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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site lsuc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!lsuc!msb
From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: The Great Silence
Message-ID: <749@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 10-Aug-85 17:04:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: lsuc.749
Posted: Sat Aug 10 17:04:06 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Aug-85 18:05:57 EDT
References: <2944@topaz.ARPA>
Reply-To: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 31
Summary: Maybe we don't know how to listen

I've cut down the included part as much as possible, but I thought
the complete list was worth presenting again.

Josh Susser writes:

> ...  Why haven't any aliens contacted Earth?
> ... some of [David] Brin's hypotheses ...
> 
>   1) We are truly alone.
>   2) Sentient live is just appearing in the galaxy ...
>   3) There is a galactic interdict ...
>   4) We are fundamentally different from other sentients ...
>   5) Interstellar travel and communication are impossible.
>   6) Berserkers or other hostile galactics are killing off our
>      frindly neighbors.
>   7) Civilizations with the agressive tendencies necessary to
>      drive one to interstellar expansion kill themselves off ...
>      and the surviving galactics are mellow enough to expand
>      slowly, so they just haven't found us yet.
>   8) Most habitable worlds are water worlds, so most other
>      galactic sentients would be aquatic and incapable of
>      building spacecraft.

I'm surprised not to have seen any followups to this item.  Here's an
obvious next one:

    9) Interstellar travel is impractical, and we don't know how
       to listen to the communications method used by anyone else.
       For instance, maybe they modulate their star's neutrino flow.

Mark Brader