Posted on 09/21/2010 6:09:15 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Seth Shostak, a top astronomer at SETI has recently suggested that instead of trying to listen for standard transmissions from advanced alien biological lifeforms like ourselves, we should probably be listening for AI transmissions. This is based on our own experience, we as humans developed radio transmissions only a short while ago, considering the length of time our civilization has been advancing. And if we're any indication of the general route technologically capable life evolves, the galaxy is probably full of sentient AI collectives, not biological lifeforms.
In an interview with the BBC, Dr Shostak said:
"If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you," he told BBC News.
"But within a few hundred years of inventing radio - at least if we're any example - you invent thinking machines; we're probably going to do that in this century.
"So you've invented your successors and only for a few hundred years are you... a 'biological' intelligence."
Oh, uh. Goody? Working on that assumption, SETI is now looking beyond just searching for systems that may have a planet with goopy organic mold and intelligence sending out naive radio transmissions. The chance of catching a civilization before it turns into some vast self replicating artificial intelligence robotic borg collective is too high, apparently. Instead, we should train our attention to areas of the galaxy where vast AI colonies would thrive, areas with a vastly plentiful supply of matter and energy, like young stars or even the center of the galaxy.
Of course, this raises a few issues. When searching for biological beings, we imagined finding peace faring advanced species that just wanted to make contact with us. But Russian physicist Alexey Turchin is to warn at the 2010 Humanity+ Summit, that it is more likely such an entity would not be benign, and contact with an AI colony may lead to a human extinction event. "They" may send us a downloadable trojan horse, an intelligent computer virus, which could infect our entire planet's computerized infrastructure. Perhaps a Contact-like blueprint for a computer would be delivered, and the code for it, which will propagate itself, start producing nano-bots, and turn our solar system into a giant array for the vast collective.
Exactly the type that SETI is about to start looking for. Turchin warns that there could be opposing AIs out there competing for control of the galaxy, and says perhaps we should wait until our AI might be able to compete against other galactic AIs to continue our search.
You can read Turchin's book on the subject here.
Well, God said he put man on this earth - not earths. I’m just reading the bible (again), and from what it looks like, Jesus only came to this earth. God is not going to make a planet full of beings that have no chance to hear about Jesus, and then be condemned to hell.
We are the only planet with life.
And I’m not limiting God - I don’t even pretend to understand God. I’m just reading His words, and putting them into the context I can understand.
And man was given dominion of all things on the earth, in the earth, and above the earth.
Again, perhaps it’s an interpretation issue, but I see nothing in the bible that allows for beings on any other planetary body other than the earth.
Sorry, but God is not free to create life on any/every planet in whatever form He decides.
Sorry, but God is free to do anything he decides to do.
Seth doesn't understand the nature of consciousness. ONLY a living organism will ever be conscious, by design. Life flows from a non-four-dimensional physical dimensionality to the physical universe we currently conceive of as 'four dimensional' reality, though whatever that dimensional realm is fashioned as, it still exists in space and time, by desgin--with a different expression of dimension Time hallamrking that realm, probably. The manufactured machines of calculation will always be limited to the four dimensional reality of their components.
For a better understanding of consciousness than Seth has acquired, I can reccommend Part One of even parts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmSyV9pscyI
If humankind ever learn how to add that 'other' dimensionality to their calculating machines, those machines will no longer be machines, they will be living organisms of some sort.
If asked that question, I would answer YES, but they don't have the same physical limitations we four variable spacetime humans have. They are physical though, as shown with things like the hand reaching from their realm into ours as seen in Daniel Chapter five.
THX THX.
Yes - God can do anything He wants, except lie. He cannot lie.
When God said he made man in Our image (the image of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), He gave man dominion over the earth.
If there is man on another planet somewhere in the vast expanse of space - how can it have dominion over earth, when it doesn’t even know earth exists?
Yes, God created the Angels. I do not know ‘what’ they are, however.
My thoughts are they are the “spirit” that resides in every human being (man).
They can become physical, because God wills it - absolutely, as evidenced by Daniel 5, as you put - or in Revelation.
I also believe that is why satan was cast out - he was jealous that God created us (man) and did not give the angels dominion over us.
According to Cracked.com, there is a deleted scene from Independence Day that shows that Goldblum’s character had previously worked on the alien ship’s computers and had already decoded the OS, so he knew how to code a virus for the system.
Second, I would note that without time events cannot occur, and without space objects cannot exist. Therefore, the Angels are located in space and time, but we are not able as now constructed to sense the realm of Angel habitation.
Third, I would note that God The Father Almighty is greater than His creation, thus the spacetime bubble of the universe is something God exists 'outside of' but also upholds and lives within, in the body/person of Jesus.
Allow me to introduce a new term for such discussions as these: where/when, with 'where' expressing spatial dimensionality and 'when' expressing temporal dimensionality. We exist in a where/when, Angels exist in a where/when, and we have evidence that Jesus with His resurrection moved back and forth from one where/when to another, etc. as He appeared then disappeared.
As Jesus left our where/when then returned, then left, etc. His resurrected body did not cease to exist, it just ceased to be in the same where/when of our perceptions. He carried a physical body back and forth between where/whens.
I have used the analogy of a tesseract here at FR before. If you take a square, expand it into a cube, then move that cube through time, you have a 'tesseract'. Our spacetime limits would be represented by the square. But the square is located as part of a cube and the cube as part of a more complex thing of identity, the tesseract. Using this analogy, I would call the square, our spacetime where/when ... we exist in a planar present, impacted by linear past, impacted as it were by events that happen but are unsensed by us until the data reaches our sensory mechanism and is processed to 'construct' a conceptualization of our universe.
The universe our senses cannot process does not cease to exist just because we are not made--yet--to sense it. That 'greater' universe (and it may in fact be 'lesser' in the sense of steam being less dense than liquid water) exists as evidenced by the information we've been given in the Bible like in Daniel Chptr 5 or the resurrection scene or the upper room scene or the scene on the way to Emmaeus or a host of other scenes given to us in the Old Testament.
We are assured by Jesus and the writers of the New Testament that Christians faithing in Jesus will be transformed to dwell in a different where/when! The current where/when will not immediately cease to exist, but the where/when that Jesus spoke of--where He is preparing a place for 'many mansions'--is also a creation in spacetime by The Creator Who remains greater than His creation as Creator,upheld in its near infinite complexity by His Spirit,a nd indwelt by Him in the person of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.
Human consciousness involves quantum entanglements. The quantum scale is found in our universe at the 10-small>33 scale below our current physical existence, yet our very large organism touches this quantum level of information approximately forty times per second, with who knows what in between the forty points of awareness? This is likened to a movie strip of cellulose film running at forty frames per second. That is because we receive data from past events, event we did not sense int he present they occurred.
We sense our universe via photon exchange effects. What if we sensed our universe via gravitational 'warping' of spacetime, instead? We would till be in a where/when, but our temporal alignment and spatial alignment would be very different from a photon dependent alignment.
[I'm pinging a few others because they may enjoy these 'strange' conjectures.]
First, I would note that when Spirit of God is read in the Bible, that Spirit is different from the human spirit. Here's why I would assert that: humans were created with an aspect of their soul which is fashioned to have a special life in it, a life sourced in God's Spirit. The word 'life' is used to refer to a lot of organismal things, from viruses, to the single cells in your body, to the whole complex of billions of cells that make up your body, to the phenomenon of multi-layered consciousness. The human spirit can also have what Jesus characterized as 'death' in that spirit, yet the body and soul continue to function.
Second, I would note that without time events cannot occur, and without space objects cannot exist. Therefore, the Angels are located in space and time, but we are not able as now constructed to sense the realm of Angel habitation.
Third, I would note that God The Father Almighty is greater than His creation, thus the spacetime bubble of the universe is something God exists 'outside of' but also upholds and lives within, in the body/person of Jesus.
Allow me to introduce a new term for such discussions as these: where/when, with 'where' expressing spatial dimensionality and 'when' expressing temporal dimensionality. We exist in a where/when, Angels exist in a where/when, and we have evidence that Jesus with His resurrection moved back and forth from one where/when to another, etc. as He appeared then disappeared.
As Jesus left our where/when then returned, then left, etc. His resurrected body did not cease to exist, it just ceased to be in the same where/when of our perceptions. He carried a physical body back and forth between where/whens.
I have used the analogy of a tesseract here at FR before. If you take a square, expand it into a cube, then move that cube through time, you have a 'tesseract'. Our spacetime limits would be represented by the square. But the square is located as part of a cube and the cube as part of a more complex thing of identity, the tesseract. Using this analogy, I would call the square, our spacetime where/when ... we exist in a planar present, impacted by linear past, impacted as it were by events that happen but are unsensed by us until the data reaches our sensory mechanism and is processed to 'construct' a conceptualization of our universe.
The universe our senses cannot process does not cease to exist just because we are not made--yet--to sense it. That 'greater' universe (and it may in fact be 'lesser' in the sense of steam being less dense than liquid water) exists as evidenced by the information we've been given in the Bible like in Daniel Chptr 5 or the resurrection scene or the upper room scene or the scene on the way to Emmaeus or a host of other scenes given to us in the Old Testament.
We are assured by Jesus and the writers of the New Testament that Christians faithing in Jesus will be transformed to dwell in a different where/when! The current where/when will not immediately cease to exist, but the where/when that Jesus spoke of--where He is preparing a place for 'many mansions'--is also a creation in spacetime by The Creator Who remains greater than His creation as Creator,upheld in its near infinite complexity by His Spirit,a nd indwelt by Him in the person of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.
Human consciousness involves quantum entanglements. The quantum scale is found in our universe at the 10-33 scale below our current physical existence, yet our very large organism touches this quantum level of information approximately forty times per second, with who knows what in between the forty points of awareness? This is likened to a movie strip of cellulose film running at forty frames per second. That is because we receive data from past events, event we did not sense int he present they occurred.
We sense our universe via photon exchange effects. What if we sensed our universe via gravitational 'warping' of spacetime, instead? We would till be in a where/when, but our temporal alignment and spatial alignment would be very different from a photon dependent alignment.
[I'm pinging a few others because they may enjoy these 'strange' conjectures.]
Your tesseract analogy strikes me as powerful. And your dimensional contextualizing by means of "where/when" enormously useful.
JMHO FWIW.
Thank you ever so much, dear MHGinTN, for this thought-provoking essay/post!
An interesting conjecture about all this is one that regards the moment of conception as a unique expression of the universe (God) at that moment in time and space. The expression of the universe, through the translational vehicle of DNA,in that human life, may be regarded as a very breath of God Himself. The human is meant to be the expression of God through his time dimension.
I would conjecture humans dwell in the when/where..where being subordinate to time, while angels enjoy the where/when
dimensional relationship.
Read the paper!
It's already happened!
It's in yer computer; searchin' for LIFE!
God can create whatever the Hell he wants to. He's God you dimwit.
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