Would Visiting Aliens be Benevolent or Malevolent

[JCG]

If they exist, some would be benevolent and others would be malevolent (in our eyes and according to our morality, of course). Can't be much different from humans in that respect, I'd suppose.

[DAVOUT]

We have destroyed too often primitive people only by the contact of our technological civ, that I hope that in case we would discover aliens not as advanced as we are we would not contact them immediately, only in order not to harm them. And I believe that advanced aliens discovering the Earth would do the same. They would observe in taking great care not to interfere. And this observation period can last millenia if the cultural gap is big enough, which I believe too.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by 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

That might be.
And after all, for example noone cares if someone kills a cockroach.

Maybe for those Aliens Humans are the cockroaches of the Universe

[Lung]

Originally posted by elijah
Theyd be more inclined to be nice, because if they were benevolent, they would have most likely destroyed themselves.

Ummm....benevolent is being nice/peaceful

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!

So, they could be like us. Wasn't that my point?

[Lung]

Originally posted by Flare
Let us go into space & find out, shall we?

My point exactly. Just like in colonial times, whoever does the exploration has the upper hand. I know i won't see it in my lifetime, but i hate to think that in future humanity may just see fit to stay put. Of course, the chances of being visited by aliens are really quite remote, so we don't need to start hurling ourselves into deep space just yet

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
They would probably treat the planet as a big zoo, charging their own kind huge amounts of money to come look at us, but not allowing us to expand to any other planets.

That is my guess as to what aliens are doing NOW. Not a zoo as such, more of a game preserve...

That is, if you believe aliens are visiting us now.



ACK!

[GePap]

Most likely, we would not have a clue about their intentions and neither would they have a clue about ours. We have no idea how many frames of referrence we would share with them, and the fewer that we shared, the harder it would be to actually ever understand each other.

[Whaleboy]

I do believe it to be peaceful. Of course like someone said, there are no guarantees that because one hasnt destroyed oneself that means one is peaceful, but I would have thought it to be a good indicator of that. In terms of natural resources, organics would presumably be easily made, thus inorganics would be more easily harvested and accessed in asteroids, so I dont believe natural resources to be an issue. In terms of human resources, and intellectual resources, keeping people free and equal generally creates a more innovative workforce. Slavery is inefficient in the long term, if one wants to have progress, we humans dont make very good ants. Therefore, they would make contact presumably if they wanted something from us, trade or cooperation etc. They would only do so when we are at a sufficiently high level, until then, our only value might be scientific or anthropological. Thus we would have a situation like star trek: first contact.

[Lung]

Re: Re: Would Visiting Aliens be Benevolent or Malevolent

Originally posted by Cruddy


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).

That's benevolent??!!! I'd hate to see their malevolent relo's, then

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?

There's life outside my home town?! I have met people like that....

Them: "Where're you from?"

Me: "Woy Woy"

Them: "Wee Waa?! That's a long way away!" (it was about 50 miles away)

Me: "No. Woy Woy"

Them: "Wee Waa?"

Me: "No, NOT Wee Waa. WOY WOY"

Them: "Woy.....Woy? Where's that??"

Me: "Near Sydney"

Them: "Sydney?! You mean the big smoke?!!"

Me: "Yeah"

Them: " We've never been to the big smoke before! "

One of them: "I've been to Tamworth!" (Megatropolis of 30,000 people/sheep. Home of country music in Australia. Say no more)

This was when i moved to a place in the NSW wheat belt called Moree. I was stunned to find that most kids had never been much beyond the town limits. If aliens ever visit us, i hope they land there

[Lung]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
I have reservations about the likely benevolence of aliens.

So our own history tells us that we will always develop technologies which secure our position at the top of the food chain, but the spear is sufficient for supremacy over non-humans. More sophisticated weapons are needed only against human enemies. Many intelligent but peaceful races may have achieved supremacy over all other life forms on their planet, and then simply ceased developing beyond that point: their equivalent of "spear mastery". More aggressive races, however, would be more likely to get involved in an "arms race" leading to high technology, because they're always up against enemies comparable to themselves. They may be disproportionately more likely to become spacefarers if they DON'T destroy themselves.

A typically logical and wise reply, Jack You said it better than i can. My point was that our assumptions based on Star Trek and the like are likely to be way off the mark, such as the assumption that they would be one people. The biggest surprise to most people would be the likely diversity within any alien population. Ever seen a blonde Klingon on Star Trek?

[Whaleboy]

Ever seen a blonde Klingon on Star Trek?

Those Bolians are HOTTT!!!

[Whaleboy]

Ever seen a blonde Klingon on Star Trek?

See that episode with "the albino"? I used to be a trekkie when I was a kid

[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?

[Sava]

Assuming the speed of light is the "speed limit" of the universe, I doubt alien life forms would visit us. I read a good Carl Sagan novel about how we would go about detecting life on other planets. Most likely, I think we would see robot probes of alien creation before any aliens. And even then, we'd probably take them off-line and study them rather then let them function as they were designed. IMO, I think that intelligent life is too far away for us to ever have contact. At best, we will probably encounter some ancient radio traffic or ancient probes.

But, for argument's sake, if aliens detected us, I doubt they would attempt to make contact. They would probably remain undetected and study us. If they were able to understand our language, they would probably hack into our computer networks in an attempt to gather data. I can't really form a decent theory on what their motives or attitudes would be. It would depend on the environment in which they came from. Due to the costs involved, from our point of view, any visitors would probably be in search of knowledge. I doubt Earth would be a target for resource exploitation, it would require a massive commitment in order to "harvest" Earth, and if they had the capability to do so, I doubt they would even need our resources. It's not like Earth has anything that isn't in massive abundance throughout the universe.

[Whaleboy]

Id **** a brick, because a force of that size is most likely invasion or colonialisation... although it would put a rather large fly in the Americans ointment so it cant be all bad jk.

We'd most likely face small numbers of ships, or maybe even one, but still, one cannot assume anything about the fleet until they make their intentions clear.