SETI bioastro: FW: Centauri Dreams - Self-Consciousness Among the Stars

• Previous message: LARRY KLAES: "SETI bioastro: Can Terrestrial Planets Form in Hot-Jupiter Systems?"

>From: Centauri Dreams <gilster_at_mindspring.com>
>Reply-To: Centauri Dreams <gilster_at_mindspring.com>
>Subject: Centauri Dreams
>Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:04:20 -0500 (CDT)
>
>Centauri Dreams
>
>///////////////////////////////////////////

>Self-Consciousness Among the Stars
>
>Posted: 22 Oct 2007 08:29 AM CDT

>http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1529
>
>
>As a coda to our recent SETI discussion, two newspaper stories on the
>subject ran over the weekend. I follow how the media handle this subject
>because public interest in SETI seems to remain high, and the cultural
>expectations that show forth in these articles may give us a glimpse of
>what would happen in the event of an actual detection. Moreover, the Allen
>Telescope Array has re-focused attention on this quixotic endeavor.
>
>Sometimes it seems that we humans give ourselves too much importance in the
>cosmic scheme of things. After all, what would our little planet have to
>offer in a galaxy that, as The Age (Melbourne) notes, is made up of 100
>billion stars (and theres that number again, 100 billion, which reminds me
>that estimates of our Galaxys stellar population range from this low-ball
>figure all the way up to Timothy Ferris whopping one trillion). Arent
>humans, we ask, just one more backward species trying to evolve?
>
>Maybe, but the problem is that we have no way of knowing the answer. If we
>are the only civilization in the Orion Arm, then were hugely significant.
>If were one of ten thousand, then were not. Without further evidence, we
>cant draw any conclusions. The Age notes that even as the Allen Array comes
>online, the southern hemisphere has been without a SETI search since 2005.
>In fact, there remain unanalysed data left over from Southern SERENDIP,
>which began in 1998 at the Parkes Observatory and now, absent government
>funding, languishes.
>
>Thus Ain de Horta, project scientist with SETI Australia:
>
>Weve got stacks of CDs full of data that we just havent had a chance to get
>through because theres a shortage of time and staff. A couple of hundred
>thousand dollars wouldnt go astray. That would get our equipment up and
>free us from our teaching duties to get some analysis done. The thing my
>colleague and I hate the most is that we started all this and we havent
>been able to complete the first bit, put it to bed, as it were.
>
>It would be useful to resurrect funding at Parkes, given that although the
>Allen instruments will be able to cover a wide swathe of the Galaxy, a
>southern skies search opens up even more celestial real estate. The Allen
>attempt starts out listening to billions of star systems toward the
>galactic center, but then focuses in on individual nearby stars. A renewed
>Parkes search wouldnt have that range but would at least complement the
>ambitious Allen instruments and extend the hunt.
>
>Ben Bova, meanwhile, writing in the Naples (FL) Daily News, notes that the
>oldest stars are doubtless drenched with radiation associated with the
>black hole at the galactic core. But elsewhere, in the suburbs of the disk,
>doesnt it just take time to raise up an intelligent species? Maybe, but
>perhaps theyre extinguished by asteroid and comet collisions or destroy
>themselves through misuse of their own technology. Bova, a science fiction
>writer and former editor of Analog, wonders too about just what it is that
>we mean by intelligence.
>
>Or maybe [writes Bova] intelligence is not as inevitable as we assume.
>After all, Earth existed for almost all of its nearly 5 billion years
>without an intelligent species. Maybe intelligence is just a special kind
>of adaptation, not an inexorable end point of evolution. Of all the myriads
>of species on Earth, only one has produced true intelligence.
>
>
>
>Giancarlo Genta, who has written wisely and sanely about SETI in his new
>book Lonely Minds in the Universe (New York: Copernicus, 2007), would add
>that we dont really know whether intelligence and self-consciousness always
>co-exist. Just how anthropomorphic do we want to be in our definition of
>these things? Let me quote from the book:
>
>Human beings are both intelligent and self-conscious but, if it may be
>easier to give a theoretical definition of consciousness than of
>intelligence, it is much more difficult to tell whether a being is
>self-conscious or not. Besides, it is not even clear whether consciousness
>is a discrete characteristic (i.e., a characteristic that either is present
>or is not), or a continuous one (i.e., one that may exist in different
>degrees).
>
>And later:
>
>On Earth, consciousness and intelligence appear to be strictly related to
>each other. Will it be so when (and if) we discover other intelligent
>beings?
>
>And this:
>
>When we say we are looking for extraterrestrial intelligence, are we
>looking for only intelligent beings, or conscious beings, or beings like
>ourselves who are both? When we search for extraterrestrial intelligence,
>are we actually searching for extraterrestrial minds?
>
>So many questions, and looming above them all that big Fermi question
>where are they? I suspect SETI will be a long, hard search. And if it ever
>does snag an undisputed signal from an extraterrestrial civilization, I
>would wager that it wont be a directed beacon but an extraneous
>transmission that well probably never be able to decipher. A huge event in
>human history, to be sure, but forever enigmatic, reminding us that in
>terms of communication, the distance between species, as sometimes between
>individuals, may dwarf our merely human comprehension.
>
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>--

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