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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: advanced races
Message-ID: <587@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Aug-85 15:17:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.587
Posted: Mon Aug 12 15:17:35 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Aug-85 20:31:34 EDT
References: <3094@topaz.ARPA>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 23
Summary: will be motivated by the desire to survive


In article <3094@topaz.ARPA> Boebert.SCOMP@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA writes:
>From: Boebert@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
>
>  Aliens will be looking for something that is attractive to
>them, based on their frame of reference; there is no assurance whatever
>that their motivations will make any sense to us.


Our primary motivation is our desire to survive -- ourselves and our
families, primarily; larger groupings to a lesser extent.  Love, hate,
fear, and most other emotions are explainable thereby.  This desire
is an inevitable consequence of evolutionary development.  (Flames to
net.origins, please.)  Thus there is every reason to expect aliens to
share it.

Less obvious are things like religion.  There are survival-related
reasons for the development of religion, but it is not clear how much
they relate to details of our development.  Aliens might have some
such institution which would lead them to behavior patterns which
seemed very bizarre to us.

But survival is a quite sufficient reason to colonize other stellar
systems, so it is the most likely one.