Matt Mahoney wrote:
--- Tom McCabe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
--- Craig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Kurzweil already postulated this a while ago.
Although I don't agree with his conclusions. He says
that if any society were to attain the "singularity"
then their presence would already be felt, and since
we can feel no presence then essentially this proves
that humans are the only sentient life forms in
EXISTENCE. I wholeheartedly disagree with Kurzweil's
reasoning in this matter, since he takes such a
human perspective in regards to imagining an alien
technology. I think his stance is very presumptuous
on his part. For instance he assumes that we haven't
felt their presence merely because there isn't
anything to detect. When in fact he never considered
that human senses or sciences may not be acute
enough to detect them.
Human senses, while crude, are good enough to detect a
wholesale rearrangement of a large majority of the
matter in the solar system.
A technology this advanced could also reprogram your neurons to make you
believe whatever it wanted. There is no way you could detect this.
Although that might be the case for some technology of the future
(protein manipulating nano-bots), it seems that unless you want to
create a religion based on these kinds of beliefs you really can't go
very far with them. What would the logic of being an advanced race that
hides itself from those it finds on other planets anyway?
How about the light sphere argument though? Most likely there are many
civilizations all over the universe, but we just ended up at a point in
space where we don't have the proximity necessary to interact with
another habitable planet. Of course, I hope we figure out faster than
light communication and travel, but if it's not possible then this could
be a lonely universe for us on Earth, forever.
-Jeff
-----
This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email
To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=11983
