SFDebris arguments regarding contact with extraterrestrial life

[Cikomyr]

You can see his arguments in this page (http://blip.tv/sf-debris-opinionated-reviews/extraterrestrial-life-and-us-6585540). It's a nice 23 minutes video, quite interesting. I wanted to to open a discussion about it here.

The question we should discuss isn't "are there aliens" or "have they visited us", it's more of a "what should we do in case we ever meet them?". The video was issued following his review on TSN's episode "First Contact".


Now, I just have one thing to say regarding the final mental exercise he submits. It's less of a case of "being in Central park", and more about "being in the middle of the desert". There are no exits, and there isn't even clues regarding the presence of anybody else. You KNOW there are bad people in Central Parks, you aren't even sure there is anybody else in the desert.. So while I agree that One Should Never Gamble With Humanity's Survival principle, I don't know if we should act as paranoid as the exercise would lead us to be.


Anyway: discuss!

[MLai]

A big part of the argument in favor of caution is "We have no idea what aliens, nevermind intelligent aliens, are like."
Therefore, IMO the first order of business is "Get out there into the solar system and find the primitive lifeforms hidden on Titan and Europa. Then we'll have an idea whether our anthropic principles such as evolution hold true for alien life as well."
If it does, then we can start making assumptions on how intelligent aliens might think. IMO, I think evolution as a process should be pretty universal.

[Frozen_Feet]

What do you mean by evolution?

If you mean natural selection, you're very likely to be right. The core principle of "survival of the fittest" should be applicable regardless of other specifics.

But that isn't very useful. All it tells us is that any intelligence we're likely to encounter will have developed in response to a set of problems in its place of origin. Without specific knowledge of what those problems are, we are none the wiser of what kind of thought processes that intelligence might possess.

Especially considering that 80% of the context of evolution for organic life is provided by other organic lifeforms. Only 20% is provided by inorganic environment. So we can't make far-reaching deduction based on basic planetary qualities, because majority of the problems (and hence, context) our extraterrestrial intelligence will have faced have been caused by other alien lifeforms.

Also, specific mechanisms of evolution, such as DNA, are much less likely to exist outside of earth.

[Cikomyr]

What do you mean by evolution?

If you mean natural selection, you're very likely to be right. The core principle of "survival of the fittest" should be applicable regardless of other specifics.

But that isn't very useful. All it tells us is that any intelligence we're likely to encounter will have developed in response to a set of problems in its place of origin. Without specific knowledge of what those problems are, we are none the wiser of what kind of thought processes that intelligence might possess.

Especially considering that 80% of the context of evolution for organic life is provided by other organic lifeforms. Only 20% is provided by inorganic environment. So we can't make far-reaching deduction based on basic planetary qualities, because majority of the problems (and hence, context) our extraterrestrial intelligence will have faced have been caused by other alien lifeforms.

Also, specific mechanisms of evolution, such as DNA, are much less likely to exist outside of earth.

Except that we can assume that any intelligence that we will meet will have met problems. Otherwise there are little reasons to have became intelligent in the first place.

And we can assume that it had the desire to DEAL with these problems. Otherwise it wouldn't have survived/thrived beyond mere subsistance; no ambition to do more than just live.

[Grinner]

Especially considering that 80% of the context of evolution for organic life is provided by other organic lifeforms. Only 20% is provided by inorganic environment. So we can't make far-reaching deduction based on basic planetary qualities, because majority of the problems (and hence, context) our extraterrestrial intelligence will have faced have been caused by other alien lifeforms.

Where did you get this figure from?


Also, specific mechanisms of evolution, such as DNA, are much less likely to exist outside of earth.

Actually, there's something very interesting about that. A while back, researchers found that plasma in a microgravity environment can arrange itself into helical structures (http://www.space.com/4219-hot-gas-space-mimics-life.html).

[Water_Bear]

The way we respond to aliens depends on their motives. I can really only think of three which make any sense.


To Learn: You don't just trip and fall into the ability to leave your solar system; that requires a lot of knowledge about how the universe works. And what better source of knowledge than looking at how other optimization processes like evolution or intelligence have solved problems elsewhere? Information about alien forms of life is one of the few resources I can imagine being valuable enough to actually be worth going dozens or hundreds of light years to get.
In terms of how that data is collected, I personally doubt a human conception of "ethics" is going to play any role; the aliens will choose whatever method of observation or experimentation is most efficient for their purposes.
To Reproduce: No, not the probing. Get your mind out of the gutter. :smalltongue:
I just see the metaphor as more apt than "colonization" which implies communication and trade which interstellar distances make pointless. Sending out members of your own species to make new civilizations in other solar systems is a good way to ensure the species survives, if a costly one, and logic indicates that those species which do so will have more of a reason to send out tons of expensive spacecraft in the first place.
Needless to say, the Xenoforming of Earth is not something which Humans can possibly survive in our present form.
To Kill: With relativistic weapons, the risk of an alien species with hostile intent discovering and attacking them means that preemptive strikes are an option worth considering. And because other species might think the same way, the chances of them being hostile are much higher.
Aliens might decide that playing it safe means wiping out any alien life they find.


So if we do run into aliens, even if their intent isn't explicitly hostile, their goals (data collection/xenoforming/self defense) will probably conflict with ours (surviving in our present form). As such, contact protocols ought to be primarily concerned with destroying all ships as soon as they enter the heliosphere, thus making any alien goal too expensive to continue to pursue.

[Frozen_Feet]

Except that we can assume that any intelligence that we will meet will have met problems. Otherwise there are little reasons to have became intelligent in the first place.

And we can assume that it had the desire to DEAL with these problems. Otherwise it wouldn't have survived/thrived beyond mere subsistance; no ambition to do more than just live.

These are so general as to be near-useless.


Where did you get this figure from?


My biology textbook. I'm trying to find an english source for your perusal.

[Grinner]

My biology textbook. I'm trying to find an english source for your perusal.

Don't worry about it. I was just curious because 80:20 tends to crop up a lot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle).

What's the name of your textbook, anyway?

[warty goblin]

My biology textbook. I'm trying to find an english source for your perusal.

I'd imagine the amount of pressure caused by environment depends heavily on the sort of environment we're talking about. Emperor penguins are pretty clearly under quite a lot of pressure due to Antarctica being cold as hell.

[Frozen_Feet]

I'm embarrassed to say I don't actually remember, despite rearranging my bookshelf just a week ago. I heavily suspect it was just something banal like "Koulubiologia", that is, "school biology" in Finnish.

Though I don't think it's directly about the Pareto principle. Just the observable fact that living beings do evolve in response to other living beings. The arm's race between preys and predators is a prime example; intelligence, being one key factor in such races, is very sensitive to such pattern.

In other words, the fox is trying to be the best in catching rabbits, and rabbits try to be best at not getting caught by foxes. Rinse and repeat for a few generations, and you have very cunning foxes and very agile rabbits. Or dead rabbits and starving foxes.

[Cikomyr]

These are so general as to be near-useless.


I hardly think so. If you can safely assume that an alien intelligence would have possessed traits such as ambition and aggressiveness in its past, then playing it safe must be a safe reaction to take.

[warty goblin]

I hardly think so. If you can safely assume that an alien intelligence would have possessed traits such as ambition and aggressiveness in its past, then playing it safe must be a safe reaction to take.

On the other hand, if that means you can assume aliens possess some degree of communal motivation and desire to protect said community from outsiders, playing it safe in the sense of nuking any aliens who showed up would be anything but. Combine these attributes with aggression and ambition, you have a recipe for getting humanity involved in an interstellar war we're probably doomed to lose.

My thinking on this is that if they're out to kill or xenoform the planet, blowing up the recon team probably isn't going to change that. If anything, I'd think the logical supposition is that the aliens figure we're a threat, and better to deal with us sooner rather than later.

If they're not interested in all things unpleasant, blowing them up could shift our species from 'intellectual curiousity' to 'target practice' in one hell of a hurry. And because I'm fairly certain reality isn't written by David Webber, it seems unlikely that humanity is any more of a vicious bastard when it comes to warfare than anything else out there. Right here on Earth we've got ants, which pretty much prove that point.

[Cikomyr]

On the other hand, if that means you can assume aliens possess some degree of communal motivation and desire to protect said community from outsiders, playing it safe in the sense of nuking any aliens who showed up would be anything but. Combine these attributes with aggression and ambition, you have a recipe for getting humanity involved in an interstellar war we're probably doomed to lose.

If they do show up on our doorstep, there is little point in hiding anymore. We simply have to keep a hand on the button until we are relatively certain of otherwise.


My thinking on this is that if they're out to kill or xenoform the planet, blowing up the recon team probably isn't going to change that. If anything, I'd think the logical supposition is that the aliens figure we're a threat, and better to deal with us sooner rather than later.

If they're not interested in all things unpleasant, blowing them up could shift our species from 'intellectual curiousity' to 'target practice' in one hell of a hurry. And because I'm fairly certain reality isn't written by David Webber, it seems unlikely that humanity is any more of a vicious bastard when it comes to warfare than anything else out there. Right here on Earth we've got ants, which pretty much prove that point.

The point isn't necessarily to strike first. The point is that our defense layers should be twofold:

1- Remain hidden
2- Make our intentions abundantly clear that we are not going to take any form of potentially hostile behavior without retaliation.

Like Chuck said, there isn't any difference from an interstellar bomb and a rocket going at 0.01c. The kinetic impact alone could wipe out a good portion of our humanity if they only go a fraction of the speed involved in interstellar travel. The point we should make to potential aliens is: "Don't adopt aggressive behavior. Adopt a trajectory that won't look aggressive to us."

[GenericGuy]

My answer to the Fermi Paradox (if life is common, where the heck is everybody?) is either, some other intelligent life has already become an interstellar civilization and whenever any competition sticks its head out (a la whack-a-mole) it is immediately snuffed out.

Or, interstellar civilization is really really impractical. It makes great fiction to imagine civilization spreading throughout the stars like our own terrestrial nation-states, but I’m not convinced that an intelligent species can A) circumvent the light-speed barrier in a cost vs. benefit way, B) need the resources of other Solar Systems when there is plenty of raw material in their own C) Risk attracting an alien threat.

[Frozen_Feet]

I hardly think so. If you can safely assume that an alien intelligence would have possessed traits such as ambition and aggressiveness in its past, then playing it safe must be a safe reaction to take.

"Playing it safe", in this case meaning non-interference, is safe by definition. But we can't assume anything. Like was pointed out in the video, even, once a civilization evolves past a point where aggressiveness and ambition cease to be overtly useful, the bets are off. More to the point, there are different types of aggressiveness and ambition - we can't know which form these traits take in an alien civilization, before we know what kinds of problems it has faced or is facing.

[Cikomyr]

"Playing it safe", in this case meaning non-interference, is safe by definition. But we can't assume anything. Like was pointed out in the video, even, once a civilization evolves past a point where aggressiveness and ambition cease to be overtly useful, the bets are off. More to the point, there are different types of aggressiveness and ambition - we can't know which form these traits take in an alien civilization, before we know what kinds of problems it has faced or is facing.

I did say "have possessed" past tense. Meaning that they would certainly understand the concept of, at least intellectually.

[Frozen_Feet]

There is no guarantee of that either.

[warty goblin]

If they do show up on our doorstep, there is little point in hiding anymore. We simply have to keep a hand on the button until we are relatively certain of otherwise.

Which button? I mean it seems to require an incredibly specific level of extraterrestrial incompetence to be able to claw their way across the light-years to our doorstep, but be threatened by whatever we have sitting around capable of projecting force into space. In no small part because we really don't have anything sitting around capable of threatening a space-born target.



The point isn't necessarily to strike first. The point is that our defense layers should be twofold:

1- Remain hidden
2- Make our intentions abundantly clear that we are not going to take any form of potentially hostile behavior without retaliation.
I don't think you can really get both of those things at the same time. The only effective way to counter an extra-terrestrial space-born threat is with a space capable military. Moreover, it would have to be a space-based military capable of generating massive thrust, since the aliens would presumably have the same capacity. Things capable of generating massive thrust, at least with any technology we can conceive, tend to be quite bright. Aka not stealthy.


Like Chuck said, there isn't any difference from an interstellar bomb and a rocket going at 0.01c. The kinetic impact alone could wipe out a good portion of our humanity if they only go a fraction of the speed involved in interstellar travel. The point we should make to potential aliens is: "Don't adopt aggressive behavior. Adopt a trajectory that won't look aggressive to us."
Which we do how? Building anything capable of threatening either an alien fleet or planet would be the largest engineering project ever undertaken by orders of magnitude. And we have to figure out some way of communicating this message to any incoming aliens, then bank on the assumption they figure our untested interstellar rocket artillery will both work and be something they can't neutralize after we fire it.

The way I see it, either any incoming aliens are already hostile or they aren't. And either they think anything we cobble together is a credible threat or it isn't.

If they're hostile and they think we're a credible threat, the reasonable - and worst case - guess is that they'll become more hostile. Personally, playing chicken with a species capable of interstellar travel and conquest sounds like a losing proposition. Particularly since any species capable of such is probably fairly adept at long-range planning, and can reasonably be supposed to have a contingency for existential threat scale resistance already on the table. The outcome where they decide to peaceably go their way does not seem particularly likely.

If they're hostile and don't think we're a credible threat, we're still screwed. Quite possibly extra screwed, simply because we were attempting resistance. The probability of them going peacefully away is indistinguishable from zero.

If they aren't hostile and we escalate to interstellar rocket artillery, either they go away and we lose out on lots of potentially amazing scientific and intellectual advances, or they decide to become hostile. In which case see above.


I'm seeing a lot more loss than win there.

If we don't start building giant death rockets though, the non-hostile options turn into significant wins, balanced only by the slender proposition that our feeble and backwards resistance is enough to get a hostile fleet to call the whole thing off.

[Grinner]

Which button? I mean it seems to require an incredibly specific level of extraterrestrial incompetence to be able to claw their way across the light-years to our doorstep, but be threatened by whatever we have sitting around capable of projecting force into space. In no small part because we really don't have anything sitting around capable of threatening a space-born target.

Well, those intercontinental ballistic missiles we have laying around from the Cold War would be a good start.

Really though, that isn't the issue. Yes, we have a lot of things that go boom. The problem is that we're sitting ducks. We have little means of defending against spaceborn attacks, and our ability to strike at a space-faring civilization is limited by their proximity. They, on the other hand, wouldn't even need to be within our range to attack.

Really, our best option would be negotiation.

[hamishspence]

Well, those intercontinental ballistic missiles we have laying around from the Cold War would be a good start.

None of which are designed to hit anything in orbit, much less beyond it.

[Cikomyr]

Actually, I think my point was made in case the aliens aren't necessarily hostile. But nothing says they wouldn't attack us because of a misunderstanding. The idea is to show them we'd rather not have a fight, but we aren't going to allow threatening posture either.

I am not sure, however, if ICBM would really work. It's a lot harder to send a payload into outer space than it is to send it somewhere else in in the world. Energy-wise, obviously. Not sure what the difficulty are regarding "precisions"

[Frozen_Feet]

Problem: how are you going to communicate with these aliens? They might not have any concept of language as we know it. They might have completely foreign concepts of logic or intuition. They might have completely foreign manners of communication.

Just the task of finding a way to get through to any hypothetical aliens will take years or decades from us. Our only hope of fast-tracking this process is if they have technology specifically geared towards this task that is way more advanced than ours... something that is hardly guaranteed.

[Grinner]

I am not sure, however, if ICBM would really work. It's a lot harder to send a payload into outer space than it is to send it somewhere else in in the world. Energy-wise, obviously. Not sure what the difficulty are regarding "precisions"

No, they would need to be extensively retrofitted. Better yet, they could be stripped down and sent to Cape Canaveral. They keep spare space shuttle parts there, after all.

Edit:
Problem: how are you going to communicate with these aliens? They might not have any concept of language as we know it. They might have completely foreign concepts of logic or intuition. They might have completely foreign manners of communication.

Just the task of finding a way to get through to any hypothetical aliens will take years or decades from us. Our only hope of fast-tracking this process is if they have technology specifically geared towards this task that is way more advanced than ours... something that is hardly guaranteed.

Then we'll send our best...


Jane Goodall!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Jane_Goodall_HK.jpg/450px-Jane_Goodall_HK.jpg

[warty goblin]

Actually, I think my point was made in case the aliens aren't necessarily hostile. But nothing says they wouldn't attack us because of a misunderstanding. The idea is to show them we'd rather not have a fight, but we aren't going to allow threatening posture either.

I think the only reasonable assumption is that anything capable of crossing interstellar space would kick our kidneys out through our ears in a fight in the first place. There's no point in getting all 'we won't tolerate threats' because we aren't in a position of sufficient strength to effectively bargain.

Imagine for a moment that the only two countries in the world were the US and a continent inhabited by people armed with nothing more advanced than sixteenth century muskets. If the US decided to 'request' all their wealth, do you think Musketland's best play is a show of force? Personally I think the wiser course of action is to dig out the dictionary and look up 'Danegeld'.


I am not sure, however, if ICBM would really work. It's a lot harder to send a payload into outer space than it is to send it somewhere else in in the world. Energy-wise, obviously. Not sure what the difficulty are regarding "precisions"
The biggest problem is that you need to get a nuke really close to something in space to mess it up that badly. I'm guessing that shooting down relatively slow moving ballistic projectiles is mostly a solved problem for a species with the technology for interstellar travel.

The other problem is that nobody has a rocket big enough to make a powered flight all that far from the Earth. If the invaders camped out around the Moon, anything we shot at them would be a joke to evade.

[hamishspence]

Personally I think the wiser course of action is to dig out the dictionary and look up 'Danegeld'.

If you believe Kipling, that never works out in the long run.

To paraphrase:

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation planet that plays it is lost!"

[Kitten Champion]

We have no credible means of stopping a wholly inorganic clump of metal from annihilating us at the whim of the inertia, let alone something that can actually form the intent and interstellar technology to do so. Will Smith might be our only option.

While we can stop actively searching for intelligent extra-terrestrial life, "hiding" becomes a considerably more difficult challenge given that we still want a technically advanced society and have no understanding of what may be looking for us or how/if they're looking.

To me, alien contact is a singularity event. Furthermore, it's not like we've put that much of an effort into exploration, your crib wasn't densely populated either.

[Cikomyr]

Imagine for a moment that the only two countries in the world were the US and a continent inhabited by people armed with nothing more advanced than sixteenth century muskets. If the US decided to 'request' all their wealth, do you think Musketland's best play is a show of force? Personally I think the wiser course of action is to dig out the dictionary and look up 'Danegeld'.


Depends. If the only thing the US send in the first place is a gunboat and Musketland happens to be 30 years away of travel..

Then, in the shoes of the leaders of Musketland, I'd assume our best chance is RIGHT NOW or never. Next time they'll come, they'll be ready.

[warty goblin]

If you believe Kipling, that never works out in the long run.

To paraphrase:

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation planet that plays it is lost!"

Between paying up and getting incinerated, I'll take paying up, thanks. I rather suspect the replacement world leaders will feel similarly after their predecessors - and their predecessor's military assets - are reduced to glowing charcoal by a batch of uranium rods fired from high orbit. The modern modus operandi of leaders standing on principle, then sending off other people to die for it doesn't work so well when the enemy can kill the leadership with complete impunity.

I'm not denying that surrender would suck massively, but it sucks less than losing and then surrendering. If you can avoid getting a bunch of people killed, it's usually best to give that option some careful consideration.

[Water_Bear]

Between paying up and getting incinerated, I'll take paying up, thanks. I rather suspect the replacement world leaders will feel similarly after their predecessors - and their predecessor's military assets - are reduced to glowing charcoal by a batch of uranium rods fired from high orbit. The modern modus operandi of leaders standing on principle, then sending off other people to die for it doesn't work so well when the enemy can kill the leadership with complete impunity.

I'm not denying that surrender would suck massively, but it sucks less than losing and then surrendering. If you can avoid getting a bunch of people killed, it's usually best to give that option some careful consideration.

The problem with this is the assumption that there is anything an alien species could possibly want from us that would leave us alive and recognizably human once they've gotten it.

Obviously if their goal is self defense then we're dead from the get-go. If they want to Xenoform the planet or use its component elements to build a megastructure, theres no difference between surrender and annihilation. If they want to study us that most likely means knockout trials and stress tests on every component part of us, of every other living organism on earth, ecosystems and even human societies if they recognize them as such.

So if surrender means near-certain destruction, or at the very least horrific experimentation, what reason is there not to resist? Even if it's futile, which it would be, it is still better to be killed quickly as an enemy than die slowly as a byproduct of their actual goal.

[Grinner]

The problem with this is the assumption that there is anything an alien species could possibly want from us that would leave us alive and recognizably human once they've gotten it.

Obviously if their goal is self defense then we're dead from the get-go. If they want to Xenoform the planet or use its component elements to build a megastructure, theres no difference between surrender and annihilation. If they want to study us that most likely means knockout trials and stress tests on every component part of us, of every other living organism on earth, ecosystems and even human societies if they recognize them as such.

So if surrender means near-certain destruction, or at the very least horrific experimentation, what reason is there not to resist? Even if it's futile, which it would be, it is still better to be killed quickly as an enemy than die slowly as a byproduct of their actual goal.

Well...they don't need to invade in order to experiment on us. Openly observing us would alter our behavior, and that would screw up the experiment. Rather, it would be better done discretely. Watch from afar, and maybe abduct a few people here and there.

I'm sure you see where this is going. :smallamused:

[warty goblin]

The problem with this is the assumption that there is anything an alien species could possibly want from us that would leave us alive and recognizably human once they've gotten it.

Well, yes, I am assuming an offer to surrender on something resembling reasonable terms. I'm not quite as pessimistic on this front as you are though, see below.


Obviously if their goal is self defense then we're dead from the get-go. If they want to Xenoform the planet or use its component elements to build a megastructure, theres no difference between surrender and annihilation.
I'd think in these cases we probably don't get the option to surrender. In the first case because killing everybody is the objective, in the second because remaking an entire biosphere is tricky enough I'd figure killing us out of hand would just make life that much easier for them.


If they want to study us that most likely means knockout trials and stress tests on every component part of us, of every other living organism on earth, ecosystems and even human societies if they recognize them as such.
On this front I think you're being overly gloom and doom. Subjecting entire populations of (quite likely) very biologically different creatures to lethal and destructive tests is probably not a really good reason to haul ass across the cosmos. If you look at the sorts of animals we run various horrible tests on, they tend to be as close to human or genetically controllable as possible. Years of sci-fi aside, I doubt we'll be that similar to whatever aliens show up on our doorstep, and it seems unlikely we'd be the Alpha Centauri equivalent of the fruitfly.

Which isn't to say there wouldn't be some unpleasant probing going down (and up), at least at first. But I think it overly gloomy to expect it on the scale of species and society destroying event. If nothing else, they would need a control group. It's also not completely implausible that the aliens have some sort of ethics code of their own.


So if surrender means near-certain destruction, or at the very least horrific experimentation, what reason is there not to resist? Even if it's futile, which it would be, it is still better to be killed quickly as an enemy than die slowly as a byproduct of their actual goal.
If I want to exit stage dead in a hurry and without getting mooshed up for alien scientists, I think the better last soliloquy is delivered with a shotgun. Far less chancy than hoping to get atomized before they move in and start rounding folks up. In the other cases, I suspect everybody winds up dead so fast it doesn't matter very much.

[Water_Bear]

Well, yes, I am assuming an offer to surrender on something resembling reasonable terms. I'm not quite as pessimistic on this front as you are though, see below.

[...]

I'd think in these cases we probably don't get the option to surrender. In the first case because killing everybody is the objective, in the second because remaking an entire biosphere is tricky enough I'd figure killing us out of hand would just make life that much easier for them.

I assumed we would be pre-emptively surrendering. Even if aliens had a political system similar enough to the Westphalian idea of Statehood to recognize what the idea "surrender" even means in this context, why would they offer one? It doesn't give any greater advantage over a helpless enemy and tips their hand if we can somehow hurt them.


On this front I think you're being overly gloom and doom. Subjecting entire populations of (quite likely) very biologically different creatures to lethal and destructive tests is probably not a really good reason to haul ass across the cosmos. If you look at the sorts of animals we run various horrible tests on, they tend to be as close to human or genetically controllable as possible. Years of sci-fi aside, I doubt we'll be that similar to whatever aliens show up on our doorstep, and it seems unlikely we'd be the Alpha Centauri equivalent of the fruitfly.

[...]

It's also not completely implausible that the aliens have some sort of ethics code of their own.

As to the question of how testing would go, the main issue is as you said how quickly and easily they could understand our biology. If we're pretty straightforward for them to understand, it'll go a lot smoother (at least at first). But if they have any trouble figuring out how any given part of a human being, molecular or macroscopic, works and they have over seven billion potential subjects why wouldn't they take advantage of that? And while I'm sure they wouldn't want to kill off the species, the idea of captivity doesn't sound so appealing either.

As for the question of ethics... we're talking about a life form which evolved on another planet, in another solar system. They might not even have DNA* and they're supposed to have ethics that mesh with our human idea of fairness? We can't even get humans to agree on one set of ethics, and now we're trusting species we don't have a common ancestor with.

*RNA or PNA seems more likely to me if we're sticking with nucleic acids, but then again there's a reason it's the standard here.


If I want to exit stage dead in a hurry and without getting mooshed up for alien scientists, I think the better last soliloquy is delivered with a shotgun. Far less chancy than hoping to get atomized before they move in and start rounding folks up. In the other cases, I suspect everybody winds up dead so fast it doesn't matter very much.

"Rounding folks up" is a human pastime; anything advanced enough to get here at all really ought to be operating at least nanoscale. As soon as they hit the atmosphere you've lost; either by incineration from an RKV or their self-replicating probes.

[warty goblin]

As to the question of how testing would go, the main issue is as you said how quickly and easily they could understand our biology. If we're pretty straightforward for them to understand, it'll go a lot smoother (at least at first). But if they have any trouble figuring out how any given part of a human being, molecular or macroscopic, works and they have over seven billion potential subjects why wouldn't they take advantage of that? And while I'm sure they wouldn't want to kill off the species, the idea of captivity doesn't sound so appealing either.

It's crappy science? If you're trying to understand something, the usual goal is to control for outside sources of variation. It's pretty hard to do that when you're screwing with the entire population. Unless they only want to do one test, running it on the entire population means the effects of any subsequent treatments cannot be isolated.


As for the question of ethics... we're talking about a life form which evolved on another planet, in another solar system. They might not even have DNA* and they're supposed to have ethics that mesh with our human idea of fairness? We can't even get humans to agree on one set of ethics, and now we're trusting species we don't have a common ancestor with.
They don't need a sense of fairness that lines up with our own; just one that draws up short of really major mayhem. If their offer was 'give us a million test subjects or we declare war, then start rounding people up' that is a really good offer from our perspective, conditional on the fact that somebody's gonna get vivisected.


"Rounding folks up" is a human pastime; anything advanced enough to get here at all really ought to be operating at least nanoscale. As soon as they hit the atmosphere you've lost; either by incineration from an RKV or their self-replicating probes.
Again, if they want to do science, unless they're really bad at it they can't release agents in the general population. They need to obtain and isolate test subjects. In which case, the twenty gauge's rendition of 'to be or not to be' starts looking really good. In the case where they simply want us dead, as you point out I don't think it really matters.

[Soras Teva Gee]

I have a couple of point for consideration on the topic of alien visitors:

1: Excepting very limited circumstances they have no reason to bother with Earth at all.

They would almost certainly have mastered long term space survival so they don't need planets like we do. Any resources they desire would almost certainly be in the asteroids choking the solar system. For that matter would they be compatible with Earth anyways? Finally if they did need a habitable planet for some reason the reasoning behind say the Drake Equation would suggest for every civilized planet there would be a far greater number with no intelligent life at all.

2: Except very limited circumstances we have no way to hide when Earth shouts our prescence every night. And through the rest of the EM spectrum. Literally hiding is only possible in the case of extreme long range signals from outside the solar system. Any actual presence in the solar will be sufficiently capable either from being manned or AI to observe us.

3: Only in very limited circumstances can are any decisions we make be of any relevance. From the moment ET arrives its ET's party not ours and ETs decisions that dictate our destiny. We become powerless toddlers against Bruce Lee. If benevolent we've nothing to worry about, if only modestly so it is our responsibility to simply suck it up until we reverse-engineer the tech, if malevolent we are just plain ****ed up the ass. No softer language will do.

Because Earth cannot dodge we are in a hopeless military position.

[Water_Bear]

It's crappy science? If you're trying to understand something, the usual goal is to control for outside sources of variation. It's pretty hard to do that when you're screwing with the entire population. Unless they only want to do one test, running it on the entire population means the effects of any subsequent treatments cannot be isolated.

My point was, if they've got a few billion to pick from they can afford to throw thousands or tens of thousands of people at any given test if they want to without seriously messing with our biodiversity. And when they're done, they feel they understand us sufficiently to breed humans at their own pace or can model us down to the atom in computer models, the question becomes what do they do with the excess population left behind on earth?

I'd doubt the answer would be "oops, sorry about all that we'll let ourselves out."


They don't need a sense of fairness that lines up with our own; just one that draws up short of really major mayhem. If their offer was 'give us a million test subjects or we declare war, then start rounding people up' that is a really good offer from our perspective, conditional on the fact that somebody's gonna get vivisected.

No, I meant why should we assume they even have a concept of fairness? Or that they would think it applies to situations like this where there is such an enormous power asymmetry*? Or to other kinds of intelligence than their own? Those are all huge leaps.

Also, why would the idea of a declaration of war even be something they have? That'd be a pretty big coincidence if their politics somehow ended up with such a distinctly human concept of how conflicts and negotiation work.

*After all, the idea of fairness is useful because acting generously is a good way to gain trust in repeated interactions with parties you rely on. When there is no chance of a second interaction and one party is utterly powerless, the smart solution is to do whatever you want.


Again, if they want to do science, unless they're really bad at it they can't release agents in the general population. They need to obtain and isolate test subjects. In which case, the twenty gauge's rendition of 'to be or not to be' starts looking really good. In the case where they simply want us dead, as you point out I don't think it really matters.

I'm not talking agents, I'm talking nanoscale machines which build microscale machines which can then build macroscale machines if needed; there's no need to "round people up" when you can make whatever you need anywhere on the planet in minutes. There's not a lot a shotgun can do when your DNA is being sequenced and modified in vitro, especially when you don't necessarily realize it's happening until your body stops producing hemoglobin properly...


They would almost certainly have mastered long term space survival so they don't need planets like we do. Any resources they desire would almost certainly be in the asteroids choking the solar system. For that matter would they be compatible with Earth anyways? Finally if they did need a habitable planet for some reason the reasoning behind say the Drake Equation would suggest for every civilized planet there would be a far greater number with no intelligent life at all.

I'm not so sure about the idea that they "don't need planets," because that implies engineering on a scale where you'd need to be breaking the planets apart for their elements anyway, but even if that's true why restrict themselves to just gathering from the asteroid belt?

If they want to reproduce badly enough to come across light-years to get access to the elements, they'd be better served using every spare bit of harvestable material to make a whole fleet of new ships they can send out to other systems or just park around the sun and soak up energy as a Dyson Sphere (Sphere not Shell!).

[warty goblin]

My point was, if they've got a few billion to pick from they can afford to throw thousands or tens of thousands of people at any given test if they want to without seriously messing with our biodiversity. And when they're done, they feel they understand us sufficiently to breed humans at their own pace or can model us down to the atom in computer models, the question becomes what do they do with the excess population left behind on earth?

But again, what motivation is there to want that kind of understanding? I'm really not seeing how it benefits the aliens in the slightest. Spending very long periods traipsing between planets just to see what happens when you use nanomachines to dissolve the sensory organs of some hairless endotherrms seems a strange, inefficient pastime.


I'd doubt the answer would be "oops, sorry about all that we'll let ourselves out."
Why wouldn't it be? You seem to be postulating a sort of hyper-focused being here, one that gives not a toss about anything but its objectives. Once those are met, killing everything else is just more bother.


No, I meant why should we assume they even have a concept of fairness? Or that they would think it applies to situations like this where there is such an enormous power asymmetry*? Or to other kinds of intelligence than their own? Those are all huge leaps.

*After all, the idea of fairness is useful because acting generously is a good way to gain trust in repeated interactions with parties you rely on. When there is no chance of a second interaction and one party is utterly powerless, the smart solution is to do whatever you want.
We still have rules for the treatment of lab animals. The power imbalance between your average human and your average mouse is not dissimilar. And I never said it was a necessary assumption that they had such a concept, merely that there's no reason to rule it out. The only sapient species we know of has a concept of fairness after all, it's clearly not outside the realm of possibility.


Also, why would the idea of a declaration of war even be something they have? That'd be a pretty big coincidence if their politics somehow ended up with such a distinctly human concept of how conflicts and negotiation work.
Most animals that compete socially have signals for hostility and surrender. It's not like these are unique to humans.



I'm not talking agents, I'm talking nanoscale machines which build microscale machines which can then build macroscale machines if needed; there's no need to "round people up" when you can make whatever you need anywhere on the planet in minutes. There's not a lot a shotgun can do when your DNA is being sequenced and modified in vitro, especially when you don't necessarily realize it's happening until your body stops producing hemoglobin properly...
How is a nanoscale agent meaningfully distinct from a biological, chemical, or any other thing you would do to a population to illicit a response? I wasn't talking about lizard-people running around with walkie-talkies here.

And if it can kill me before I can turn any of the wide variety of lethal things in my residence on myself, I'm not fussed. It's not like a person wouldn't have time to lay in a contingency plan either; something slowing down from interstellar speeds to Earth orbit is probably going to make the evening news. That, and light up the sky like a second sun.




I'm not so sure about the idea that they "don't need planets," because that implies engineering on a scale where you'd need to be breaking the planets apart for their elements anyway, but even if that's true why restrict themselves to just gathering from the asteroid belt?

If they want to reproduce badly enough to come across light-years to get access to the elements, they'd be better served using every spare bit of harvestable material to make a whole fleet of new ships they can send out to other systems or just park around the sun and soak up energy as a Dyson Sphere (Sphere not Shell!).
Rather by construction of the hypothesis, anything that comes here has figured out how to survive long term in space. It's perfectly conceivable that you can manage this without breaking up planets wholesale as well. They may need more stuff, but the only thing the Earth has that other body in the Solar System lacks is life. If they just need building material for habitats, there's plenty of options farther up the gravity well without things like thick atmospheres to get in the way.

[Soras Teva Gee]

I'm not so sure about the idea that they "don't need planets," because that implies engineering on a scale where you'd need to be breaking the planets apart for their elements anyway, but even if that's true why restrict themselves to just gathering from the asteroid belt?


You don't need a planet.

You need an atmosphere of a certain pressure and mixture, a certain temperature range, and a degree of radiation protection. All of these are within our technical ability to achieve. The first over the long term is the most troublesome since our current best methods (nuclear submarines) require a lot of water. Clearly the carbon cycle works on basic principle if nothing else though

What's that, gravity you say? A health issue true, but some of it is voided if you don't ever need 1G again. We can't really say how that would effect alien physiology or even say children brought up in it. Even if you can't avoid the requirement artificial "gravity" is a very simple concept in physics.

And none of this requires breaking up a planet. Really where did you get that idea because I want to see who's putting out crap like that.

Note that all of these problems have to be solved anyways before you can hope to galivant around the universe. Unless you have effectively instant FTL that can take you to dirtside backhome at little cost and in no more then a few days... you have to be prepared to spend months if not years in space. That demands solving all of the problems of actually living in space.

Once you can live in space you don't "need" a planet, or rather you have an alternative means of meeting your physiological requirements.

And you then don't bother with planets because of a two troublesome factors: gravity and friction. Friction is terrible, it means to get any work done you need constant energy expended just to perform basic movement, it locks you out of all the fun benefits of inertia. And gravity well there the problem lies in having to climb in and out of a gravity well. That's currently the single biggest factor limiting our own space exploration. And the basic requirement isn't going anywhere.

Importing isn't so bad I guess, but to actually get a profit out of a planet you need to export. And options for that are currently either poor, massive engineering enterprises, or pure fantasy cosmo-engines we can maybe tie to a possible idea of actual physics.


If they want to reproduce badly enough to come across light-years to get access to the elements, they'd be better served using every spare bit of harvestable material to make a whole fleet of new ships they can send out to other systems or just park around the sun and soak up energy as a Dyson Sphere (Sphere not Shell!).

Go look at O'Neill Cylinders not Dyson megastructures and correct your visions of required mass accordingly. Or just look at what fractional percentage of Earth's available resources we use to support our billions.

Okay I guess you could maybe exhaust a solar system's asteroids, small moons, and then need to move in on a planet.... on a geological timescale.

This is like worrying about the Sun going out here.

[Eric Tolle]

The backstory of Yamato 2199 makes a lot more sense now.

In a first contact situation with the Gamalon Empire, the Earth government orders its fleet to fire. Things go badly. Obviously the Earth Government read this thread.

[russdm]

Not having the read the article, I would say that we already have plenty examples of first contact protocols or their lack thereof. Remember how first contact went between Europeans and everybody else? Or earlier civilizations with each other? Sometimes, we can barely comprehend one another.

As for hiding, its too late for that. The first radio signals sent into space will introduce to some other species that picks them up. Besides, we produce stuff in our atmosphere that can picked up by our sensors(equipment on satelites(sp?)) on other planets that we have found, methane and carbon dioxide, methane have been detected on Io or Europa. Its not too far-fetched to think of another species detecting us.

As for the aliens, you (the others in the thread) are assuming alot. You are putting a human mind inside an alien. The aliens might very well have a completely different outlook to us. We can't assume that aliens think like humans. They may have a hivemind or even need something that only humans could provide. Assuming we could understand their language, we might not be able to meet halfway on other issues.

We need to seriously all aliens hostile until proven otherwise. Remember about Halo and the Covenant? It could turn out that like, or like the story in Space: above and beyond. We can hide out on Earth, sure, but our own species' drive will push us outward. We need to be ready and have something made. After all, an alien race might find the idea of mining our planet worth it.

Something that no one seems to be looking at: Workers. Our planet has an impressive population of workers available. Humans are pretty functional and capable. Sentinel Prime was going to use humans as a slave labor force; its a legitmate and understandable alien attitude to have.

The main problem is using our own mindset to explain an alien's. We should reconsider how we think about aliens.

Edit)

ICBMs are useless for the following reasons:

1) These suckers are designed to hit cities/towns not objects. Unless that asteroid is not moving or that alien ship is not moving fast, we can't hit it with an ICBM without launching it way in advance. ICBMs are designed to strike at established coordinates, not changing ones.

2) ICBMs are limited in range and speccing them up to have further range still has problem 1: hitting the target.

3) We don't have any kind of shielding against ICBMs, but any aliens that show up would because they would be dealing with meteorites, asteroids, and solar discharges(aka flares). They need to create a defense for long term exploration that would be required to reach us. The closest possible candidate, alpha centauri, is 6 light years away. Thats plenty of time to come up with a defense against our nukes.

4) The number of nukes we possess in the world is decreasing due to treaties and the like. We are reducing our nuclear warhead stockpiles. Its going to probably take more than one to knock an alien ship.

5) We have no information regarding the construction or schematics for an alien ship, so we won't know if we hit an important system or a cargo hold. Firing off an ICBM would shooting in the dark and hoping to hit something useful.

We need a space fleet/force to protect us, not ICBMs.

[warty goblin]

Not having the read the article, I would say that we already have plenty examples of first contact protocols or their lack thereof. Remember how first contact went between Europeans and everybody else? Or earlier civilizations with each other? Sometimes, we can barely comprehend one another.

Comprehension wasn't really the issue; so much as side A deciding to kill and/or enslave as much of side B as they could get away with. History is also full of international trade though, annihilation is hardly the only outcome it suggests.

As for hiding, its too late for that. The first radio signals sent into space will introduce to some other species that picks them up. Besides, we produce stuff in our atmosphere that can picked up by our sensors(equipment on satelites(sp?)) on other planets that we have found, methane and carbon dioxide, methane have been detected on Io or Europa. Its not too far-fetched to think of another species detecting us.


As for the aliens, you (the others in the thread) are assuming alot. You are putting a human mind inside an alien. The aliens might very well have a completely different outlook to us. We can't assume that aliens think like humans. They may have a hivemind or even need something that only humans could provide. Assuming we could understand their language, we might not be able to meet halfway on other issues.
If you have but one data point, it's the only estimator you have, and the only sensible course of action is to guess it's relatively representative. Of course with a single data point you can't verify that, but it's the only thing you can do.

And given that as per the hypothesis, they show up here it seems unlikely they need anything only we can provide. Fairly transparently, they would seem to be kicking along just fine without us.



We need to seriously all aliens hostile until proven otherwise. Remember about Halo and the Covenant? It could turn out that like, or like the story in Space: above and beyond. We can hide out on Earth, sure, but our own species' drive will push us outward. We need to be ready and have something made. After all, an alien race might find the idea of mining our planet worth it.
As I pointed out, having a defense in place probably won't help, and could hurt. It's also a colossal investment with a minimal chance of staving off a spectacularly unlikely outcome. We're talking a worse investment than developing an entirely underground highway system to protect people from death by small meteor or lightning bolt here, because at least those things either do or clearly could kill somebody.

Nor is it like we're going to butt into ET over colonizing some exo-planet. The Fermi Paradox strongly suggests that either nothing is out there, or whatever is out there never crosses interstellar space. In either case, we can't run into aliens because there aren't any aliens to run into, or we can't run into aliens because nobody is going anywhere, ever.

Which really suggests there's no point in worrying about aliens at all.


Edit)

ICBMs are useless for the following reasons:

There's also the rather more obvious point that nobody has a rocket powerful enough to threaten anything outside of low earth orbit anyway.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Something that no one seems to be looking at: Workers. Our planet has an impressive population of workers available. Humans are pretty functional and capable. Sentinel Prime was going to use humans as a slave labor force; its a legitmate and understandable alien attitude to have.

Doing what precisely though?

As tech level increases the demand for actual laborers decreases as more and more functions can be automated. And those that remain become increasingly skill and social based.

You don't use slaves to haul your pyramid blocks around because machinery is not only more effective but cheaper and less maintenance intensive. And while sentient labor has not proven to be entirely removable the roles that are left require more and more in the way of skill and therefore active collaboration on the part of your labor force. Heck beyond a certain point you don't even want someone cleaning a machine that doesn't know what they are doing and motivated to do it.

All of which suggests that this isn't much to worry about because well... even if we became the galactic equivalent of cheap labor overseas outsourcing that phenomena derives in large part from a core of voluntary agreement and differing living standards. We'll work for nothing in galactic terms because for us it will still be an improvement.

And such a relationship is fundamentally temporary over the long term.

[Leliel]

The problem with this is the assumption that there is anything an alien species could possibly want from us that would leave us alive and recognizably human once they've gotten it.


The problem with this assumption is that it is based on Lovecraft. More than that, it's based on repeated fan-manglings of his work.

If they want, say, minerals, it's infinitely more efficient to make peaceful contact. Peaceful contact with a gun prominently displayed, but if you can get over the distrust, you can have the primitive monkeys show you to the minerals and gain a possible ally in the future.

If they want a new home, there's a reddish planet right next door that's not already occupied and thus would not result in a lot of resources being wasted on the locals, since even primitive weaponry can damage a tank, and you'd still have to spend a lot of time wiping away an already extant environment to create living conditions for you. Again, possible allies in the near future.

If they want self-defense, well, okay, you got me there.

But I find a communal species lacking some concept of altruism achieving interstellar flight to be...doubtful. As in, fracking impossible. Humans, if we were violent and greedy by nature instead of territorial and selfish, we would not be having a conversation over this computer.

[Grinner]

As for hiding, its too late for that. The first radio signals sent into space will introduce to some other species that picks them up. Besides, we produce stuff in our atmosphere that can picked up by our sensors(equipment on satelites(sp?)) on other planets that we have found, methane and carbon dioxide, methane have been detected on Io or Europa. Its not too far-fetched to think of another species detecting us.

I once tried to write a program which would generate an entire universe in a fashion reminiscent of the Big Bang theory. Whilst preparing to write the program, I tried to get an idea of the program's system requirements. I figured 2 kilobytes would be enough to fairly represent the surface and chemical composition of any planet and, with compression, still leave room for a gist of the native species, if any.

I decided to start small and googled the number of planets in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. I got estimates ranging from a hundred billion to four hundred billion with four billion to seventeen billion Earth-like planets.

"Wow." I thought to myself," That's a lot."

I did the math anyway. To store a file describing just the Milky Way Galaxy (100 billion planets, not including stars) in poor detail, I would have needed 190,324 more gigabytes of storage than I have. I've read that there are over 125,000,000,000 galaxies.

My point is that that the observable universe is a big place. There are vast quantities of space separating each solar system, each galaxy, each galaxy cluster, etc. I don't believe the entirety of our electromagnetic output makes even so much as a ripple in the pond of cosmic radiation.


There's also the rather more obvious point that nobody has a rocket powerful enough to threaten anything outside of low earth orbit anyway.

NASA does...well, did. And whatever the Russians and Chinese are using to get up into space.

[Cikomyr]

I once tried to write a program which would generate an entire universe in a fashion reminiscent of the Big Bang theory. Whilst preparing to write the program, I tried to get an idea of the program's system requirements. I figured 2 kilobytes would be enough to fairly represent the surface and chemical composition of any planet and, with compression, still leave room for a gist of the native species, if any.

I decided to start small and googled the number of planets in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. I got estimates ranging from a hundred billion to four hundred billion with four billion to seventeen billion Earth-like planets.

"Wow." I thought to myself," That's a lot."

I did the math anyway. To store a file describing just the Milky Way Galaxy (100 billion planets, not including stars) in poor detail, I would have needed 190,324 more gigabytes of storage than I have. I've read that there are over 125,000,000,000 galaxies.

My point is that that the observable universe is a big place. There are vast quantities of space separating each solar system, each galaxy, each galaxy cluster, etc. I don't believe the entirety of our electromagnetic output makes even so much as a ripple in the pond of cosmic radiation.



NASA does...well, did. And whatever the Russians and Chinese are using to get up into space.

Plus... whatever radio emission we have sent so far in outer-space is.. let's just say, the equivalent of trying to draw visitors in your forest shack by snapping your fingers.

60 light-years is pretty small an area so far.

[Soras Teva Gee]

NASA does...well, did. And whatever the Russians and Chinese are using to get up into space.

And even those used to say reach the Moon or launch the Voyager missions aren't exactly fast when you think about a weapon and a target presumably capable of free navigation. We can fairly easily say they could have days to dodge or use a countermeasure defense.

Which is not true of the reverse. With the right calculation you have effectively unlimited range in space. Earth can't dodge and neither can cities on it, nor any kind of major infastructure.

[Ravens_cry]

Plus... whatever radio emission we have sent so far in outer-space is.. let's just say, the equivalent of trying to draw visitors in your forest shack by snapping your fingers.

60 light-years is pretty small an area so far.
Since we don't have much of an idea how common life, let alone intelligent life, let alone radio using spacefaring life, actually is, it's hard to say whether that is true or not.
Now, there is things they could do that, while not overtly hostile, would still lbe devastating long term.
While it is highly doubtful they would want Earth's resources, they could still basically strip mine the rest of the solar system, leaving us with little way to reach the stars ourselves or even to expand into a true spacefaring species.
Also, culture pirates. In a world where anything that exists can be replicated with ease, the real value is in novelty.
A newly discovered species would be full of novelty, new and interesting perspectives and ways of doing things. We might sell the only thing we have of value besides raw materials for the equivalent of beads and mirrors.

[McStabbington]

Since we don't have much of an idea how common life, let alone intelligent life, let alone radio using spacefaring life, actually is, it's hard to say whether that is true or not.
Now, there is things they could do that, while not overtly hostile, would still lbe devastating long term.
While it is highly doubtful they would want Earth's resources, they could still basically strip mine the rest of the solar system, leaving us with little way to reach the stars ourselves or even to expand into a true spacefaring species.
Also, culture pirates. In a world where anything that exists can be replicated with ease, the real value is in novelty.
A newly discovered species would be full of novelty, new and interesting perspectives and ways of doing things. We might sell the only thing we have of value besides raw materials for the equivalent of beads and mirrors.

The amount of EM energy we put out compared to Sol is, to put it bluntly, infintesimal. What's more, with the advent of technologies that cut down on EM production, our sound footprint has been getting smaller and smaller each year. The likelihood that another species is also a) sentient, b) within 60 light years, c) technologically advanced enough to distinguish the whisper of EM chatter coming from us over the roar of the Sun, d) actually doing so, while e) remaining completely quiet on their own, is absurdly small.

That's really neither here nor there, though. The question is more theoretical than that: what should we be doing if we assume that all those conditions were met somewhere else in the universe? The likelihood that anyone would need anything in our system is absurdly small, because the only thing that can be found here that can't be found in plenty elsewhere in the cosmos, with no one to claim it or lob nukes back at you if you try and take it, are organic molecules themselves. If we're someone else's cure for Gottflarbian phage, and they can find a cost-effective way of getting from here to Gottflarb, we're pretty much hosed. We might still be if they're just not predisposed to letting us develop.

Beyond that, what SF Debris was emphasizing was primarily the uncertainty. That they are intelligent enough to kill themselves but refrained from doing so says nothing about their willingness or unwillingness to kill us. And as far as cost-benefit analysis goes, the fact is that the potential cost is "they ram-drive an asteroid into our world and obliterate all life more sentient than a bacterium," and that's not exactly chump change. And the same goes for any species out there that looks at us, especially so since the first things they would see from us are, effectively, images of the run-up to the Second World War, hardly our finest moment as a species. If they were capable of hearing us, they might very well not answer simply because the potential costs of attracting our attention are so high. And we might be wise to make the same choice.

[Ravens_cry]

Compared to Sol? Sure. The thing is though, the signal would look different from the noise of solar output, though if enough to be noticeable I can not say. I agree that being nice to each other does not preclude hostility toward outsiders.
War, after all, is a form of cooperation, within the group.

[Soras Teva Gee]

While it is highly doubtful they would want Earth's resources, they could still basically strip mine the rest of the solar system, leaving us with little way to reach the stars ourselves or even to expand into a true spacefaring species.

Of course well before that could their presence would stirr a response from us in the form of technological development to get out there and go "S'up dudes?"

Even closing the tech gap.


We might sell the only thing we have of value besides raw materials for the equivalent of beads and mirrors.

Equivalent to who? Value is a relative thing.

Something like a portable fusion reactor might be the unremarkable equivalent of a backup gas generator to the aliens... but would be of priceless value to us. Especially if someone is canny enough to ask not simply for product but the understanding to go with it.

Presuming displacement is off the table our Columbian exchange unfold along very different terms. If nothing else we are forewarned by history.

And if not, well not like we have a choice, we have to deal until we can steal the tech for ourselves.


The amount of EM energy we put out compared to Sol is, to put it bluntly, infintesimal. What's more, with the advent of technologies that cut down on EM production, our sound footprint has been getting smaller and smaller each year. The likelihood that another species is also a) sentient, b) within 60 light years, c) technologically advanced enough to distinguish the whisper of EM chatter coming from us over the roar of the Sun, d) actually doing so, while e) remaining completely quiet on their own, is absurdly small.

Remember we can detect Earth sized (http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/20dec_earthsized/) exoplanets with our own astronomy today.

While I'm not technical expert enough to say how bad our EM signature is, ultimately we cannot hide anyways. And I can't believe it is somehow fundamentally impossible to isolate those signals given all the kinds of things we know about the universe ourselves.

Especially since they will have very distinctive patterns.


Beyond that, what SF Debris was emphasizing was primarily the uncertainty. That they are intelligent enough to kill themselves but refrained from doing so says nothing about their willingness or unwillingness to kill us. And as far as cost-benefit analysis goes, the fact is that the potential cost is "they ram-drive an asteroid into our world and obliterate all life more sentient than a bacterium," and that's not exactly chump change.

And we can do absolutely nothing about it at present

More to the point though we can't even hide which is what SF Debris missed. Choosing to say "not answer" is only possible with say detecting an alien SETI message where we know its just a "Heellloooo anyone out there?" or other mere attempts at communication. And frankly that's risky too if they have FTL since if we don't answer they might conclude "uninhabited, slate for bypass construction" or something.

Our only options to actual First Contact is kowtow in deep respect to the superior power and engage in dialogue.

To avoid the the simple possiblity that sticking our heads in the sand will only make things worse. If they are benevolent to not be offended by understandable fear and hesitation, they are benevolent enough for such things to not be nessecary. If they are utterly malevolent we are screwed whatever we do. Not answering though runs the gamble that that sort of nonsense will offend them.

[Frozen_Feet]

Isolating a patterned EM signature is not a problem.

The problem is that our signature might not be strong enough to reach anywhere important.

Previously, it was thought that whatever signal we send will echo into the aether and continue forever and ever. Unfortunately, later calculations suggest that destructive interference will actually render our signals nothing but noise before they even leave the solar system. Technically, bits and pieces of the signal will go on, but the information content will be destroyed.

To properly send a radio message to other solar systems, we would need a much more powerful transmitter than what we have been using so far.

[Jayngfet]

Equivalent to who? Value is a relative thing.

I think the thing he was referring to culture, and not say technology.

I think beads and whatnot might BE out only thing we have of value. It's the one thing they can't have coming into it. It's also the only thing they can take from us they'd need to observe us without bothering us, and even our records are incomplete enough they can't just pilfer any records we have, assuming they can work our machines effectively anyway.

If they care about other species, even if we'd have to assume we're inferior by the nature of the exercise, then that's a whole nother dimension that'd probably work in our favor.

Assuming of course, they don't just want to like, suck up all our air and leave us to choke.

[Ravens_cry]

Of course well before that could their presence would stirr a response from us in the form of technological development to get out there and go "S'up dudes?"

Even closing the tech gap.

Right, because having potentially thousands or even millions of years headstart and the resources of however many solar systems ain't going to make that difficult.



Equivalent to who? Value is a relative thing.

Something like a portable fusion reactor might be the unremarkable equivalent of a backup gas generator to the aliens... but would be of priceless value to us. Especially if someone is canny enough to ask not simply for product but the understanding to go with it.

That's exactly what I mean. In a world where novelty is the only value, being otherwise post-scarcity with the exception of raw matter, sure, we might get some, to us, miracle level tech out of it, but once we try to join the greater interstellar community, we find we have nothing of value to them. Hence the term culture pirates.

[Avilan the Grey]

Yes yes all this is very interesting but we need to look at the fundamentals first:

1. Are they bugs? In that case we will be screwed.

2. Are they robots? In that case, we will be screwed.

3. Are they strangely colored women in way too little clothing that are desperately curious about what "love" is and how it can be combined with their habits of never wear anything bigger than a swimsuit unless they have to? Then we are screwed, but in a more fun and direct way.

And no, this is not to be taken seriously. Except the bug part. And maybe the robot part.

I have not watched this program, but to me Alien life is Alien. We really cannot be certain of ANYTHING until we make contact.

[Cikomyr]

Right, because having potentially thousands or even millions of years headstart and the resources of however many solar systems ain't going to make that difficult.


That's exactly what I mean. In a world where novelty is the only value, being otherwise post-scarcity with the exception of raw matter, sure, we might get some, to us, miracle level tech out of it, but once we try to join the greater interstellar community, we find we have nothing of value to them. Hence the term culture pirates.

Imagine if they have a society based on consumerism, and the best thing they can get out of our planet is our own cultural product.

But what if their consumer base prefers stuff like Fred (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred:_The_Movie), Fred 2 (Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred) and Fred 3 (Fred 3: Camp Fred)?!?! :smalleek:

They'll trade stuff of immense value to the producers of such sort of entertainment, ensuring that we will keep producing them for a loooong time in order to satisfy their alien viewership.

[Ravens_cry]

Imagine if they have a society based on consumerism, and the best thing they can get out of our planet is our own cultural product.

But what if their consumer base prefers stuff like Fred (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred:_The_Movie), Fred 2 (Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred) and Fred 3 (Fred 3: Camp Fred)?!?! :smalleek:

They'll trade stuff of immense value to the producers of such sort of entertainment, ensuring that we will keep producing them for a loooong time in order to satisfy their alien viewership.
Let's hope so, as Earth's relatively small population base may have trouble producing enough novelty compared to the potential trillions of a spacefaring speces. Still, making sure we get things of value in return is vitally important.

[Jayngfet]

Imagine if they have a society based on consumerism, and the best thing they can get out of our planet is our own cultural product.

But what if their consumer base prefers stuff like Fred (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred:_The_Movie), Fred 2 (Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred) and Fred 3 (Fred 3: Camp Fred)?!?! :smalleek:

They'll trade stuff of immense value to the producers of such sort of entertainment, ensuring that we will keep producing them for a loooong time in order to satisfy their alien viewership.

Then I say leave it be. If they're willing to give us rayguns in exchange for a boxed set of Jersey Shore dvd's, I'm more than happy to make that trade.

We're large enough for a one planet population and we can develop content about as fast as the technology allows us to. With like, alien power sources backing us and a better distribution network we could probably be willing to stream just about anything for their novelty, provided it gets paid for.

Worst case scenario there is earth is just an interplanetary bollywood. We get to live for a few extra generations, presumably with some level of advancement along the way.

[Grinner]

I have not watched this program, but to me Alien life is Alien. We really cannot be certain of ANYTHING until we make contact.

I seem to recall that the Xenomorphs of Alien were actually bio-weapons...

[HamHam]

My main reaction to the video is that his is assuming a lot of things about the relevant physics that are probably not true.

Basically, if FTL is not possible... this is all irrelevant because meaningful interaction between different solar systems just isn't possible.

So lets assume FTL is possible, for the sake of argument. Even then, hostile interaction between us and aliens does not make a lot of sense. I know sci-fi writers like to get on their soap box and go on about how humanity starts all these wars out of ignorance or whatever... but the truth is that the vast majority of conflict is born out of or sustained by self interest. And there is just nothing to be gained by going around destroy or conquering alien civilizations.

There are no resources on this planet that it would make any sort of economic sense to go down a gravity well for. If you're goal is colonization, it's gonna take some astronomical luck to find a planet that is both already suited to your biochemistry and also occupied. And even then, if you can build a space ship, you can build a space station, so the cost of conquering said planet better be pretty cheap.

The B5 episode he mentions is cool and all, but it's not realistic. Your entire race would have to be insane for you to think spending billions and billions of whatever currency you use on fire and forget probes like that. Was that thing even jump capable? Because if not, boy that was jumped. Whoever built that thing probably got found and conquered by the Centauri before the first one even got to another star system. And packing it with a big enough bomb to take out a planet could not have been cheap. Like, probably the GDP of your entire planet for a year just to design the thing and then who knows what to build each one. Then you have to hope the damn thing is smart enough to make first contact successfully, which probably means actual AI. And then you have to hope it shows up at just the right time when the locals are smart enough to pass the test but are not already an interstellar civilization. Which it failed to do, all it was going to do was blow up a theoretically unimportant outpost. Which makes it the equivalent of trying to solve your hornet problem by tossing a pebble right into their nest.

No one would ever agree to fund a project like that, much less see it to completion.

[Avilan the Grey]

I seem to recall that the Xenomorphs of Alien were actually bio-weapons...

I don't mean Alien as in Xenomorph. I mean Alien as in alien. :smallsmile:

[Jothki]

Any technologically superior aliens that contact us would know that we know that they might be capable of wiping us out. Any paranoia on our part would be completely reasonable, it's on them to either make us feel safe, make us feel helpless, or forgive us for anything we do to them.

[Cikomyr]

Any technologically superior aliens that contact us would know that we know that they might be capable of wiping us out. Any paranoia on our part would be completely reasonable, it's on them to either make us feel safe, make us feel helpless, or forgive us for anything we do to them.

Except that if they do behave in a way to make us feel safe, we still have to be relatively cautious. Maybe they want us to trust them..?

[Frozen_Feet]

To everyone saying "we have nothing to offer to advanced aliens", I think you're missing the elephant in the room. Earth still has abundance of one thing that is notably lacking in other parts of the universe: life.

There's a myriad possible alien cultures between "puny earthlings" and "might as well be God". Just because a species has mastered space travel to the extent it can visit our solar system, doesn't mean it has mastered every possible technology ever. Going to the Moon did not teach us how to cure cancer, after all.

Organic life, in particular, is known to create hugely complex substances that are very hard to synthetize. Beyond that, observing living organisms has been a great font of inspiration for mankind and the spark for many technological innovations. What says life on earth can't serve as a valuable source of technological insight to aliens also? Who's to say studying arachnids won't be the basis for better starships in the future? Think about it.

Also, I find the argument "they can live in space so they don't need planets" somewhat dubious. Planets are some of the sturdier space vessels possible to acquire, so for a species concerned of it long-term survival, hi-jacking Earth would make sense if it is suitable for their purposes. "Can travel to Earth", even "can conquer Earth" don't necessarily equate to "can survive in space infinitely".

[Jayngfet]

Also, I find the argument "they can live in space so they don't need planets" somewhat dubious. Planets are some of the sturdier space vessels possible to acquire, so for a species concerned of it long-term survival, hi-jacking Earth would make sense if it is suitable for their purposes. "Can travel to Earth", even "can conquer Earth" don't necessarily equate to "can survive in space infinitely".

Of course, even "can conquer earth" may be presuming a bit much.

Earth isn't, compared to some other stars, terribly close to it's neighbors. Unless they can somehow detect us from like 50 light years away and are willing to make the trip, a passing alien ship might just plan a trip a couple of systems away, and we'd never know.

Maybe the visiting aliens are the equivalent of a shipwreck, hoping to just get some raw materials to go home. Or maybe first contact is with an isolated group that can't just call for backup or use some kind of bull supermove to beat us instantly, being too low on power or supplies or just plain raw manpower to do much.


A vast empire can beat a smaller power easily, but total conquering can take a few generations even still unless they can get there very, very quickly.

A smaller crew who can't just leave or get help tends to either get wiped out, create a mutual destruction scenario, or, commonly when survival is on the line, try to integrate itself into the existing structure.

[HamHam]

Organic life, in particular, is known to create hugely complex substances that are very hard to synthetize.

None of which would be compatible with an extraterrestrial biology. Unless you just mean like... silk or something, but again the costs of shipping mean that no matter how expensive synthesizing something similar might be, it's still cheaper.


Beyond that, observing living organisms has been a great font of inspiration for mankind and the spark for many technological innovations. What says life on earth can't serve as a valuable source of technological insight to aliens also? Who's to say studying arachnids won't be the basis for better starships in the future? Think about it.

Sure but that would all the more reason to expect peaceful contact.


Also, I find the argument "they can live in space so they don't need planets" somewhat dubious. Planets are some of the sturdier space vessels possible to acquire, so for a species concerned of it long-term survival, hi-jacking Earth would make sense if it is suitable for their purposes. "Can travel to Earth", even "can conquer Earth" don't necessarily equate to "can survive in space infinitely".

1) Given our ability to make Earth completely uninhabitable at the push of a button, this is still a terrible idea on their part.

2) Assuming Earth as it stands is remotely habitable to something that evolved on a different planet is silly. You are better off finding some place on the verge of the habitable zone but that doesn't have life on it yet and terraform that than try to do the same to a planet of Earth were you have to actively fight against the local organisms.

3) It really kind of does. You pretty much have to posit fantasy tech instant speed FTL jump technology to produce a model of space travel that doesn't involve you being essentially self sufficient for a very, very long trip.

[McStabbington]

None of which would be compatible with an extraterrestrial biology. Unless you just mean like... silk or something, but again the costs of shipping mean that no matter how expensive synthesizing something similar might be, it's still cheaper.



. . .You can find crude oil useful without being able to drink it. We make immense use of plastics that are, essentially, refined hydro-carbons produced by decayed plant life. It's entirely possible that some other civilizaton out there, for example one based on silicon, never developed plastics and has to use metal substitutes. And even if the other life out there is carbon-based, that's no guarantee that particular forms of carbon chains developed on their planet, nor that it would necessarily be poisonous. One of the funniest bits I've ever seen in science fiction involved the simple fact that in the Farscape-verse, Earth is the only planet where sucrose (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVMYBRzStzo) is naturally-produced.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Right, because having potentially thousands or even millions of years headstart and the resources of however many solar systems ain't going to make that difficult.

I was pointing it out in reference to visitors starving our development before we could get going. That's just not the case. We lack the impetus to put up the massive start-up cost but we have the sort of basic technological capability to become an space inhabiting species. Do you think actual contact and observation of exploitation of "our" natural resources could provide the sort of political capital to get major funding behind space programs, because I do. And exhausting our solar systems resources would be the project of generations, so we have time to do it too.

Now this of course also provides a prime ground for more direct conflict too.

That is technically a different issue then being starved to death though. Which would depend on the benevolence of our alien benefactors. If they are sufficiently benevolent then there's ample room for equitable and profitable compromise.

And yes we can close the tech gap, we already have a society gear toward advancement within the scope of a human lifetime. Afterall if they did it, we can replicate it. The question will be time and how much we can wring out of them.


That's exactly what I mean. In a world where novelty is the only value, being otherwise post-scarcity with the exception of raw matter, sure, we might get some, to us, miracle level tech out of it, but once we try to join the greater interstellar community, we find we have nothing of value to them. Hence the term culture pirates.[/QUOTE]

While true I guess its still a win for us. We aren't connected to an intergalactic economy so we can't benefit from it anyways.

And if the only value is novelty then we can still trade on that with authenticity. Own an actual Earth hand-carved sculpture, marvel as its minute and unique flaws add character not found in nano-extruded computer images. Buy real Italian marble from Earth itself (secretly from America not Italy) not that synthetic crap the J'oones have.

And in the meanwhile we develop our own internal markets and tech until we close the gap. And the Fermi Parodox would strongly imply we will have plenty of frontiers to expand to our own resource base and therefore markets on. Because if the universe was filled up (especially the local neighborhood) we'd know it.


. . .You can find crude oil useful without being able to drink it. We make immense use of plastics that are, essentially, refined hydro-carbons produced by decayed plant life. It's entirely possible that some other civilizaton out there, for example one based on silicon, never developed plastics and has to use metal substitutes. And even if the other life out there is carbon-based, that's no guarantee that particular forms of carbon chains developed on their planet, nor that it would necessarily be poisonous. One of the funniest bits I've ever seen in science fiction involved the simple fact that in the Farscape-verse, Earth is the only planet where sucrose (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVMYBRzStzo) is naturally-produced.

Silicon based life seems unlikely. (http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/astrobio/feat_questions/silicon_life.cfm) At least to a healthy spread of people with actual expertise.

To a certain point anthromorhic bias is justifiable. Science is not infinitely mutable, its not unreasonable at all to suppose that there is only one basic way to create complex technological life chemically. Not "humanoids" of course, but say "space bears" who internals are actually more avian. Which would imply that while not nessecarily habitable to us you could still have say hydrocarbons arise. Or they have the chemistry to replicate them, there are ways to do that. Ergo they are not unlikely to have plastic themselves.

And if they didn't would they nessecarily need or want them.

And in any case it would be far easier to trade "beads and mirrors" to have us do something we already are doing with gusto.

[HamHam]

. . .You can find crude oil useful without being able to drink it. We make immense use of plastics that are, essentially, refined hydro-carbons produced by decayed plant life. It's entirely possible that some other civilizaton out there, for example one based on silicon, never developed plastics and has to use metal substitutes. And even if the other life out there is carbon-based, that's no guarantee that particular forms of carbon chains developed on their planet, nor that it would necessarily be poisonous. One of the funniest bits I've ever seen in science fiction involved the simple fact that in the Farscape-verse, Earth is the only planet where sucrose (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVMYBRzStzo) is naturally-produced.

Okay? Same problem. Oil and plastics are so desired by us because they are cheap. Dragging them up through a gravity well is just never going to make economic sense compared to something you can make from all the base matter you can already get in space.

[McStabbington]

Okay? Same problem. Oil and plastics are so desired by us because they are cheap. Dragging them up through a gravity well is just never going to make economic sense compared to something you can make from all the base matter you can already get in space.

It's not just that they're cheap. It's that they are, in many ways, vastly superior to alternatives. You can machine an interchangeable part just as you would with metal, but the part will weigh substantially less and not be nearly as conductive of electricity or heat in the process. There are a lot of things you can do with various kinds of plastics that simply cannot be done with equivalent alloys.

Plus, if we're figuring that they are a space-faring species, it is almost given that they've also figured out how to solve the logistical problem of moving items from ground to orbit cheaply. There are possible exceptions, but it's just not feasible to consider it. It's the same reason why alien abduction stories are simply unbelievable: because in order to be accurate, the alien abductors would have FTL capacity, but failed to develop their knowledge of biology beyond what we were doing in the late 1800's. Is it possible that they would have such significant lag in one of the scientific disciplines? Sure, in the sense that it doesn't technically violate any of the laws of logic or physics. Is it in any way realistic as a matter of calculating probabilities? No.

[The Glyphstone]

Unless the abductions aren't actually for any legitimate scientific purpose. Maybe it's the interstellar equivalent of a fraternity hazing ritual....."to become a new pledge, Glllzasz'Thragorp has to steal the vice-president's saucer, take it to Earth, then probe three humans and a cow, without being caught."

[HamHam]

It's not just that they're cheap. It's that they are, in many ways, vastly superior to alternatives. You can machine an interchangeable part just as you would with metal, but the part will weigh substantially less and not be nearly as conductive of electricity or heat in the process. There are a lot of things you can do with various kinds of plastics that simply cannot be done with equivalent alloys.

Eh. Even if this is true, making plastics without having to use oil is in fact possible.


Plus, if we're figuring that they are a space-faring species, it is almost given that they've also figured out how to solve the logistical problem of moving items from ground to orbit cheaply.

There is no such thing. Even if you assumed 100% efficiency with no loss to air friction or in your propulsion system, the simple fact remains that a great deal of energy is required to move mass out of a gravity well.

[Soras Teva Gee]

It's not just that they're cheap. It's that they are, in many ways, vastly superior to alternatives. You can machine an interchangeable part just as you would with metal, but the part will weigh substantially less and not be nearly as conductive of electricity or heat in the process. There are a lot of things you can do with various kinds of plastics that simply cannot be done with equivalent alloys.

You seem unaware that there are multiple ways (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic) to make plastic.



Plus, if we're figuring that they are a space-faring species, it is almost given that they've also figured out how to solve the logistical problem of moving items from ground to orbit cheaply.

Yeah its called not doing it. :smallwink:

Seriously the only solutions on the scientific horizon are all megastructure building projects. That's one thing when you *have* to do it because its your homeworld you evolved on, its something else once you are in space.

We can speculate about fantasy anti-gravity or whatever drives but its barely on the map scientifically. I've not seen a serious proposal (unlike FTL even) for how something like that would begin to work.

The way you move things to and from space is to not do it, you ideally move the one thing that absolutely must go up (people) and nothing else. Its actually plausible you don't even do that, and take a generational approach. Move the minimum people for carefully made breeding pool and breed a space based population the long way.

[russdm]

Space stations are infact less useful than planets. We have a space station that houses usually about 3-4 people max at a time and they have to get regular shipments of supplies that weighs in at several tons. A bigger station with more people require more supplies, most of which are free here on Earth. They need oxygen to breathe which is free on earth; they need water to drink, easily free or attainable on earth. Plus they have to keep themselves exercising because of the issues regarding weightlessness and body structure loss. Then you have the worries about radiation and micro-meteorites. Yes, building stations are feasible, but settling on a planet works better.

Not every alien species will have developed the same as us. Some may have ended up like the buggers from Enders game, who couldn't comprehend us. Or maybe they are klingons who enjoy fighting and conquering new species to sustain a warrior culture. Or maybe they are bug-like creatures or spider-like creatures that feast on meat, that would find humans a plentiful food source.

Or for the worse idea) What if some species needs our blood to survive because of how it contains iron? We could be medicine for some other species, we use some species for medicines and some even as aphrodisiacs. Another species could end up using us as aphrodiasiacs to get them in the mood.

As for alien abductions, that might be their scientists who are capturing a few humans and conducting studies similiar to lab rat trials. They may be trying to learn about us before revealing themselves and want to see how people react. They could be determing whether we would make good food sources, or medicines, or love-making potions.

An alien race having a religious view that they are the only sentient beings in the universe or the only race allowed to be sentient is possible. Other species would be removed because it offended their religious views. We have had that in our own past.

As for being an interseller bollywood or hollywood is bogus. Human culture might be completely offensive or inexplicable to aliens, rendering it worthless to them. Its incrediably arrogant to think that every alien race wants humanity to provide them entertainment and frankly, our current entertainment is rather crappy in alot of ways.

We need to stop looking at everything in terms of capitalist economical viewpoints. Aliens might infact be communists or have very different views on economies. They may consider that all individuals/planets/systems should share freely what they have with the rest of the galaxy without concern for the amount of money it costs. If they are capitalists, they may consider it good capitalist thinking to exploit the natural resources of other planets without regard to the people living there. Might makes right, eh?

The most horrible idea to consider is that the aliens are enviromental terrorists, going about punishing other species for their bad enviromental choices. Having them show up and say, "Due to your species' bad decision making for the planet Earth's enviroment, all humans must suffer." Is not that in the slightest bit possible?

This is some food for thought people. Devour as need be, and stop calling me Warty Goblin please.

[Grinner]

Space stations are infact less useful than planets. We have a space station that houses usually about 3-4 people max at a time and they have to get regular shipments of supplies that weighs in at several tons. A bigger station with more people require more supplies, most of which are free here on Earth. They need oxygen to breathe which is free on earth; they need water to drink, easily free or attainable on earth. Plus they have to keep themselves exercising because of the issues regarding weightlessness and body structure loss. Then you have the worries about radiation and micro-meteorites. Yes, building stations are feasible, but settling on a planet works better.

All problems which a space-faring civilization would have dealt with already, or else they wouldn't have gone into space in the first place.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Space stations are infact less useful than planets. We have a space station that houses usually about 3-4 people max at a time and they have to get regular shipments of supplies that weighs in at several tons. A bigger station with more people require more supplies, most of which are free here on Earth. They need oxygen to breathe which is free on earth; they need water to drink, easily free or attainable on earth. Plus they have to keep themselves exercising because of the issues regarding weightlessness and body structure loss. Then you have the worries about radiation and micro-meteorites. Yes, building stations are feasible, but settling on a planet works better.


You need to read this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder)



Not every alien species will have developed the same as us. Some may have ended up like the buggers from Enders game, who couldn't comprehend us. Or maybe they are klingons who enjoy fighting and conquering new species to sustain a warrior culture. Or maybe they are bug-like creatures or spider-like creatures that feast on meat, that would find humans a plentiful food source.

The Buggers also had magical soul particle telepathy.

The Federation made peace with the Klingons. If anything there maybe as belligerent as we are today.

And if we're good to eat (biologically, unlikely but possible) it wouldn't answer why they would even know this since they can obviously aren't eating us right now. Also they'd likely be dead from putting all their things they couldn't eat in their mouths.


Or for the worse idea) What if some species needs our blood to survive because of how it contains iron? We could be medicine for some other species, we use some species for medicines and some even as aphrodisiacs. Another species could end up using us as aphrodiasiacs to get them in the mood.

You mean the basic periodic element. If they can process iron (and therefore ever need it) then they can obviously already do so without a completely alien species as intermediary.

Also watch less Futurama. *cough*human-horn*cough*


As for alien abductions, that might be their scientists who are capturing a few humans and conducting studies similiar to lab rat trials. They may be trying to learn about us before revealing themselves and want to see how people react. They could be determing whether we would make good food sources, or medicines, or love-making potions.

They haven't figured that out in the hundreds of years the "abduction" phenomena has been going on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis)?



An alien race having a religious view that they are the only sentient beings in the universe or the only race allowed to be sentient is possible. Other species would be removed because it offended their religious views. We have had that in our own past.

Without challenging that assumption of history... did such views prosper in the long run?

Basic logic would suggest they can only work as long as you are both the biggest fish and overwhelmingly so.

Consider also such a view would have almost inevitably had to confront an older more advanced race itself. Ergo a bigger fish.



We need to stop looking at everything in terms of capitalist economical viewpoints. Aliens might infact be communists or have very different views on economies. They may consider that all individuals/planets/systems should share freely what they have with the rest of the galaxy without concern for the amount of money it costs. If they are capitalists, they may consider it good capitalist thinking to exploit the natural resources of other planets without regard to the people living there. Might makes right, eh?

Whatever your philosophy if you don't manage your resources properly you loose to yourself. Cost benefit analysis is not merely a good idea but a sort of self enforcing law, since if you don't do it right you suddenly have nothing left to do anything with.

That's why economics are so important.

Also a true equal sharing would be a perfect benevolence event since we would be the recipients of the full tech benefits of the galactic commune so we can effectively contribute our resources to the whole.

And the cold-hearted capitalist bastard knows that there's no reason to bother with inhabited systems at all. Unclaimed resources are where its at. And there's by definition more of that in space then anywhere else.

[warty goblin]

They haven't figured that out in the hundreds of years the "abduction" phenomena has been going on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis)?


That's a kinda weak argument.

I'm not seriously proposing that little green men are out kidnapping Farmer Gomer and pulling their deep-bore probing rig out of the sterilizer as we speak mind you. However we've been studying ourselves for quite some time now, and in all probability are still getting stuff wrong*. We certainly keep finding things we got wrong in the past. Saying they should have enough data isn't particularly compelling since we don't have enough data, and we've got a hell of a lot more of it that the hypothetical little green men do.

Besides which, we have no idea how hard the problem of unraveling a completely alien species' biology and genetics is.


*If you want something scary, consider this: Even if every single assumption made in analyzing a medical study is 100% correct, the scientists will still falsely conclude something irrelevant is effective with a non-negligable frequency. And there's good evidence that a significant portion of the time they don't even know what the hell they're doing when they analyze their data in the first place...

[HamHam]

Space stations are infact less useful than planets. We have a space station that houses usually about 3-4 people max at a time and they have to get regular shipments of supplies that weighs in at several tons. A bigger station with more people require more supplies, most of which are free here on Earth. They need oxygen to breathe which is free on earth; they need water to drink, easily free or attainable on earth. Plus they have to keep themselves exercising because of the issues regarding weightlessness and body structure loss. Then you have the worries about radiation and micro-meteorites. Yes, building stations are feasible, but settling on a planet works better.

Hydrogen and oxygen and thus water are all not that hard to find in space, if a bit expensive energy wise to process into a usable form. Still easier than trying to adapt to Earth. The literal best case scenario is that fundamental differences in biology would make you and the local bacteria and viruses miss each other. More likely you keel over dead from a fungal infection that your body did not even recognize as alive while it saw you as a buffet of organic compounds.


Not every alien species will have developed the same as us. Some may have ended up like the buggers from Enders game, who couldn't comprehend us.

Ender's Game assumes preposterous things about inter-habitability.


Or maybe they are klingons who enjoy fighting and conquering new species to sustain a warrior culture.

Because a civilization like that could survive developing nuclear power. Not to mention not making any evolutionary sense to begin with.


Or maybe they are bug-like creatures or spider-like creatures that feast on meat, that would find humans a plentiful food source.

Again, biology does not work like that. And second... they can farm domesticated animals like normal species.


Or for the worse idea) What if some species needs our blood to survive because of how it contains iron? We could be medicine for some other species, we use some species for medicines and some even as aphrodisiacs. Another species could end up using us as aphrodiasiacs to get them in the mood.

Or they could just use all that iron floating around in the asteroid belt that isn't suspended in a horribly toxic blend of alien microorganisms?


An alien race having a religious view that they are the only sentient beings in the universe or the only race allowed to be sentient is possible. Other species would be removed because it offended their religious views. We have had that in our own past.

No religious war has ever been fought that did not benefit the parties in a far more materialistic way.

[Frozen_Feet]

None of which would be compatible with an extraterrestrial biology. Unless you just mean like... silk or something, but again the costs of shipping mean that no matter how expensive synthesizing something similar might be, it's still cheaper.

I'm not talking about producing organic goods here on earth and then shipping them out en masse. I'm talking about the aliens coming here to analyze earth-bound life in hopes of finding organic compounds they have not thought of or synthetized yet. Just the information you can get from analyzing a whole biosphere is immensely valuable.

EDIT: the nice thing about living things is that you can a small amount of them to another place, feed them stuff, and soon you will have a big amount of them. With sufficiently advanced genetic engineering technology, the aliens would only need to import genetic data, nothing more.


1) Given our ability to make Earth completely uninhabitable at the push of a button, this is still a terrible idea on their part.

But we haven't rendered earth uninhabitable yet. And I wouldn't put it past sneaky aliens to disarm us first, conquer us second. :smalltongue:


2) Assuming Earth as it stands is remotely habitable to something that evolved on a different planet is silly. You are better off finding some place on the verge of the habitable zone but that doesn't have life on it yet and terraform that than try to do the same to a planet of Earth were you have to actively fight against the local organisms.

I myself noted we can't assume a damn thing. :smalltongue: But, if Earth is even remotely suitable for the aliens, it will be vastly easier for them to take earth whole-sale. Terraforming is not easy. It is harder than bombing our biosphere from orbit, waiting a couple of decades for the dust to settle, and the reclaiming the ruins. Terraforming, in general, is almost on par with FTL for fantastic technologies. Altering a whole planet is not easy!

In fact, the difficulty of terraforming is the reason why I usually speak against trying to spread humanity on other planets. :smalltongue: Earth at its worst is better than any known other planet at its best. Keeping earth livable essentially infinitely requires only fraction of the technology we would need to terraform, say, Mars.


3) It really kind of does. You pretty much have to posit fantasy tech instant speed FTL jump technology to produce a model of space travel that doesn't involve you being essentially self sufficient for a very, very long trip.

Define "very, very long". Engineers us posited we humans could, with today's technology, build a multigenerational, nuclear-bomb-propulsed ship that could reach the nearest other solar system in ~200 years. But it would be one-way trip, and if there's nothing inhabitable in the other end, the ship is SOL.

Considering the distances involved, it's not enough for a space vessel to be self-sufficient for hundred, thousand or ten thousand years if there's no resupply depot in sight. A vessel large enough to remain "self-sufficient" infinitely (ie. resupplying itself with materials from space-found materials) will be the size of planetoid by itself.

[Jayngfet]

But we haven't rendered earth uninhabitable yet. And I wouldn't put it past sneaky aliens to disarm us first, conquer us second. :smalltongue:



Of course, this is under the assumption that they have the means to.

I mean, can the aliens figure out our operating system? Do they have the technology necessary to take out each specific nuclear base in every country, even with technological differences?

Remember, they're going in blind here too. They'll need to analyse every piece of technology if they want to disarm us, and presently we're advancing at a prodigal rate. Their ability to see what specific technology we have, and will have in a timely fashion, and disarm it without us stopping them at a speed we can't replace, requires a bunch of other assumptions to be made.

They can cross the stars with ease, but they can't understand Windows 7.

[Frozen_Feet]

I was thinking more on terms of "We come in Peace - shoot to kill" strategy. That is, they cheat us to remove our own armaments - and then stab us in the back when we're not looking.

But you are right, it will be a major effort on their part to understand enough of us to even start with that.

[McStabbington]

You seem unaware that there are multiple ways (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic) to make plastic.


. . . I see the distinction. I don't see the difference. Whether the biomass has been dead for a long time or a short time, the point was that something as common and useful as plastic is only producable if you have organic molecules to work with. There won't be any algae blooms in space any more than there are petroleum deposits in yonder asteroids. Plastics are immensely useful, and if you want them, you have to come down here to get the base components.




Yeah its called not doing it. :smallwink:

Seriously the only solutions on the scientific horizon are all megastructure building projects. That's one thing when you *have* to do it because its your homeworld you evolved on, its something else once you are in space.

We can speculate about fantasy anti-gravity or whatever drives but its barely on the map scientifically. I've not seen a serious proposal (unlike FTL even) for how something like that would begin to work.

The way you move things to and from space is to not do it, you ideally move the one thing that absolutely must go up (people) and nothing else. Its actually plausible you don't even do that, and take a generational approach. Move the minimum people for carefully made breeding pool and breed a space based population the long way.

Not disagreeing with you, but if we're talking about a civilization that is a threat, they will have, almost by definition, had to have solved this problem in one way or another. Whether that goal is even theoretically achievable is, for the moment, beside the point. What's important is that if they haven't solved this problem, then they are either still largely confined to the gravity well of their own home world, in which case they aren't a threat, or they're entirely spacefaring, in which case they are also not a threat. An entirely spacefaring civilization would have the same interests, and same basic defense, as an actual Atlantis: the first line of defense for both sides is that the medium that they live in is completely inhospitable to the other and can be ventured deeply into only with cumbersome and expensive technology, to say nothing of the extremely limited basis.

Long story short, so long as we're talking civilizations that are potential threats, we are also by definition talking about civilizations that have solved the logistical problems of surface-to-orbit mass transit. That such logistical problems seem nigh insurmountable given our current understanding of physics and engineering is true, but beside the point. It's akin to interrupting a debate about how the Federation could combat the Borg threat by pointing out that FTL is, barring one incredibly recent and untested theory, completely impossible. However true, you're just making me :smallannoyed:.

[MLai]

On interspecies communication, this is what gets me the most excited:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2012/10/18/dolphin-speak-bustin-the-code-on-flippers-rhymes/

I really hope scientists make big progress in this during my lifetime. It is my belief that these animals are capable of sophisticated communication on the level of our standards of language. Because the boundary between animal and human intelligence is not as clear-cut as many may think.

[Soras Teva Gee]

They can cross the stars with ease, but they can't understand Windows 7.

Hey at least it won't be Windows 8.


. . . I see the distinction. I don't see the difference. Whether the biomass has been dead for a long time or a short time, the point was that something as common and useful as plastic is only producable if you have organic molecules to work with. There won't be any algae blooms in space any more than there are petroleum deposits in yonder asteroids. Plastics are immensely useful, and if you want them, you have to come down here to get the base components.

There will however be water, carbon, and all the other basic elements. Put in tin can orbiting at the right distance, add some seed microorganisms from home, wait a season and bang.

You don't go find biomass, you farm it.

More to the point basic surivival in space will demand the exportation not only of people but of the means to feed them before you leave your home system. So you need to do this anyways.



It's akin to interrupting a debate about how the Federation could combat the Borg threat by pointing out that FTL is, barring one incredibly recent and untested theory, completely impossible. However true, you're just making me :smallannoyed:.

Given that the serious proposal is actually very much like the Warp Drive I'd hardly point that out.

The problem is that this disscussion isn't based on fantasy settings which can take things as simple givens nessecarily to allow the plot... but on the reality of what we can actually expect to happen in the event of First Contact.

So for example that there isn't anything on the drawing board for cheaply getting to and from 1G wells is of paramount importance. Just finding what circumstances actually make Earth of interest to aliens and we start talking edge cases, among edge cases, among edge cases at minute fractions of a percent.

[HamHam]

I'm not talking about producing organic goods here on earth and then shipping them out en masse. I'm talking about the aliens coming here to analyze earth-bound life in hopes of finding organic compounds they have not thought of or synthetized yet. Just the information you can get from analyzing a whole biosphere is immensely valuable.

EDIT: the nice thing about living things is that you can a small amount of them to another place, feed them stuff, and soon you will have a big amount of them. With sufficiently advanced genetic engineering technology, the aliens would only need to import genetic data, nothing more.

Yeah but that's an argument in favor of peaceful contact.


But we haven't rendered earth uninhabitable yet. And I wouldn't put it past sneaky aliens to disarm us first, conquer us second. :smalltongue:

Good luck with that? Magic computer viruses that can shut down all nuclear launch systems in an instant are not a thing that exists or is even possible. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that those have manual failsafes for a reason. And destroying every bunker and sub and whatever at once from orbit suggests a level of energy production that makes all of this mute. You can literally use fusion to synthesize any kind of matter you want with that much energy.


I myself noted we can't assume a damn thing. :smalltongue: But, if Earth is even remotely suitable for the aliens, it will be vastly easier for them to take earth whole-sale. Terraforming is not easy. It is harder than bombing our biosphere from orbit, waiting a couple of decades for the dust to settle, and the reclaiming the ruins. Terraforming, in general, is almost on par with FTL for fantastic technologies. Altering a whole planet is not easy!

Not really. Terraforming is required in either case. The benefit of a dead world is just that, it's dead. You have to compensate for certain physical deficiencies, like a lack of certain elements or unoptimal orbital conditions, but if you wanted to settle on a living world, you have to first kill everything, then scrub the environment of all the pathogens and other toxic biological compounds, and then fix the place up.

If you are capable of space flight, it is almost certainly cheaper to keep looking for a planet in the habitable zone with the right composition that just never had anything evolve on it or is only lacking one thing that you can easily import, like water.

The odds of any sort of alien life is already astronomical. The odds of that life being adapted to an atmosphere and environment just like Earths is exponentially so.


Define "very, very long". Engineers us posited we humans could, with today's technology, build a multigenerational, nuclear-bomb-propulsed ship that could reach the nearest other solar system in ~200 years. But it would be one-way trip, and if there's nothing inhabitable in the other end, the ship is SOL.

Why? At that point, it is a comparably simply procedure to make the thing capable of indefinite operation as long as it has inputs of energy (solar, or H3 harvested from gas giants into a fusion reaction of some kind) and raw materials from asteroids. Hydroponics and a good recycling system can make keeping humans alive on board a closed system that only requires new energy.

-------------

And that's not even considering the fact that the way things are developing, it seems likely that singularity will happen long before a working FTL design or the capability to actually build usable sub-light ships. Which if it represents the usual nature of things means what we actually need to worry about is living machines showing up... but those definitely do not need our planet for anything.

[Frozen_Feet]

Not really. Terraforming is required in either case. The benefit of a dead world is just that, it's dead. You have to compensate for certain physical deficiencies, like a lack of certain elements or unoptimal orbital conditions, but if you wanted to settle on a living world, you have to first kill everything, then scrub the environment of all the pathogens and other toxic biological compounds, and then fix the place up.


There is a reason why dead worlds are dead. Reversing those reasons is not easy. And dead worlds are not necessarily any less toxic or inconvenient than living ones. Take a look at Venus. Or Mars, for that matter - the sand is really going to ruin a few days if we ever go there.

Also, you're making big assumptions regarding toxicity of earth life to foreigners. Most earth microbes are specialized for interaction with certain kinds of organisms - they might ignore alien life alltogether.

In fact, I'd like to point out that your very own environment is likely full of substances that are insanely toxic to you, but you're still alive because they won't normally interact with your body. The ground is stock full of bacteria that create botulinum toxin, one of the most toxic substances known to man - but unless you go eating dirt and rotten carcases, you will barely notice.

Also, I find it funny you too jumped to the conclusion of "magic bomb-disarming virus", instead of more realistic visions such as political upheaval making us humans defuse our own bombs.

[Eric Tolle]

But then the Earth's atmosphere contains large amounts of the highly toxic and reactive chemical oxygen. So it's not a given that Earth would be any more habitable than say, Venus. You're really making unwarranted assumptions about the biology of aliens.

[Soras Teva Gee]

But then the Earth's atmosphere contains large amounts of the highly toxic and reactive chemical oxygen. So it's not a given that Earth would be any more habitable than say, Venus. You're really making unwarranted assumptions about the biology of aliens.

Venus has a surface temperature of 735 K, an atmospheric pressure 92 times Earth's, and is shrouded by clouds of sulfuric acid. It is a waterless pressure cooker. Chemistry may be endless, but it is not so unlimited that it lets us suppose anything we want as possible.

Sure maybe there's some living goop around an enviroment, but its several other tasks to get from microorganisms to complex intelligent macroscale life capable of manipulating its enviroment. And maybe someone with expert knowledge can correct me (preferably with a source) but it seems to me biochemistry in particular ends up making trade-offs. We have no fur so are vulnerable to the cold, but can run everything into the ground because we don't overheat. (What's with those average stats humans always gets we should have big Con bonuses)

And biochemistry aside you need certain conditions to create a technological society at all. Don't have an atmosphere with enough oxygen for fire, good luck getting industry started when you can't forge or cook.

When you consider the thousands of things that had to go right for us to exist to me it starts to become downright reasonable that any aliens will be broadly similar to Earth life. Which still allows for plenty of things, like how we devour chocolate that poisons our dogs...

... but not so much to make say anywhere but Earth even possibly habitable in this solar system without a lot of work.

[Frozen_Feet]

But then the Earth's atmosphere contains large amounts of the highly toxic and reactive chemical oxygen. So it's not a given that Earth would be any more habitable than say, Venus. You're really making unwarranted assumptions about the biology of aliens.

The core assumption in this line of discussion was that Earth is particularly suitable for some aliens, instead of, say, Venus. Again, I agree we can't assume anything. My point was mainly that we also can't assume the aliens are better off colonizing some sterile rock. :smallwink:

[Ravens_cry]

The core assumption in this line of discussion was that Earth is particularly suitable for some aliens, instead of, say, Venus. Again, I agree we can't assume anything. My point was mainly that we also can't assume the aliens are better off colonizing some sterile rock. :smallwink:
If they are too much like us, at least at a fundamental biochemical level, Earth could be very ,very bad place indeed, as there is then a chance of diseases crossing species. Even if that is not the case, civen that Earth has a thick atmosphere and large gravity well, an ispacefaring species may well indeed be better off going for the rock.

[Axolotl]

I think the idea that aliens capable of reaching Earth will have anything close to a set biology at all is unlikely to say the least. Genetic engineering, mind uploading and strong AI are all technologies that are going to be untilised long before interstellar travel is a possibility nevermind actually done on anything close to a regular basis.

Any aliens that can travel to earth just to meet us (and lets face it there's no other good reason for them to come here) is going to be centuries if not millenia post-singularity. And I can't think of any plausible way they're interaction with us would be desirable.

[Karoht]

My two cents on the matter:

If they want to kill us: They will. And they'll do it from as far away as they can reasonably be. Chances are they will just shove an asteroid (or many) at us from one of the many chunks floating around in the asteroid belt. Why waste their precious photon torpedoes when they can let an abundant amount of rock do the work. AND we would have next to no idea that other life forms were involved, as we aren't really tracking that much of the sky to even know something is coming our way. Seriously, extinction level event, and all it would take is a nudge or two to get some big fat space rocks headed our way.

If they want our knowledge: They'll get it. Either they will find a way to access our communications satellites and start scanning through the internet, or they will just ask us what they want to know. Chances are good that if they can access the internet, they can create false personas to start asking about what they need to know. When they exhaust that possibility, they will probably make contact. If the massive amounts of X rated material on the internet do not scare them off first. Or all the adds.

If dey wants our wimmens: Highly unlikely, and a sexist notion at best. We don't know their physiology, ergo we don't know if they even HAVE sexes.

If they want our resources: Remember how I mentioned the asteroid belt? It is a ring of rocks floating around out past the orbit of Mars, if memory serves me correctly. It's said that there are abundant resources out there. Massive rocks made of titanium ore, lithium, and more. But outside of our solar system, there are crazier things out there, like that one planet they think is actually one big giant diamond. My point is, why would they come all the way to our solar system for the purpose of taking our resources, when there are larger and likely more abundant sources of it elsewhere. Why would they come to earth for fossil fuels when they can just go to one of the moons of jupiter (titan or europa, I always get the two confused) which has an ocean of liquid methane?

If they want our life force: Unlikely. Prove we have one first and then we will talk.

If they want to eat our whole planet: If Galactus shows up, we're probably boned.

If they want to share in our culture: Tough to speculate here. Either they will show up and just ask to be invited to our parties and visit our museums and be tourists for a while, take some souveniers, leave a few goodies for us, and off they go.