Skeptics > Believers >>>>>> Visiting aliens
Sure. But the question is:
Skeptics > Believers >>>>>> Visiting aliens>0?
Glenn, while your points are all quite valid, you are still assuming that certain courses of technological development are inevitable, such as eventual air travel, complex mathematical systems, space travel, etc...
The term I used was 'spacefaring species'. This places the necessary qualifications upon the matters you discuss. For instance, while it's true Home Sapien Sapien has been around for 50,000 years, we didn't qualify as 'spacefaring' until the 1950's.
You are also assuming that one alien planet will only hold one civilization, and I don't see how this can be a totally reasonable.
I didn't stipulate at any point that all spacefaring races must all come from different planets than one another. I merely pointed out that the statistical practice for a sample base of 1 is to assume the data point is average. And if that is the case, we know that more spacefaring species have gone before us then will after us because we know our star was formed late in the galactic cycle. We are not working with one, but two, data points.
All I am saying is that time is not the sole factor in technological development, it's not even a major one at that, and to assume that there are a large number of alien civilizations in the universe (actually, let's just say the galaxy, or even better our region of the galaxy since those are the only ones worth thinking about) that have all the tools that we have as well as more because the species has been around longer. I am saying that such an assumption is unreasonable.
The very fact that ET is older and is presumably spread out through the galaxy means that there will have been a higher probability of him needing to exhaustively explore all forms of technical improvement in the past. With regard to an understanding of the laws and physics of the universe, ET will have developed an utterly comprehensive 'Grand Unified Theory' not as a matter of need, but as a matter of course.
If the juxtaposition of our two viewpoints means that ET's continuing technological improvement is mired in the law of diminishing returns (as opposed to hitting an outright physical wall as I suggest) then so be it. I've got no problem granting that ET might, with say 10 years of utmost effort at the federal level, increase the efficiency of his trash compactor 1%.
Also, your point on genetic self-modification sounds good, but when you really think about it what would the species directing it's own mutation be changing itself in response to? The environment, of course.
You've hit the heart of the matter here. It appears you believe genetic modification will come for the purpose of adapting to
external conditions. I believe that they will be aimed first and foremost to addressing an
internal agenda.
Let's use our 1-point statistical base as the example. If I understand you correctly, you believe that if mankind begins to modify his own genome it will be to tailor it to specific environmental pressures. Perhaps to combat disease, or to allow us to function in hotter climatic conditions as this joint globally warms, etc - the list goes on and on.
I believe that the primary force behind species self-modification will be internally motivated. That is to say, I think the pressure causing changes will stem from competition
within our own species, and not so much with reference to any outside stresses. Assuming that genetic engineering must take place before birth, I propose that the driving forces will fall into three general categories:
1) Family motivated genetic alteration.
This drive will stem from parents with regard to their children's well-being. It derives from the fact that competition for jobs, resources, mates -
everthing - is pervasive, and that parents are fantastically motivated to give their offspring the greatest advantages in life they can. Not too short. Not too thin or too fat. Healthy, not sickly. Fetching over ugly. Intelligent, not stupid. Etc., etc.
I'm not for a moment thinking parents will go in for 1984-style factory babies or crap like that. But I do believe parents feverently hope to pass on their own best traits, and this will start to skew matters in a statistically predicatable fashion. For example, if the father has bad teeth and the mother's are fantastic, then they might choose for the mother's teeth genes to be selected for
all their children. If both have bad teeth, they might purchase a better gene set for their kids; only 99.9% of the genes of their children come exclusively from one or the other parent. They might elect to replace or alter a few for some reason. One parent might contribute more than 50% of the material for some reason. (It is also conceivable that the number of parents will diversify somewhat from the basic two, I suppose)
Over time, I think this force will predictably alter the genetic composition of Homo Sapien. Rotting teeth DNA, for instance, will gradually be weeded out of the genome.
2) Societal genetic alteration.
Similar but different to no. 1 above. The idea here is that there exists within our DNA certain genes that are not desirable for the purpose of a legal and orderly society, and these will therefore be targeted - not by the parents, but by governments and other regulating bodies. For example, if a gene is identified that will increase the chances that the person carrying it will commit rape, then I can see it eventually being legislated that it must be replaced by another gene that doesn't have this effect, but is otherwise identical.
3) Security-oriented genetic alteration.
As you'll notice in the past few years, our well-being as a society is being increasingly held hostage to a few individuals willing to commit terror. This is because technology appears to be evolving in a way where individuals are now able to exert a
personal threat to society on a scale hitherto reserved for
nations. For example, Bin Laden runs airliners into the World Trade Towers. This was not possible for a few dorks to do until we invented airliners and really tall building that can hold 50,000 people. ET's problem is bigger than ours right now, because ET's tech is more destructive. His loser-dorks can run a spaceship through a planet at .99
c and liquefy it's crust, killing billions of citizens. Hence ET will have had a
tremendous incentive to genetically alter his society to prevent this type of self-destructive behavior.
These three proposed driving forces, should cause the following three proposed Rules of thumb, or trends, from which we might fancy the nature of a visiting ET.
Rule 1: The tendency to eliminate or degrade a gene or genetic trait's influence in an engineered environment will be
proportional to the gene's inherent expression of advantages vs. disadvantages within that society. That is to say, the more a gene handicaps it's recipients, the less likely it will be to pass on unmolested into the next generation. (Note, this is similar to stand Darwinian evolution, but the
pace and precision of alteration will be 'off the map' in comparison to natural selection).
Rule 2: There will be a trend, or gradual convergence of, a civilization's criminal and civil codes of conduct, and that civilization's own genome. That is to say, over time the
genome's expression of civil and criminal behavior will evolve towards the standards demanded by the host civilization's legislative expressions of the same.
Rule 3: Individuals with access to, or control over, potentially dangerous technology or devices will more likely to be subjected screening and other biological safeguards than those who do not have such temptation or responsibility.