Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gauguin who wrote (37135)	9/3/1999 2:31:00 PM
From: Michael Sphar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

kinda like feed cattle perhaps ? Uh-oh! Here come those darn harvester aliens again!

To: Gauguin who wrote (37135)	9/3/1999 4:50:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 71178

Interesting...Nietzsche once defined consciousness (that is, consciousness conscious of itself) as a "disease." Think of it, we are all walking around with this diseased consciousness, which will, of course, cause the premature death of this planet, or at least of all the other forms of life on it. And think what a scourge we will have been to the other species! Serve us right if some SuperBrainyAliens should appear here, and decide that we are the yummiest things they ever saw. Since in their eyes we would be just dumb brutes, they would pen us in special stalls, which would not allow us to move (so we would be fatter & juicier); stuff us with hormones, etc.; and then slaughter us, perhaps, by lying us like logs on a conveyor belt, and then sending us down the production line to a big buzzsaw or guillotine type thing, which would chop all our heads off neatly, one by one...And then they would fry us, stew us, bake us, whatever... Or maybe they would make us their pets, instead. Of course, we would have to be neutered, so we wouldn't multiply too much. But the problem is, humans wouldn't stay cute very long. An old dog or an old cat can still be cute -- but an old human? Ugh... The only consolation for us would be to point out that the Consciousness of the SuperBrainyAliens is probably even more diseased than our own, for the very reason that it is more advanced....

To: Gauguin who wrote (37135)	9/3/1999 5:44:00 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 71178

An interesting discovery would be the discovery that we are not intelligent life. But I don't know who could make it. This sounds like something Ashleigh Brilliant might have written. Why does thinking about 1000000 years make me feel frightened and sick to my stomach? Or maybe that was the stock market. No- it really does. I know I'll be dead, and my children dead, and their children dead,and that's scary. I think we can pretend, as Terry does on Feelies, that we might live another hundred years, and see all kinds of things, and still be around to see what happens...but a million? No chance. Can't somehow get around being dead for that one. I am going to the high school football game tonight. THough I think it will be hard not to have CW there. I go to maybe one a year- it's not like I'm this rabid fan. I don't even know the fight song. But my best friend and I are spouseless again and this is the only night life available. "I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself." Montaigne I guess he didn't think about aliens at all.

To: Gauguin who wrote (37135)	9/3/1999 6:24:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Benjamin, this afternoon, told me that scientists had inserted a gene into mouse DNA that made them much smarter than ordinary mice, and there was speculation that the same thing could be done with people, and make human beings that were far more intelligent than people now, new babies, he emphasized. Not make people now smarter. He wanted to know if I thought that was "fair." "Fair to present-day humans, you mean?" "Yes, to have people that were so much smarter than we are." He looked thoughtful, as if his world-view had been shaken by the idea of humans smarter than him or any of his friends. I said, "well, I don't suppose the Neanderthals liked it when we showed up." I don't think that satisfied him, he went away with a thoughtful look on his face.

To: Gauguin who wrote (37135)	9/3/1999 11:50:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Respond to of 71178

David Brin took this basic premise and spun it half a dozen different ways. "Where da phawk IS everybody??" His most epic fiction is built around the idea that a single species billions of years ago Made It through the perilous infancy of an intelligent species, then established a rigid tradition of "training" presentients. Who you were in the Galaxy had a lot to do with who your patrons were. Mankind was a "wolfling" - a patronless species that had achieved starflight, andthis sat poorly with priests of a thousand species. War ensued.