From: Billy Brown (ewbrownv@mindspring.com)
Date: Sat Jul 24 1999 - 10:43:47 MDT
Alintelbot@aol.com wrote:
> Billy wrote:
> > Since the idea of technological aliens having visited our solarsystem in
> > any fashion is itself problematic (it is virtually impossible to
construct a
> > scenario that makes any sense),
>
> Huh? I could go a few rounds with you on that one, but I'm making a run
for
> a latte in a minute, so I'll save that book for another time...
and Eliezer S. Yudkowsky [sentience@pobox.com] wrote:
> That kind of technology doesn't allow for moderation. On the spectrum
> of Blaringly Obvious to Totally Undetectable, it is simply beyond
> probability that the aliens just *happen* to fall in the Detectable To
> Twentieth-Century Humans But They Have To Look Real Hard category.
That pretty much sums up my view on the topic. You can't have interstellar
space travel without having nanotechnology and sentient AI, because
sub-light travel simply takes too long (and it probably can't be done
without them, anyway). But if you have those kinds of technologies, you
don't leave behind quant little old-era-SF-style artifacts. Your stealth
missions leave no traces at all, and your non-stealth missions will
rearrange the entire solar system. Besides, how exactly do you ever make
them go away? Anything that could kill them off would also exterminate all
life on Earth (not to mention leaving unmistakeable signs all over this side
of the galaxy).
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
ewbrownv@mindspring.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:33 MST