There's a long lost Star Trek episode ' Run In With The Kardashians' on
YouTube but I wouldn't go there - it should remain lost. The 'real'
Cardassians are mentioned here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardassian.
Their noses are gray.
Now setting aside possible derogatory use of 'fantasies', I think
discovering possibly intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is
interesting because of the subsequent cultural ramifications here on
Earth. All sorts of noses of all kinds of colors will be bent out of
shape. Will they have their own Hero's Journey myths, etc. etc. What
will their philosophies look like? Will contact of the x-kind change
who I consider to be my friends and the way I stir my coffee-
absolutely! Purely pragmatic and of self-interest. Perhaps they will
tell us what the meaning of INTERESTING is too.
Robert C
On 4/4/12 2:55 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
I go back to the original question I asked Owen. Why are these
fantasies INTERESTING?. Now, quickly, I have to admit, they don't
capture my imagination that well. But I also have to admit that I
firmly believe that NOBODY is interested in anything for nothing. IE,
wherever there is an interest in something, there is a cognitive
quandary, a seam in our thinking that needs to be respected. So I
assume that there IS a reason these fantasies are interesting [to
others] and that that REASON is interesting. The reason is always
more pragmantic and immediate than our fighting off being absorbed
into a black hole. Speaking of which: Weren't the Kardashians some
race on some planet on StarTrek. What color where THEIR noses? And
how did the writers of StarTrek know they were coming
Nick
*From:*friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com]
*On Behalf Of *Arlo Barnes
*Sent:* Wednesday, April 04, 2012 11:05 AM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] So, *Are* We Alone?
Ah, one of my favorite authors, Arthur C. Clarke. Well, in 2012 the
von Neumann machines were used to increase the density of Jupiter to
fusion point, creating Lucifer, the solar system's second star, in
order that the life on Europa might have a more stable source of heat
to evolve in than the mercurial hotspots on the ocean bottom created
by Jupiter's tidal forces. This is why human beings must ATTEMPT NO
LANDINGS THERE, so they do not interfere with the process of
advancement to civilisation as arranged by the mysterious
monolith-controlling aliens (who have energy bodies like Dave Bowman
has at the end of /2001/ [who by the way becomes incorporated with the
energy body of HAL to become Halman after 2010] but who used to have
spaceship bodies like Rama in Clarke's /Rama/ series). For those who
enjoyed the films, I highly recommend the book series, it is excellent.
But perhaps a better literary comparison is Isaac Asimov's short story
/The Last Question/, the eponymous question being "Will we [humans]
ever reverse entropy?". In the story, we have a series of vignettes of
a human asking a computer the question, from engineers asking it of a
huge supercomputer on Earth (contemporary to the time of writing) to a
family asking it of a starship they are living on to a pair of
transgalactic (energy-body, again) conversers asking it of a mystical
supercomputer keeping it's vast mass in hyperspace. None of the
computers can answer, and prefer to wait for more data. Eventually the
computers and humans merge (that theme again) into a single being (I
guess that is the Singularity?) and slip into hyperspace just before
the universe heat-dies (correct usage?) and the HumPuter (my term, I
forget what Asimov calls it) ponders the Question, eventually deciding
it has figured it out. Thus entropy is reversed and the universe was
created, with the implication that this is what God is (the religion
conversation sneaking back into this thread).
-Arlo James Barnes
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
