Re: Feo: Hawkings Warning


Posted by danno might on Jan 23, 2004 at 07:49
(206.50.195.194)

Re: Feo: Hawkings Warning (Feo Amante)

thanks for the comments.
A couple of points to make:

Any species who does have the drive, ability and desire to cross interstellar space would have to be, at their core - aggressive (invasive). That does not imply violent or "cruel", but intelligence with passivity would never leave their local neighborhood or more probably become extinct since destructive anomalous events will eventually strike any one single spot eventually.

Think about it. Passive species hardly go anywhere outside their norms. Aggressive (invasive) species are always looking for something new to eat, see, examine, and so on.

Regardless of particular environment, it seems the "way of life" is to expand into as many niches as possible. Species that settle into those niches and never move on become susceptable to extinction events. Intellignet aggressive (invasive) species would find attractive any place with abundant resources. Access to basic chemicals/metals like Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, Silicon, Iron, Aluminum - regardless of environment - would draw an intelligent species realizing that the more wide spread your civilization, the higher probability that it will survive any particular destructive anomalous event (super nova, comet strike, enormous CME, rogue black hole, etc).

I think your phrase "Where the differences in ecosystems are greater, dominance is less." would more correctly read "Where the differences in ecosystems are greater, [i]assimulation[/i] is less." Domination can mean destruction, would you not agree? If we are dealing with some alternative carbon or silicon based life forms, we might not even be considered for slaves or pet, but as a dangerous annoyance which should be quickly put down. The more different the species, the greater the likelihood that the more powerful would Dominate instead of Negotiate or Communicate.

Lets look first at your example of the mid/deep sea life forms. The differences in pressure are such that we will not see those creatures in your local aquarian shops. Even dedicated scientific attempts can only keep them alive for weeks at best. Not much hope of assimulation even there. But what about our history of "concern" for those life forms? It doesn't exist. Nations have dumped trash, including highly radioactive waste into those deep sea areas, currently there are insane plans to either harvest the methane (what impact on the creatures who would be killed in the intake process - none), or to attempt to pump CO2 down and keep Old Tech companies from having to change (an inconvenience to us). The creatures at the bottome of the CO2 dump will be killed off and that will play very little in the [i]moral[/i] decision on if/when/can we dump CO2 there. These are our own creatures with some shared DNA history. A completely alien species would feel even less connection to us.

Now your other example - if we had the tech to drain off hydrogen from the cloud-tops of Jupiter, do you think that once that investment had been made and we started detecting dismembered chunks of (suppose) a jelly-fish like life form, that production would stop immediatly? No. At best someone would suggest some type of filter system but it could take years to perfect and impliment. In the mean-time we would be destroying countless intelligent creatures. It would be very difficult to capture and communicate with something so foreign and with the history of Capitalism on this planet in disregard of the species we disrupt (bids, fish, mammals, all), just how much less would be these foreign blobs weigh in protecting their profit margin. This is NOT a slam on Capitalism, either but a recognition of the history of our culture. Business ventures as expensive as sucking hydrogen from Jupiter would be for some major type power requirements. The investment would be huge and scientist would be in the advisory role, not sole decision makers.

But back to our visitors, how much less will some alternative life form look at us if they come calling for one of the better fuels in the universe (H2O). It might be much easier - depending on types of space engines - to harvest H2O from the earth, in its congealed form of liquid oceans, than to crunch dirty snowballs (comets) and the moral constraints on a species who does not live in our environment might be much less than if they could see us frollic around and could scratch our bellies.

If another species does have the technology to cross the divide we had better pray that they are of similar environmental makeup because otherwise there would be no hope of assimulation. If that strange species looked at us as a threat, there is a high probability that we would be destroyed.



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