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Over the course of my life, a little tidbit of wisdom I've learned, and not heeded enough - like right now - is the wisdom of shutting up. As amazing as the pr

by jpitz 16y ago

Over the course of my life, a little tidbit of wisdom I've learned, and not heeded enough - like right now - is the wisdom of shutting up. As amazing as the prospect of communicating with and meeting a spacefaring race would be, I fear the consequences may lie somewhere between a repeat of the Louisiana Purchase and putting up a galactic 'Joe's Diner' sign. Are we a babe screaming in the woods?

Roboprog 16y ago
The book "Killing Star" comes to mind. The aliens did not burn up tons of anti-matter to come and steal our stuff -- the came (in the book) because they had the MicroSoft business plan: destroy any competition. (do unto others before they do unto you) Yeah, that book starts with a neutrino detector. The guy monitoring it is not a happy camper :-)
- arethuza 16y ago
  That line of "logical" reasoning was also why Curtis LeMay wanted to attack the Soviet Union.
  - Roboprog 16y ago
    That was crazy. The USSR might not have been our equal, but they could have hardly been considered a push-over or "infant society". It's hard to see an outcome from that other than everybody loses. That was definitely a case where tit-for-tat made a lot of sense.
- rflrob 16y ago
  > the came (in the book) because they had the MicroSoft business plan: destroy any competition. (do unto others before they do unto you) And why would anyone logically do unto anyone first? If you're not worried about people stealing your stuff (because it's so fantastically expensive to do that at interstellar distances), then there's really very little incentive to harm anyone. The only thing I can think of is that you're worried another race might develop cheap enough FTL that they could then do an interstellar smash-and-grab, but compared to the time and expense of mounting your own campaign, it's probably faster and easier just to focus your resources on building your own FTL.
  - Roboprog 16y ago
    I'm not saying I agree with the philosophy, just that that's how the antagonists in the book thought: we're scared, we don't trust anyone, so snuff out any other possible competing space-faring species in the cradle. Of course, it's entirely possible that it simply isn't practical to traverse interstellar distances at all, other than sending dormant robots on "the slow boat" to explore and "phone home" about what they found. More likely there are better ways to travel, but it might take more than 50 years on manned space travel to discover / devise them.

by jpitz 16y ago

Roboprog 16y ago

The book "Killing Star" comes to mind. The aliens did not burn up tons of anti-matter to come and steal our stuff -- the came (in the book) because they had the MicroSoft business plan: destroy any competition. (do unto others before they do unto you) Yeah, that book starts with a neutrino detector. The guy monitoring it is not a happy camper :-)

arethuza 16y ago
That line of "logical" reasoning was also why Curtis LeMay wanted to attack the Soviet Union.
- Roboprog 16y ago
  That was crazy. The USSR might not have been our equal, but they could have hardly been considered a push-over or "infant society". It's hard to see an outcome from that other than everybody loses. That was definitely a case where tit-for-tat made a lot of sense.
rflrob 16y ago
> the came (in the book) because they had the MicroSoft business plan: destroy any competition. (do unto others before they do unto you) And why would anyone logically do unto anyone first? If you're not worried about people stealing your stuff (because it's so fantastically expensive to do that at interstellar distances), then there's really very little incentive to harm anyone. The only thing I can think of is that you're worried another race might develop cheap enough FTL that they could then do an interstellar smash-and-grab, but compared to the time and expense of mounting your own campaign, it's probably faster and easier just to focus your resources on building your own FTL.
- Roboprog 16y ago
  I'm not saying I agree with the philosophy, just that that's how the antagonists in the book thought: we're scared, we don't trust anyone, so snuff out any other possible competing space-faring species in the cradle. Of course, it's entirely possible that it simply isn't practical to traverse interstellar distances at all, other than sending dormant robots on "the slow boat" to explore and "phone home" about what they found. More likely there are better ways to travel, but it might take more than 50 years on manned space travel to discover / devise them.