On Sun, 09 May 2004 11:29:57 -0400, stephen voss
<voss749@bellsouth.net> wrote:

Well... That depends on one's point of view.

We are being constantly bombard by the news, fact books, 'experts',
and so on that there are no ETs in our solar system or on/in our
planet. But are these things true or not? If these things aren't true,
is it just an honest mistake or there's something more sinister behind
it?

The reason why alien civilizations may not want to communicate with us...

1) If you watched our signals, you would assume that there is a nominal
world government but that we are currently in a state of civil war
and have been so for the last 60 years.
2) An independent observer would view earth as primitive aggressive 
warlike xenophobic and politically unstable.

If I were leading an advanced scouting team for an alien civilization,
I would recommend continued discreet observation of the world in question.

I guess that would depend on what kind of civilization you were
looking for. If you were looking for a stable peaceful planet you may
be correct. If you are looking for a place to take over, we may be
just the place! We have NO central government. Heck we can't even get
along within our own local areas. The people in the Hutu and Tutsi
tribes in Rwanda have almost wiped each other off the faceof the
Earth! The "Chechen President Dies in Stadium Blast", the US is
fighting a war on multiple fronts, the Russians have split their
Country into many smaller ones that are now in civil war in many of
them! The United Nations has become a joke. A dominant civilization
would LOVE to see our planet and colonize it and enslave us! Your view
of "aliens" as peacefull and "continued discreet observation of the
world in question", does not fit all possible scenarios!

Also the issue of radio waves is not as simple as it seems.
It is possible that there is a narrow range of time from
when it becomes possible to use radio waves for that purpose
to when a species becomes sufficently advanced as to no longer
use those frequencies. Such a period may only be 200 years or less.
In an additional 100 years...the technology for listening to
the old frequencies may disappear.

That is exactly why we must listen now and continually upgrade our
techniques to keep up with the most likely scenario for contact! It
also assumes that any civilization that we want to contact is still
there. We could very well discover a civilization that has long since
been extinguished. Meaning that those old frequencies are really
meaningless because those civilizations would have upgraded also. The
path of upgrade is not currently known, but we are doing the best we
can with our current information.

The Fermi paradox is not really valid for the following reasons.

1) If youre going to realistically maintain long term interstellar
communication youre going to have to develop reliable FTL 
communication...which we cannot currently detect.

Does not mean it isn't there, just as you said "which we cannot
currently detect".

2) The Fermi paradox is good math but lousy social science.
The roman empire mathematically could have colonized all of Asia,Europe 
and Africa in a period of 1000 years or so...but even beyond the 
battles. Their supply lines would be overextended. Also the cost
of sending out colonies requires wealth that the satellite colonies
may not have.

True, learning from History is very important.

3) Its much easier to colonize 14000 nearby stars within a 100 light 
years than to send ships all over the galaxy.

By what mode of transportation? By our Earth bound minds probably, but
with time on our side that may become just like a trip across the
street.

4)The population curve suggests as a species becomes more prosperous
they have fewer children. Without huge booming populations, the
ability to have sprawling colonies quickly is reduced.

That is neither good nor bad. Huge "sprawling colonies" have their own
advantages and disadvantages.

5) expansions of civilizations is not a steady thing, civilizations have
boom periods, decline periods, and some civilizations may just decline
to nothing.

Or rebound and once again become booming.

Beyond a certain range civilizations do not spread unless there is some
sort of technological improvemment.

True but, there always seems to be one doesn't there, that range
cannot be determined until a long time has passed, giving a reflection
on either its demise or its continued existance. The very few that
have proclaimed that they have seen the demise of any civilization,
with any degree of timeliness, have been decried as heretics and have
become outcasts.