Subject:
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Re: Drake Equation (was: Re: Some great Space info and dicussion)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Thu, 23 Jan 2003 09:48:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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1368 times
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In lugnet.space, Paul Baulch writes:
> In lugnet.space, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> >
> > And, of course, it need not be pointed out too sharply that
> > intelligence has yet to show itself as anything other than
> > an evolutionary dead-end. Our track record is not incredibly
> > impressive (but I'd like to be optimistic).
>
>
> You must be joking, right? Intelligence has already done immeasurable things
> for our species.
> If you're talking about our capacity for conflict and self-destruction,
> blame our million-year-old instincts. IMO, intelligence is about the only
> redeeming feature our species has!
Redemption is, of course, an ethical concept,
not an evolutionary one. Yes, our propensity
towards violence is rooted in the competitive
nature that very probably *gave* us our intellects
to begin with; but that aggressive nature in
itself wouldn't be sufficient to snuff out nearly
all multicellular life on the planet (or even
our own species). That particular twist is
entirely thanks to human sapience.
I'd argue that you can't have the type of
intellect we have *without* the conflict and
competitiveness; the question is how close one
has to cut it in order to survive the period
in which the species has the ability to destroy
utterly the closed system upon which its survival
is dependent. A million years is a geological
blink of an eye, after all, and at the rate we've
been going in just the last two hundred years,
be it in fouling our nest or killing one another,
we'll have vanished before a thousand more. If
all intelligence in the cosmos follows such a
pattern, then intelligence (at least that of
the type that would build artifices and colonize
space) may in fact be a dead-end: a short-term
survival benefit without long-term staying power.
But as I said, I'd like to remain optimistic.
That's why I love .space so much. :)
best
LFB
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