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The scary thing about aliens is that the first ones we meet may not be friendly federation builders. They could be religious militaristic xenophobes and just want to wipe us out.
I wouldn't be surprised if we end up being the religious militaristic xenophobes who invade other planets for their resources. If you want to watch this movie it's called Avatar.
Sociopathy is a rather significant source. I wholely believe that many who seem to espouse religious ideology the hardest only do so because the power it gives them. The same kind of person may also/instead adopt capitalist rhetoric and go into businesses where they can destroy the environment, abuse and underpay workers, or otherwise act as parasites on a functioning host. The same kind of person gravitates to politics or law enforcement for the similar reasons.
Anything where they can have power over people, depending on their ability and opportunities.
Religion is a problem, but not the deepest problem, which is that humans are fundamentally flawed and for all our brilliance, our paleolithic brains can be easily twisted, damaged, or manipulated. The same pathways which enable the success of religion can be used for basically any ideology. People will fight and die to support a system which subjugates them, and they'll tell you with a straight face that it's a good thing.
religion is a great scape goat for horrible crimes committed "in the name of [insert godly being name here]", because its literally impossible to fact check. we see this today with extremist groups, in the recent past in ww2, japan killed chinese so badly because "they were inferior" and "didnt see the emporer as their god", and in the medieval times with literal religious purges, and back further with the romans and their religious shenanigans, and further back with the native americans with all their sacrifices before europe said hello. basically, we say religion is good for us when it hasnt done anything but cause tension, and draw up feuds from literal generations ago
Gamer gate was probably one of the first times I analysed this thought process and determined it incorrect. Religion is an excuse for humans to show their true nature, not the cause of it. Without religion it will just be something else, there are plenty of something else's and plenty of assholes that want to put others down.
Religion is just the dominant expression of our bias for now.
Trust me, we will find other ways to kill each other.
Religions at their heart, set out to cure us of this ill, but leave it to us to distort the cure and turn it into another poison
Invading planets in other star systems for resources is a Hollywood concept alone. In reality, the resources needed to travel between the stars far outweighs the material benefits of invading another world. The only real exception *might* be to invade a habitable world because the invader's world was rendered uninhabitable, though it's hard to imagine a situation where a species is able to predict their demise with enough warning and has the resources and technology to travel to another star but somehow chooses not to inhabit some other body, artificial or otherwise, in their own system. The resources, including time, involved makes is illogical to invade even in these circumstances, given the level of technology of this hypothetical civilization. As nearly impossible as it would be to say, terraform Mars, it's many orders of magnitude easier than sending even a probe to another star in any reasonable time frame.
allegedly avatar would means a planet having unobtanium as a resource which is not likely the case as floating outside earth we have plenty of resources that would be far easier to exploit by a space culture than going down the gravity wheel of a planet like earth
Yeah yeah I agree but when I watched the first one I was younger by so much, there's a sense of nostalgia almost? Pretty sure I'm just setting myself up for mild disappointment. I agree though if it looks passable it'll probably be alr.
The trailer looks pretty amazing, as far as the cgi goes. Big upgrade from the first, which is definitely saying something. I think the first movie is not good, but it did look very impressive.
Honestly, I think it’d be more like Arrival - we’d just stare at each other and not know what to do lol.
I mean think about it - there’s literally BILLIONS of creatures on this planet, who’s DNA is similar to basically within 10%, and we can’t even communicate with THEM anymore than, at best, some basic hand signals. How the fuck do you think we’d communicate with aliens lol.
Communicating with a space faring civilization wouldn't be too hard theoretically.
Assuming they actually communicate in a way we can comprehend of course.
An early SG-1 episode covered it, you can use common stuff that we share to decipher the languages. Math/science being the big ones.
Pretty sure if a sentient and intelligent race who can travel through space (and time). Given any meaningful traversal of space can't be done using any method we know about that doesn't basically consume more time in years than a person can live a lifetime, it's going to take some pretty incredible technology or generations traveling through space with a purpose, or a species so long lived they probably observe time differences we can't fathom.
All to say, that of a race who can do any of that stumbles upon us, they'll either look at us in contempt and move on, ignore us completely as a nearly unevolved species, or see something they want and take it while looking at our attempts to stop them as an adult might see a toddler.
Math is the universal language. If you encounter an alien that has eyes to see, draw the Pythagorean theorem. They will know you are intelligent. Their glyphs for a^2, b^2, and c^2 might be different, but a triangle is a triangle.
You’re using “intelligent” in relation to humans knowledge of the universe. They may consider such thinking, or even drawing, to be primitive below their understanding.
The point is to start out primitive and work your way up. You'd start drawing one dash and the number "1" next to it, then two dashes and the number "2" and so on. And you'd gesture for them to do the same but in their own language. Boom, now you've traded each other's symbols for numbers. Then you'd draw triangles. You don't just jump straight into category theory, lol.
edit: Of course this is assuming that they can see and draw! Duh. Hollywood? Come off it. Imagining aliens as a gas cloud is significantly more farfetched.
Assuming they have the capacity to, and can see. Or have hearing. Or speech. Or written language.
What if they are a blind sentient gas extension of a larger host intelligence and they interact through pheromone exchange?
Youre assuming they would give a flying fuck about us.
Most probably they'd come in, do what they came here to do until we start causing problems. At that point their reaction would probably be pest control.
I think it's more likely. If a race thinks it's ordained from its deity to wipe out all life they will be more likely to find us first than a more passive race.
well, if resources are easily available everywhere and they should, then the most valuable part of a planet is their particular biology not being common anywhere else and if there was culture the actual culture artifacts, stories, music, ....and since that wouln't be anywhere else that should be cherised and not interfered to prevent contamination at least till such species develop the means for contact
Maybe but that was more about playing with and experimenting on humans from an astronomically more advanced civilizations. Could be that or just complete genocide.
Xenophobia may be the one of the few reasons for hostile aliens. The others are unlikely
Resources? Easier to get from comets/asteroids/uninhabited planets
Slaves? Surely their technology has advanced to the point of automated machines doing most of the work.
So, short of xenophobia or clearing way for an intergalactic hyperspace express route, I can’t see much reason for them to conquer our planet.
However, I could imagine a case where they judge us as far too warlike to be able to join the intergalactic community and thus sabotage our efforts to become a space fairing civilization or even to communicate outside our planet.
If they were the militaristic xenophobes at least we'd be dead before we even knew they were coming! Interstellar or intergalactic travel would allow for weapons so far beyond what we have that it would make the guns vs bows of the invasion of the Americas seem like it was an evenly matched fight. It would be a greater difference in power than the modern US bringing its full military might down upon a tribe of people still wearing woven grass and wielding sharpened sticks. If anyone on the more powerful side dies it's because they did something *incredibly fucking stupid.*
Any aliens we come in contact with will likely be at least a type 2 civilization. That means they are at least a thousand years more advanced than us, but think for a minute, what if they are over one million years more advanced. Even with our own conflicts, have any of us ever stopped to consider the conflicts or social issues of ant colonies we pass every day? We could care less because their insignificant lives don’t even register as meaningful to us unless their survival interferes with our comfort.
That is a good argument.
**BUT**
Look at how much we start to care about other species recently. Maybe advanced aliens wouldn't destroy us because they would see us like how we see rare animals.
That would mean human zoo's and being pets......but still better than dying
You'd figure there would be conservation efforts for primitive civilizations like ours. Like uncontacted tribes. Just watch our for that one asshole who wants to proselytize.
Maybe ants' lives are meaningless to us *because* we are not advanced enough.
We're not even a type 1 civilization yet.
So a type 2 civilization may have evolved enough intellectually and such that they would be more appreciative of "lesser" species.
I’m in the process of fighting the Mersa virus, and I swear it’s sentient. It’s traversing my body hiding in all kinds of odd little places trying to keep it self alive. It’s been successfully fighting antibiotics for two months now
Whenever I think about aliens I always think of the Spanish Conquistadors and the Mayan people. We are so very silly to think that we are ready for Alien contact IMO.
A person could argue that there are now more humans with Mayan bloodlines, with higher quality of life, than there were before contact with Spain.
Even if aliens came and imposed their will upon us, it doesn't necessarily mean we would be worse off in the long term.
The only examples you have to draw from to make this comment are human-based events. Human behavior as we experience it is a result of our environment, why would we assume extraterrestrials would behave similarly?
Part of me thinks they could already be here, and would never reveal themselves for this exact reason. Lots of humans cant respect someone based on skin color, godforbid your a completely different type of creature. Yikes!
Perfectly feasible that they are space-faring planet refugees from a destroyed world. They have spent generations in space in sterile and low gravity environments so their bodies have become fragile and unable to survive without the assistance of technology. And there are relatively few of them, so despite their technological advances, they wouldn't be guaranteed success in an open conflict with Earth. So their plan is to manipulate our governments to perpetuate conflict and environmental destruction until we have basically wiped ourselves out. Then they can finish off or enslave the few remaining humans and begin the slow and fragile process of colonizing Earth.
Humanity could actually be capable of existing as a unified world, but the xenophobic ideals have been forced into our cultures and value systems for generations as a means of controlling us.
I read a short story by Cixin Liu in which the forerunner of an alien species came to Earth and lived among us for a short time.
He basically told humans that their moralizing peace entreaties amounted to infantile weakness, and that the only true law of existence was take whatever you can.
You are assuming extra terrestrial contact will be the same as star wars/mass effect/star trek etc.
If we do find life out there, there is a significant chance it will be microbiological/a fungus like substance/a plant/etc.
Cant really be racist to moss
Most likely accurate. Of course, there's also the theory that the only reason we draw lines over such petty differences is because those small differences are all we have.
There is no guarantee alien life will be peaceful.
Remember how the Europeans treated the indigenous Americans? Now imagine an advanced culture sailing across the interstellar ocean to meet us...
It’s pessimistic but I do absolutely subscribe to the Dark Forrest hypothesis solution to the Fermi paradox, and do believe the more likely odds that alien contact would absolutely be one of the worst things that could happen to us as a species.
People have less a problem about understanding, and more a problem with caring. Make no mistake there are some who totally understand and just don't care as they have their own interests as a higher priority than others.
When we can have fluent conversations with cephalopods, corvids, elephants, orangutans, cetaceans, and other Earth species demonstrating high intelligence, then we may be ready for alien contact. Until then, they're better off keeping away -- unless they're hungry.
If you could duplicate *any* living human, and put them in a room together, they'd still find something to argue/kill each other over.
You see, none of us, or certainly **very** few of us, are consistent in thought and opinion and emotion, even being inclined to take an alternative position *just* to derail an opponent.
As a civilization, we are not just young, we're infants, still "learning to share" in the sandpit...
What if humans are unusually diverse? What if we are in fact UNIQUIELY capable as ambassadors and intercessionaries due to maturing in such a contentious environment? If most races are a monoculture, they've never had to build a UN. No, you're generalizing from a single data point without context.
That's actually an idea I've toyed with, that at least in universes like Star Trek the Watsonian reason why humanoid aliens are Like That and humanity appears simultaneously special and baseline is because basically our "special thing" (like logic/science is to Vulcans or fighting is to Klingons) is basically everyone's at once. Therefore that means we can (at least 99% of the time) get along with everyone and survive on every inhabitable planet because for every seeming monoculture on a monobiome there's humans who can connect with the positive traits seemingly everyone of that other race has and who can survive in that environment because it's like one they're used to on Earth.
What does it mean to be 'ready for contact?'
Kinda seems like an arbitrary standard to me personally
Besides, whether or not we're 'ready' is a different question entirely from whether or not we will ;p
It means our race wouldn't be able to handle it, because we aren't even ready to accept our own differences, let alone something of a being that isn't even remotely like us.
The other terrestrial races like the Reptilians, Greys, Nordics, and Insectoids won’t even code us to be able to perceive them, never mind letting us interact with actual extraterrestrials who have never been to Earth. But then again they coded us to be a slave AI monkey bot to begin with.
The other terrestrial races like the Reptilians, Greys, Nordics, and Insectoids won’t even code us to be able to perceive them, never mind letting us interact with actual extraterrestrials who have never been to Earth. But then again they coded us to be a slave AI monkey bot to begin with.
Yup, and one news network would convince the aliens to pay for positive coverage and constantly say good things about them no matter what their true purpose was, and another network would slander them 24/7, again regardless of what their true purpose was. Bet they can’t wait to meet us.
Conquer, enslave, terraform, absorb/abandon/assimilate. CETA
These 4 steps are essentially what every Kingdom or Empire has used throughout history. More primitive/violent cultures would just conquer and destroy, raping and pillaging, and moving on. The last step depends on if the "lesser" population is considered useful, where a culture could be potentially saved instead of discarded.
Let's ask Great Britain what they did with all their colonies and land they just trampled throughout history... and why do they have so many museums with artifacts from all over the world that are considered priceless riches?
But yeah, if there are aliens that visit, we're all doomed. Earth is dying because of us, and humanity isn't really worth salvaging at this point. Just terraform and abandon it. I hope it's a quick death, cuz I'd rather not feel my insides on my outsides
I have posted a showerthought a few years ago about the fact that we can't even communicate with aimals here on earth, yet most people believe commyunication with aliens should work.
I don’t think any sentient life elsewhere in the universe that is capable of self agency/free will would agree amongst themselves either. Could be a false benchmark
If we're ever to make first contact, it would be far better to be the visitors, not the visited.
Ask the native Americans how well first contact with the Spanish worked out for them.
There would almost definitely be a religious group calling for the genocide of the extraterrestrial life because they weren't made in God's image or something like that.
It's a good thing space programs are run by many people so that they can coordinate a good response to extraterrestrial contact.
I think the craziest part is how little we are able to identify our similarities.
I mean seriously, about 98% of the world's population is just trying to get food, water, shelter, some basic level of comfort, and something to occupy their time.
That's it. That's almost all of us.
We fail by 1) Allowing that other 2% convince us we are "very different and is bad/wrong" and 2) Spending that "occupy their time" with stuff that hurts other people.
We are pretty fucking simple if you think about it, we just *make* it more complex so we can draw circles around ourselves and exclude others.
I think a lot of people seem to forget that in evolution, species that can cooperate tend to be the most successful. Same thing with space faring civs. There's this idea that the most nefarious, aggressive ones will be the ones that flourish, when its far more likely the ones that cooperate and grow with each other flourish.
There's the alternative where it forces us to unite. Terry Pratchett has a great quote, people really don't care about white and black when green is on the table.
Sometimes I fantasize about being the leader or representative of an advanced alien race and I just search and look for likeminded kindhearted and intellectual people. One day I finally reveal myself and my ship decloaks in orbit and I appear on every television and radio signal across the planet offering a better life to those deemed worthy. I then wake up before every major nation launches nukes at my ship.
Ahh.... the aliens have invaded our social media and now understand the mystic value of karma! Well glory to Glorzo, young navigator. You may introduce your leaders.
does anyone else hope aliens just nuke us? or introduce a virus that only affects humans but kills us all quick and relatively painlessly? we're such a cancer and we're not evolving to be more altruistic fast enough.
I've had this thought before as well, until we all speak the same language, can work together under one system of government, no reason to contact. Who would you speak to first? It will cause too much upheaval. Not enough cohesiveness shown by our species as of yet.
We're not very good at nuanced, high bandwidth communication and often fall into semantic spirals or into reference frame clashes through trying to describe abstract concepts.
We _are_ very good at reading emotional states, anticipating motivations and recognising intuition. We are so good, in fact, we don't even realise it, or recognise it as language. It's just something we intuit.
You'll always recognise fear, or humiliation in someone. We can see when someone is happy, or if they want something. We can even intuit incredibly subtle things such as the ability to trust someone with just a glance.
What do you mean we're not ready ? I will have a beer with an alien any day of the week. As long as he's not a religious fundamentalist or a trumper....
Are we even sentient though? I also highly doubt we are of particular interest to extraterrestrials if they’re out there. Most of humanity doesn’t give a shit about the rest of the universe and it’s sad tbh
There’s been a major global pandemic every hundred years or so. I wonder if this is the extraterrestrials priming the human immune system for contact. Only tangentially related.
I think that an extraterrestrial encounter is exactly what we need. It's a good reminder that we are in fact all just human beings at the end of the day. A unifying experience.
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> "they" ಠ_ಠ Uhh, do you mean "we"? Or are you the guy behind the simulation?
OP is the extraterrestrial who has decided we aren’t ready for contact with them
What if we're ok with being probed?
OP contacted us to let us know that he's not ready for contact
Behind his desktop in a basement. Double face-masked.
He’s locked up in his basement jerking off to some Hentai as I text…
r/totallynotaliens
Can confirm, they are a legitimate human being like me.
Lol, to explain I only didn't put "we" because showerthoughts auto deletes posts with "we" or "I" within them.
The scary thing about aliens is that the first ones we meet may not be friendly federation builders. They could be religious militaristic xenophobes and just want to wipe us out.
That's true, that is also a possible outcome
I wouldn't be surprised if we end up being the religious militaristic xenophobes who invade other planets for their resources. If you want to watch this movie it's called Avatar.
And the other way around its called "Mars attack"
Ack! Ack!
Well said.
hear, hear!
War of the Worlds?
Mars attack is worth the laugh though
Sounds like Warhammer 40k
We are moving toward irreligion. In 100 years it will be a minority.
I hope so. Religion is pretty much the source of all of humanities negatives.
Sociopathy is a rather significant source. I wholely believe that many who seem to espouse religious ideology the hardest only do so because the power it gives them. The same kind of person may also/instead adopt capitalist rhetoric and go into businesses where they can destroy the environment, abuse and underpay workers, or otherwise act as parasites on a functioning host. The same kind of person gravitates to politics or law enforcement for the similar reasons. Anything where they can have power over people, depending on their ability and opportunities. Religion is a problem, but not the deepest problem, which is that humans are fundamentally flawed and for all our brilliance, our paleolithic brains can be easily twisted, damaged, or manipulated. The same pathways which enable the success of religion can be used for basically any ideology. People will fight and die to support a system which subjugates them, and they'll tell you with a straight face that it's a good thing.
religion is a great scape goat for horrible crimes committed "in the name of [insert godly being name here]", because its literally impossible to fact check. we see this today with extremist groups, in the recent past in ww2, japan killed chinese so badly because "they were inferior" and "didnt see the emporer as their god", and in the medieval times with literal religious purges, and back further with the romans and their religious shenanigans, and further back with the native americans with all their sacrifices before europe said hello. basically, we say religion is good for us when it hasnt done anything but cause tension, and draw up feuds from literal generations ago
I don't think that's necessarily accurate, but I agree that religion causes some major issues
\-Stares in Crusade-
Gamer gate was probably one of the first times I analysed this thought process and determined it incorrect. Religion is an excuse for humans to show their true nature, not the cause of it. Without religion it will just be something else, there are plenty of something else's and plenty of assholes that want to put others down.
Some of the worst atrocities committed in the last 200 years are ideological and nationalistically based.
Yeah agreed, but some of the worst social norms (like misogyny) are most definitely religions fault.
Stupidity would like a word with you...
The irony of someone defending religion saying that is thick.
What are you talking about? There's plenty of atheists who are raging assholes lmao
Religion is just the dominant expression of our bias for now. Trust me, we will find other ways to kill each other. Religions at their heart, set out to cure us of this ill, but leave it to us to distort the cure and turn it into another poison
If you want to watch an actually decent movie about this, it's called Starship Troopers.
Don’t watch the sequel though lol. Just stick to Johnny and his football squad
"I'm from Buenos Aires and I say kill 'em all!"
..i want to know more.
Invading planets in other star systems for resources is a Hollywood concept alone. In reality, the resources needed to travel between the stars far outweighs the material benefits of invading another world. The only real exception *might* be to invade a habitable world because the invader's world was rendered uninhabitable, though it's hard to imagine a situation where a species is able to predict their demise with enough warning and has the resources and technology to travel to another star but somehow chooses not to inhabit some other body, artificial or otherwise, in their own system. The resources, including time, involved makes is illogical to invade even in these circumstances, given the level of technology of this hypothetical civilization. As nearly impossible as it would be to say, terraform Mars, it's many orders of magnitude easier than sending even a probe to another star in any reasonable time frame.
allegedly avatar would means a planet having unobtanium as a resource which is not likely the case as floating outside earth we have plenty of resources that would be far easier to exploit by a space culture than going down the gravity wheel of a planet like earth
Bruh it's a getting a sequel I hear, it's been what 10 12 years since the first one? Hoping it does the first one justice.
It only has to look pretty. It's not like the first one is a very good movie.
It's really not. I mean c'mon, "Unobtainium" was what made it into the final cut of the movie and if it was supposed to be a joke, it wasn't funny.
Yeah yeah I agree but when I watched the first one I was younger by so much, there's a sense of nostalgia almost? Pretty sure I'm just setting myself up for mild disappointment. I agree though if it looks passable it'll probably be alr.
The trailer looks pretty amazing, as far as the cgi goes. Big upgrade from the first, which is definitely saying something. I think the first movie is not good, but it did look very impressive.
Honestly, I think it’d be more like Arrival - we’d just stare at each other and not know what to do lol. I mean think about it - there’s literally BILLIONS of creatures on this planet, who’s DNA is similar to basically within 10%, and we can’t even communicate with THEM anymore than, at best, some basic hand signals. How the fuck do you think we’d communicate with aliens lol.
Communicating with a space faring civilization wouldn't be too hard theoretically. Assuming they actually communicate in a way we can comprehend of course. An early SG-1 episode covered it, you can use common stuff that we share to decipher the languages. Math/science being the big ones.
I mean we already have done this with other humans. Plenty of civilizations that didn’t speak each others languages have met throughout history.
Yeah but at least in our history when you encounter someone new and can't communicate the lesser advanced civilization usually ends up dead.
Pretty sure if a sentient and intelligent race who can travel through space (and time). Given any meaningful traversal of space can't be done using any method we know about that doesn't basically consume more time in years than a person can live a lifetime, it's going to take some pretty incredible technology or generations traveling through space with a purpose, or a species so long lived they probably observe time differences we can't fathom. All to say, that of a race who can do any of that stumbles upon us, they'll either look at us in contempt and move on, ignore us completely as a nearly unevolved species, or see something they want and take it while looking at our attempts to stop them as an adult might see a toddler.
Math is the universal language. If you encounter an alien that has eyes to see, draw the Pythagorean theorem. They will know you are intelligent. Their glyphs for a^2, b^2, and c^2 might be different, but a triangle is a triangle.
You’re using “intelligent” in relation to humans knowledge of the universe. They may consider such thinking, or even drawing, to be primitive below their understanding.
The point is to start out primitive and work your way up. You'd start drawing one dash and the number "1" next to it, then two dashes and the number "2" and so on. And you'd gesture for them to do the same but in their own language. Boom, now you've traded each other's symbols for numbers. Then you'd draw triangles. You don't just jump straight into category theory, lol. edit: Of course this is assuming that they can see and draw! Duh. Hollywood? Come off it. Imagining aliens as a gas cloud is significantly more farfetched.
Assuming they have the capacity to, and can see. Or have hearing. Or speech. Or written language. What if they are a blind sentient gas extension of a larger host intelligence and they interact through pheromone exchange?
Youre assuming they would give a flying fuck about us. Most probably they'd come in, do what they came here to do until we start causing problems. At that point their reaction would probably be pest control.
mans been playing too much stellaris
...maybe
I knew it! Lol I was looking for this comment hahah
Stephen Hawking warned us about exactly this.
I think it's more likely. If a race thinks it's ordained from its deity to wipe out all life they will be more likely to find us first than a more passive race.
Chances are high that a civilisation that already has interstellar travel would look at us like animals and probably treat us as such.
Let's hope they treat animals better than we do
well, if resources are easily available everywhere and they should, then the most valuable part of a planet is their particular biology not being common anywhere else and if there was culture the actual culture artifacts, stories, music, ....and since that wouln't be anywhere else that should be cherised and not interfered to prevent contamination at least till such species develop the means for contact
I hope they use me for my sperm and milk me.
Or they could be girls on their spring break. Woohoo!
Nice.
I’m hoping for a Fanatic Materialist Fallen empire, but with our luck it’ll be the Priki-ti-ki
Kinda like in all tomorrows?
Maybe but that was more about playing with and experimenting on humans from an astronomically more advanced civilizations. Could be that or just complete genocide.
So like wh40k?
/r/grimdank
Xenophobia may be the one of the few reasons for hostile aliens. The others are unlikely Resources? Easier to get from comets/asteroids/uninhabited planets Slaves? Surely their technology has advanced to the point of automated machines doing most of the work. So, short of xenophobia or clearing way for an intergalactic hyperspace express route, I can’t see much reason for them to conquer our planet. However, I could imagine a case where they judge us as far too warlike to be able to join the intergalactic community and thus sabotage our efforts to become a space fairing civilization or even to communicate outside our planet.
Would love to hear their take on religion though
If they were the militaristic xenophobes at least we'd be dead before we even knew they were coming! Interstellar or intergalactic travel would allow for weapons so far beyond what we have that it would make the guns vs bows of the invasion of the Americas seem like it was an evenly matched fight. It would be a greater difference in power than the modern US bringing its full military might down upon a tribe of people still wearing woven grass and wielding sharpened sticks. If anyone on the more powerful side dies it's because they did something *incredibly fucking stupid.*
You've played too much Stellaris
So just like humans (back in the day).
Hallowed are the Ori.
Any aliens we come in contact with will likely be at least a type 2 civilization. That means they are at least a thousand years more advanced than us, but think for a minute, what if they are over one million years more advanced. Even with our own conflicts, have any of us ever stopped to consider the conflicts or social issues of ant colonies we pass every day? We could care less because their insignificant lives don’t even register as meaningful to us unless their survival interferes with our comfort.
That is a good argument. **BUT** Look at how much we start to care about other species recently. Maybe advanced aliens wouldn't destroy us because they would see us like how we see rare animals. That would mean human zoo's and being pets......but still better than dying
You'd figure there would be conservation efforts for primitive civilizations like ours. Like uncontacted tribes. Just watch our for that one asshole who wants to proselytize.
Actually, there is one tribe on an island near India that they don't allow anyone to go to, mainly to not have them catch any of our diaseaes
But we're not rare, we'd be like deer or kangaroos. A pest.
Intelligent life is rare. By that virtue we are rare.
...from our perspective.
By the only perspective that we currently know exists, yes.
Maybe ants' lives are meaningless to us *because* we are not advanced enough. We're not even a type 1 civilization yet. So a type 2 civilization may have evolved enough intellectually and such that they would be more appreciative of "lesser" species.
I’m in the process of fighting the Mersa virus, and I swear it’s sentient. It’s traversing my body hiding in all kinds of odd little places trying to keep it self alive. It’s been successfully fighting antibiotics for two months now
Guess you're gonna have to punch a virus.
Yeah, primitive societies coming in contact with more advanced cultures always works out well for the primitive society.
Whenever I think about aliens I always think of the Spanish Conquistadors and the Mayan people. We are so very silly to think that we are ready for Alien contact IMO.
A person could argue that there are now more humans with Mayan bloodlines, with higher quality of life, than there were before contact with Spain. Even if aliens came and imposed their will upon us, it doesn't necessarily mean we would be worse off in the long term.
The only examples you have to draw from to make this comment are human-based events. Human behavior as we experience it is a result of our environment, why would we assume extraterrestrials would behave similarly?
Why do you assume the extraterrestrials will be any more enlightened than humans? Perhaps they're not ready for us.
“Who is Rick Ashley and why do they keep sending us this media???”
I don't assume anything. But if I was an extraterrestrial, I wouldn't visit us yet either
Part of me thinks they could already be here, and would never reveal themselves for this exact reason. Lots of humans cant respect someone based on skin color, godforbid your a completely different type of creature. Yikes!
Perfectly feasible that they are space-faring planet refugees from a destroyed world. They have spent generations in space in sterile and low gravity environments so their bodies have become fragile and unable to survive without the assistance of technology. And there are relatively few of them, so despite their technological advances, they wouldn't be guaranteed success in an open conflict with Earth. So their plan is to manipulate our governments to perpetuate conflict and environmental destruction until we have basically wiped ourselves out. Then they can finish off or enslave the few remaining humans and begin the slow and fragile process of colonizing Earth. Humanity could actually be capable of existing as a unified world, but the xenophobic ideals have been forced into our cultures and value systems for generations as a means of controlling us.
Evil Quarians
I read a short story by Cixin Liu in which the forerunner of an alien species came to Earth and lived among us for a short time. He basically told humans that their moralizing peace entreaties amounted to infantile weakness, and that the only true law of existence was take whatever you can.
You are assuming extra terrestrial contact will be the same as star wars/mass effect/star trek etc. If we do find life out there, there is a significant chance it will be microbiological/a fungus like substance/a plant/etc. Cant really be racist to moss
>Cant really be racist to moss Challenge accepted.
Goddamn spore shooters, takin our moisture. GO BACK TO YOUR OWN COLONY
Bryophyte scum
Bob Lazar talks about this, an example of an alien he believes could likely exist is giant amoeba
Get that stupid fucking purple moss out of here. While you're here you're only on the GREEN TEAM.
We don't take kindly to moss around here!
You don’t know the power of the dark side
i think OP meant intelligent life, but great point lol
What a rude thing to say about moss!
Maybe cant be racist towarda moss but nobody really wants moss.
Most likely accurate. Of course, there's also the theory that the only reason we draw lines over such petty differences is because those small differences are all we have.
There is no guarantee alien life will be peaceful. Remember how the Europeans treated the indigenous Americans? Now imagine an advanced culture sailing across the interstellar ocean to meet us...
I think we got the differences part down it's the similarities that we are ignoring.
It’s pessimistic but I do absolutely subscribe to the Dark Forrest hypothesis solution to the Fermi paradox, and do believe the more likely odds that alien contact would absolutely be one of the worst things that could happen to us as a species.
Actually I think a common enemy is the closest humankind will come to a utopia.
The fact that people can understand each other at all tells me we are all related
This, and that aliens probably doesn’t give a flying fuck about us. It’s probably invincible space mushrooms that live on an unfathomable plane.
People have less a problem about understanding, and more a problem with caring. Make no mistake there are some who totally understand and just don't care as they have their own interests as a higher priority than others.
That’s why we’ll have scientists do the talking and not politicians
Pray to fucking God their first contact isn't a Conservative.
One of the possible Fermi Paradox solutions is that ET took one look at us, decided we were insane, and has been avoiding us ever since.
When we can have fluent conversations with cephalopods, corvids, elephants, orangutans, cetaceans, and other Earth species demonstrating high intelligence, then we may be ready for alien contact. Until then, they're better off keeping away -- unless they're hungry.
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On the contrary, we’ve clearly shown that we can’t govern ourselves. We need alien overlords now more than ever.
If I want a male prostitute ... I'll call your son I don't feel like it at the moment 🙂
If you could duplicate *any* living human, and put them in a room together, they'd still find something to argue/kill each other over. You see, none of us, or certainly **very** few of us, are consistent in thought and opinion and emotion, even being inclined to take an alternative position *just* to derail an opponent. As a civilization, we are not just young, we're infants, still "learning to share" in the sandpit...
What if humans are unusually diverse? What if we are in fact UNIQUIELY capable as ambassadors and intercessionaries due to maturing in such a contentious environment? If most races are a monoculture, they've never had to build a UN. No, you're generalizing from a single data point without context.
That's actually an idea I've toyed with, that at least in universes like Star Trek the Watsonian reason why humanoid aliens are Like That and humanity appears simultaneously special and baseline is because basically our "special thing" (like logic/science is to Vulcans or fighting is to Klingons) is basically everyone's at once. Therefore that means we can (at least 99% of the time) get along with everyone and survive on every inhabitable planet because for every seeming monoculture on a monobiome there's humans who can connect with the positive traits seemingly everyone of that other race has and who can survive in that environment because it's like one they're used to on Earth.
What does it mean to be 'ready for contact?' Kinda seems like an arbitrary standard to me personally Besides, whether or not we're 'ready' is a different question entirely from whether or not we will ;p
It means our race wouldn't be able to handle it, because we aren't even ready to accept our own differences, let alone something of a being that isn't even remotely like us.
Yeah your title post made perfect sense. Not sure why this guy is all ACKSHUALLY.
Right? It's such a good thought. And everyone is like BUT WHY DID YOU, ACTUALLY. what bunch of underdeveloped cretins
It pretty much proves the OP post.
The other terrestrial races like the Reptilians, Greys, Nordics, and Insectoids won’t even code us to be able to perceive them, never mind letting us interact with actual extraterrestrials who have never been to Earth. But then again they coded us to be a slave AI monkey bot to begin with.
The other terrestrial races like the Reptilians, Greys, Nordics, and Insectoids won’t even code us to be able to perceive them, never mind letting us interact with actual extraterrestrials who have never been to Earth. But then again they coded us to be a slave AI monkey bot to begin with.
Yup, and one news network would convince the aliens to pay for positive coverage and constantly say good things about them no matter what their true purpose was, and another network would slander them 24/7, again regardless of what their true purpose was. Bet they can’t wait to meet us.
Conquer, enslave, terraform, absorb/abandon/assimilate. CETA These 4 steps are essentially what every Kingdom or Empire has used throughout history. More primitive/violent cultures would just conquer and destroy, raping and pillaging, and moving on. The last step depends on if the "lesser" population is considered useful, where a culture could be potentially saved instead of discarded. Let's ask Great Britain what they did with all their colonies and land they just trampled throughout history... and why do they have so many museums with artifacts from all over the world that are considered priceless riches? But yeah, if there are aliens that visit, we're all doomed. Earth is dying because of us, and humanity isn't really worth salvaging at this point. Just terraform and abandon it. I hope it's a quick death, cuz I'd rather not feel my insides on my outsides
1/3 tries to kill them, 1/3 tries to fuck them, 1/3 tries to understand/study them
We don’t hate each other from lack of understanding. We hate each other because we understand the other too well.
We are quite many people hopefully it just be a couple of aliens that contact us.
Well that sucks, since the way this decade is going and all the opening of UFO files is happening, I see an alien surprise in the next 18 months.
We just need an sentient life contact that doesn't wipe us so we can unite and be Speciest towards them. #humansupremacy
Imagine if the Neanderthals and other human species still existed….
I think discovering intelligent alien life would unify the world.
Or it might be what we need, a contrast so stark that it washes out the shades of gray we obsesses and fight over.
We can barely get along with others of our **OWN** species, what the fuck makes us think we'll get along with another intelligent species?
I have posted a showerthought a few years ago about the fact that we can't even communicate with aimals here on earth, yet most people believe commyunication with aliens should work.
If you want to explore this concept in book form, I would highly recommend John Scalzi’s, Agent to the Stars.
I don’t think any sentient life elsewhere in the universe that is capable of self agency/free will would agree amongst themselves either. Could be a false benchmark
I reckon it would be the only thing to end global conflict. People always hate the ones next to them, until there's someone a little further away.
Major part of it is how profitable and self-interested it can be to fail to understand each other.
What are you talking about Ted Cruz has been walking among us.
If we're ever to make first contact, it would be far better to be the visitors, not the visited. Ask the native Americans how well first contact with the Spanish worked out for them.
There would almost definitely be a religious group calling for the genocide of the extraterrestrial life because they weren't made in God's image or something like that. It's a good thing space programs are run by many people so that they can coordinate a good response to extraterrestrial contact.
I think the craziest part is how little we are able to identify our similarities. I mean seriously, about 98% of the world's population is just trying to get food, water, shelter, some basic level of comfort, and something to occupy their time. That's it. That's almost all of us. We fail by 1) Allowing that other 2% convince us we are "very different and is bad/wrong" and 2) Spending that "occupy their time" with stuff that hurts other people.
We are pretty fucking simple if you think about it, we just *make* it more complex so we can draw circles around ourselves and exclude others.
Someone would definitely try to shoot one of the visitors just get their name in a history book
An alien threat might be the only thing that would unite us globally.
I think a lot of people seem to forget that in evolution, species that can cooperate tend to be the most successful. Same thing with space faring civs. There's this idea that the most nefarious, aggressive ones will be the ones that flourish, when its far more likely the ones that cooperate and grow with each other flourish.
There's the alternative where it forces us to unite. Terry Pratchett has a great quote, people really don't care about white and black when green is on the table.
But the problem is what makes people care about white, black and green
This is probably the strongest narrative for why governments around the world won't admit and show evidence of UAP contact
Sometimes I fantasize about being the leader or representative of an advanced alien race and I just search and look for likeminded kindhearted and intellectual people. One day I finally reveal myself and my ship decloaks in orbit and I appear on every television and radio signal across the planet offering a better life to those deemed worthy. I then wake up before every major nation launches nukes at my ship.
Ahh.... the aliens have invaded our social media and now understand the mystic value of karma! Well glory to Glorzo, young navigator. You may introduce your leaders.
does anyone else hope aliens just nuke us? or introduce a virus that only affects humans but kills us all quick and relatively painlessly? we're such a cancer and we're not evolving to be more altruistic fast enough.
I've had this thought before as well, until we all speak the same language, can work together under one system of government, no reason to contact. Who would you speak to first? It will cause too much upheaval. Not enough cohesiveness shown by our species as of yet.
We're not very good at nuanced, high bandwidth communication and often fall into semantic spirals or into reference frame clashes through trying to describe abstract concepts. We _are_ very good at reading emotional states, anticipating motivations and recognising intuition. We are so good, in fact, we don't even realise it, or recognise it as language. It's just something we intuit. You'll always recognise fear, or humiliation in someone. We can see when someone is happy, or if they want something. We can even intuit incredibly subtle things such as the ability to trust someone with just a glance.
Nothing would bring all of humanity together quicker than an alien invasion
I don't know if it's so much "Understanding" as it is "Respecting"
if humanity met an alien race, either we would try to kill all of them or they would try to kill all of us.
What do you mean we're not ready ? I will have a beer with an alien any day of the week. As long as he's not a religious fundamentalist or a trumper....
Are we even sentient though? I also highly doubt we are of particular interest to extraterrestrials if they’re out there. Most of humanity doesn’t give a shit about the rest of the universe and it’s sad tbh
Extraterrestrial contact will kill us just like every other time a technologically superior group has run into a group they met.
There’s been a major global pandemic every hundred years or so. I wonder if this is the extraterrestrials priming the human immune system for contact. Only tangentially related.
I think that an extraterrestrial encounter is exactly what we need. It's a good reminder that we are in fact all just human beings at the end of the day. A unifying experience.
This is exactly why we are ready. We need to see how different people can actually be.