Vas Gardiakos

I strongly believe in governmental and private funding of SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. The funds for this venture are not very high and if ETI, an Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence is discovered it will an important milestone in human understanding of where we are in the universe. The potential benefits that will derived from the discovery of ETI are too great for funds not to be provided for the search.

I suspect that there are at least two types of ETI, Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. Those that we are searching for now must have a high technological civilizations. I believe or I should say I am guessing that there are a few high technological civilizations in our universe. I am confident that there are many more ETI without any electronic sophistication. How high can a civilization advance without electronic technology? During the years of high tech SETI we will find none or very few intelligent and technological advanced life or Techies in the universe. From our vantage point we will only be able to discover Techies.

As the noted astronomer, Carl Sagan once remarked, that if the Greek spirit had continued unencumbered we would not be dreaming about traveling to the stars but would have returned long ago and now we would be launching fleets of ships for missions of exploration, trade and immigration. If Sagan was right the discovery of civilizations with non-electronic technology may have been discovered by these interstellar missions by now. This may have translated to a more peaceful earth and an  understanding of our place in the universe.

There are primitive societies, PICE and Thales civilizations. Civilizations reaching the Thales level lead to technology as it did on our planet. The Thales civilizations however can lead to and I am not even going to guess here but to great advances unforeseen by us.

The pre-Thales state includes the civilizations of Persia, India, China and Egypt (and others) or PICE. There are many pre-Thales or PICE civilizations in the Universe. We will discover many civilizations in the PICE state. On earth the Thales state lasted for only several thousand years. In the great expanse of the universe we will find many civilizations stuck in the PICE state for tens of thousands. Some of these PICE civilizations may last even over100,000 years but eventfully fade away as their resources are exhausted. The PICE civilizations then revert to a more primitive state and may never recover to a high state again. Thales is the first scientist on this planet. From the time of Thales to technological society is relatively short.

I predict that planets with pre-PICE those with primitive societies will be very plentiful. Lower life forms will be extremely abundant. A few PICE civilizations get to the Thales or Greek state which lead to science and from there to technology but can lead to other states of advanced societies. There is always the threat of the Dark Ages.

PICE civilizations will be difficult to detect from earth at least with our present day resources. It will take visit by probe or by humans to make this observation. I suspect or should I say I am speculating that very advanced civilizations have transplanted themselves into the universal source code. This is the reason we have not heard from them.

Pythagoras - Sistine chapel