SETI public: SETI biases

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----- Original Message -----
From: Robert J. Bradbury
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 2:09 PM
Subject: SETI biases

In response to some recent conversations regarding SETI & Pattern
Recognition between "into_the_light" and Yvan Dutil, I thought
I would offer some comments.

Milan M. Cirkovic (which in the proper Yugoslavian font has accents
on the c's) has been publishing a series of papers that speak to
some extent the "incommensurability" problem of communications between
civilizations at vastly different levels of development, when such
civilizations might develop (a temporal problem in addition
to a spatial problem [the Fermi Paradox and the "Great Filter" problems]),
and the importance of SETI vis-a-vis the evolution of humanity,
transhumanism and the survival of our species or its descendents.

One of the first of these is located here:
"Cosmological Forecast and its Practical Significance"

http://www.jetpress.org/volume12/CosmologicalForecast.pdf

Two others that are in pre-press for perhaps "Foundations of
Physics" or "Icarus" are:

"Forecast for the Next Eon: Applied Cosmology and the Long-Term
Fate of Intelligent Beings"

and

"On the Importance of SETI for Transhumanism"

I have seen the preprints for these and they are quite interesting.
(If you are interested in offering criticisms -- Milan (arioch_at_eunet.yu)
may be willing to provide a preprint copy).

There are additional preprints by Milan on various topics in the
www.arXiv.org archive.

There is also an extensive document by Nick Bostrom on
"Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards"
http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html
which Milan references that feeds into the discussion regarding
SETI, the Fermi Paradox, and the Great Filter discussions.

Milan and Nick seem to be among a small group of people that are
trying to integrate aspects of Astrobiology, SETI and the evolution
(or life-cycles) of advanced technological civilizations. IMO, any
discussion of SETI without including these other aspects of past
and future development scenarios is likely to be significantly
handicapped.

Robert

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