizable moon, a
> huge gas giant to slurp up the comets and asteroids, convection and
> subduction between an early planets surface and its mantle, the right
> climate..etc. Also I contend, that 12-20 billion years is a subjective view
> on what it takes to bring forth intense self awareness. We may be the first
> beings in the Local Group to attain this awareness. We are set ( I suspect)
> against the after-glow of creation. Flip a coin.
One of the common problems with human discourse is the tendency for someone to
attack the inverse or converse of the statement made by another. If the nature
of the statement is such that it is true but has a false inverse/converse, then
each side is making a true statement while under the impression that the other is
unjustly attacking, a basic flammable mixture. Richard Feynman once said, "If I
say that science is good, that does not mean that that which is not science is
not good, if you know how to reason."
Given that technology spontaneously evolved here, if it can be shown that the
conditions of this earth are very common in the Universe, then one would expect
technology to be common. However, if our conditions are unique in the Universe,
technology may still be common, although one would not expect it to have come
about in the same way. It is hard to shake this planetary, H2O, carbon
chemistry, amino acid, poly peptide, RNA-DNA, cellular, eukaryotic, O2 breathing,
mammalian, homo, walking upright, ... Chauvinism.
"It's life, Jim, but not as we know it ..."
-Ken
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