X-Message-Number: 21635
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 08:57:38 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #21631 - #21634

To the various people discussing other civilizations:

First of all, the issue of whether or not there will or won't be
a "technological singularity" isn't relevant to the existence of 
other civilizations. Even the idea presented by Morgan remains
irrelevant to any technological singularity: if we discover other
universes, and means to get to them and/or exploit them, whether
we do it slowly or take several hundred years would not matter.

Second, no one would deny the possibility of many explanations
based on some notion of what future science, now unknown to us,
may be able to accomplish. As a true explanation, however, such
notions don't tell us anything at all because the possibilities
for future science are much too wide. Not only that, but suppose
we do find a way to visit/exploit other universes. In what way
does that literally prohibit us from visiting and exploiting
our own universe, too? Any freely available area is bound to
be used, one way or another. Even interstellar travel, which
many people think cannot happen because we now have no way,
even in our imagination, of doing it within PRESENT human
lifespan, would become trivial to people who live for thousands
of years ---- as WE all hope to do. So mere distance would not
convince us not to use that matter, even if we had still other
places to go to. As Skrecky (I believe) put it: lots of nice
free real estate, ready for the taking. Just because we've also found
other nice free real estate elsewhere does not mean that the real
estate in our Galaxy ceases to be nice and free.

As astronomers think more and more about the limits on places
where a "technophilic" society could evolve, they come up 
with lots of problems for other than a narrow range within
the Galaxy. As yet they haven't excluded many stars, but
things seem to be moving that way (remember that the Galaxy
has many stars, and even with the restrictions some still
look like the Sun). The case for other civilizations has
slowly gotten weaker and weaker over the last 50 years.

            Best wishes and long long life,

                Thomas Donaldson

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