COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	1. Humans have a peculiar motivational structure unlikely to be universal
C00006 ENDMK
C⊗;
1. Humans have a peculiar motivational structure unlikely to be universal
for intelligent life.

2. We are barely intelligent enough and rational enough to progress.  Others
may go from the invention of fire to interstellar travel in a few
hundred years.

3. We may be first because of the billions of years variance in the time to go
from algae to sex.

4. Multi-generation voyages to stars are technically and culturally
feasible, i.e. many cults and tribes have maintained peculiar goals
for the hundreds of years required to reach nearby stars with fission
powered rockets electrically expelling a working fluid.

5. It is strange to assume only politically unified cultures when
ours will probably enter the era of feasible interstellar travel
with more than 100 sovereign countries and many hundreds of movements
that might be motivated to launch pioneering expeditions.

Can't you imagine yourself helping launch an expedition if
it looked like the bad guys would take over the world for an indefinite
period?  If you expect to take over, 
what about those who regard you as a bad guy?

6. The Viking plaque doesn't contain a computer program embodying
the knowledge and values of our culture.  In 100 years, it will
seem peculiar to omit it.

7. If one expects signal times of hundreds of years, one should base
one's communication technology on at least 100 years advance from
the invention of radio.

8. Some subculture of ours will probably try to occupy the galaxy if
it is mostly empty.

9. The development of artificial intelligence will have a problematical
effect on human motivation.  Any group posessing it will probably
have a much clearer idea of the effects of its options than we
can imagine today.  Here are some possibilities:

	a. We might merge with it maintaining continuity with our
present motivational structures, or at least what we will want our
motivational structures to be once we know the possibilities.
This seems to me the most likely choice on the basis of present
knowledge.

	b. This may or may not merge humanity into a single person
or into a few.

	c. Artificially intelligent probes may constitute scouts or
settlers according to the motivations of the senders.

10. Some group may decide to renounce interstellar travel and/or
communication and repress anyone who thinks differently.  They
may or may not succeed.