Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!pasteur!ames!amdahl!drivax!macleod
From: macleod@drivax.UUCP (MacLeod)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: "Violent urges..."
Message-ID: <3715@drivax.UUCP>
Date: 29 Aug 88 07:31:37 GMT
References: <8808190000.AA15832@venera.isi.edu>
Reply-To: macleod@drivax.UUCP (MacLeod)
Organization: Digital Research, Monterey, CA
Lines: 33

In article <8808190000.AA15832@venera.isi.edu> cew@VENERA.ISI.EDU 
("Craig E. Ward") quotes:

:     Due to the great distances involved, any communication with
:extraterrestrials would be very one-sided.  The exchange of pleasantries
:could take 100,000 years.  Even with that, we have sent several messages
:into the deep space.  Pioneers 10 and 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2 all
:contain messages for some inter-stellar traveler to find.  

Using EM waves for interstellar communications is about as feasible as 
putting messages in a bottle and tossing them in the sea.  Better minds than
mine suggest that if interstellar communications traffic takes place with
any regularity it must use some mechanism not bound by the speed of light.

: Any species which
:survives long enough to develop interstellar space travel will likely
:have controlled its more violent urges, something Humanity has not yet
:done.

I'll bet this canard has been advanced at every juncture in human history.
"We can't sail the Great Sea - men would fight and kill each other
before we reached shore!"  "The Germans could never develop jet planes - 
they're too evil!" 

We may not have "advanced" enough to please this foolish scientist, but
somehow we made it this far.  True, the game is not over, but I'm betting on
spacefaring races as being pretty heterogenous groups.  

Back here on Earth we seem wedded to two archetypes: Peaceful Space
Babies (ET, Close Encounters, etc.) or Nietzche's Nightmare (Alien and 
many other movies).  Surely the truth will be somewhere in between.

Michael Sloan MacLeod  (amdahl!drivax!macleod)