You must remember that bistro mathematics was more advanced than improbability drive since it avoided all that dangerous mucking about with infinite improbability.
The skill of DA was that, like George Orwell's 1984, he perfectly described contemporary society as a foreign land, eg. Vogons are just green lawyers; the American president already has a role remarkably similar to Zaphod Beeblebrox's...
It had occurred to me that even if we abandoned actual expansion into space ourselves, our curiosity would still cause us to send out robot probes which would still produce the same effects as Fermi's theory, but following the thoughts of the posters here who have discussed the absolutes of either wiping ourselves out or of being immediately wiped out when we contact another race of intelligent beings, I wonder how the equations are effected if there is some (even small) possibility of conflict between intelligent alien species.
If there is just a 20% chance of conflict in any encounter, then I expect that most alien races would swiftly cut back or cancel their expansion plans unless they had some urgent need to relocate to a planet that wasn't going to be eaten by a goat or something.
IMO this would mean that contact would only be likely with a race who lived locally and was at a similar stage of technological development.
Slashdot Mirror
You must remember that bistro mathematics was more advanced than improbability drive since it avoided all that dangerous mucking about with infinite improbability.
The skill of DA was that, like George Orwell's 1984, he perfectly described contemporary society as a foreign land, eg. Vogons are just green lawyers; the American president already has a role remarkably similar to Zaphod Beeblebrox's...
If you want to change the time.......
Woohoo, I just love writing shell scripts.
The next wave of genes to sweep across the globe will be from those people who don't mind arguing with their food before they eat it.
I'm not big into Macs, but those young sheep would have to hold pretty good conversation before it put me off eating them.
It had occurred to me that even if we abandoned actual expansion into space ourselves, our curiosity would still cause us to send out robot probes which would still produce the same effects as Fermi's theory, but following the thoughts of the posters here who have discussed the absolutes of either wiping ourselves out or of being immediately wiped out when we contact another race of intelligent beings, I wonder how the equations are effected if there is some (even small) possibility of conflict between intelligent alien species.
If there is just a 20% chance of conflict in any encounter, then I expect that most alien races would swiftly cut back or cancel their expansion plans unless they had some urgent need to relocate to a planet that wasn't going to be eaten by a goat or something.
IMO this would mean that contact would only be likely with a race who lived locally and was at a similar stage of technological development.
If they want a short title for the film they could try: "Apocalypse? Now?"
Of course we have no evidence, but perhaps everyone forgot how to use their computers in the dark ages.