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What If Aliens Came To Save the Galaxy From Mankind?
astroengine writes with an amusing piece in Discovery. From the article: "In a study carried out by NASA and Pennsylvania State University scientists, several intelligent extraterrestrial encounter scenarios are examined. One of the scenarios is a sci-fi favorite: what if we encounter an alien race hellbent on destroying us? However, there's a twist. This isn't mindless thuggery on behalf of the aliens, and they're not killing us to get at our natural resources; they have a cause. They want to exterminate us for the greater good of the Milky Way."
We could always have voiced our objections against the interstellar express route.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
At our technological level, we pose no danger to anything off this planet.
It would be like saying you'll sterilize a grain of sand to protect the planet.
Such a silly scenario...
If we ever develop interstellar travel that is fast, cheap and practical, maybe then this scenario starts to have legs.
Alastair Reynolds explores this scenario in his Revelation Space series. The inhibitors come to eat anyone that progresses too far to keep a greater threat in check (IIRC).
Fantastic space opera, if you haven't read them yet.
The galaxy is freakin' huge. Unless the aliens are from the systems closest to Earth, there's no reason they'd give a damn.
I thought that was a staple scenario in its entirety. I saw The Day the Earth Stood Still (both of them) where the aliens come to say "yo, we've come to save the earth. From you losers".
One twist is where the aliens think they need to save the earth from us, but really we're the good guys in a galactic conspiracy (or bureaucracy), like David Brin's Uplift trilogy.
'Childhood's End' is a book with a superb scenario, without the imagination-less superimposing of human ideas, methods and motivations onto ETs, who, by the way, absolutely must exist, and who do come here regularly.
After decades of writing, speculation, insights and research devoted to this subject, the usual suspects keep coming up with the same tired ideas and human centered dogma. There is a reason for this; they are all paid no matter what the quality of their ideas is, because none of them can be implemented, and the State is paying no matter what they come up with.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
What If Aliens Came To Save the Galaxy From Mankind? ... Friday August 19, @08:18PM
HP Spinning Off WebOS and Exiting Hardware Business .... Friday August 19, @06:02AM
STFU
This is 100% the plot of the story told by the concept album Year Zero.
You must be new here . . .
i say what a waist of money to let ppl come up with that stuff.... i could had told them straight away that that will not happen, because we will already be our own downfall, we will not advance enough in time on spacetravel, before we destroy our own planet, by means over over population and depleting our natural resources.
Aliens where popsicles?
Ffs.
Stuff that matters?
It already happened - God arrived ...
but humanity lately is turning out to be a bit of a lost cause!
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
Any Slashdotter worth his salt has known for years that HP computers suck. It's not news.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I believe this was done in of Titan A.E. They just weren't very thorough about it.
"Hey, I know what we're gonna do today." -- Phineas Flynn
not to eat us, kill us, us, but they would share knowledge with us, free energy(e=mc2) and teach us to live in harmony with the Universe.
Will they take the dolphins with them?
Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made. - Otto von Bismarck
*cough*
HP Spinning Off WebOS and Exiting Hardware Business
you must be OLD here!
what's pollution to them? maybe they'd think were actually terraforming since human population is on the rise and will remain at high levels even if all borders were closed and all hell broke loose - as information on how to make food is spread now to every corner of the earth, even if things went bad we would have that know how and steel to make instruments out of, better than ever before.
the article takes the assumption that the human race is sinful and presents that as not just global but as an universal truth.
anyhow, this is something explored a lot in sci-fi, from fifties to today.
but, their reaction would largely depend on the contrast our civilization has against the other civilizations they'd have encountered before. if ours were the first, they wouldn't even know what they're going to do. maybe they'd run into an ideological chaos period in their own civilization, which pretty much happened in europe when the new world was found and the slave business was booming.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
First of all if aliens visited us with the intention of extinguishing us to save the galaxy it is likely that they would have become more advanced and would have expanded further into the galaxy than we have.
Second of all, the fact that they simply want to destroy us would mean that they would automatically be a more destructive race than us and therefore are hypocrites.
Third, unless they could travel faster than the speed of light they would have to have started travelling to us a long time ago in order to somehow know we are a threat. This emphasizes my first point.
If a species has managed to conquer interstellar travel in reasonable time spans, I'm pretty sure they have developed energy sources that are powerful enough to wipe us out before we even know what hit us. A gentle nudge on a few asteroids, and BOOM. No more life above microscopic size.
What if Aliens were allergic to the radio signals coming from earth, and they wanted to "switch it off"
really, the global warming scare factory blew right past hyperactive speed and went straight to plaid.
It is crap like this that makes it hard for many to believe there are is any seriousness in the global warming let alone man causing it or making it worse. I cringed while reading this article. I am not sure if its more of a creepy cringe or just offensive to real thinking
Its time to get the zealots out of the lead roles, they are no more than Bible thumping tent preachers, whats next, snakes?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Just have the Slim Whitman records on standby.
Simples.
The perfect storm of magical thinking and self hatred.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
I think it's unlikely, and not just because the Universe is huge and travelling at the speed of light is a paradox. (not a scientist) Simple social observations, we have free will, our free will creates great works of art, science, invention, engineering, we think outside the box because we have unique perspectives on life. Just like all things, this comes with a downside. The downside is of course that not all of us think about art when we think outside the box, some think about murdering people and exploiting them for their resources. So to assume that an alien race where they have achieved the goals of intergalactic space travel through free thought and innovation, the idea that this alien race would think we were more evil than them because we wage wars and kill each other is laughable. Because if they have the same free will, the same free innovation and free thinking free spirited individuals as we do then they would by that logic have the same evil, the same murders and the same exploitation.
"We must meet this threat with our courage, our valor, indeed with our very lives to ensure that human civilization, not insect, dominates this galaxy *now and always*!"
- Sky Marshal Dienes
Same scenario as the movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still" sans Keanu Reeves. We win, why? I don't remember but I do remember that we are on borrowed time. Surprised that Hollywood as tried to do a sequel of the Aliens coming back after 60 years and saying:
"You know what Earth? We screwed up last time. Say goodbye to all of this...and hello to oblivion."
"Hello Oblivion, how's the wife and kids."
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
Do you remember when the term "scientist" applied to people who did science? We used to reserve the title "scientist" for people who did repeatable experiments. People like the ones referred to in this article were called "science fiction writers" with the key word being "fiction".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
And of Plan 9 From Outerspace, and The Day The Earth Stood Still.
the paper describes plenty of contact scenarios, but I like the cherry-picking: only doomsday references are TFS-worthy
You must have flown in from 4chan...
(hides from flamethrower)
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
What about those massive black holes that will suck up the entire universe, caused by the LHC?
Micro black holes created by the LHC may be "massive" in that they have rest mass, but they're not "massive" in the sense of sticking around very long before evaporating into Hawking radiation. See the scientific consensus.
Ahem.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
How about all theists?
Just enough to make space travel impractical.
After all, if they are bent on saving the galaxy, this would imply they are peaceful. So rather than nuke us or harvest us for our brains, they simply cause the market to crash.
Seems like a more "humane" course of action to me.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Soon we will discover Solarbonite. The aliens in their round space ships that look like square houses in the ground when landed must stop us!
we will have exterminated most of ourselves long before we will find find (if at all) the technical ability to get even close to harming any planet other than our own.
If there are aliens and if they are intelligent they probably know that already.
So the only threat we could face is aliens who want to exterminate us for the sheer fun of doing it.
Unless the aliens plan to travel to earth on flying carpets powered by groovy love and destroy us by throwing their hippie sandals at us, then surely they must also possess advanced technology and some kind industry and would't see our industrial and technological civilization (and reject all industry/technology in general) as "pollution" and "earth destroying".
This is actually the plot of Plan 9 From Outerspace!
IIRC, the aliens are trying to eliminate the human race because they have developed a weapon of ultimate destruction and threaten the entire galaxy.
Or it might just be an example of bad film... :)
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Greg Egan's "Quarantine" has a nice twist on this. By observing the universe we collapse a lot of possible quantum states dooming billions so the earth is enclosed by aliens in an opaque sphere. Like all Greg Egan novels that's just one of many plot points and it gets even weirder from there and that story becomes a sort of cyberpunk novel.
The reason NASA is facing the problems it is with the public is because of ridiculous things like this. The idea that a civilization from another planet would consider us a threat to our galaxy is preposterous, and the article doesn't even begin to make a case for it.
Couldn't we just sit down and talk to them? I'm sure we could reason with them, just like we have done with Iran.
I'd help!
This is either a joke or an elaborate ruse by the Tea Party to visually demonstrate government waste...
The thing is, the thought experiments described in that article are actually related to the science that the scientists in question actually did. I am unaware of any repeatable experiments that have involved extraterrestials. Both of the thought experiments that are used as examples in your link (Schrodinger's Cat and Maxwell's Demon) are used to illustrate a conclusion that these scientists had come to as a result of repeatable experiments.
I would be hard pressed to come up with a repeatable experiment that would give us a basis to draw conclusions about how extraterrestials would interact with humans. If, on the other hand, they had asked historians I could see them getting two scenarios: First scenario, the aleins exterminate humans in order to colonize the Earth. Second scenario, the aliens enslave humans in order to colonize the Earth and use humans as slave labor. There are almost certainly a couple more scenarios that historians could come up with based on human interactions in the past, however, I am pretty sure we have no examples of one human civilization wiping out another one because of what the latter did to the environment.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
friendler aliens seeded this planet with the common cold at the dawn of time - earth life evolved an immunity, but it will be deadly to those damn martians.
I hope it's not Sarah Palin who gets to speak for humanity.
I agree with that concept. As a race we just tend to break things down into their natural states. Our pursuit of 'purity' is the greatest example of this, we drill and mine and our only goal is truly the isolation of materials from their counterparts. Most of this is a reflection of nature its self where something gets broken down into it's fundamental parts we are just an extension of this. We some how believe looking from the outside in that we are exempt of this but it is the furthest from the truth.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
What if our planet is somehow precious? Not speaking about goldilocks zone or anything, just something we haven't found out (and maybe never will before 4000 or so). Or our solar system? And a change in the gravtitational system would be bad for it? Like, you know, when we finally nuke the earth from orbit, just to be sure...
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
The Killing Star is a hard science fiction novel by Charles R. Pellegrino and George Zebrowski - it covers quite easily how to rid the galaxy of us human scum...
Relativistic kinetic weapons - stand back and watch the fireworks...
(Damn good, if hard reading SciFi)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Star
I can't imagine any intelligent lifeforms being unable to see that we're never getting off this planet and will either off ourselves, or sit idly by and let a rogue chunk of rock do the job. Now, if the aliens' leader claimed there were Weapons of Mass Destruction on our planet, that's another story.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Aliens did land here to destroy us, but they were small and insect like and the bug exterminator guy killed their entire galactic fleet, thinking they were some "weirdo bug infestation". A second attempt was tried by another species, and aquatic one, but it got ate by sharks. A third one came, land based and they were bigger, but were ate by the wild life. A fourth came and the RF that we are immune to quickly burned out their brains, and they too were ate by wild life.
A mechanical race came and was destroyed by a thunderstorm, when a bolt of lightning struck their ship and it exploded. Of course there have been several small missions which end up in races being consumed by just the biological aspects of our planet. Germs, viruses, and an assortment of microbes tend to make short work of them if they don't use the proper environmental protocols.
Not to mention we are a biological weapon to 99.9999999% of the species in the known universe. Many in the galaxy speculate that the "creator" an extra dimensional entity that instilled the creation codes, was being some kind of a dickhead when he instilled the planetary creation code for this planet. Many speculate and fear that we are doomsday weapon made by said "creator", some want to destroy us, others think we have some special link with the "creator" and should just stay away at least.
Considering we breath poisoned gas, we are mostly water, which is a universal solvent that eats through many species on contact. We live near oceans of water which scare most species. We are larger than most species by far and are physically more capable. We have lived in a constant state of war with each other since before our history, hence we are really good at it and durable, some how we fight each other so hard, yet our species is over populated. Which is a terrifying aspect of us, we breed so fast compared to most species.
Most species pray that we will just kill ourselves off. Others are convinced we will achieve the technology to travel about the universe, hence over running it in a matter of eons. But it's galactic law that nobody gives us any aid, and any species that tries to cultivate us is punished. Often rich juveniles from a species will buzz Planet Earth to impress a mate or mates, only to get shot down, spotted or crash; many escape, but its still risky behavior that if caught gets severe punishments.
Mostly we are immune to solar radiation, in fact we bath in it to get a tan. Our Sun puts out enough EMP to burn up the nervous system of some delicate species before they even get near Earth. Our skin though we think it's thin in contrast to some of the beasts of the planet, is incredible to most species. It's chemical resistant, radiation resistant, and waterproof which baffles everyone. Shooting an Earthling with an alien water cannon only amuses them. They in fact stole several water cannons and reproduce them as toys under the "Super Soaker" line. An Earthling child with a water gun chills the bones of the hardiest of galactic warriors.
Lastly, what we can eat is frightening as well. What we eat and drink frightens most species away alone. Most of them would be on our dinner plate, as a delicacy. Not to mention our waste byproducts are the most foul bits of toxic waste in the universe. They have watched us poke and prod everything on our planet and try to eat it. We have even ate each other, which is a horror that most minds can't comprehend in the universe. Not to mention we skin other species and wear them as clothes and trophies.
Then some have tried to understand us, they have figured out that TV is some form of entertainment to us, not educational, not some history archive. This process drove many species insane. One species was found in some insane collective nightmare after watching Gilligan's Island episodes, they fell into some logic loop and have been catatonic as a species ever since. They have concluded that we as a species are quite insane and it's illegal to attempt to figure us out psychologically.
Its now
Take the Red Pill.
It's a bit of a contradiction:
- If humanity could grow to pose a danger to the galaxy it would likelly destroy itself before that.
We (seem to) have survived the discovery of the power of the atom, but there are still plenty of challenges facing us as our technology advances, the next ones being in genetics (a man-made plague that wipes out our civilization) and nano-technology (out of control self reproducing nanites, i.e. the grey goo).
Any aliens concerned with us becoming a danger to the galaxy and yet willing to give us a chance would simply stay away from us and/or made sure we did not get access a feasible interstellar travel technology before we either evolved enough as a social species or destroyed ourselves.
Any aliens certain that we would become a danger to the galaxy would just leak the appropriate technologies to us and stand off while we proceeded to destroy ourselves with them.
Perhaps the aliens have also made such a study and decided that it is best for them to stay silent too.
And thus we have the following paradox: while the galaxy has a lot of planets with intelligent life, none of them dares try communicate with others, fearing that the others will be so much more advanced than them that they will obliterate them.
This "intergalactic" fear should actually be one of the stages of development for any civilization that develops radio communication and early forms of space travel. Just like us, they suddenly realize that a vastly superior hostile civilization may be out there, looking for signals from other civilizations, and therefore decide to "keep it low".
And thus, there is no contact between civilizations in different planetary systems.
(Incidentally, I think that the above explains the Fermi Paradox: there are many intelligent life forms out there, none of which wants to contact the others).
And they leave book titled To Serve man......
I'm pretty sure the universe is big enough to accommodate everybody (with the possible exception of the egos of liberal douchebags).
Right now, President Zero is riding his bike around the playground for the northeastern wealthy, Martha's Vineyard, looking like Steve Urkel in mom jeans. Enjoy your summer vacation, America!
welcome our new galactic saviors!
At the same time, let me introduce myself and of my abilities to help with your plans for Earth doom, if I am allowed to switch sides.
I can't believe noone posted this yet!
First point: if the aliens attack us for the good of the galaxy, or if they attack us for selfish interest, I do not think it matters a lot. The issue would be how we fight back (or avoid being exterminated, or if we decide to surrender and spend our last days in an hedonistic orgy).
Now, more to the issue, I want to know what those guys were smoking, because I want to try it (just a little, a lot less that those guys did). Not because they think the aliens may be hostile, but because they publicly discuss about a subject they do not know shit about. We do not know if they exist, if they can reach us, or anything, and yet we discuss about their motives? Maybe they are a Solaris like entity and kills all of us because it can not even recognize us as living beings, as we are so different from them. Maybe for them the real "live" planet in the solar system is Venus. Yet someone posts those allucinations as news.
Beats me that the public is stupid enough to link/click in articles like that, unless it is just to make fun of them.
Why can't
Shit sounds like the Q Continuum. Better get Patrick Stewart to help defend us.
How this can be even close to being categorized as science, escapes me completely. This is pure speculation, with absolutely no way to verify, reproduce, check data, etc. Was it even peer reviewed by "scientists" who were not part of the magical thinking?
Natural selection being what it is, any aliens that we meet will have already gone through the relentless-resource-strip stage that we are going through now, and will have either solved it or will have found ways to supply the inevitable exponential resource hunger that every developing species has.
So either they will know how to help us solve our problem, or they will treat us as rivals for the same resources and wipe us out.
What they will not do is wipe us out "for the good of the galaxy", because (assuming that there is other intelligent life out there) we're not that unusual. We are inevitable, every planet's dominant intelligent life form will be just like us.
It may well be that the Neanderthals were a peaceful, harmonious species that lived within their means and didn't just strip the local resources bare and move on. If that is the case, then my conclusion is that they got wiped out by our ancestors who were relentless resource strippers.
How could we have a slightest clue if humans are selfish or not? Compared to what? We might be the most benevolent thing seen in the entire universe, or we might something completely different.
I think your insight is interesting.
There was a Twilight Zone episode I once saw (don't know name or whether it was old vs. the short lived 70's one) where aliens came down and told the UN that we needed to fix our problems.
World leaders finally worked together to eliminate wars and conflict. When the aliens returned, they were even more upset as they wanted us to be warring and ultimately destroyed the world because of the new peace. I don't recall reason, but I believe it was related to the human race simply being work bees and conflict drove evolutionary improvements to strength or something similar.
I love the sound of distortion in the morning -- webcommando
Paul Krugman says an alien invasion is good for the economy
The aliens come down and exterminate all of the a$$holes that are intentionally abusing the planet for profit or other motives and leave the rest of us with a stern warning "Don't fuck it up or we'll be back".
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
I would say mankind deserves it. What with its bickering over religion, artificial country boundaries, the fixation on acquiring green pieces of paper and a lot of other reasons I am not convinced we should be allowed into the great ether. We would only do that we do here; piss in each others Wheaties and generally make a mess of things. Its nothing to worry about; there would be absolutely nil we could do to prevent it; unless the aliens were into diplomacy and such.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
I will pierce through them with my drill!
If we didn't measure up to their standards, they'd probably just hack our DNA in whatever way they wanted to turn us into a nice, docile subservient species to serve their purpose on this planet. We're pretty good at doing everything already. Just a few tweaks and we could be ideal for whatevver purpose. At this stage of development we can even engineer our own tools!
Of course some people propose that they've already mucked about making us more intelligent, good gold farmers and possibly even breeding partners. But this isn't nut-jobs of today. This is the ancient Sumerian culture.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Cheers for pointing to that! It wasn't visible on my main page feed, so missed it due to the equally retarded fact that they've removed the view more button from the bottom of the main page now so that if I don't catch a story, it seems I can't catch a story.
"several intelligent extraterrestrial encounter scenarios are examined..."
For totally wasting their time and money? Humans are a microscopic 'blip' in the time-line of the Universe. Take a grain of sand and mix in with all the worlds sand from every beach and every ocean, multiplied it by a thousand, and try to find that one spec of sand. That's like trying to find us.
The only thing these Scientists did is prove that:
1) They are bad at astrology
2) They are bad at math
I am going to be the devils'advocate and suppose that it is just the media spin; after all one guy can be an scientific from 8 to 5 and then go to the bar and speculate about what colour ET's underwear was. As long as they did not claim that they were doing something more than "wildly speculating", it is not so grave.
Anyway, the part (media or participants) who put the enfasis in the science aspect should be feathered, to begin with.
Why can't
World domination is their goal as is the eradication of non-believers. The similarity is striking.
If this ever happens the mice will be really pissed.
I have a Pavilion in my basement that has been happily running CentOS for several years now. Only problem it ever had was Seagate's fault, not HP's.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I always had a similar view of the computers in The Matrix, after-all the idea of using humans as batteries is thermodynamically unsound. I thought the machines were merely simulating humanity's power wasteful lifestyle in an energy efficient way in the Matrix.
Maybe they're already here, making sure, behind the scenes, we're fucking ourselves up so much we don't have time or resources to worry about the rest of this galaxy.
Conspiracy theories are always more fun than alien domination theories, aren't they?
"When the Destroyers came for us, we attacked. Never had we been defeated. They were like the others: strange, hideous, resisting, fighting. Only these were not like the others. They did not die. We made our first retreat. We could forego one system. We left it to the Destroyers and went elsewhere. But they followed. They hunted us. They followed us when we retreated, discovered where we lived. For a long time we did not know why they chased us. These were no ordinary enemy. They did not seek our territory, our technology, our resources. Now we know our crime was sin."
I've played this video game. I think we sort of win.
>>The thing is, the thought experiments described in that article are actually related to the science that the scientists in question actually did.
Any thought experiments that start with the assumptions that 1) there are intelligence extraterrestrials; and 2) faster-than-light drives are possible aren't thought experiments. They fall squarely in the realm of pure science fiction.
Worse, these scenarios aren't attribute common human motives to the assumed-to-exist ETs (willing to kill humanity for environmental reasons, willing to oppose other ETs to save humanity). Anyone who says, "ET's might be worried about [current human problem here]!" is automatically suspect. If a group of ET's did exist and were technologically advanced enough to have FTL drives and all the supporting tech needed for that to exist, their ability to solve such things that vex humanity might well have rendered concerns about such problems totally moot; and their ethical thinking about such things surely would have evolved over millenia in ways we can't begin to imagine right now.
It's entirely possible that casual interstellar travel is impossible, at least for biological entities.
Let that sentence soak in for a moment. Someone wants the Enterprise to go somewhere, for some reason, so it goes. Worf wants to go to some sort of Klingon competition, so he hops into a warp-capable shuttle and goes. Luke needs to go to Dagobah to see Yoda, (twice) so he hops into his X-wing and goes.
For sake of this post, "slow-boat" is coasting most of the way, "fast-boat" is warp speed, and "medium-boat" is relativistic speed.
We have such an optimistic view of interstellar travel. We have half an idea today what the energy budget for interstellar travel is like, and it's prohibitive to put people on even for a slow-boat, let alone a medium-boat. We don't even know how to make a fast-boat, but we know it'll take more energy. We have grand theories for some sort of warp drive, but so far all of them involve some form of exotic matter or other type of unobtanium, and the energy budget for manipulating that stuff is easily as extreme as the plain old ways we have barely half an idea how to do, like fusion drive. Even if the fast-boat is somehow possible, how do we meet the energy budget. They toss around numbers in Star Trek in technobabble units that are clearly supposed to be incredible. There's no hint of the source of the antimatter, other than that the accidental destruction of Praxis was disruptive at interstellar ranges.
At the same time, we have Ray Kurzweil going on about The Singularity. Even if Kurzweil is way too optimistic, the technology to achive the Singularity is far more comprehensible than that necessary for fast-boat interstellar travel. By that token, it may be that the only common interstellar travelers are uploads. Also by that token, by the time we can upload, ourselves, we will have the technology for medium-boat interstellar travel. It's a much smaller barrier, but also a game-changer in the whole First Contact question. Uploads don't need planets - they need energy and matter, both of which are more easily available from places other than a biosphere. Unless they're specifically interested in studying us, kind of like those biological entities they used to be, uploads fall into the "too-different" category.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Don't get me wrong,... I hate the way humans treat animals...they destroy their lands, they think they don't have as much right to live as they do....
I hate the way humans will entrap an animal , take it out of its element, then put a collar on them, then treat them as if all along they were meant for that life, and get upset with them when they do something natural for that species (like bark, or scratch their nails on something to trim their nails naturally)
I hate the fact that we can drive around on cement roads that has destroyed thousands of homes for dirt dwellers, and that when a groundhog or raccoon needs to get to the other side, he gets hit only because he was trying to find a food source....I hate the way some people become desensitized when working in meat and poultry factories to the point they stomp on live chickens or kick the animals into pulp, for the pure joy of it.
That is not even the tip of the iceberg...
I do hope at some point some alien race comes to this planet and sees our total disregard for other species on this planet, and treats us like we have treated the animals here....I really would appreciate that the race I was born into, which I am so embarrassed to say that I am a part of, would learn respect for other living beings, and even more so respect for the environment they live in.
Call it society, evolution, redneck mentality, immigrant mentality, male or female mentality....call it what ever name you use to sleep better a night after having
lived through the day in your so called ordinary way , that ignorantly is destroying this beautiful planet and all it's living creatures...but should this ever happen,...do not EVER,....EVER!....ask "why, god, why?...what did we ever do to deserve this..."...... because I will strap you to a rock and throw you in the ocean!
"klaatu barada nikto!"
With the emergence of the Tea Party it became evident that humanity is so irrational as to endanger the entire galaxy. Infectious radio and television programs broadcast into space ran the risk of contaminating intelligent minds across the galaxy. Rather than risk this spread of dullard thought patterning it was adjudicated that humanity must be exterminated.
But then who would commit crime?
You might find "Harry Stottle's" philosophical view of (hypothetical) aliens to be interesting.
Conversely to your assumption that in order to achieve faster than light travel we must all be highly liberal without having evolved morally (and thus being murdering bastards in the process)... His idea is that in order for any race to achieve the technological level of FTL we have to over come many hurdles of technology each that give us more power and more potential for self destructions (think H Bomb etc). In order for us to attain this ultimate goal we have to overcome these so called teething problems of self destruction and ultimately any race who does achieve this goal would probably be peaceful (for one reason or another).
This proposition sort of elegantly restrains any destructive races from leaving their home planet because they would destroy themselves before being able to develop any technology for FTL
Then the reason such an achieved race might not want to interfere with another is simply to let other races at a younger evolutionary stage to continue naturally the same as they did until humanity reach a stage where they are mature enough for communication and interaction with other races that does not artificially help us technologically without having past these "moral tests". So regardless of weather we are killing each other or doing childish imoral things to each other it doesn't matter... they wont interfere, not because they don't care or empathise (quite the oposite) they just recognise it as a necessary part of your evolution as it was a part of there own. Interfering may ether help your currently undeserved path to FTL or hinder it... imagine if you where in their shoes, i'd leave humans alone until they were more evolved. We are harmless to anything beyond earth now due lack of technology and possibly in the future due to the process of some kind of "moral enlightenment".
I've read this story before, back in grade school, when it was called "My Teacher is an Alien."
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Read human history & see the trends in there, it's not a pretty picture. I find the idea that they'd come destroy us pretty far fetched, but I can see some motivation for the idea.
1) this is a "study"? REALLY? And people wonder why our government is out of money, when bullshit like this rates the scientific focus of NASA? Please, let's have another article on how scientists are baffled that people are taking science less seriously following this one?
2) this is a relatively old trope from science fiction. Nothing new here at all. I can think of at least one AE van Vogt short story from the 1960s that had a similar theme.
3) if we're talking about it seriously, the likelihood of us encountering a spacefaring civilization within say, 500,000 years of tech development of us are vanishingly small. Beyond that, would either of us really even care the other exists? Or notice? I'm not going to go into it unless someone asks, but the math on this is at least as solid as the Drake equation.
4) this is a neat psychological extrapolation of the sort of OCD egoism that's driving much of the consensus around climate change today. The idea that some civilization penned in on some rocky world orbiting a peripheral average star might actually matter to a starfaring civilization is absurd, gross narcissism. We're still using CHEMICAL rockets - pretty much glorified fireworks - to get off our planet, for pete's sake.
-Styopa
Why do we wage wars ? ...)
Simply because it allows us to plunder other nations/people, or vent the frustration of living in appaling living conditions; the often cited religion cause to it is only a facade, allowing the peasants to slaughter without conscience issues, while the real reasons are nearly always economy & profit :
- American Indians, for their lands
- Africans for their mineral ressources (gold, diamonds, copper, petroleum,
- Middle-eastern countries for their petroleum reserves
- Middle Ages' wars, because the Kings wanted more taxes to build their Fortresses
- XVIIth to XXth century jews because they where bankers (slaughter your banker, and debt disappears as if by magic)
- Next : China, Russia, India (they hold USA's treasury bonds)
The sad point is that ever since Money has been created out of nothing (thanks to dropping of the Gold index of USD), there is no point in arguing about the constraints of the Money Supply (recent name of God) to whatever we want to do as a specie : we don't need money, we really only need food, lodging, and what politicians ought to be thinking of (instead of how much they can plunder out of the make-believe economy) : purpose & goal.
Economy is defined as how to take care of limited ressources. Money was usefull for a while, but right now, it simply has oultived its usefulness (think of the bright people working for it, they ought to do something worthwhile instead, like research, art or any of the intelligent endeavours of mankind).
So, hell yes, bring on Project BlueBeam's Aliens, please threaten to destroy Earth, and maybe we can drop the charade of the Money Supply for something usefull (unfortunate, through planned, side-effects include wiping out half of the population).
Wasn't that Admiral Albert Pike, 33rd ranking officer of the Pyramid order ?
--
Crafting out of the Blue the Morals and Dogma of the New World Order
(hey, who would call it Old Selfish Disorder)
In fact, we used to use the term Scientists for people who had crazy ideas about how the mess we're in works ... afterwards, they crafted proofs for their crazy ideas, which happened to be repeatable.
But since most of them now turn to be wage-slaves of large corporations, they lost the inventiveness required, and now have to outsource the visionnary part of the Scientific process to science-fiction writers.
Would anyone have even bothered to go to the Moon, if not for the legions of poets, dreamers, and science-fiction writers hinted that it ought to be done ?
--
Al-dajjal, Islam's version of the antechrist, pictured with one eye blind : allegory for the need of both wisdom/fiction & intelligence/science for producing anything worthwhile.
Given it wasn't funded by NASA, and wasn't done by NASA, and NASA has no involvement at all. What do you propose NASA do about it?
Ban everyone who is affiliated with NASA from human contact outside of work?
Not a NASA study There seems to be an increasing problem - people who happen to work for NASA do some other side projects, and NASA gets credit/blame for it.
what if we encounter an alien race hellbent on destroying us?
We die.
Seriously, if they can get here we are no threat to them. If they can get here, then they can send a rock big enough for an extinction event.
While alien troops landing, an aircraft battle are fun to watch, there the worst way for a space faring race to destroy the life on a planet.
But again, If there is a galactic civilization, we aren't a threat to them anymore then a primitive tribe of people in the tropical rain forest is a threat to Canada.
If they did show up, our only logic repsonse "You want us to stop doing 'X'? OK."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As a race we're incredibly violent, and just look at the world around us, everything is a mess.
If we were ever to meet beings from other planets, the first thought of everyone that has any sort of power would be war for control of their resources.
"Oh look, there's oil over there in the middle east, lets go to war!" will turn to
"Oh look, there's element zero over on that planet over there, lets go to war!"
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Sounds like an excellent idea, because it's a win-win for all: The Muslims get to dominate their own planet without any resistance, and we who are left get to live in peace. And we finally get to properly shift our focus of hatred over to the Atheists.
This kind of mentality makes me upset. Our romantic notions of Mother Nature have no absolute significance. An alien would dispassionately look at a 500 year-old redwood tree as having no more value than sand in the middle of a desert (except maybe for internal energy considerations). Spotted Owl? Rainforest? HAH! The fact that the author believes there is truly some sort of Universal Morality code when consuming resources (which is, by the way, a requirement for Life) is laughable.
Unless the aliens could peer into the future to see we were actually impacting the galaxy in a harmful way, we would have to first be a force capable of upsetting the galaxy. Currently that is not the case.
It sounds like their scenario is also assuming the aliens to be intelligent and proceeding with reason. It is quite possible that would not be the case, a la "skyline" aliens; mindless alien animals hell bent on consuming any substantial source of neuro energy.
Seems to me they are not capable of devising scenarios without putting the story in a box. What a waste of good thought time lol.
There is an anime about this subject. It was award winning, and is partially available on Netflix. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurren_Lagann
I volunteer to be a Space Marine like in 40k.... I will purge the alien! lol
Paul Krugman says an alien invasion would stimulate the economy.
2. To kill us all and eat us (Creatures evolve to eat what's around - they won't be able to eat us)
3. To enslave us (purpose built slaves are cheaper and better - whether they be organic or silicon based)
4. To kill us before we kill them (if they can come here and we don't have FTL, we can't hurt them).
5. To teach us anything. Cheaper to send a book.
6. To learn about us. Cheaper to watch our TV.
Reasons why an Alien might come here.
1. To convert us all to the one true faith.
2. To escape the horrible problems of their own empire that are far worse than anything we can imagine. Oh and it's following them.
3. Spaceship broke down.
4. To get away from the kids, absorb some primitive culture, and get as far as possible away from their boss. Oh and let's see that famous Lunar Eclipse where your moon is just big enough to block the sun.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Just tell 'em Klaatu said not to blow up the Earth.
... or the green man will come and save the galaxy from you! The treehuggers are getting desperate.
On a serios note, why the fuck such retarded stuff is not on idle? Or not on slashdot at all?
The only way they can get their misanthropic crap published is to couch it as a "study."
No, the reason we have a problem is because people like you can't be bothered to gather any facts before opening their fucking pie hole. No wonder a militant religious zealot who is ignorant of science, economics, and want's to force everyone to his religion is a contender to run for president.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
why can't NASA spend its budget on space exploration instead of some absurd study like this - Lots of /. post about how we spend too much on defense - I agree that we need to spend more on NASA and have a REAL space program again instead of the current joke we have today. I would point out that MOST of the technology that has made space exploration possible (and lots of other things too) comes out of defense spending and technology initiatives for defense. The thing I find even more insane than this study, is that the current bunch of losers in control of our country (and I include all political affiliations) believe we should let the take the privatized health care system and put it in control of the government and take government funded space exploration and privatize it...... I keep saying this - until a private corporation can make real money on space its not going to happen, that means money that offsets the risks involved - the government can assume this risk, private companies aren't going to - the first time a space tourists dies in a horrible accident you are going to see the government clamp down like you never thought possible and it will all immediately come to an end.... Lawyers and Insurance companies are driving this boat, Maybe an alien race SHOULD facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project and take of this problem.....
So what you are saying is the a scientist can't use his spare time to think abut anything else other then pure experimental science?
I would also like to point out that many if Einstein's thought models weren't provable for decades. So was he not a real scientist?
You're an idiot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One of the authors of the paper has posted a blog post with clarifications. Mostly, he wants to point out that this was done in his spare time, has nothing to do with NASA (other than the fact that he works there doing other research), and he doesn't even regard any of the scenarios as particularly likely. It was just something he and some friends wrote up on a lark.
Also, note that despite some people's interpretation here, the paper has nothing to do with climate change. They merely note that a rapid change in atmospheric composition (such as greenhouse gases) could warn aliens, if they're nearby and hostile, that an expanding technological civilization exists on Earth.
The summary makes it seem as if it was not in their spare time. I have now actually read the article and the second article linked seems to imply that this was done in their spare time. It is just that they published a non-scientific paper in a semi-scientific journal. There is no science in this paper and the fact that the authors are scientists is irrelevant.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
/. isn't an immediate news source, never has been. If you want something that jumps on industry events, try CNN.
This site is about interesting nerd stuff*. Will the HP article appear here? probably, but it needs to go through the queue. In the mean time, you can read up on it elsewhere and start an informed discussion when ti does appear here?. Or maybe submit the article? You do know /. is almost entirely reader submission driven?
*really, interesting reader stuff.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There are other intelligent forms of life on the planet, some have spread all over the world.
http://blogs.discovery.com/animal_news/2009/07/giant-ant-colony-takes-over-the-world.html
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Do you always find it to be other peoples fault when you fail?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Amen, brother, would mod you up if I had the points. Seems like three scientists, one affiliated with NASA, should at least nod in the general direction of physics when writing something like this. Does Acta Astronautica claim to be peer reviewed? If not, I guess this is just a sort of speculative quasi-SF opinion piece, and we can cut them some slack.
See what the author who listed NASA as his affiliation says about it.
In summary, NASA did not financially or in any other way support the creation of the review paper in question. A postdoc - who happens to work at NASA - used a little of his free time to add some comments to the paper, which was primarily written by two of his friends at Penn State. The paper is not a scientific "study" or "report" - it is a review of various speculations on how contact with sentient extraterrestrials could affect human civilization.
The Guardian got it *very* wrong. NASA had nothing to do with this study: http://paleblueblog.org/post/9110304050/some-important-points-of-clarification
Let's assume an intelligent space faring alien race exists....
Would you give a crap about what an ant colony is doing on the other side of the globe?
So why would this so call alien race care about what humans are doing on the outer edge of this galaxy?
We Americans know just what to do with them damn hippies, get me my boom stick, we're going to mess them up.
So they are Anti-Spirals?
they just need to wear a wings prop and we'll obey to any bs they say.... probably any advanced race with 'religion' still going on is marked for garbage....
For leaving cigarette butts and empty beer cans all over on most of the known gate worlds. Home World Command is gonna be angry.
They already have us in an energy field that limits the speed of light to 299,792,458 m / s
Samsung would rejoice and Apple would be pissed!
We nuked each other, we'll nuke the little green buggers too.
My real critique of this is why would the aliens care so much for Earth's environment. We are a very aggressive, technical species with a penchant for things like nuclear bombs. Logically if they were going to exterminate us it would be for those reasons not because we don't tend the daffodils.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Earth View
They came from the sky's in giant mechanical monstrosities and targeted only humans, leaving other creatures alone. Surely its payback for our violent ways or abuse to our ecosystem. When it was over only 10% of the human race remained.
Alien View
It was Flerns first big field trip, they were going to harvest kooplas for the harna festival. Due to it being a viska year a substitute for the koopla was discovered in a primitive harva like animal. Unfortunately only about 1 out of 50,000,000 was suitable but they bred quickly. Flern vowed to find the best koopla and beat Klerv once and for all using the harvester his dad bought him for kuska day.
This reminds me of a scene from Hot Fuzz.
"How can this possibly be for the greater good?"
"THE GREATER GOOD"
"Shut it!"
... No chance of any of this happening.
Really slashdot?
what's the worst we could do? go to random planets inhabited by intelligent beings, and then exterminate them?
Recorded human history is about 3000 years long, but technological civilization is only about 200. Only in the last 100 years have humans been able to make a significant dent in the planet's resources.
Most of the major resources that make our industrial civilization go run out within 50 to 200 years. There hasn't been a new energy source in 50 years. Absent new physics, industrial civilization is more than half over. If we're lucky, there's a post-industrial bio-based society ahead. If not, it's regression to pre-industrial society or worse.
That's probably why we haven't had any contact with other civilizations. Each industrial civilization has its brief moment, and then the planet reverts to normal, but with all the concentrated resources mined out, so there's no second chance. Put 400 years as a civilization lifetime ("L") into the Drake equation.
The Doctor in his TARDIS will come save us all. It's not the first time it happens. Everybody lives!!1one
So long as they let me fight on their side, it's all good!
This signature is lame.
case closed mr green
As you say we have the potential capability of surviving the annihilation of Earth.
The reason for the pessimism is that we have promoted, or self-promoted, absolute psychopaths as leaders seemingly hellbent on the destruction of the world for personal or ideological gain. This may be enough to assure that we will NOT use our immense potential capabilities to colonize other planets and star systems before we commit total self-destruction.
It would be much easier to build that hyperspace bypass if the Earth wasn't in the way.
So aliens are going to travel MILLIONS of LIGHT-YEARS, costing intold amounts of energy to prevent us from POLLUTING the galaxy?
YOU ARE SHITTING ME ! YOU CALL THIS SCIENCE ?
THE most ridiculous thing I think I have EVER heard.
You misunderstand what "Gaygirlie" said. ("I'd actually be pretty sympathetic with the aliens and wouldn't mind them annihilating the human race completely.")
Translation: "I, for one, WELCOME our pan-galactic, human-exterminating overlords!"
Perhaps, she thinks they'll spare her & her friends, for her cooperation. These aliens don't need to annihilate humanity, if they can just politically & culturally alter it.
Perhaps, her approach is more adaptive than yours, puny human?
Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.
For those unable to repay, they give us what they can, namely land. We expand our nation, they get their debt eliminated. Everyone wins.
... some alien needs to write a simple description for mankind. Mostly Harmless.
By his divine might the Imperium shall rightfully claim the galaxy as its own. No foul xenos threat shall stand in our way.
Kill the xenos,
burn the heretic,
and purge the unclean!
When we are watched by aliens, they most likely make a good show out of it. Something like Big Brother. However, nobody leaves the compound. And definitely we are no danger for any life form outside the Earth.
Cut subsidies to USA/EU farmers, so they no longer can do "dumping" to farmers from other countries. That will be a a great help to those farmers.
It might be a help to those farmers but it will NOT be a help to the rest of the population in those countries who cannot afford to compete with the price that developed countries will pay for the crops which they produce. Hence the result will be farmers here going bust and people over there starving. I don't like farm subsidies but I like the probable result of getting rid of them even less.
Wow! it looks like you are having a hard day! I sincerely hope you get better soon, now try to relax. If you cannot, it is time to go to bed early. And drink less coffee.
Why can't
Oh no, you're one of those cyber stalkers who stalks people and tries to troll them when you get owned in a prior conversation.
If only you knew how sad that made your life look to the rest of us :(
Sucks to be you I guess.
I read the /. summary, and the actual article. The summary gives the impression that it's a NASA study. If that's not true, then okay, but the fact that studies like this are associated with NASA still gives it a black eye.
Did you RTFA? I did. I also read the /. summary which said NASA was associated with the "study". So you might want to have a look at your own piehole, genius.
The continuing government UFO coverup is the most alarming modern covert fact!
NASA had nothing to do with it, one of the articles writers worked for NASA.
What advanced culture would want to visit us? the likely hood of other life out there is far to high to think that it is empty or are we so vain as to think that we are the only ones?
This thread digressed into a discussion about the US military budget. What we should be worrying about is whether the alien's are coming here to exterminate us. For far less than our yearly defense budget, we should be able to initiate a program of alien education, where we teach the aliens that we neither want to blow them up, or eat them, or steal their petroleum reserves. Well, two out of three isn't bad. :-)
There are problems with your 1-6.
Re 1,2,3: we have no way of knowing what we have that an alien species might place a high value on. TFA already mentions the idea that humans imprison seals mainly because they can balance a ball on their nose. A seal would have no way of guessing that we would value that skill beforehand. As I've pointed out before (probably on /.), our own own species collects and ascribes high value to relatively common objects such as diamonds. Actually there are so many diamonds on earth that we have to pretend diamonds are fewer in number than these actually are by restricting distribution in order to maintain their high value. Also, consider food. We have precedent in our own species for disliking synthetic substitutes on philosophical and cultural grounds alone. Aliens may find humans something of a delicacy and eschew synthetic substitutes for no rational reason. We simply have no way of knowing what aliens might value. In short, it is very dangerous to assume that alien desires will be any more rational than our own. If humans are any precedent, there may be little rationality in the desires of an advanced civilization with too much time and resources at its beck and call. Think Nero.
Re 4: They may want to kill us as a preventative measure seeing that we are entering a stage of technological maturity where we could develop FTL. Once we have FTL it is probably too late. Galactic courts/executioners may wish to prevent any chance of first contact initiated by humans. Re 5,6: This might be akin to a human trying to communicate with an ant. Media won't do it. Our own media might be completely meaningless to an entirely alien kind of intelligence. Humor and many other forms and symbols might be meaningless since these are grounded in human culture and on the human psyche. Also, humans always want to go there. We want to put humans on the Moon and on Mars when a robot would do. How do we know aliens do not have the same impulse to physically explore? Again, it is dangerous to assume that aliens will be more rational than humans.
Seriously, why would they want to come here to exterminate us for the good of the galaxy, when it's pretty obvious we're never going to get out of the solar system? We'll be lucky if we're a visible presence in the other planets. And, if we ever get ourselves sane enough to manage to get off the Earth, then by definition we won't be crazy enough to be dangerous any more.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Please, really! Radical Environmetalist wacko aliens? Can we please take the idiots who thought this up, sterilize them so they are not allowed to breed, and then place them in a pain amplifier for the rest of their lives as a warning to anyone else with these types of ideas. All they are trying to do is push an agenda telling us humans are bad, civilization is bad, and only they should have ultimate control over everyone. One could only wish they would go back to living in the trees, and then give up medical care, crop cultivation, livestock herds, cars, radios, TV's, computers, decent clothing, appropriate sanitation, housing, phones, and anything else even remotely associated with civilization. In other words... GO AWAY!
That was the subject of Arthur C. Clarke's last books (Time Odyssey, with Stephen Baxter).
We humans needed to be stopped as we were only hastening entropy.
Or maybe semi-intelligent Human CentiPads sooner than you think..
...
I submit that our civilization is currently unable to affect the milky way in a negative manner. With this premise it is unlikely that an alien armada would even be dispatched to destroy us due to the cost of resources. I further submit that if we ever do become able to affect the milky way that we must be sufficiently advanced to the point where destruction of our own world by our own hand is impossible. This seems like a thought exercise with a "green" agenda behind it.
I see some author finally got around to seeing The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Yo man, oddly enough, as I was filling out my new information(since your network couldn't find my original ID Energizerbunny, which happened the last time I visited about oh, I don't know TEN years ago) I realized, that the last time I created an account to make a sarcastic comment about something on here, I think this was the same damn article. Literally. No, aliens aren't trying to destroy the human race for the sake of the galaxy, we'd be dead. Even in the most advanced technology that exists today, and believe me, I know them all, we'd be dead. We're retards. So, get that self important threat to the universe heads out of your butts, cuz it aint happenin cornholio. (I was tweeting when I found this...lol.)
Won't happen we breed the planet - and our race - to dead before they get the chance of getting here
Face it the only reasons that aliens would care one bit about the earth is if we had developed FTL capability.
Right now we only polute the galaxy with I LOVE LUCY episodes or even worse a speech by Michele Bankmann.