Understanding the Alien
The forthcoming paperback edition of David McFarland’s Guilty Robots, Happy Dogs actually has nothing to do with literal ETs. But check out the blurb below from the publisher.
For those of us who have ever wondered how we might one day interact with real-life extraterrestrials of an infinitely different mindset, culture and thought-process, this could be essential and thought-provoking reading.
Here’s the background to the book:
When we interact with animals, we intuitively read thoughts and feelings into their expressions and actions - it is easy to suppose that they have minds like ours. And as technology grows more sophisticated, we might soon find ourselves interpreting the behaviour of robots too in human terms.
It is natural for us to humanize other beings in this way, but is it philosophically or scientifically justifiable? How different might the minds of animals or machines be to ours? As David McFarland asks here, could robots ever feel guilty, and is it correct to suppose your dog can truly be happy? Can we ever know what non-human minds might be like, or will the answer be forever out of our reach?
These are central and important questions in the philosophy of mind, and this book is an accessible exploration of the differing philosophical positions that can be taken on the issue. McFarland looks not only at philosophy, but also examines new evidence from the science of animal behaviour plus the latest developments in robotics and artificial intelligence, to show how many different - and sometimes surprising - conclusions we can draw about the nature of ‘alien minds’.
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Mar 12 2009 
March 12th, 2009 at 10:33 am
One of the biggest UFO myths in South America is the one about Friendship Island. It revolves around a mysterious religious community—most of them Americans—living in a remote, unchartered, and inaccessible little island in the Chonos Archipelago of Chile (close to the Patagonia). The story went that these people were in contact with alien beings, whom they referred to as ‘the angels of the lord’; this community had very advanced technology, one man —Ernesto de la Fuente—claimed that the ‘Friendship people’ cured him of lung cancer; and there’s also the story of a very important UFO sighting over the city of Santiago, where some other folks who claimed to be in contact with this sect (through CB radio) said that the UFO responded to the commands that were announced by the ‘Friendships’ over the radio.
Soooo anyway… one of the things I found that was pretty interesting about this particular story, was that the Friendship guys claimed that in order to have a true communication with these ‘angels’ of theirs, they first needed to devise faster computer systems, since all of the communication would be established through machines. They said that the difference of intelligence (and therefore the velocity of thought process) between us and them was so vast, that without a fast enough computer interface, there could be no ‘open channel’.
So this was the first time I had come across such a concept in the UFO lore. We are all so accostumed to the idea that the aliens can project their thoughts telepathically, that at least this Friendship story had to receive points for originality
March 13th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Isn’t that the plot line that the entire LOST TV series is based on?
franciscokrueger.blogspot.com/2007/10/lost-in-friendship-island.html
March 15th, 2009 at 4:56 am
Very interesting Sage! I didn’t make the connection, because I’ve never seen any chapter of LOST, if you can believe it
Maybe we should try to find if there’s an interview in the net with the screenwriter of the series, to see if they used the Friendhip story as an inspiration for the program.