| Subject: Re: The Fermi Paradox and SETI Success |
| From: Inez |
| Date: 18/08/2008, 17:56 |
| Newsgroups: talk.origins,alt.sci.seti |
On Aug 16, 2:30 am, Tim Tyler <seemy...@googlemail.com> wrote:
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank wrote:
On Aug 15, 2:44 am, Tim Tyler <seemy...@googlemail.com> wrote:
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank wrote:
I quite disagree witht his part. Indeed, I think "intelligence",
particularly in the form of the "technological intelligence" required
for SETI, is an abject evolutionary failure. In our short tenure as a
species, and even in our microscopic-timed tenure as a technological
species, we've managed to produce the largest mass extinction since
the Cretaceous, and have put not only our own survival as a species at
risk, but the very existence of nearly the entire biosphere within
which we live.
Right. Six billion humans and going strong and we are a *failure*?!?
What on earth does it take to be a success?
How many bacteria are there on earth . . . . . . . . . .. ?
About five million trillion trillion, I gather. But what
has that got to do with anything? Humans are large organisms
with big brains - comparing their numbers to those of bacteria
seems pointless - unless you are claiming that any large
animal on the planet is a failure by *definition*.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ t...@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply.
I tend to agree that it is a stretch to call humanity a failure. Us
producing extinctions of other species might indicate we're mean or
careless or something, but not a failure in the evolutionary sense.
We ceratinly out-competed those species.
If we nuke ourselves into oblivion then we'll be failures, but we
haven't done that yet.