Stephen Hawking Thinks Aliens Likely 579
OMNIpotusCOM writes "Noted astrophysicist Stephen Hawking thinks that alien life is likely, albeit primitive, according to a lecture delivered at George Washington University in honor of NASA's 50th anniversary. It begs the question of if we need to consider a Prime Directive before exploring or sending signals too far into the depths of space."
But The Real Question: (Score:2)
Will they simply laugh at us earthlings; or shake their heads in frustration, wondering "when will we ever learn"?
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Re:But The Real Question: (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think life forms entirely alien to earth will even have heads? Starfish have no heads, jellyfish have no heads.
I think it's a bit early to worry about TFS's "Star Trek Prime Directive". Sure, there is probably life alien to earth but face it, guys - we haven't found any. Not yet.
There are folks who think an advanced civilization from some other star has already come here to study us (Roswell), but if in fact those are aliens come to visit us, I think it more likely that it is a species descended from us come back in time to do some archaeology rather than visiting from Betelguise to work on a Wikipedia entry on us..
Travelling faster than the speed of light is, after all, just as impossible as time travel. Humans have been human for less than a million years, what will we be like in another ten million? Will we have found that time travel is as impossible as air travel was 1000 years ago?
Re:But The Real Question: (Score:5, Informative)
Travelling faster than the speed of light is pretty much the same thing as time travel. If you could travel faster than the speed of light, then you could time travel.
Actually, some things make sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Or even better explained: they make sense when you
A) want an alien at least evolved enough to hold a conversation with. Bacteria are exciting for biologists, but an alien you can actually make contact with, has damn good reasons to indeed look kinda like us.
B) take evolution and RL constraints into consideration. It's easy to imagine giant amoeba creatures, or sacs of gas floating on Jupiter, but those tend to either (I) have blatant disadvantages that natural selection would discriminate against, or (II) they're bloody impossible. E.g., a cell is really just a drop of sea water in a lipid membrane, and evolved from some aminoacid chains which originally started replicating in plain sea water without a membrane. And from there it's been baby steps towards any complex organisms. It was first just bacterial films, then some "worms" which were just a toroidal bacterial film and "sponges" which were just a bacterial colony with holes in it, and so on. Most fantasy extraterestrial forms proposed, like those giant gas sacks, it's not clear how they'd evolve in the first place.
But anyway, that in mind, I'll say that, for example:
- to start with the easy part, any creature of any complexity above "bacterial colony" will have specialized cells for specialized tasks. Simply because it's a huge advantage to. Cells on your skin need to largely insulate you from the uncontrolled outside world, while cells inside need to allow a freer flow of nutrients, for example. As an added bonus, specialization also means that each cell only needs a smaller set of proteins and reactions to do its job, which reduces its energy and nutrient needs and also the number of things that can go wrong.
So basically this rules out any ideas some may have about sentient amorphous blobs.
- almost any creature has either bilateral or radial symmetry, simply because it saves on DNA. Your left side is largely a mirrored copy of your right side. It also has advantages like that it's easier to swim or walk when your left and right legs/fins/tentacles are the same length. And having redundant organs is an advantage by itself too.
- any complex creature will have _some_ sensory organs, because again it's a great advantage to. Even some of the most primitive cells can detect changes in the environment, and react to them in one way or another. Some unicelular organisms already have light sensors. Over time some stuff will remain rather distributed, but high-bandwidth stuff like eyes, it makes sense to have a small number and complex/high-res, rather than photosensitivity all over your body. Other stuff tends to work _because_ it's a single structure instead of a widely distributed array, e.g., hearing. Etc. Basically given enough time and evolution, see the previous stuff about specialization: a lot of things will get concentrated and specialized.
- almost any complex creature will have a mouth at one end and an arse at the other end, simply because it all evolved out of some ultra-primitive worms which were just a thin tube that pushed water from one end to the other. And evolution works in baby steps, small changes to what already existed. Even the exceptions tend to be actually really built the same way. E.g., gasteropods have a funkier configuration, but start as the above described tube anyway: later a diagonal muscle twists them into an different configuration.
- neurons (or whatever the alien equivalent is), are inherently slow, compared to transistors. They're chemical things, just because they evolved out of other cells, and that's how cells work. They don't have to just transmit the signal, they actually have to produce chemicals to excite the next neuron's receptors, and then neutralize those so the next one doesn't keep firing for ever. Again, _because_ they evolved from other cells, which are just a complex chemistry run
Re:Actually, some things make sense (Score:4, Insightful)
B) A radically alien environment is going to evolve radical alien organisms. Starfish have no heads, like I said. Mammals have no eggs, lizards don't have milk. Snake eyes and cat eyes have a different pupil than other reptiles and mammals.
sentient amorphous blobs
I've often wondered if an ant were an animal, or if the ant colony was the actual animal?
almost any creature has either bilateral or radial symmetry, simply because it saves on DNA
I wonder if extraterrestrial life would necessarily be dependant on DNA?
any complex creature will have _some_ sensory organs
Which may or may not be the same as our senses. Sight nay be in the radar band yet be blind to visible light. They may even have evolved senses that earth creatures lack.
So now we have a mouth on that "head" too
You wouldn't need a head to have a mouth, eyes, or antennae.
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Not even the birds would have dreamed men could take bits of the earth and cause them to soar through the air like we have. At supersonic speeds, no less.
No, the GP post was right, and the analogy is sound.
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Note that this neatly misses the fact that people have gone outside and stood still while the wind blew past them at two or three times this speed without suffocating. People will always come up with creative ways to misunderstand the world around them. We're still doing it now.
Re:But The Real Question: (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll have you know that I, as an enlightened being, have been liberating lesser beings for years. I have personally liberated hundreds if not thousands of civilizations of ants. I've also liberated civilizations of bees, wasps and hornets. I'll tell you... the totalitarianism they were subjected to would make a civilized person weep.
They must have been captives, because once I slew their rulers and set them free, they all left and I never saw them again. But I'm sure they were singing my praises, whatever happened to them.
Re:But The Real Question: (Score:5, Funny)
(Paraphrasing Calvin)
Why is this newsworthy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hawking has said this before earlier as well. Just because he makes the same statement again instantly makes this news??
Come on the Drake Equation has been around for a long time now guys.
But...but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But...but... (Score:5, Informative)
Justin.
* "sending signals too far into the depths of space" - see 'inverse square law' and 'size of solar system', not to mention 'microwave background'
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And an incorrect usage of "begs [skepdic.com] the question" [begthequestion.info].
(I assume "sumbitter" is deliberate -- seems to be somehow more descriptive of many articles.)
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Actually, it means that there is almost certainly a crapload of civilizations out there, it is not a foregone conclusion.
It is nevertheless still entirely possible, however unlikely, that our own civilization might actually be the only one in the whole universe.
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You call this "civilization?" Get your hands off me, you dirty ape!
In other news, aliens consider Stephen Hawking unlikely.
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Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score:5, Informative)
What this means is that in an infinite universe that has totally random initial conditions, every possible state will be realized somewhere. That means that somewhere in the universe, conditions very similar to our local conditions will be realized. Not only does this mathematically guarantee that life exists somwhere, but also that "copies" of Earth and you and me exist somewhere. All possible variants of matter organization are realized somewhere in the infinite universe (and in fact may be repeated over and over). Of course, the distances over which you will see a repeat may be fantastically large (much, much larger than the observable universe, for instance). Also, life-forms in causally-disconnected volumes can never communicate with each other. (So you may say... who cares?)
In any case, it's not known with certainty that the universe is infinite (or that the big bang was ergodic)... but our current theories allow for models where the multiple emergence of life (and all physically reasonable variants) is in fact mathematically guaranteed. Kinda interesting.
Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score:5, Funny)
But we'll have goatees.
Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score:4, Funny)
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score:4, Interesting)
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The Drake Equation doesn't tell us everything. For starters, there's the Fermi Paradox [wikipedia.org]. More interesting, imho, are the questions raised by the Great Filter [gmu.edu] -- namely, are the hard challenges ahead of us, or behind us?
If Hawking says he thinks life elsewhere is likely, then that implies a certain degree of pessimism about our future chances.
Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Cons
No begging (Score:4, Informative)
No, it doesn't [begthequestion.info]. There. Got that out of the way.
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Re:No begging (Score:5, Funny)
Fixed that for you.
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Feel free to show me where I am wrong, however.
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Actually, I believe that the correct, polite usage would be 'I bought a soda for my wife and me' - it is polite to put the other person first.
Feel free to show me where I am wrong, however.
IANAET, but from what I remember, the order isn't relevant as long as the subclauses work individually.
"I bought a soda for me." "I bought a soda for my wife." "I bought a soda for my wife and me" || "I bought a soda for me and my wife."
I would think it would be "..for my wife and myself", but... yeah.
Not relevant to correctness, but to politeness (Score:2)
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Re:No begging (Score:4, Funny)
You stil don't have it right. "I bought a soda for your wife, and a double shot of rum for myself, because your wife is so fugly that even drunk, she scares me!"
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Feel free to correct me or confirm - I'll learn something either way.
Re:No begging (Score:5, Funny)
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Not only does the old usage hardly exist anymore, but when you try to use it people have no idea what you are talking about.
Language changes.
Re:No begging (Score:5, Insightful)
The view that language is good enough as long as it is fairly likely to get the point across is - even putting aside that it is usually harder to parse incorrect, intelligible writing than correct prose - antithetical to the "standards" culture espoused on Slashdot. It is the permissive, lackadaisical Internet Explorer approach to HTML. And it is born, I fear, of the average nerd's mediocre ability in his own language, and his desire to change the rules to suit his own lack of interest in a discipline at least as complex, and millennia older, than his own - that of effective communication. Put down the Knuth, pick up the Fowler, and learn to express yourself as elegantly to your fellow man as you might to your computer.
Anyway, I've met no reasonably educated man who does not know the correct usage of "beg the question". A few minutes ago I was reading a book published in the last decade which employed it correctly. Had the author wished to indicate that a particular question was "raised", he would have done so. While I'm here:
Here endeth the rant.
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Words and expressions often have multiple meanings. In this case, both the definition you cite, and the way the summary uses the phrase, are correct, and which is meant is discerned from the context. While I laud your ability to get +5 Informative by lacking the ability to do so, it begs the question as to whether you also post on topics about gay rights insisting that gay can only mean cheerful and not homosexual.
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Re:No begging (Score:4, Informative)
This usage of 'begets' was somewhat common in 18th c. English. Take a look at Hume, Enquiry, sec. XII, pgh. 2 [eserver.org]
Belloc
Prime Directive? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean seriously -- if we think our technology and culture is okay for the entire planet, why should we stop here?
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Unless Stephen has another announcement he's saving for another date...
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I think before we contemplate attacking France maybe we should get out of our own backyard first.
okk.. (Score:5, Funny)
You're absolutely right! We should definitely set hold back on all the space exploration we've been doing. Also, we should set physical limits for our transmissions to "expire" after a certain distance, so we don't send them "too far". In fact, that would be the only responsible thing to do for Masters of the Universe such as us.
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we should set physical limits for our transmissions to "expire" after a certain distance
New York - April 22, 2008 - The RIAA/MPAA today announced a new initiative targetting so-called "transmission sharing." A spokesperson for the group is quoted as saying "just because an intelligent alien signal has been put out there - illegally - in the public domain doesn't mean the recording label doesn't deserve their fair cut of the action." As with the ongoing file-sharing battle, technology will play a pivotal role in the battle against transmission sharers. Several not-for-profit SETI organizations
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I realize, of course, that you were repl
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Directive Prime (Score:3, Funny)
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if we ever find intelligent life (Score:2, Interesting)
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This attitude comes straight out of reading too much science fiction. Whether it's 'friendly' or not paints wayyy to sim
No (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hawking isn't an astrobiologist (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hawking isn't an astrobiologist (Score:4, Insightful)
Parasites and diseases which are common in household animals seldom accept human as a host. Furthermore, I have never been infected by a tree fungus. I guess they don't find me favorable for symbiosis.
Some Notes on Alien Life (Score:2, Insightful)
2: I suspect there's no other intelligent/space faring life in our galaxy, but probably there is in other galaxies. (Fermi paradox and Tipler-Barrow arguments both are pretty convincing to me).
For me, #1 means that we should be careful to make sure our spaceships are bug free so we don't contaminate places we land on with life that could wipe out any indigenous life.
For #2, it means that it's impossible for us to ever have a meaning
Re:Some Notes on Alien Life (Score:5, Insightful)
Put another way - we (humanity) went from fairly small mammals to now in about 65 million years. If the dinosaurs hadn't fallen victim to $extinctionLevelEvent, they could easily have become as evolved as we are now - just a whole lot earlier. So, if intelligent/sentient life could have evolved here 60 million years ago, why wouldn't that be the case in another solar system?
For all we know, it's entirely possible that 15,000 light years away there's a planet with a civilization that is EXACTLY as evolved as we are. Why haven't we heard from them yet? Physics - would take 15,000 years for any signal to reach us. Hell, 200 light years away would suffice for that argument, and in both cases Fermi would look like an idiot.
As an aside, I see his paradox along the lines of creationism - after all, we can't prove that something doesn't exist. Only that it does.
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It comes down to statistics. Assuming space technology doesn't advance much further in the future (and we all know that's pessimistic beyond belief), we could still colonize the entire galaxy in anywhere from 5 to 50 million years. That's with technology and speeds not far beyond where we are now.
5 to 50 million seems like a long time, but at cosmological and even geological
The flaw in the argument is: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, we don't know any such thing.
Current life technology is based ultimately on oil- or coal-derived fuels and there is no realistic prospect that we will have enough of these to support a serious space program. Point me in the direction of a single alternative technology that will provide the kind of energy required.
Even assuming such a technology, consider the effect on the atmosphere o
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This is the default. Radiation from the sun and a zero pressure, zero gravity environment is enough to kill any microbes on our spaceships.
Prime Directive my shiny metal ass! (Score:4, Funny)
Humans are designed to trade, travel and exploit resources. Then move on when there are too many tourists.
Frankly, I'm surprised there isn't aready a Prime Directive that reads:
"See that blue/green planet with all the space junk and EM noise? You want to leave that one well alone!"
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really?
Re:Prime Directive my shiny metal ass! (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. Two episodes of TNG come to mind and they illustrate the Prime Directive. I don't know the names of the episodes (and too lazy to look them up) but here are their descriptions.
The first involved Riker being found out while on a mission to make contact with a civilization that was beginning space exploration. The actress who played Lillith is the female doctor who realizes what he is and wants to hump him at every opportunity (no argument from me). In the end, Picard meets with their leader and is asked not to return until the people are ready for the fact that there are other beings in the universe.
The second involves Deanna's mother and her infatuation with David Ogden Stiers (Charles Emerson Winchester III). On his planet, when people reach a certain age, they are required to commit suicide. Deanna's mother can't come to grips with this and begs him not to go through with it. She even asks for Picard to offer him asylum. Picard refuses and things go on.
In both cases, while contact had been made, the balance of the civilizations was not upset. One could argue that in the first case, the fact that certain people knew about these visitors fundamentally changed things but since only a select few knew, the general populace went about their business none the wiser.
Personally, I think those two episodes, along with the one where Picard has to convince a group of pre-industrial people he is not a god despite his "powers", are the three episodes which best illustrate the Prime Directive and some of its permutations.
Nope (Score:5, Funny)
The problem with Hawking's statement (Score:5, Informative)
The only problem I have with his statements at GWU is that he is focusing too much on radio waves. He is speculating that since we haven't detected any radio waves, it is unlikely that any intelligent civilization exists close to earth (and by close, I mean in astronomical measures).
In my opinion, scientists are taking too much for granted when looking for life. We assume that it is more likely to find life wherever water exists and we constantly assume that the conditions must be earth-like. And regarding the radio waves, I don't understand why an extraterrestrial civilization would even need to use such technology. It is just as likely that they communicate in entirely different ways. After all, hearing and seeing is just one way of living, but not a necessity.
I realize that radio waves occur from more than just television shows, but this is mainly the type of signals we look for since the odds of intended communications from other planets are insanely small.
Re:The problem with Hawking's statement (Score:4, Insightful)
Then it's just a matter of settling on WHICH photons to look for. Some don't work well for communications (like the visible spectrum). Some won't travel very far. We are capable of producing photons at just about any desired wavelength, and yet we've settled on a narrow range for communications.
You could argue that we don't understand the natural world completely yet, and so there could be other means of communication. This is absolutely true, but how would we look for something that we don't know about? Electromagnetic waves are so easy to detect and discover that any technologically advanced culture is bound to use them eventually.
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Whats the problem here? We want to look for alien life so we cant sit around forever trying to figure out what form it has and how it communicates. We have to start somewhere and from our own (albeit very limited experience of life) water and radio waves currently seem to be two very good indicators.
You ask what the problem is but you also answer your own question (unintentionally). The problem is obviously that if we look for places with similar conditions, not only is it like looking for a needle in a billion haystacks, but at the same time knowing that the needle may not be a needle, but in fact a button, string or something else.
First we should find out how life started, prove it and then see if there are other ways of creating life. Only then can we know what the needle really looks like.
The Prime Directive is Evil (Score:5, Funny)
"Hello Mr. Alien. Welcome to our planet. Boy, you sure are more advanced than us!"
"Why, yes, we are, thank you. By the way, I couldn't help noticing that many of you still die from cancer."
"'Still die'? You mean you don't?"
"Oh, no, we cured that a long time ago. Same for that crooked politician thing you've got going. And war. Oh, and that thing you call 'Alzheimers', too. And global warming. We don't have any of that. They all turned out to be really simple to fix, in fact."
"Really? that's wonderful. Will you teach us how to solve these things."
"What? No, no, child, your culture isn't ready for all that. Besides, you're so cute the way you are. No, we'll just stay up in our ships and watch you figure it out. It will probably take several more generations, but that's OK, with our advanced medical technology, we will live long enough to see it... unless you wipe yourselves out in the process, that is. He he. You amuse us."
"Asshole"
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Noted? (Score:4, Informative)
Ahem, I suspect he is a little more tha noted. He holds the same chair as Sir Isaac Newton did at Cambridge University, worked out how black holes work and is probably the most famous scientist in the world. Even the article [yahoo.com] says:
Answer: no. That was easy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Aliens are avoiding us (Score:3, Funny)
Not only are the game shows bad, the soap operas moronic, and the news hours obviously paid advertisements, but our shopping network features declasse technology.
From what they can tell, showing up on earth and saying "I am an alien" is a quick way to get a dead-end job in food service.
They're hanging out in the horsehead nebula, periodically manipulating us with botnets comprised of compromised Windows machines.
Hawking's opinion counts for little (Score:3, Insightful)
Now a couple of reasons why Hawking may be totally wrong.
- 1. We have no evidence that we as a species will ever be able to deploy enough energy or resources to move beyond this solar system. We can already foresee the end of cheap energy, and it is all we can do to lift a few tonnes to low earth orbit. It is quite possible that the Universe is so arranged that almost every possible life form is trapped in its own solar system.
- 2. The period in which we have emitted significant radio waves into space is barely 100 years, and more and more we are moving to very short range low power transmitters. It's quite possible that every civilisation does that and so, except for a narrow window of a hundred years or so, is effectively radio silent. You might pick up a primitive 50s and 60s AM transmitter (think Voice of America and megawatts on a narrow frequency band) but not all those Bluetooth devices.
If both of these are correct, the chance that we will detect another civilisation is extraordinarily small even if they are extremely common. In fact, the growing knowledge of carbon chemistry - graphenes and so on - and clays suggest that there are many opportunities for substrates to arise that might hold together primitive organics long enough for life to get a start. It's a subject which is getting increasingly interesting; if you take enough surface area and spread enough small molecules over it for long enough under enough variations of conditions, something is more or less bound to happen. Recent research also seems to suggest that there could be planets around smaller and so longer-lived stars which might have conditions suitable for the formation of life for much longer than the Earth will. Our own planet may be a lot less than optimal. In which case life is likely to be very common indeed, but the low energy environments in which it evolves may make it quite unsuitable for expanding from one star to another.And why should it? The belief that there is something special about the human race which justifies its long term existence is as "religious" as any theistic religion, and no more defensible.
1st Contact (Score:3, Funny)
Anonymous stealth mission
Objective: How do they taste?
It's possible that there is other life elsewhere, and nearly a certainty that it exists elsewhen.
We just need to work out how to get there after it exists and before it's "Best if eaten by" date.
Not infallible (Score:3, Insightful)
I am surprised by this quote, and maybe a bit elevated that Hawking is not perfect and doesn't know everything.
It is unlikely that any truly alien life can infect or even eat us. Viruses work because they evolved to work on earth-bound DNA structures. Few viruses can infect multiple species. Chimps are 98%~99% exactly the same as human and few viruses can infect both. A truly alien virus infecting us would be like one of our viruses infecting gasoline or some other organic compound. (Assuming aliens are organic)
Similarly, the "chain of life" where compatible proteins and compounds are consumed by predators (yes we prey on plants, they just don't defend themselves all that often.) is more narrow than you would think as many plants and parts of animals are poisonous. The notion that an alien biology would have any sort of compatibility is, on the surface, absurd.
All that being said, if an alien species was able to eat us or vice versa, or infect us, it would probably support the notion that life on earth was caused by cosmic panspermia.
because the aliens compress their data stream! (Score:4, Interesting)
Plans to recognize alien signals are all based on finding redundancies in the transmission. But from the point of view of an alien signal engineer all redundancies are opportunities to save energy and transmission time by adding compression! The more compression you add, the more your signal looks like random noise. Also the aliens might be using spread spectrum techniques which make a signal even more difficult to detect.
Think of it, the FCC is already starting to require TV signals to move to digital in order to save bandwidth that can be resold to the cell phone companies. How long will it be till the FCC requires that these signals be compressed? Our signals are already becoming more difficult to detect.
Probably in the natural technical evolution of any species there is only a very small window where the species is smart enough to use radio energy for communication but not smart enough to use enough compression to make its signals look like random noise.
Thus our SETI efforts are looking for a needle in a heystack and failure only indicates that species in a transitional phase like us is very rare.
Stephen Hawking should have thought of this.
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I don't care much for meeting advanced aliens (Score:4, Interesting)
And if we are more advanced than them, we will exploit them.
I think it's more likely that, in an evolutionary time-frame, we'll colonize our solar system (and beyond), and extra-terrestrial humans will evolve in different directions and become the "aliens".
We should be shouting HELP! (Score:3, Insightful)
Survival of the Fittest Civilization (Score:3, Insightful)
Federation Man: "Our Prime Directive instructs us not to interfere with the development of your culture."
Alien: "Good because, our culture is adequately developed already and our Prime Directive says we can assimilate you and take all of your resources.
Guess who wins. If its not obvious think about the history of Native Americans.
Just Because They Have FTL . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
If something hard to us maybe easy to them, the oppisite may be true too.
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So yes, it must be a slow news day...
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Re:too much st (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:too much st (Score:5, Funny)
1) Subjugate and conquer any species you encounter against which you can prevail with military might.
2) Use diplomacy and survelliance/espionage techinques to undermine any species against whom you are not guaranteed to prevail to bring about their downfall and leave you in control of their resources.
3) Attempt to avoid or form favourable alliances with anything you come across which is stronger than you.
4)
5) Profit
Re:too much st (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:too much st (Score:5, Funny)
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"Oh, they must not wanna interfere because 'we're not ready yet'."
What crap! WTF is so damned "magical" about the state of some planet's culture when they invent interstellar travel, as opposed to 50 or 200 or 1000 years earlier?
For most of human history, the vast bulk of the population lived in misery, while a few kings lived at the top.
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That makes so much more sense.
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More importantly, once it's reached, they can reach you. Before that they are stuck in their shithole planet, so you can ignore them, since they can't follow you home.
...And attack you.
A fallacious argument. Five year olds lack the physical capacity to handle a loaded gun in a safe way. Their brains simply aren't working well enough yet.
Which is, you know, the point of my argument. The rationale is that until they've hit a certain level of technology, their "brains" (that is, culture) aren't working w
Re:Fictional rules will be no help (Score:4, Funny)
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I didn't know it was made by aliens. Pretty cool. I hope they think to release it on DVD.