Thursday, May 1, 2008

News Feeds and the Future of Man

I came across the following article at :http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20569/page1/ while looking at different news feeds. This is an article in Technology Review by Nick Bostrom which discusses the possibility of life on other planets entitled "Where Are They? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing." The author speculates that since life on other planets seems to be rare, there must be a filter that prevents life either in a developmental stage we have passed or in a stage in our future.

The author concludes; "If--as I hope is the case--we are the only intelligent species that has ever evolved in our galaxy, and perhaps in the entire observable universe, it does not follow that our survival is not in danger. Nothing in the preceding reasoning precludes there being steps in the Great Filter both behind us and ahead of us. It might be extremely improbable both that intelligent life should arise on any given planet and that intelligent life, once evolved, should succeed in becoming advanced enough to colonize space.
But we would have some grounds for hope that all or most of the Great Filter is in our past if Mars is found to be barren. In that case, we may have a significant chance of one day growing into something greater than we are now."


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