On: Why I thought we'd all be living in space by now

[jraines]

Right. But will that race be interplanetary and/or capable of deep space survival?

[dfranke → jraines]

I could tell you with considerably greater confidence whether or not it will snow in Boston ten years from today.

[rsheridan6 → jraines]

Based on the fact that we haven't seen any aliens, and assuming that we're not the first intelligent species in the universe for roughly the same reason I assume I'm not the first person to have some bright idea for a web app, I'm going to guess no, or at least that it's not cost effective. Otherwise we'd probably have seen von Neumann probes or something like that by now (or more likely, we wouldn't be here).

[rw → rsheridan6]

I hear Revelation Space there :)

[rsheridan6 → rw]

I haven't read it. I was just thinking my favorite explanation for the Fermi Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Communication_is_...