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100 Many reject the assumption that self-destruction is inevitable; we still have the capacity to make rational decisions about our future. Any emer- gent societies having developed sufficient technology to be capable of destroying their whole species would almost certainly be intelligent enough to recognize and avoid the danger of suicide, MacGowan and Ordway believed. This implies that some, if not most, intelligent species will survive and prosper for astronomical periods of time.* Futurists have tended to overestimate the importance of negative factors, argued the Clarks. It takes an extreme pessimist to believe that even if only 1% of the world’s population survived some catastrophe, the 60 million who remained could not get things going again over many generations. Even if L is short, a new technically sustainable civilization might arise with a more extended lifetime. If intelligence has survival value, posited Shostak, it will come back after a disaster.* Planets might produce sapient species at fairly short intervals, Brin sug- gested, depending on the time needed to recover from the damage done by the previous sentient race. The outlook for finding other civilizations brightens considerably if they routinely have successors. Peter Schenkel, author of upbeat novels about contact, argued that the lesson to be drawn from the human analogy is encouraging rather than discouraging. Humankind is struggling toward a peaceful global order; more advanced civilizations will have moved even farther along this path. Itis highly improbable that an intelligent extraterrestrial race would permit itself to degenerate, to fall victim to stagnation, or to lose interest in science. Schenkel concluded that L should be raised to infinity.** Mind-Stretcher. Extraterrestrials who are more intelligent and better informed than humans—less driven by genes and instinct—may be more able to perceive, choose, and implement alternative courses of action. That would make them even less predictable than we are, casting doubt on any model of their future that we project. We need look no further for the famous “missing link”—it is us. As Nietzsche said, Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superhuman. A nthe OO OMA. 900735 Worries about a takeover by intelligent machines have spread through popular culture, recently via the Terminator films. Fear of machines is not new; it can be traced at least as far back as the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century. The difference is that the machines we fear now nen aeantae are smarter. Probabilities: Longevity Fear of Machines —Arthur C. Clarke, 2003*°