In case you want to know the nature of the extra-terrestrials who will
contact us...
http://www.mt.net/~watcher/noah.html
Be sure to check out all of the watcher's links to get the whole scoop. You
know you want to.........
----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Klaes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 11:47 AM
Subject: E.T. or Alien? The Character of Other Intelligence
>
> http://www.setileague.org/editor/et_alien.htm
>
> E.T. or Alien? The Character of Other Intelligence
>
> by David Darling, Ph.D.
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Science fiction has envisaged the possibility of everything from kind,
> wise, and even cute extraterrestrials, like E.T., to utterly malicious,
> scheming monsters, like Giger's Alien.
>
> http://www.cyberspace-creations.com/phonehome/
>
> http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~naflande/
>
> On balance, ever since H. G. Wells unleashed his marauding Martians,
> the fictional creatures from "out there" have tended to be of the
> usurping, death-ray variety - not surprisingly, since this makes for
> a more compelling plot.
>
>
http://www.literature.org/authors/wells-herbert-george/the-war-of-the-worlds
/
>
> But if we do encounter other intelligences among the stars, will they
> in reality prove to be friendly or hostile?
>
> A poll conducted by the Marist Institute in 1998 suggested that 86% of
> Americans who think there is life on other planets believe it will be
> friendly. Similar optimism has been expressed by many prominent figures
> in SETI, including Frank Drake, Philip Morrison, and Carl Sagan.
>
> An argument in favor of alien beneficence is that any race which has
> managed to survive the kind of global crises currently facing humanity
> (and which presumably confront all technological species at some stage
> in their development) is likely to have resolved the sources of conflict
> we still have on Earth.
>
> Morrison, for instance, doubted that advanced societies "crush out any
> competitive form of intelligence, especially when there is clearly no
> danger."
>
> Similarly, Arthur C. Clarke has stated that:
>
> "As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have
> superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable
> and self-destroying."
>
> However, there can be no assurance on this point. After all, human beings
> appear to have made little progress, over the past two millennia or so,
> toward eliminating or controlling their aggressive tendencies. And there
> is no reason to suppose we shall change much in this respect over the next
> few centuries, during which time we may well develop the means of reaching
> the stars.
>
> Those who are pessimistic about the general nature of extraterrestrials
> argue that Darwinism, and its fundamental tenet "survival of the fittest",
> virtually guarantees that any advanced species will be potentially
> dangerous.
>
> Michael Archer, professor of biology at the University of New South
> Wales, Australia, has put it this way:
>
> "Any creature we contact will also have had to claw its way up the
> evolutionary ladder and will be every bit as nasty as we are. It will
> likely be an extremely adaptable, extremely aggressive super-predator."
>
> Perhaps the most reasonable assumption, in the absence of any data, is
> that, just as in our own case, the potential for good and evil will exist
> in every intelligent extraterrestrial race. Civilization is unthinkable
> without some measure of compassion, and yet how could a species that had
> emerged successfully after several billion years of live-and-let-die
> biological competition not also possess a ruthless streak?
>
> The question is surely not whether any advanced race we may meet among
> the stars is capable of aggression - it certainly will be unless it has
> genetically or otherwise altered itself to be purely pacific - but
> whether it has learned to override its more basic instincts. Bear in
> mind, too, the variation in character that can exist between individuals
> within a species. Will the first representative of an alien race that
> we encounter be a Hitler or a Gandhi?
>
> More on such matters in my new book "The Extraterrestrial Encyclopedia"
> (Three Rivers Press, New York) and my Web site at this URL:
>
> www.angelfire.com/on2/daviddarling
>
>
>
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