PAST CONVERSATIONS

(Friday, April 16th):

Dark forest versus zoo hypothesis, etc... are intelligent and technologically capable aliens “good” or “bad”? Do some googling, or reflect on science fiction you’ve read, and come with some ideas about the likely nature of alien intelligence, if indeed you think there is any pattern. You can read this Wikipedia summary for an example of the violent concept of aliens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Small_Talent_for_War
Related to this: METI
§ Is it okay? Should we do it? Why or why not? Who has the right? Who decides?
§ http://meti.org/en/mission
§ https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.08422
§ https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.library.georgetown.edu/doi/full/10.1080/14746700.2019.1557806?scroll=top&needAccess=true
AND: how do you think we should look for ETI? (radio/EM spectrum, artifacts, optical, pollution, anomalies, etc…)

(Friday, April 23rd):

What would be ethical versus unethical or appropriate versus inappropriate treatment of Martian / Europan / etc. life (including microbial life), and why? Do we only care about people? Things that we judge to be ‘rational’ or ‘intelligent’? Any life? Environments? Or do we care about life and environments as far as they benefit ourselves?
One of the many challenges of astroethics: does the golden rule even apply, cosmically? And ‘the cosmic golden rule’…

(Friday, April 30th):

Short stories! ~3,500 words : https://www.you-books.com/book/W-Tenn/Brooklyn-Project
a. Homesick by Sarah Gailey: https://firesidefiction.com/issue36/chapter/homesick/
b. And a longer short story by Ted Chiang (exhalation): http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/exhalation/
PLEASE suggest sci-fi you want us to read if you know some stuff :)