Would you be interested in a Timeshare opportunity that's too good to pass up?
Joe, representing the King Sultan of Nairobi
XDDDD
Tell E.T. skeptics where to stick it
- Thread starter Itisnotlogical
- Start date
XDDDD
That's how I see it.
Another possibility is that intelligent life forms are not predisposed to become technological. By many estimates Human beings have been around for a few hundred thousand years, perhaps more. For the vast majority of our existence we have lived in primitive hunter gatherer tribes with no permanent settlements. Civilization as we know it didn't begin until 6-7 thousand years ago when we finally figured out that its a better idea to stay where you are and grow your own food. Civilization could well have been a freak accident that spiralled out of control. I consider it perfectly plausible that intelligent life forms could exist in the stone age indefinitely, perhaps for tens of millions of years until they go extinct. Or perhaps even for them to advance to the stage that we have and then quickly eat up all their planets resources leading to a catastrophic collapse of their industrialized civilization. If you use up all your planets fossil fuels (which took hundreds of millions of years to form) and you don’t find an alternative source of power than your heading back to the dark ages…permanently. Never again will any intelligent species on your planet be able to industrialize. Something to keep in mind when thinking about our rapidly diminishing fossil fuels.
It might also be that intelligence isn’t a particularly useful trait. Chimpanzees, the species closest to us in terms of biology and intelligence, are very unsuccessful. They exist in only a few very small pockets of the world and are very few in number. A minor climate change or a few huge forest fires could wipe them out completely. For a good while Humans weren’t particularly successful hunter-gatherers, geneticists have determined that at one point in our history we experienced a population bottleneck where there were only a couple of thousand of us left. We came within a hairs length of going extinct.
I tend to think that intelligent life isn't very abundant. I don’t expect that there’s anymore than a handful of sentient species in our galaxy. By a quirk it could be that were the most advanced. If were not then I think were more likely to meet robots that they have created than the aliens themselves. If you had the technology you could create an intelligent robotic species that could survive in almost any environment. Its cliché but a war with alien robots might not be so far fetched after all.
What makes you think alien robots would be interested in war?
One of the things that has always bugged me about ST, SW, BSG, Farscape etc is the fait accompli that all vessels are armed to the teeth and meet similarly armed vessels. This is just ludicrous. I know the writers need conflict for dramatic purposes but I much prefer the Firefly scenario where most of them are not armed and the only people they are fighting, when they fight, are each other, since aliens haven't made it anywhere near humans.
One of the things that has always bugged me about ST, SW, BSG, Farscape etc is the fait accompli that all vessels are armed to the teeth and meet similarly armed vessels. This is just ludicrous. I know the writers need conflict for dramatic purposes but I much prefer the Firefly scenario where most of them are not armed and the only people they are fighting, when they fight, are each other, since aliens haven't made it anywhere near humans.
All very good points. This is a very interesting topic to me, one I can (obviously) talk about a very long time.
To reinforce your points, think of Dolphins, many people think they are already very intelligent, but no matter how intelligent they get, they don't have the physical tools (hands, opposing thumb, etc.) to manipulate their environment. They are forever destined to swim about thinking deep thoughts. Unless, some other technological agency hooks them up with tools to manipulate their environment.
Evolutionarily speaking, intelligence is a very beneficial trait as it wins over un- almost every time. Which is more survivable... the human or chimpanzee? You already answered that question. Or even an intellegent human over one with zero intel?
There is a lot of intellegence on earth in other species. Competition for resources pushes evolution, without limited resources a lot more species will survive. Once a species starts using tools, given enough time, competition, and resources (but not too many) it will develop more/better tools. Pretty much like we did. Remembering the greatest threat to an individual is another individual of the same species.
Given the set of intellegent life, the subset of those that can use tools is somewhat smaller. How much smaller is the question and guess. Looking around at our one data set of life on earth, of the billions of species we have several that use technology (tools), so it may not be as unlikely as we might first think.
Alien War: In media, alien/robot war is far more interesting (over and over) than a peaceful meeting. "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (The original) could be an example of peaceful. A couple others... "ET", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". You can only run peaceful so many ways, but there are innumerable ways to kill and blow up things. *IF* a species comes to earth because resources have been drained from their previous planet, then chances are the more aggressive of that species are the likely survivors. When they show up here looking for more resources would they worry about the indiginous life forms that are to us what we are to chimps?
Up thread, someone mentioned that if the aliens appear above our cities, it's a good sign indicating they don't want to destroy us. In my opinion it's more likely, they didn't want to harm the resources. An "explorer" wouldn't show up in force, a "plunderer" would. A small ship = explorer, the more or the bigger the worse for us.
Interestingly (to me), if you create a self-replicating self-programming AI, one of it's initial priorities would be self-preservation, no matter how basic. How many generations would it take for the AI to decide that having a gun of some sort would help it survive better? From there it would be a "more is better" thing. Such an armed robot may not show up guns blazing, but what would be a likely response if it was attacked?
I think first contact with an alien species would almost inevitably be disastrous. Shows like Star Trek attempt to paint Humans as being much more noble and dignified than we really are. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think Humans are evil, and I don’t think aliens will be evil either, I just think that we will be so different from each other and find it so hard to communicate with each other that conflict will inevitably ensue. We can’t even get along with members of our own species if they wear a funny hat and odd clothes. Imagine meeting a species of sentient molluscs who have five rows of razor sharp teeth, four genders and who ritually cannibalise their parents and give off the smell of rotting eggs when happy. Our first thoughts will be “lets find a way to kill them”. Not to mention the difficulties of communicating with a species whose primary sense is smell and talk in frequencies that humans can’t even hear. It could take hundreds of years to establish even a primitive dialogue.
What reasonable person WOULDN'T want to kill off a species like THAT?
Worse, the aliens will probably taste like chicken.
I think "Mars Attacks" is probably the most realistic scenario of first contact, without some (not all) of the shtick.
