LogFAQs > #880562729

aDirtyShisno posted...

To be honest, it would really suck if we were the first sentient lifeforms in the universe. You are right and that someone quite literally HAS to be first to get there but I would imagine that no species would want to be that one. All alone. Even we keep looking for aliens because we expect there to be some.

Conversely, that might be the best race to be, because you'd be the only one who would automatically be safe from some other conquering race coming along and wiping you out or enslaving you. Or having the still-functioning war-machines of a long-dead race finally track you down to kill/harvest you based on ancient, obsolete programming. Or having some grand galactic civilization deem you unworthy to join their perfect society and sterilize you into extinction. And so on.

(And suddenly, I strangely find myself compelled to post THIS link! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(Saberhagen) )

Even if we're assuming any given Precursor race is theoretically benign, you'd still have the danger of them dying off and leaving their doomsday super-weapons and technology just laying around where younger races eventually stumble across it (which is sort of one of the main concerns with how we dispose of nuclear waste today - namely, how we can keep potential future human civilizations safe from accidentally finding and exposing it). But that's also assuming that any civilization could realistically leave ruins behind that would last for any significant period of time - as per Life After People, nearly every single trace that humans ever existed as a technological species will be more or less erased by time and weather within only about 10000 years or so if we all up and disappeared tomorrow - with only our space garbage potentially lasting longer (but even that isn't guaranteed). We might not be the FIRST race in the universe... we might actually be one of the later races and STILL be more or less alone, as the other races may have lived and died already, with all trace of their existence more or less eroded away.

The universe is a huge place, made even more vast when you start factoring in Time as a separate dimension of measurement. Imagine someone from Paris trying to track down someone from New York, in a world where there's no Internet or global communication grid to use to track them, while knowing absolutely nothing other than their name and having a vague idea of what they look like. Now imagine trying to find that New Yorker when they were born in 1850 while the Parisian was born in 1950.

That's basically what looking for intelligent life in the universe is like. Even if it's out there, there's a good chance we'll never find each other.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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