[Grifter]

calling entropyfails. please answer.

we havent seen a single new provable observable NEW species in thousands of years!

This is refutable. I think the magnolia that was found in an ancient casket for example.

[worrier]

But space is big. Really big.

From the reading about anatomically modern humans that I have done we have had the same degree of intelligence when we were in the stone age as we have now. It's our technology and our knowledge of the universe that has advanced and built on each advance. Not our underlying intelligence. That indicates a precedent a decent amount of time (100 000 years?) of an intelligent species existing without having access to radio telescope technology.

As has been said before space is really big, with quite a lot of stars, and it now seems from recent discoveries, a lot of planets. That's a lot of potential for intelligent species to evolve. Why haven't they contacted us? Perhaps intelligent species are rare, with the time overlap of 2 species having radio telescope technology either narrow or nonexistant. Perhaps they tend to extinguish themselves before they have time to explore space much. Why aren't they here? Well, space is big, really big.

[gg3]

Y'all are seriously mistaken about something important:

The idea that intelligence leads a species to self-destruction is based purely on the implicit assumption that any intelligent species must necessarily have the same emotional constitution as humans.

The thing that is causing us to go into overshoot/collapse, is the absence of an inbuilt negative-feedback system to moderate the instinctive desires to reproduce and consume. The whole "more is better" syndrome is a direct expression of this.

"More is better" is an arbitrary point on a scale of development. Further along the scale is "enough is enough," which is to say, self-limiting feedback.

We are not a highly intelligent species. We are a partially intelligent species. Some of us are highly intelligent, most are not. A highly intelligent species (or individual) is able to exercise a greater degree of free will in choosing whether and how to act upon its emotional states.

The next stage of human evolution will be to the point where "more is better" is replaced by "enough is enough." This could happen genetically via the flip of a switch in one of the neurotransmitter or neuropeptide systems in the brain. It could also happen behaviorally via the simple exertion of such free will as we presently have, in relation to our present crises.

Other planets with other evolutionary paths, could well have produced sentient species with built-in negative feedback systems governing their reproductive and consumptive behavior. Such species would probably take longer in their history to develop and utilize any given type of technology, so if they had access to a stored energy resource, it would tend to last much longer.

---

As for why we haven't heard from ET yet:

It is pure hubris to assume that other civilizations will necessarily use radio frequency communications of types detectable by us. If they primarily used lasers to communicate among their various inhabited planets, we would never know they were there. If they found a way to use quantum entanglement as the basis for a communications medium, they would have truly instantaneous communications, would not be constrained by locality, and we also would not know they were there. And of course they may also have made other fundamental scientific discoveries that we haven't the slightest faintest clue about, which could have lead to means of communications.

Or perhaps "they" have marked our solar system "Quarantine: dangerous semi-sentient species here, enter at your own risk!"

---

We tend to believe in uniqueness because each of us starts from the belief that s/he is in some way a unique individual.

Our current best estimate is that the number of stars in the known universe is 10^21, i.e: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

To assert uniqueness of our planet and of intelligent life, is to say that the probability of intelligent life occurring is one in a sextillion.

[tivoli]

My favorite theory lies with the writings of some Sci-Fi authors, that more advanced civilizations don't make themselves known, because that would be like "a babe crying in the wilderness". Conjecture of the "predators" follows

[Kingcoal]

It's all starting to make sense now. We're too smart for our own good, and we're hard-wired for self-destruction after a hundred thousand years. This explains our behavior.

I dispute that, I don't believe Mankind is too smart. If this were the case we would be able to think our way out of trouble. Which at present is looking less and less likely.

our problem is believing our own hype and thinking we are actually smarter than what we are.

You're making a moral assessment and the author is making an observation. Intelligence is something that is defined by us. We created the concept and we use it to describe a certain type of behavior that we consider good. Scientists use Social Biology to describe behaviors. That is simply, a behavior that allows one to successfully pass their genes on from generation to generation becomes a prominent part of that species psyche. In the real world of the universe outside of earth, there is no egalitarian standard, reference standard by which to judge behavior other than social biology.

In other words modern humans might be a fluke, an outgrowth allowed by certain very special conditions which are highly unlikely not only here, but out there also. Our behaviors, our definition of intelligence might be completely based on a very unique environment. I think that all of us, compared to what exists out there, live a life of pleasant, peaceful luxury. Other life forms probably have to endure periodic shifts in their environment which causes them to constantly evolve. Since the only rule is that genes have to be passed forward in time, anything that aids that goal is good, including good luck.

[gego]

As for why we haven't heard from ET yet:

It is pure hubris to assume that other civilizations will necessarily use radio frequency communications of types detectable by us. If they primarily used lasers to communicate among their various inhabited planets, we would never know they were there. If they found a way to use quantum entanglement as the basis for a communications medium, they would have truly instantaneous communications, would not be constrained by locality, and we also would not know they were there. And of course they may also have made other fundamental scientific discoveries that we haven't the slightest faintest clue about, which could have lead to means of communications.

Or perhaps "they" have marked our solar system "Quarantine: dangerous semi-sentient species here, enter at your own risk!"

---

We tend to believe in uniqueness because each of us starts from the belief that s/he is in some way a unique individual.

Our current best estimate is that the number of stars in the known universe is 10^21, i.e: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

To assert uniqueness of our planet and of intelligent life, is to say that the probability of intelligent life occurring is one in a sextillion.

I think you are correct that life is found spattered around the universe.

It would just be a continuation of the egocentric idea that we are the center of the universe to believe that we are somehow so unique in the universe as to be the only example of life or of intelligent life. We should assume that wherever life exists, it would be subject to the same general principles of physics since this is the reasoning upon which we dismiss our own uniqueness. The local conditions would mold that life into different shapes within the limits of the laws of nature.

It seems to me that if you argue that we are not unique, then you cannot argue that we would be the only technology to use radio waves. Sure others might use other forms of communication, but you must assume that radio technology would also be common, certainly common enough in time frame and space to easily discover the signals.

I think that life anywhere would require energy; the more complex the lifeform, the more energy; the more technology, the more energy needed. Again using the idea that what happens here on earth would not be unique in the universe, then using a temporary store of energy to fuel technological advance, followed by depletion of the energy source, would be a common problem. Perhaps this is a universal limit on "advanced civilizations" everywhere.

For all we know, some "advanced civilizations" trying to outrun the energy dilema eventually figure out how to cause a continuous fusion reactions which they then can't shut down and their entire planet is consumed, as a alternative end to "advanced civilization".

My bet is that the problems we are encountering, having based our advance on stored energy, are universal in the universe. How likely is it that right out of the box, the first invention of a pseudo "advanced life form" is a perpetual energy machine?

[rogerhb]

Also a species often 'dies' by evolving into another species.....

Not really if you follow time's arrow, a species evolves from, not into..., as technically a single species could sire a number of different species.

One thing I can't stand is mangled logic.

Yup.

[NEOPO]

Not really if you follow time's arrow, a species evolves from, not into..., as technically a single species could sire a number of different species.

Don't you mean "has" in place of "could" there Roger?

[MonteQuest]

Ahem...

A forum to either submit your own review of a book, video or audio interview, or to read others' reviews.

[NEOPO]

i apologize and only now realize that we were not suppose to post here. doh!!!

[MonteQuest]

i apologize and only now realize that we were not suppose to post here. doh!!!

No, I edited things a bit.

A forum to either submit your own review of a book, video or audio interview, or to post reviews by others.

Discussion of the review is encouraged.

[entropyfails]

we would expect 2 million species every 100 years 200,000 new species every ten years and 10,000 new species every year.

No one has obseved a new species in thousands of years.

[url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0305_0305_allspecies.html]
Clearly false!
[/url]

There are many millions of species left to be discovered. Many will die before we get to learn about them. Perhaps most will die. But you need to realize the amount of change happening is astounding. Finding it at the macroscopic level is harder, true. And we should suspect this as higher level systems should be more stable. But we rely on this vast undergrowth of biological change that keeps this planet alive. Hegemony or Survival indeed!

Grabby fact:

The species are hardy until neutrons hit them.

When the nukes get released, then all the species will disappear. scrubbed polished and rinsed.

Hence the "or Survival" part of the title. It’s easy to misquote Chomsky. It’s much harder to argue with his logic, he lays out a pretty convincing case. You won’t get defeat him by arguing his mathematics. It will be well sourced and calculated by someone respected in their field. I’m not sure the point you wanted to make about Chomsky...

[Carlhole]

PressTV

Renowned Jewish-American scholar Noam Chomsky says US invasion of Afghanistan was illegal since to date there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has carried out the 9/11 attacks.

"The explicit and declared motive of the [Afghanistan] war was to compel the Taliban to turn over to the United States, the people who they accused of having been involved in World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist acts. The Taliban…they requested evidence…and the Bush administration refused to provide any," the 81-year-old senior academic made the remarks on Press TV's program a Simple Question.

"We later discovered one of the reasons why they did not bring evidence: they did not have any."

Gawd, how long did it take one of America's preeminent intellectuals to figure that out? Chomsky has been nothing but a cork-in-the-butthole-of-progress on the whole 911 issue. All of a sudden he decides to change his tune?

[Mesuge]

That guy is a comedy treasure when it comes to addressing "matrix" brake-in systemic issues, I suggest you reading Chomsky<->World (other scholars/researchers) correspondence available on the net;
on the topics such as JFK/MLK/RFK or 9/11.

He has been THE cork-in-the-butthole-of-progress for decades, funding to him channeled through yours truly "anti-establishment" MIT, hah. False progressive gatekeepers like Amy Goodman love him dearly.

If he is sincere, which given his demonstrably strange record he is NOT, simply, should have come out with this limited hangout like at least ~6yrs ago. Nowadays, given the mountains of other and far more reaching, /false flag/ leading evidence, it's a bit silly..

[Plantagenet]

Chomsky is pretty much a denier of everything criticisms of Chomsky

[mattduke]

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

GW and Obama both killed more innocents than OBL. GHWB killed 3000 in his Panama invasion alone.
http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/2652/no ... ion_to_os/

[DomusAlbion]

"We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s ..."

Yes, we might ask ourselves that, if we were sheltered academics sitting on the side lines with a set of lofty, abstract ideals that we make our evaluations from; if we had no dog in the fight. But we're not; well most of us are not. Many of us are people who knew or knew people that knew people that died because of Bin Laden and his little schemes. Many of us care about those people that died (they weren't all America, remember). There were no military targets in the WTC, in the train in Spain, in the subway in London. They were targeted because they were easy targets, because those Al Qaeda bitches can't go up against real military.

IMHO

[sparky]

.
From living and working in Arab countries ,
I can assure you that payback for the good and the bad is a fundamental mindset .
nobody involved with the salafist ,extremist movement would question the motive or the means
Osama had set himself as the irreducible enemy of the U.S. and killed some of their people
He was granted the ultimate prize , the undivided attention of this most powerful of enemy

[Cog]

Noam Chomsky makes a useful idiot for far left propaganda.