Through Conscious Beings The Universe Has Generated

The Anthropic Principle Is An Unfortunate Name As It Implies Something About Humanity.

What We Want Is Another Sample Of Life, Which Is Not On Our Tree Of Life At All. All Life That We've Studied So Far On Earth Belongs To The Same Tree. We Share Genes With Mushrooms And Oak Trees And Fish And Bacteria That Live In Volcanic Vents And So On That It's All The Same Life Descended From A Common Origin. What We Want Is A Second Tree Of Life. We Want Alien Life, Alien Not Necessarily In The Sense Of Having Come From Space, But Alien In The Sense Of Belonging To A Different Tree Altogether. That Is What We're Looking For, "life 2.0."

If We Knew We Were Not Alone In The Universe It Would Have A Very, Very Deep Impact On Our Worldview, On Our Understanding Of Our Place In The Universe.

The Problem Here Is That A Civilization That Is 1,000 Light Years Away Doesn't Know We Exist. They Don't Know That We Have Radio Telescopes Here On Earth Because They See Earth As It Was 1,000 Years Ago. Nothing Can Travel Faster Than Light, So However Good Their Instruments They Can't See In Affect The Future. So There Is No Particular Reason They Should Be Sending Us Messages At This Time.

Supposing We Knew That Up There Is Some Alien Civilization And It's Sending Radio Signals Our Way We Should Not Tell The Public Where That Is. We Could Say That We've Picked Up A Signal, But We Should Not Tell Them Where For The Simple Reason That Anybody Could Commandeer A Radio Telescope, Set Themselves Up As Some Self Appointed Spokesperson Of Mankind And Start Beaming All Sorts Of Crazy Messages Back To The Aliens.