Newsgroups: sci.space
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Seti
Message-ID: <1988Aug28.000049.16137@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <587138396.iaeh@ISL1.RI.CMU.EDU> <443@csed-1.IDA.ORG> <1988Aug19.212031.24023@utzoo.uucp> <1944@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 88 00:00:49 GMT

In article <1944@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk> adrian@cs.hw.ac.uk (Adrian Hurt) writes:
>> A poor assumption; our own lifespan is likely to increase dramatically within
>> the next century or so.
>
>During a series of TV programmes last Christmas, it was demonstrated that life
>expectancy has been levelling off...

Our *natural* life expectancy is unlikely to increase much further.  That
wasn't what I was talking about.

>Diseases can be beaten, but old age is much more difficult.

Agreed.  On the other hand, there is a lot more motive for tackling it.
Old age is 100% fatal and happens to everyone; AIDS is insignificant by
comparison.

Understand, I don't expect major improvements in lifespan tomorrow, or
next year, or even next decade.  But we are starting to understand the
detailed biochemical functioning of a few very small portions of our
physiology.  It is fairly safe to predict massive progress in this within
a few decades.  The biggest problem with old age is simply that we don't
understand the details of why it happens.  That will change.

>> Again, check out the pattern in our immediate past.  Emigrating to North
>> America -- just the passage and the necessary startup supplies -- took
>> every cent the Plymouth Rock colonists had, and drove them so deep into
>> debt that it was 20 years before they were in the black again.
>
>But did anyone launch a multi-year enquiry when a ship was lost? People were
>much more willing to risk their lives then.

Nonsense.  You're looking at a pathological phenomenon in a persistently-
underfunded branch of the US government, not a general trend.  If access
to space were adequate to permit an attempt at, say, a lunar colony to
be made *without* having to beg approval from government bureaucrats and
a Congress full of fat lawyers, there would be half a dozen of them already,
risks notwithstanding.  There is no shortage of people willing to risk their
lives for what they see as a worthwhile cause; the problem is that
spaceflight is currently too expensive for such people to fund it from
their own resources.

>... who says we haven't been visited? Would
>you believe anyone who said we have? Would you believe anyone who claimed to
>have seen or met the visitors? In other words, how do you react to people who
>believe in UFO's? Simply saying "They're nuts" or "They were fooled by
>something" isn't open-minded. As Henry said somewhere else, I don't believe and
>I don't disbelieve. Can anyone conclusively prove whether we have been visited
>or not?

"It is good to have an open mind, but not one that is open at both ends."
It is not possible to state definitely whether we have been visited or not.
However, the weight of the evidence is against it.  Clearly, if we *are*
being visited, the visitors are being very furtive and cryptic about it.
This is quite peculiar behavior by our standards (and we have no others to
judge it against).  It is possible to imagine explanations for it, but they
are sufficiently strained that good evidence would be needed to justify
them.  None is on hand.  For all the reports of UFO landings, contacts, 
etc., *NOT ONE* unquestionably extraterrestrial artifact or hitherto-
unknown-but-verifiable fact has come out of them.  There have been
sightings of phenomena that are arguably difficult to explain, but
there are plenty of natural phenomena that are still poorly understood;
it is not necessary to invoke extraterrestrial spaceships as the reason
for our inability to explain such sightings.  There are people who claim
to have seen or been contacted by extraterrestrials, but people have been
known to lie or be mistaken before; it is not necessary to take such
claims at face value to explain them.  The most prosaic -- and hence, most
probably correct -- theory is that we are not being visited, and have not
been in the past.
-- 
Intel CPUs are not defective,  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
they just act that way.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
