Would Visiting Aliens be Benevolent or Malevolent

[Winston]

Aliens.

I think they'll be a bit more malevolent than the arch-angels, but far, far nicer than those pesky types living inside the Earth's core.

Now giant mutated bedbugs is a whole different story.

[Ben Kenobi]

I think they'd point and laugh a lot.

AH must be an alien...

[Whaleboy]

Theyd be more inclined to be nice, because if they were benevolent, they would have most likely destroyed themselves. In order to develop tech to travel between stars, its reasonable to assume they develop tech to harness huge amounts of energy. Warlike people will turn this into weaponry and could destroy themselves. We only recently passed that test in october 1962, and we're not out of the woods yet!

[Cruddy]

Re: Would Visiting Aliens be Benevolent or Malevolent

Originally posted by Lung
That's "nice or "mean", to those of you still in high school

Maybe not. Perhaps they want to install a benevolent dictatorship - so the first thing they do is round up all civil servants, politicians, soldiers and kill them (no need for them, you see).

They might be benevolent to some, but to all? How's about the xenophobic morons who don't even believe there's life outside their home town, let alone another country or another planet?

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Winston
...
Now giant mutated bedbugs is a whole different story.

Nah, leave them out and let's try to stay on topic, eh?

[Arrian]

elijah, I think Jack the Bodiless has a real good point about "peaceful" aliens.

I see no reason alien visitors wouldn't subjucate us for the benifit of their empire (or, as FP put it, "squash us like bugs"). Why assume goodwill toward a primitive civilization like ours?

-Arrian

[DaShi]

I agree. Imagine that we are the aliens arriving on a peaceful planet. What would we do?

[Arrian]

We would kick ass, steal, exploit, and maybe feel bad about it later.

-Arrian

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by DaShi
I agree. Imagine that we are the aliens arriving on a peaceful planet. What would we do?

Cause the aliens to all die of the common cold, most likely.

[Lorizael]

If it's likely that any aliens with advanced technology would have gotten that technology through some type of arms race, what prevents them from destroying themselves? This isn't actually meant to be a pessimistic question, because, after all, humans have managed to avoid that fate.

MAD was all well and good, but if the Soviet Union was still alive, would the world be?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet


Cause the aliens to all die of the common cold, most likely.

Free resources!

[Lorizael]

Yah aliens wouldn't be likely to have any resistance to our diseases, but what are the odds the diseases have any idea what to do against whatever weird biology the aliens have got?

[Arrian]

It cuts both ways, too. If they are vulnerable to our diseases, we could be vulnerable to theirs. We could decimate each other's populations without firing a shot.

-Arrian

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Spiffor
If they develop good enough machines to come all the way down here, they must be a highly scientific kind. I'm sure they will observe us before taking any steps (and observe Earth in general).

If they are of a highly scientific kind, it could also backfire.
Mabe they use humans for their Experiments, just as human scientists do with Rats, Pigeons or Escherichia coli

After all, being highly scientific doesn´t mean that you are also highly ethical

[Arrian]

They could have a totally different ethical code than we do (leaving aside for a moment that we humans do not have 1 ethical code), which allows them to "morally" do nasty things to us.

After all, we kill each other, why shouldn't they kill us?

-Arrian