So what would be the world's reaction if

[Akisa]

So what would be the world's reaction when we travel to the stars and discover not so alien life. Like landing on a planet where humans have evolved and appears it's not an isolated incident as other planets are like it.

[Yarram]

I think most world denominations would divide into two parties; The alien Killers and the alien Lovers.
I don't think there would be any integration, but I think embassies would form. Maybe tourism would occur?
[/no religious stuff]

[Don Julio Anejo]

I would look at their culture and if it resembles one from ancient Egypt, I would run like hell. Let me rephrase that actually. I would leave a live nuke there and run like hell.

[Coidzor]

<_< dissect and vivisect at least a few of 'em. **** some of 'em.

Other than that, eh. Who knows with theoretical sci-fi politics.

1st: "WTF?"

2nd: "... Can .... Can we **** 'em?"

3rd: "I dunno, but let's see what happens, FOR SCIENCE!"

Alternatively:

"How'd this happen, eh?" *geneticists enter stage left*

"But can we **** 'em?" *you know who enter stage right*

"Let's do both, FOR SCIENCE!" *XKCD guy*

[golentan]

So what would be the world's reaction when we travel to the stars and discover not so alien life. Like landing on a planet where humans have evolved and appears it's not an isolated incident as other planets are like it.

Ever play Traveller?

I think something like that would happen. Everyone would have a fit (other humans about earthling humans, earthling humans about other humans), the scientists would do gene studies and come up with the most plausible explanation (a wiz*precursor*ard did it), and the public in general would be weirded out by the idea of aliens but subconsciously expecting them to be just like us the whole time due to pseudoscience fiction with cheap special effects budgets going all the way back to the sixties, and wonder why the bio and chem majors were shouting angrily about ridiculous chiral, chemical, structural, and genetic coincidence.

Then we'd get on with our lives, fight a few wars, make a few nations, and go back to what we were doing before.

I would be mad as hell if I found that out, though. Misanthropy spoilered is misanthropic. First of all: what universe altering force looks at *humans* and says "Those are cool. I'd like to make them a complete set." Inneficiencies and little indignities are human's primary defining feature: You have less efficient muscle mass pound for pound than your nearest relative. Your body is designed neither for upright or four limbed locomotion, leading to massive back problems. You use. A. Bubble lung. Of all the stupid, innefficient systems that could have been chosen. You have. A bubble lung.

Then, let's talk about the appendix. And while we're at it, the colon. On second thought, let's not. On top of that, you have no regenerative capability, an enlarged brain but structurally weakened skull, a top speed, absolute top, of about 20 MPH. For sprinting. Way lower for any useful running period. Damage to your ears and you topple right over. You reek and are oily, and don't even like your OWN smell, leading to a massive perfume project. In your natural environment, your teeth have a lifespan about half of the rest of you, and rot painfully and smellily out of your jaw. Your nervous system has a top transfer speed of less than a couple hundred miles per hour. You're prone to neuroses, psychoses, and violence. You can't cooperate together long enough to agree on whether or not you should do something about world ending dilemmas, and your nightvision is terrible, even compared to what passes for your dayvision.

The only reason you developed tools was to compensate for your obvious other deficiencies as a species, the ones that caused the population to dip to under 1000 (well below the threshold for a phenomenon known as "population bottleneck"). And if I may say, the inbreeding frequently shows.

Any precursor who decided to replicate humanity is either very stupid or very cruel, and either way I'd like to give them a piece of my stinger.

And no, you can't convince me that random chance would provide the exact same laundry list of mistakes twice in the same galaxy.

/Misanthropic ranting.

[Faulty]

Interspecies love.

[GallóglachMaxim]

I would look at their culture and if it resembles one from ancient Egypt, I would run like hell. Let me rephrase that actually. I would leave a live nuke there and run like hell.

"I've seen this movie, I know what to do."

We'd find something to fight with them over, it's sort of our thing.

[Innis Cabal]

I get the appendix. But....why exactly was the colon mentioned?

[Krankheit]

@golentan
well following your logic of how flawed humanity is, whos to say a precursor didnt seed other habitable planets with us to prevent a decent rival from getting a chance to develop. Basically place a group of idiots everywhere knowing they have a decent chance of killing rival life forms when there developing, but have no chance of organizing on a large enough scale to ever pose a threat to a species of equal or greater power due to always having infighting over petty issues.

[golentan]

@golentan
well following your logic of how flawed humanity is, whos to say a precursor didnt seed other habitable planets with us to prevent a decent rival from getting a chance to develop. Basically place a group of idiots everywhere knowing they have a decent chance of killing rival life forms when there developing, but have no chance of organizing on a large enough scale to ever pose a threat to a species of equal or greater power due to always having infighting over petty issues.

Oh, no. I wouldn't bet dollars to donuts for any other species within a an order of magnitude to stand a chance against humans. You know why? Because humans are *insane.*

You kill for flimsy reasons, within your own species. Externally, "But they look like bugs" is almost always more than enough justification for planet sterilization. And when you kill, you don't mess around. You hurl people with sharp sticks against tanks and win. A side that was winning the war tested a weapon they weren't sure would destroy the world. You strap bombs to yourselves as force multipliers. You for centuries oppressed half your population on the grounds they were "weak." This being the same half that jabbed needles in themselves and drank arsenic for cosmetic reasons. You need metal detectors and fences on your children's educational facilities. Wolves look up to you as alpha creatures. You have gotten so good at making firearms that assault rifles cost less than food animals. You strapped yourselfs into modified ICBMs and made it to the moon by riding a chemical explosion. You've enslaved half of your biosphere, and are in the process of burning away the half that didn't bend when you pushed. You took your paltry 1000 population and built a world spanning, climate altering, faster, stronger civilization more powerful than most mass extinction events. I think it's easier to list non aggressive tendencies. Teddy bea... no, alpha predator + war hero. Ring around the ros... no, children celebrating the death of millions. Cak... no, the brutal slaughter and revolution of france, the enslavement of chickens, cows...

I have a theory. You're held back because you feel guilty about killing other humans. If you had an unambiguous foe, you'd feel free to really cut loose. There were three other near human hominids. They all met sudden, sudden ends within a few thousand years of human's ancestor's resurgence. It's like this giant, repressed inferiority complex over the aforementioned physical indignities.

Even at stoneage level, I have a sneaking suspicion that tanks genetically coded to their drivers and sent to kill you would wind up being driven by cavemen who had skinned the previous driver to make gloves that would let them work the joystick.

[Don Julio Anejo]

Damn, golentan... somehow you manage to turn even our advantages into disadvantages :biggrin:

I'll post a few things that make us great:
- opposable thumbs!
- some of the sharpest vision of all the animals (excluding predatory birds like eagles)
- brain capacity!
- tools. See, the best part is that with brains and tools it doesn't matter if we can't run like a cheetah or an antelope! We don't need to if we're smart enough to make an antelope kill itself, or better yet - live next to us unsuspecting of our foul intentions
- given decent training a human has some of the best endurance of all land animals (only beaten by horses, antelopes, etc) - over the course of days or weeks a human can outrun pretty much anyone else. Granted you need to use a special gait where you don't walk anymore but don't run just yet and take really long steps, but if you can learn to do it, you're all set
- 50 m/s reaction nervous system is slow for you? :smallconfused: An average human is less than 2m tall... That's 1/25th of a second to travel the length of a human. For comparison, squids who don't have myelinated axons barely have something like 5 m/s (can't be bothered to check the exact number at 3 AM) and a single axon for them is as thick as a human nerve (which has a few hundred axons bundled together)
- our natural environment is, ironically, the one we live in now. see above regarding tools and brain capacity :tongue: so teeth are to an extent a non-issue given fillings, crowns and dentures (albeit a painful and expensive non-issue)
- on muscles - we'd lose a lot of our freedom of motion if our muscles were attached in the same way as on apes. Sure, you could do 200 pound hammer curls, but then you wouldn't be able to throw a spear. Which one do you think is more useful to you, especially given thumbs, tools and brains?
- appendix - right now scientists tend to think it has an endocrine function, they just haven't been able to figure out what exactly

Granted a few things could be done better like our teeth, eyes (putting ganglia on the inside of the retina, not outside), tailbone needs to go (if you ever fell on your ass, you'd know), skull could be done better if you want to protect the brain, and appendix shouldn't catch infection that easily, but all in all I'd say we're pretty well designed biologically.

PS: the mere fact that we care about psychoses and neuroses (in contrast to, for example, finding enough food to live through tomorrow) and that we actually know what they are proves that we've done quite well compared to other species.

[The Rose Dragon]

- some of the sharpest vision of all the animals (excluding predatory birds like eagles)

Not sharpest, but definitely a one with the most number of features (color vision and ability to make out details!).

[Johel]

Simple :

We build gigantic city-sized ships.
We hover above the cities of the extraterrestrial humans.
We start a HD broadcast, featuring a gorgeous actress in bikini as ambassador : "-Greeting, [aliens], we come in peace, always. We are interested in... sharing things with you... many things, indeed."
And now, let's kill them all sterilize them all and steal their resources make them trade their resources in exchange for the sterility treatment.
It's really peaceful on this planet...


...What ? We didn't cross the cosmos to have to take care of another 8 billions people.

[OverdrivePrime]

Those posts by Golentan were some of the best I've ever read. Keep on Misanthrockin', Golentan! :smallbiggrin:

[Ravens_cry]

My first reaction would be, "Bummer, I thought they would be more alien then that."
My second thought would be, "This could be construed as evidence of a Creator."
My third thought would be, "Bummer, I thought She'd be more creative then that."
Don't want to drag religion into this, but those would be my thoughts.

[bosssmiley]

So what would be the world's reaction when we travel to the stars and discover not so alien life. Like landing on a planet where humans have evolved and appears it's not an isolated incident as other planets are like it.

The engineering challenge of getting to another star aside (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html), the "Moon landing was fake" wingnuts would have a field day and Buzz Aldrin's mighty fists would swing and swing. :smallamused:

Meanwhile Joe Sixpack and Darlene Sweatpants get angry over NASCAR and American Idol being bumped for this dumb 'momentous event' (which ain't even in Murka!)

And the French would whine and sulk that they weren't in charge.

[snoopy13a]

Large corporations would exploit their natural resources. Unless of course, their society is more powerful. Then, their large corporations would exploit our natural resources :smalltongue:

[Haven]

Large corporations would exploit their natural resources. Unless of course, their society is more powerful. Then, their large corporations would exploit our natural resources :smalltongue:

Probably this. I don't think it'd be much different overall than any other two societies encountering each other.

[SurlySeraph]

We'd arrive relatively peacefully, and try to establish communications and figure out whether they were more or less technologically advanced than us. If they were more advanced, we'd start trying to catch up by doing our own research and taking as much of their tech as we could. If they were less advanced, we would conquer them, establish them as a laboring underclass and ourselves as a ruling class, and over the course of centuries gradually allow them more rights until they were considered fully equal. Why? Every time in human history that a more technologically advanced society has found a less advanced one, it has tried to control it or at least profit off it as much as possible. And since they're fellow humans, we'd eventually end up considering them equal; while it often takes a long time, discrimination virtually always decreases the longer that two cultures are in contact.


First of all: what universe altering force looks at *humans* and says "Those are cool. I'd like to make them a complete set." Inneficiencies and little indignities are human's primary defining feature: You have less efficient muscle mass pound for pound than your nearest relative. Your body is designed neither for upright or four limbed locomotion, leading to massive back problems. You use. A. Bubble lung. Of all the stupid, innefficient systems that could have been chosen. You have. A bubble lung.

We're quite good at upright locomotion and fairly agile and flexible; few things that weigh as much as we do can climb, swim, *and* run like we do. The design flaws in our knees and lower backs have little effect until later in life, after reproduction has generally occurred. And we have hands-down the best endurance of any animal I'm aware of; we can literally walk after an antelope until it dies of exhaustion, than pick it up and carry it home. Plus, you know, opposable thumbs. We can throw things. The ability to use missile weapons is a huge advantage that virtually nothing else can match. And that's without making tools.


Then, let's talk about the appendix. And while we're at it, the colon. On second thought, let's not. On top of that, you have no regenerative capability, an enlarged brain but structurally weakened skull, a top speed, absolute top, of about 20 MPH. For sprinting. Way lower for any useful running period.

Maurice Green got 26.7 MPH, and I'm sure such speeds would be more typical in a society where running mattered more. Y'know, like the ones we had back before we domesticated horses. Which we can do, because we can analyze and manipulate or alter the natural behavior of other animals to bend them to our purposes.


You reek and are oily, and don't even like your OWN smell, leading to a massive perfume project.

Actually, that's a social construct. Studies have shown that people of both genders enjoy the scent of each other's sweat, just not so much when they're fully aware that it's sweat they're smelling.


In your natural environment, your teeth have a lifespan about half of the rest of you, and rot painfully and smellily out of your jaw.

Wisdom teeth make up for it.


Your nervous system has a top transfer speed of less than a couple hundred miles per hour.

More than enough.


You're prone to neuroses, psychoses, and violence. You can't cooperate together long enough to agree on whether or not you should do something about world ending dilemmas, and your nightvision is terrible, even compared to what passes for your dayvision.

Side effects of our totally awesome cognitive abilities. And we're better at cooperating than pretty much anything else, depending on exactly what parameters you value. No other creature has communication tools that can do anything ours can, including the ones we developed before electricity and writing.


The only reason you developed tools was to compensate for your obvious other deficiencies as a species, the ones that caused the population to dip to under 1000 (well below the threshold for a phenomenon known as "population bottleneck"). And if I may say, the inbreeding frequently shows.

Do note that our ancestors, including early Homo sapiens, had considerably thicker bones than modern humans do. And it's likely that they had greater muscle mass, as there's a correlation between bone strength and muscular strength, what with the need to avoid pushing so hard you snap your own arm.
What does this mean? It means that our tools allowed us to develop deficiencies (since they no longer mattered much for survival), not that our tools saved us from them. We were more physically capable before we used tools, but now we don't need to be, so we aren't. Our rotting teeth, back and knee problems, nonfunctional appendices (which in other primates help digest cellulose), etc. are only problems because now we live long enough for problems with them to manifest. Back when we had an average life expectancy of 30 years, we would barely notice those. But due to our awesomeness we can live up to three times as long now as was typical back in the early days. Why? Tools are better than natural abilities.


Oh, no. I wouldn't bet dollars to donuts for any other species within a an order of magnitude to stand a chance against humans. You know why? Because humans are *insane.* You kill for flimsy reasons, within your own species.

All kinds of animals fight each other like crazy during mating season, with occasional deaths. Dolphins kill each other's children, and appear to kill porpoises for fun; some speculate that they kill porpoises to practice for killing each other, since the two species are morphologically similar. Chimps will kill and eat each other's babies even within groups. Recreational murder appears to be a standard trait of highly intelligent species. Indeed, chimps smile at humans that they want to attack - not the teeth-baring display that humans tend to mistake for a smile, actual smiling that they use to express joy - to lure them in. Chimps don't do that to other chimps, because other chimps don't fall for it. But we do.


Externally, "But they look like bugs" is almost always more than enough justification for planet sterilization.

Now, we don't have enough evidence to say that yet.


And when you kill, you don't mess around. You hurl people with sharp sticks against tanks and win. A side that was winning the war tested a weapon they weren't sure would destroy the world. You strap bombs to yourselves as force multipliers.

For most of human history, warfare was primarily displays of force with very little actual killing; counting coup and such was standard practice. The reason a more ruthless paradigm of war developed is because it's so much more effective at getting you what you want than just scaring your opponents is. A common trend of historical developments in warfare is that the less sentimental side wins; weapons over fistfighting, highly disciplined infantry formations over screaming hordes, skirmishing horse archers over close infantry formations, massed longbows and crossbows over glorious cavalry charges, guns over swords, and on and on up to unmanned drones over soldiers on the ground.


You for centuries oppressed half your population on the grounds they were "weak." This being the same half that jabbed needles in themselves and drank arsenic for cosmetic reasons. You need metal detectors and fences on your children's educational facilities. Wolves look up to you as alpha creatures. You have gotten so good at making firearms that assault rifles cost less than food animals.

We also inject pathogens into our children to make them stronger (vaccination), poisons into ourselves for the same reason (various historical rulers building up resistance), most of our recreational activities and spectacles have a strong violent component (from gladiators to action movies), and so on. We are strong.


You strapped yourselfs into modified ICBMs and made it to the moon by riding a chemical explosion. You've enslaved half of your biosphere, and are in the process of burning away the half that didn't bend when you pushed. You took your paltry 1000 population and built a world spanning, climate altering, faster, stronger civilization more powerful than most mass extinction events. I think it's easier to list non aggressive tendencies. Teddy bea... no, alpha predator + war hero. Ring around the ros... no, children celebrating the death of millions. Cak... no, the brutal slaughter and revolution of france, the enslavement of chickens, cows...

And it worked. We're the first species that's even had the concept of conservation, because no species before us could alter anything on the scale we can. And we have a genuine chance of being able to keep our standard of living while keeping the rest of the planet intact. "Ring around the rosie" is more commemoration of the plague than celebration; but being able to make a cheerful game out of remembering a disease that killed a third of our population shows remarkable mental resilience. The French Revolution was small time; the Khmer Rouge killed an eighth of their countries population to ensure a complete break with the past. We've helped millions if not billions more animals (of species that are useful to us) live, far more than would have ever been born without us, because they're useful to us and we like them. Chickens spread all over the world, cows didn't vanish with the aurochs, and countless dogs and cats live, because we've taken them under our patronage. We are awesome.


I have a theory. You're held back because you feel guilty about killing other humans. If you had an unambiguous foe, you'd feel free to really cut loose. There were three other near human hominids. They all met sudden, sudden ends within a few thousand years of human's ancestor's resurgence. It's like this giant, repressed inferiority complex over the aforementioned physical indignities.

Inferiority complex? We've established that humanity is an often-reckless, often-ruthless, juggernaut. We don't take mastery of the world because we feel bad about being weak, we took mastery of the world because we were the only ones powerful enough to do so. By your theory, the platypus or giant panda should be master of the world.


Even at stoneage level, I have a sneaking suspicion that tanks genetically coded to their drivers and sent to kill you would wind up being driven by cavemen who had skinned the previous driver to make gloves that would let them work the joystick.[/spoiler]

Creativity and logic are beautiful things.

[golentan]

Damn, golentan... somehow you manage to turn even our advantages into disadvantages :biggrin:

I'll post a few things that make us great:
- opposable thumbs!
Expected of any tool user.


- some of the sharpest vision of all the animals (excluding predatory birds like eagles)
Sharpest, no. But, as mentioned by the above poster, it is a swiss army knife of vision.


- brain capacity!
Cool. I expect that of any sentient. And as stated, your brain is pathetically protected. You can die from a few pounds on the temple. Your skull is thin, and you lack padding, and it's on the end of a nice, easily severed neck filled with targets, but okay.


- tools. See, the best part is that with brains and tools it doesn't matter if we can't run like a cheetah or an antelope! We don't need to if we're smart enough to make an antelope kill itself, or better yet - live next to us unsuspecting of our foul intentions
Tools are cool. But wouldn't your rather have tools and the ability to perform physically as well as genus neighbors?


- given decent training a human has some of the best endurance of all land animals (only beaten by horses, antelopes, etc) - over the course of days or weeks a human can outrun pretty much anyone else. Granted you need to use a special gait where you don't walk anymore but don't run just yet and take really long steps, but if you can learn to do it, you're all set
Yep. Horses actually have less endurance, which is why the Greeks used humans for messengers. Still doesn't change the fact that the method of running (two legs no tail) leads to catastrophic back failure (esp. during lifting).


- 50 m/s reaction nervous system is slow for you? :smallconfused: An average human is less than 2m tall... That's 1/25th of a second to travel the length of a human. For comparison, squids who don't have myelinated axons barely have something like 5 m/s (can't be bothered to check the exact number at 3 AM) and a single axon for them is as thick as a human nerve (which has a few hundred axons bundled together)
Yes, it's slow. Comparing it to Squid is a trap. (it's about processing speed in the brain being limited by transmission speed, not about how fast it reaches your extremities). Comparing it to animals is a Trap, in fact. The Axon Synapse system as a whole is a trap.


- our natural environment is, ironically, the one we live in now. see above regarding tools and brain capacity :tongue: so teeth are to an extent a non-issue given fillings, crowns and dentures (albeit a painful and expensive non-issue)
Which is why dental hygiene has been so historically good, and since there is never any chance of a collapse of the industrial base why worry, yes?

And my point was "little pains and indignities are the human physical condition." An unnecessary source of pain doesn't count?


- on muscles - we'd lose a lot of our freedom of motion if our muscles were attached in the same way as on apes. Sure, you could do 200 pound hammer curls, but then you wouldn't be able to throw a spear. Which one do you think is more useful to you, especially given thumbs, tools and brains?
Chimpanzees disagree on their range of motion. They disagree with 5 times the muscle power. There's even a saying I've heard. "If you throw a spear at the gorilla, it will jump out of the way. Do the same with the chimpanzee, and it will catch the spear... then throw it back at you."


- appendix - right now scientists tend to think it has an endocrine function, they just haven't been able to figure out what exactly

An endocrine function small enough that the item can be excised evidently without major consequence. Comparatively, let's consider exactly how painful appendicitis is. And if it bursts? Ooh, that's not a fun way to go. It's not what it accomplishes, it's the needlessness of accomplishing it that way, and all of the associated problems.


Granted a few things could be done better like our teeth, eyes (putting ganglia on the inside of the retina, not outside), tailbone needs to go (if you ever fell on your ass, you'd know), skull could be done better if you want to protect the brain, and appendix shouldn't catch infection that easily, but all in all I'd say we're pretty well designed biologically.
The point was that all these things not only could be done better, they're fairly pathetic and painful indignities.

And actually, ganglia after blood vessels is one of the eye things what got done right. It decreases acuity, but prevents UV triggered corneal rot. Most of the time, anyway.


PS: the mere fact that we care about psychoses and neuroses (in contrast to, for example, finding enough food to live through tomorrow) and that we actually know what they are proves that we've done quite well compared to other species.

Yes, doing well. Do the aforementioned racial insanity, and stabbing and fire. Again, the point is it can and should be done better, not that it's nonfunctional.

[AtomicKitKat]

I would likely fall into the "So when can we start mating with their green-skinned space babes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe)?" category.:smalltongue:

[Trog]

My guesses on the world reaction:

First and foremost would be a reaction I cannot talk about on the boards. Let's just say that many would point to this as proof of something.

Curiosity would be the big one though. Everyone would want to know more about this species. About the planet. It's history, figures of importance, etc. Also they're be a lot of xenophobia, concerns about diseases (both ways), etc. The last thing either planet needs is an off-world origin plague.

Depending on what resources we were using and the aliens' desires and proximity to those resources would primarily determine whether or not we viewed them as a threat. If we were out planning to, say, mine for some resource on their moon and they were planning to do the same, for example, you would begin to run into conflicts.

If, however, we discovered this race of other humans through some super-powered telescope of the future that could zoom in and look at an exo-planet the same way we can with our own planet now, say, and there was no chance of ever actually visiting them anytime soon we'd likely debate about whether to contact them or not, likely wishing to gather as much intelligence about them before we attempted contact somehow. Wow... that was a long sentence. o.O

[SurlySeraph]

Expected of any tool user.

Crows, gulls, otters, dolphins, and arguably hermit crabs.


Cool. I expect that of any sentient. And as stated, your brain is pathetically protected. You can die from a few pounds on the temple. Your skull is thin, and you lack padding, and it's on the end of a nice, easily severed neck filled with targets, but okay.

As we and arguably chimps, elephants, and dolphins are the only sentients we know of, it's questionable whether other sentients would do any better.


Tools are cool. But wouldn't your rather have tools and the ability to perform physically as well as genus neighbors?

But we don't need to anymore.


Chimpanzees disagree on their range of motion. They disagree with 5 times the muscle power. There's even a saying I've heard. "If you throw a spear at the gorilla, it will jump out of the way. Do the same with the chimpanzee, and it will catch the spear... then throw it back at you."

I've seen chimps throwing objects around to intimidate potential predators, but I've never seen them throw an object directly as a weapon, or with any reasonable aim. And spears are fast, fast and hard to bat aside. Let's test that.


Yes, doing well. Do the aforementioned racial insanity, and stabbing and fire. Again, the point is it can and should be done better, not that it's nonfunctional.

We don't know if other species even have the concept of insanity (though mistreated primates and elephants develop similar symptoms to mistreated humans). Given how well our mental attitudes have worked out for us, I'd say that we're the most sane living thing. How many other species even have the concept of reason? Being able to judge a difference between rational and irrational actions, like being able to realize that we're destroying our environment and developing a concept of conservation, is just another proof of our might.

[alchemyprime]

What would we do? See the biological differences. And if they are under a red sun, we warn them, quickly, to check for seismic abnormalities, and if there is any, we will take their infants to Baptist homes in rural Kansas.

If the have time travelling police boxes, I will tag along with them.

If they are cute and have super powers and are trying to save us, I will find the one who indulged in nerd culture and/or the redheaded female of the group.

A man can dream...

If they have boobs and try to seduce me, I will run like hell. Half the time that's porn, half the time that's horror films. And I'm paranoid.

And if they try to conquer us? Well...

I'll keep in mind it'll take about 20 years to get here (closest start is double digits away). I'll find the 10 year old son of a millioniare philanthropist with a loving, ex-war butler he treats like a member of the family and vice versa in a city populated by the worst of the worst.

I will send them to see a Zorro film (or maybe Iron Man 2...) and then hire a thug to act all cracked up and kill his parents, breaking the string of pearls the child's mother is wearing. I will make certain the child swears revenge and stick to it.

After roughly 12 years (4 years until the Secret Invasion, which I will have kept under wraps), he will return from learning everything and being amazing. He will amass a set of gadgets and ninja training. We will find him a young ward, from a similar background, nut not as jaded. He will become paranoid of everything, and even use the boy as a contingency plan on himself. The next four years will turn the man into an urban legend.

And then, when the "nearly us" aliens arrive, they will be swiftly defeated by a man in combat gear and a boy in acrobatics attire.

And when the final alien, entirely ready to die, speaks the little Earth language he knows (I'd assume English or Mandarin, he'd have two years to practice from TV signals), the man will reply, "I. Am. Batman!"



Alternatively, we cripple a millionaire scientist or use a spider on a teenager. Good to have a back up plan.

If they do conquer us, introduce their females to the Book of Sparklefails and treat them badly. Breed them out. Maybe we'll get powers out of the deal.

I just realized I turned all Machiavellian in order to get Batman to save us. ... I think I'm evil.

And I just planned on introducing purple prose and abuse to the females... Wait a minute... THE INVASION HAS BEGUN! AHHHHH!


Seriously? We're humans. We have three instincts: run away, nuke it or make babies with it. Most get nuke or avoided. Aliens that look like us? I'd say we'd do a little of all three (but hopefully not the last to at the same time...)

[GallóglachMaxim]

I've seen chimps throwing objects around to intimidate potential predators, but I've never seen them throw an object directly as a weapon, or with any reasonable aim.

There's a good reason for that, Chimps (and other hominids, for that matter) don't have Innate Ballistic Awareness, unlike us, their brains can't naturally calculate where something will go if they throw it. More interestingly, there's a theory that having that is what made us able to develop language, because the areas of the brain involved in both are closely connected.

[Eldan]

Yes, it's slow. Comparing it to Squid is a trap. (it's about processing speed in the brain being limited by transmission speed, not about how fast it reaches your extremities). Comparing it to animals is a Trap, in fact. The Axon Synapse system as a whole is a trap.


I wouldn't say that, actually. Synapses are amazing things: they are not fast wires, but they enable gradual modification of connections while they are running. Can't do that with a copper wire.

[spoiler]
Which is why dental hygiene has been so historically good, and since there is never any chance of a collapse of the industrial base why worry, yes?
[/QUOTE]

I've seen studies that, actually, bad dental hygiene is a relatively recent development: ancient societies lacked refined suger in their diets.

[Pyrian]

Depends a lot on the culture; stone-ground foodstuffs were really hard on teeth, too.

[Lupy]

I'm going with the "Columbus theory."

Whichever one of us reaches the other is technologically superior and enslave us, force their language and religion on us, and then give us equality a couple hundred years letter.

[Pyrian]

Here we instead gave them casinos for some reason. :smalltongue:

[Solaris]

Oh, no. I wouldn't bet dollars to donuts for any other species within a an order of magnitude to stand a chance against humans. You know why? Because humans are *insane.*

You kill for flimsy reasons, within your own species. Externally, "But they look like bugs" is almost always more than enough justification for planet sterilization. And when you kill, you don't mess around. You hurl people with sharp sticks against tanks and win. A side that was winning the war tested a weapon they weren't sure would destroy the world. You strap bombs to yourselves as force multipliers. You for centuries oppressed half your population on the grounds they were "weak." This being the same half that jabbed needles in themselves and drank arsenic for cosmetic reasons. You need metal detectors and fences on your children's educational facilities. Wolves look up to you as alpha creatures. You have gotten so good at making firearms that assault rifles cost less than food animals. You strapped yourselfs into modified ICBMs and made it to the moon by riding a chemical explosion. You've enslaved half of your biosphere, and are in the process of burning away the half that didn't bend when you pushed. You took your paltry 1000 population and built a world spanning, climate altering, faster, stronger civilization more powerful than most mass extinction events. I think it's easier to list non aggressive tendencies. Teddy bea... no, alpha predator + war hero. Ring around the ros... no, children celebrating the death of millions. Cak... no, the brutal slaughter and revolution of france, the enslavement of chickens, cows...

I have a theory. You're held back because you feel guilty about killing other humans. If you had an unambiguous foe, you'd feel free to really cut loose. There were three other near human hominids. They all met sudden, sudden ends within a few thousand years of human's ancestor's resurgence. It's like this giant, repressed inferiority complex over the aforementioned physical indignities.

Even at stoneage level, I have a sneaking suspicion that tanks genetically coded to their drivers and sent to kill you would wind up being driven by cavemen who had skinned the previous driver to make gloves that would let them work the joystick.

You say that like it's a bad thing.
Besides, we're not holding back because of guilt. We're holding back because if we annihilate the other guy, we just ruined our planet too. That's why I'm quite convinced that shortly after Martian colonies become self-sufficient, there will be only one world in Sol System supporting human life... one way or the other.

The eventual contact, methinks, would most likely start off peacefully. It generally does, to say nothing of the massive expense and effort both societies put into just being able to talk to each other. After all, humanity's first instinct is to gauge a potential threat, and a lot of societies do have a 'ask questions first' policy on our planet. I'd assume Exo-Earth would be similar.

[golentan]

You say that like it's a bad thing.
Besides, we're not holding back because of guilt. We're holding back because if we annihilate the other guy, we just ruined our planet too. That's why I'm quite convinced that shortly after Martian colonies become self-sufficient, there will be only one world in Sol System supporting human life... one way or the other.

The eventual contact, methinks, would most likely start off peacefully. It generally does, to say nothing of the massive expense and effort both societies put into just being able to talk to each other. After all, humanity's first instinct is to gauge a potential threat, and a lot of societies do have a 'ask questions first' policy on our planet. I'd assume Exo-Earth would be similar.

Are you kidding? That's a rant of respect. Heck, the "do or die" attitude may be the one thing I do respect about humans.* And yeah: cheap space travel is a guarantee of human survival for at least a few centuries. It does, however, drastically reduce the chances of human survival on earth.

My final word is that people have a tendency to anthropomorphize things. Don't assume that other things feel the same way as you do, even if they have analogues. I tend to do the same thing with some human artifacts: Family is like Clan, love equates to Love, hate to Destruction Reflex, Fear to Concern, loneliness to Abandonment Complex, Nation to Hive, The U.N. to Collective, and so forth. But all these things are different, and have different responses in people than in me. I adopt them as analogues to stay sane, but I have to keep reminding myself that at heart, people are aliens, even if they do have a number of similar traits.

*runner ups include: Affection, your crazy beliefs about freedom, and your capacity for abstraction and loyalty in the support of your various crazy beliefs.