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dysphemistic treadmill's avatar

I don't know where your top graphic comes from, but "third time as LARP" is actually pretty brilliant.

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Gerald Fnord's avatar

Thank-you for the basic point: the very vastness in time and space that all-but-guaranties that there is other intelligent life out there also makes extremely unlikely that any of it could show-up here within the life-time of our civilisation or, likely, race. It won't help much, because:

People say they can distinguish [science] fantasy from reality, but what on the Serengeti or for hundreds of thousands of years afterward selected for not believing our eyes and ears and minds?

Charles Stross once unleashed a storm of criticism when he used simple physics and economics to demonstrate that large-scale space-colonisation were unlikely as a viable proposition. The replies were all over the place, but notable were incorrect calculations contradicting his, and 'What about The Human Spirit!?' ironically coming from people thinking of themselves as 'hard science-fiction'* fans… but I could swear that the underlying objection was 'But I'ʼve seen it done hundreds or thousands of times! '. That is to say, they' ve been reading about it happening or its having happened in a future's past, and/or seen films and television where &c., for _decades_.

*That is, s.f. that ostensibly cares about real, physical, laws…but has accumulated various tropes having nothing to do with those or contradicting them: to my jaundiced eye it might be better called 'butch science-fiction'.

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