In response to:
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=27889&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+centauri-dreams%2Feepu+%28Centauri+Dreams%29
Hi, Larry
An excellent article, Larry, I really enjoyed reading this, thanks for sending it along. It appears your thinking about SETI, much like mine, has been evolving from the early Drake and Sagan paradigms, and we both seem to be heading in pretty much the same direction.
Compared to when we first began corresponding, I now feel carbon based microbial life to probably be quite common in the galaxy, and will probably exist just about anywhere where there are conditions that make it possible to exist. However, I have come to the conclusion that metazoans, multi-cellular organisms, may be quite rare, and intelligent life capable of human-like science and technology may be extremely rare. Even highly advanced and civilized extraterrestrial species may not have our type of physics-based technology, and it would be difficult to visualize just how we would go about making contact with them. I have fictionally explored the possibility of a life form similar to our own marine corals that would be unrecognizable to us as highly intelligent, that operated at vastly different time scales than we do and whose technology was based on biochemistry, genetics and acoustics. We could share a planet with such a civilization and neither of us would even be aware of the other’s existence.
A highly advanced mechanical, or artilect civilization I also believe to be highly unlikely. Although there is no reason why they could not exist, and even though they do seem to be the inevitable final step in the evolution of their biological precursors, you have to get to the biological precursor first. As you can see, I find that preliminary step less and less likely the more I think about it.
Whether I have arrived at these conclusions due my own changing and maturing views, or whether I have somehow absorbed it subconsciously from evolving memes in the SETI community, I do not know. I suspect the former, since I don’t keep up with the latest speculations on SETI, and I don’t even read speculative fiction any more. But I do know my ideas on this, what has been one of my life’s most constant and obsessive speculations, are now very different than what they were a few decades ago. Have I been influenced by new knowledge, or have I fundamentally changed and I am perceiving the same universe differently?
For me, the universe is now a much lonlier place than it used to be.
ER