Would Visiting Aliens be Benevolent or Malevolent

[Sava]

Originally posted by Lonestar
Further Discussion Topic:

If NASA announced that a Fleet of now less than 100 1 km long spaceships were heading past Saturn towards Earth, would you come to the conclusion that it was an Invasion/colonization Fleet?

With that kind of commitment on their part, I doubt any resistance we put up would be effective.

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Sava

With that kind of commitment on their part, I doubt any resistance we put up would be effective.

On the other hand...it MUST be a colonization/invasion first, which mean that orbital bombardment is (somewhat) unlikely, as said Aliens probaly want to retain Earth in a state that helps with colonization.

(Scorching large sections of the planet wouldn't do that)

[GePap]

A more ineteresing question is, if we get to travel between the starts, will we be benevolent or malovolent vis a vi some less advanced alier race?

Oh, and why always assume man is way behind? Maybe we haven;t heard other aliens cause we are the firts in this neighborhood to start beaming radio waves around.

[Lonestar]

Maybe.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Lonestar


On the other hand...it MUST be a colonization/invasion first, which mean that orbital bombardment is (somewhat) unlikely, as said Aliens probaly want to retain Earth in a state that helps with colonization.

(Scorching large sections of the planet wouldn't do that)

If they are anything like us, they'd probably send massive quantities of biological weapons down on us. Some sort of bioengineered pathogen that would annihilate us, while being relatively peaceful to plant life.

But I think a massive fleet like that just wouldn't be practical, and highly unlikely. Considering how rare technologically capable life is on Earth, I also doubt that life forms like us would exist close enough to us that they'd even be able to detect us. Think about the timeline of humans, the timeline of our use of electricity. A few hundred years compared to what, 3 billion years of life on Earth. Technology-bearing life forms like us are rare, relatively speaking.

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Sava
If they are anything like us, they'd probably send massive quantities of biological weapons down on us. Some sort of bioengineered pathogen that would annihilate us, while being relatively peaceful to plant life.

But I think a massive fleet like that just wouldn't be practical, and highly unlikely. Considering how rare technologically capable life is on Earth, I also doubt that life forms like us would exist close enough to us that they'd even be able to detect us. Think about the timeline of humans, the timeline of our use of electricity. A few hundred years compared to what, 3 billion years of life on Earth. Technology-bearing life forms like us are rare, relatively speaking.

My Scenario, by the way, is based on Harry Turtledove's WorldWar series, when an Alien Fleet arrives in 1942, *astonished* that mankind advanced so much between the 12th century and 1942 (The previous 2 races they encountered, plus themselves, advanced very slowly, technologically speaking)

[Sava]

Oh, and why always assume man is way behind? Maybe we haven;t heard other aliens cause we are the firts in this neighborhood to start beaming radio waves around.

Good point. We are obviously the first kind of life form to have technology on Earth, I suspect any such other life forms are so far away, we'll become extinct before detecting each other. And assuming the universe is infinite, having existed forever, it's reasonable to assume such beings have existed before and have been long gone.

Also, if we go by what Einstein says, the range that we (or any other intelligent life) could ever hope to travel is small, considering the size of what we know as our region of the universe.

[Sava]

My Scenario, by the way, is based on Harry Turtledove's WorldWar series, when an Alien Fleet arrives in 1942, *astonished* that mankind advanced so much between the 12th century and 1942 (The previous 2 races they encountered, plus themselves, advanced very slowly, technologically speaking)

I haven't read that, sounds interesting though. But I doubt that we have truly advanced that far. There are still people in Kentucky that don't have running water.

[GePap]

Why would reserach be so slow paced? This is another common theme, that somehow humans advanced atypically fast. I don;t get it. Once we overcame disease, our popuation exploded, growing exponentially. Why would our technological advance not keep up with out popuation growth? Slow until you get to a specific barrier, then let loose.

[Lung]

Well said, Sava.

I read somewhere, that the difficulty in finding another intelligent alien race is that we not only have to find them in space, but in time as well. When you multiply the distant odds of either with each other, it starts getting really remote.

In other words, if you found another planet with life on it, the chances are that either intteligent life has not yet evolved, or has already annihilated itself or evolved into something beyond our comprehension.

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Sava
I haven't read that, sounds interesting though. But I doubt that we have truly advanced that far. There are still people in Kentucky that don't have running water.

Socially, we may not have progressived to the best point possible. But Technological? We've advanced quite a bit, and could certainly fight a guereilla war if need be.

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by GePap
Why would reserach be so slow paced? This is another common theme, that somehow humans advanced atypically fast. I don;t get it. Once we overcame disease, our popuation exploded, growing exponentially. Why would our technological advance not keep up with out popuation growth? Slow until you get to a specific barrier, then let loose.

Because their planets Were large Desert planets with not much in the way of natural barriers. As a result, their culture unified and Homogenizaed fairly early. The situation was the same on the other two systems "The Race" conquered (except they were at Iron and Bronze age levels, as opposed to the Race, which had reached early 21st century, war techwise, before it unified.)

No Competition= slow growth.

Remember, Nescessity is the Mother of All Invention. In the WorldWar series, the Race's Invasion force had became so "flexible" by Race standards, they were treated with contempt when the Colonists arrived. Eventually the colonists started to change too, and Earth (Tosev) was treated with contempt by the rest of the Empire.

(They have sublight speeds, the Homeworld is Tau Ceti)

[Sava]

Originally posted by Lung
Well said, Sava.

thx

I read somewhere, that the difficulty in finding another intelligent alien race is that we not only have to find them in space, but in time as well. When you multiply the distant odds of either with each other, it starts getting really remote.

In other words, if you found another planet with life on it, the chances are that either intteligent life has not yet evolved, or has already annihilated itself or evolved into something beyond our comprehension.

Who's to say Earth hasn't been visited in the past? I think life in the universe will be quite common... by using Earth's history as a benchmark, intelligent, technologically capable beings will be rare. I think that overall, the search for other intelligent life will be the key motivation behind any deep space research projects that aliens participate in. If we're to go by Einsteinian physics, traveling vast distances will take a really long time. And if I understand the laws of thermodynamics and various other theories, going into deep space would be really difficult. Most likely, probes would be doing the traveling. And they would most likely not be under direct control due to the distances involved, what with the amount of time it would take to relay instructions to a probe over light years.

[Inverse Icarus]

i've been over this a lot with my buds, we love debates that go nowhere.

the general cosensus is you cannot assume anything, because you would be dealing with, well, an alien midset, in both meanings of the word. their evolution may have been different than ours, and certain traits may have been weeded out / let to grow. maybe early in their evolution they learned that sharing their resources makes more of them strong enough to fend off predators, strength in numbers. maybe communism works for them

one of my friesnts says thats what he loves about the movie "Signs", the fact that even at the end of the movie, you have no idea what the purpose of the aliens was. they came, gassed some people, and kidnapped others, and then just left. you can't objectively evaluate alien motives / attitudes because you're using a human midset as the frame of refrence.

as for the converse, ie, we find sentient life on another planet, we'd probably screw it up and end up at war. what if we found a plaet that has achieved world peace, ad has destroyed all their weapons? easy to roll over.

i don't know, honestly. i know, as a respectable member of the human race, that i would think we would be peaceful and benevolent to alien cultures initially, but if stargate has taught me nothing, it's not to trust aliens, especially really friendly ones.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Lonestar


Socially, we may not have progressived to the best point possible.

you damn commie!

But Technological? We've advanced quite a bit, and could certainly fight a guereilla war if need be.

Not really. We've only had 200 years of real technological growth. I doubt it would compare to a race which has had 10's of thousands of years to create technology.