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Earth's resources are found throughout the universe. I doubt any advanced life form would travel all this way to get something that can be found in many places.
What about Texas Barbecue and Cedar Planked Alaskan King Salmon served with Wild Rice, Scalloped Potatoes and a Hearty Burgundy?
Antintalist humans see themselves as benevolent & superior in intelligence to other humans. And they would be wrong.
I certainly agree with that. That's a good point and a useful contribution. I would personally suspect that aliens be more likely to understand more about the universe around them and themselves and even humanity than humanity is, because we're a younger civilization that has had less time for our biases to be filtered out, and we're probably less likely to have thought about those sorts of topics at all than aliens. Aliens have the option of rendering their fellow spacefaring tool-users extinct. Humans don't. Even if we think humanity should go extinct, there's not much we can do about it. Humans just don't have much motivation to think about that sort of thing unless they just do it as a leisure activity. Therefore, I suspect aliens would usually be better at determining whether or not humans go extinct than most humans would.
However, we'd have the innate knowledge of what it's like to be us, giving us one advantage in terms of deciding what our fate should be over aliens. When I say I suspect aliens would be more likely to understand humanity than humanity is, I say that with the assumption that they'll be willing to take the time to learn extensively about us, and have minds similar enough that they can understand what its like to be us...which they might not. They might know they can't understand us, and just leave our species intact for that reason too.
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Assuming aliens were from an advanced civilization; I doubt they would be antinatalist because if they were; they wouldn’t be advanced. Antinatalism is exceedingly anti-evolutionary. Aliens who were antinatalist would probably be idolized by human groupies as their messiahs & become traitors to the human race.
For obvious reasons, they would become a rapidly declining minority.
In life forms that don't use complex tools and haven't developed complex languages I'd definitely agree that antinatalism is anti-evolutionary. However, so far as I can tell, once a society develops complex languages they no longer depend on biological evolution, or procreation, to change themselves dramatically. Once the society begins building complex inventions they gain the ability to change themselves even more, without procreating. If the society gains skill at cybernetic augmentation, surgery intended to enhance brain and body performance, and they've cured aging or replaced their biological forms with long-lived mechanical ones, or they've found some other way to transfer their minds into new, younger bodies, so long as the species at least has some minority that continues to desire to produce new children, their societies may be capable of making sweeping, adaptive changes to itself faster than humanity can now, and their low birth rate might actually help improve their chances of long term survival.
With extremely low birth rates, long lifespans, and low mortality rates aliens would have much longer to develop new technologies and behaviors designed to prepare for future difficulties relating to resource shortages and environmental degradation - two of humanity's greatest challenges. Also, if aliens meet other societies of aliens, I would suspect a rapidly-procreating, expansionist society would seem like more of a threat than a more slower-procreating society. I'd be more surprised if aliens lack weapons capable of laying waste to entire solar systems with little effort than if they have them, and so I'd suspect a large part of not going extinct would involve maintaining friendly relations with your spacefaring peers and not seeming threatening.
However, if we're talking about any species that doesn't procreate at all...of course it won't be around for long. Also there may be advantages to procreating faster, because the society might be able to zoom up the technological ladder faster due to having more researchers.
The hypothetical anti-natalist society I mentioned had a motive for continuing to exist though, and for continuing to procreate. They'd have to procreate to achieve their long term goal of ridding the universe of whatever life they could.
There are human anti-natalists - people who believe creating new life is morally wrong. They continue to exist. Perhaps they mostly just fear death. Perhaps they believe they have something to offer the world. Perhaps they don't want to hurt their friends and loved ones, and that's why they continue to exist. Perhaps they just have a mentality of, "Yeah...we'd all be better off extinct, but I see no reason to focus on that, because that's depressing. I'm here now. I'd be better off never born, but for now I have no particular desire to end my existence, so I'll just keep going because...why not?"
I could imagine those anti-natalist aliens having outlooks like that - with friends and loved ones and joys, like anybody else, just with the additional goal of destroying all life. To them, their outlook isn't so much depressing as just something they do. It gives them a long term sense of fulfillment. Their long term goal becomes the focusing on achieving the extinction of life as efficiently as possible. They have a long term sense of purpose that many species lack. I think they could very well have motivations to attempt to achieve that goal creatively and enthusiastically...because it could provide a unifying, long term sense of purpose.
Now, if many different species of spacefaring aliens have evolved and manage to contact each other...any species that has the goal of wiping out all other life is probably going to be extremely unpopular and stands a good chance of being wiped out, itself. However, given the length of time the universe has been around, if one of the earlier societies developed a culture dedicated to the destruction of all life, they might have had billions of years of more time for technological advancement than anything else in the universe, and there might be just no way to stop them.
Everything you stated may be true, or not. But what has got me stumped is: Left or Right Twix? I mean, they're both chocolaty good, with crispy wafers inside. But one HAS to be superior to the other, right?
The left Twix is obviously the superior Twix and everyone who disagrees clearly is intellectually bankrupt. We should fine them for procreating so they don't spread their disgusting right Twix-loving genes. We should send them off somewhere too. I'm not a bigot. I just think they'd probably be happiest amongst their own kind. I bet they'd love it down in Antarctica where they'd have plenty of room to run around. They could play with the penguins. Everybody likes penguins.
That could happen even with a "Rendezvous with Rama" type of encounter.
Not really...kind of, but not really.
Stephen Hawking basis his concerns of aliens off past human behavior. The thing about past human behavior I see though, is that's been engaged in by people who were often desperate for resources. I don't consider it particularly surprising that now first world nations are advocating endangered species lists - now that we people in those first world nations are not worrying primarily about finding enough food to survive the winter, but back when having enough food to survive the winter was a major concern, slavery was accepted as a part of many cultures.
I think that once people become desperate enough, their basic impulses will tend to take over and they'll be much less interested in things like creating endangered species lists and much more interested in the benefitting of themselves and those people they are close to, at the cost of ignoring the rest of the world.
I suspect that if alien societies have not solved most of these problems that result in the kind of desperation that can lead to irrationality, I can't see them existing for long...or at least I'd see their long term existence as considerably less likely than aliens that have succeeded in solving their basic concerns related to survival needs. Now, they'll undoubtedly develop new needs, emotional and otherwise, but I think that people tend not to put much energy into contemplating the heavier, more worldly, topics, until their friends and loved ones are safe, and in a reality in which the society has had hundreds of thousands of years to solve problems related to starvation and disease and thirst, I'm thinking aliens will have very few instances of desperation relating to the basic needs of survival. They could very possibly have even more security concerns than we have now...but I don't think humans would pose a threat to their security. Only their fellow aliens, and their own citizens would.
I think there will be two pretty widespread perspectives throughout the universe, regardless of how a species evolved. First of all, I think that the perspective that suffering is about as close to inherently undesirable as a concept can get will be widespread and I think that the concept that pleasure is about as close to inherently desirable as a concept can get will be widespread.
The second concept that I think will be extremely widespread is the perspective that "I dislike suffering and like pleasure. Other organisms exist that experience the universe who also dislike suffering and like pleasure. If I perceive working towards reducing suffering and increasing pleasure for myself as a desirable act, it would make sense for me to perceive working towards reducing suffering and increasing pleasure for other life as a desirable act, because they experience the same sorts of suffering and pleasure I experience."
Between the likelihood of those two above concepts being widespread, in my view, and the likelihood of aliens most likely having goals more focused on achieving a sense of fulfillment and purpose and achieving those "higher" sorts of goals, I would consider it quite likely that most aliens would have some pretty benevolent goals they strive to dedicate themselves to, at least in their minds.
Earth is the only planet we've found with large, multicellular life. Naturally evolved, large, multicellular, surface life may be quite rare. I'd be more surprised if it's common than if it's rare. A planet's surface is about the least hospitable part of it, until you go deep enough underground that things start getting quite hot. Planetary surfaces are usually irradiated, or freezing, or scorching, or bombarded by debris from space. If alien societies are going to raid us, or treat Earth recklessly, they're destroying a treasure that may be one of the few like it in our galaxy - a treasure that civilizations would likely be deeply curious about.
Therefore, I would see aliens raiding or recklessly conquering humanity like European colonizers did to various aboriginal tribes as gaining material resources (which I wouldn't think would be a big demand for them) at the cost of sacrificing their higher ideals, which I would suspect would be important to them. I see such societies as behaving similarly to some medieval wizard trying to spin gold into straw, or trying to coax his or her goose that lays golden eggs into laying a normal egg so he or she can have lunch. I think they'd be essentially trading resources they see themselves as needing for resources they don't see themselves as needing.
I think that even if aliens conquered Earth, like ancient colonizers of Earth did to many aboriginal tribes, in an attempt to "civilize" us, theirs would be a much more careful and educated attempt than what has happened on Earth.
So, I would say I don't think most alien societies would have the goal of destroying humanity for any reasons except for empathetic reasons. I don't think they'd destroy humanity unless they thought it would help humanity.
However, I would have much stronger concerns about selfish behavior engaged in by small groups of eccentrics or individual aliens. It's kind of like...no matter how many people in a group aren't mass shooters, none of them cancel out the actions of one mass shooter. For that reason, I could understand Stephen Hawking's concerns. I just don't see massive alien societies as likely harming humanity, or Earth, for selfish reasons. I see it more likely that little groups of the extraterrestrial version of drunken tourists would be more likely to do that.
I too waded through it and took the OP's entire post as a metaphor for various trends in human psychology; more specifically conflicts, both creative and destructive, within his own psychology, the aliens within.
At any rate, it is worth sharing because ...
By the way, from this perspective ...
... it matters not whether humanity or any other species becomes extinct, or how, what matters is how this human or this living creature, lives the life and time allotted to it by the forces of nature.
That's why I take the OP's post as a metaphor for his own psychology.
All the best!
Actually, none of this is intended to be a metaphor. I'm actually thinking about how plausible aliens might behave.
Also, I would disagree with the statement that it doesn't matter whether humanity or any other species goes extinct. It could be for our benefit to go extinct, or not. Therefore, it's a pretty big deal worthy of lots of thought if a species is capable of such destruction.
Earth's resources are found throughout the universe. I doubt any advanced life form would travel all this way to get something that can be found in many places.
It doesn't make sense to extinguish another life form because life is actually quite rare in the universe (at least from what we know so far) and the logical thing is to actually study it, interact with it, not kill it.
Why is it inherently more rational to study life than to destroy it? Wouldn't it depend on the life in question? Let's imagine it's a life form that experiences zero positive emotions and is driven entirely by instinct and lacks the self-awareness to think about whether or not it should end its life. It's only drive is negative emotions, and the impulse to experience fewer negative emotions. I'd say that any desire to leave that life form in existence stems from self-interest and the desire to destroy that life form stems from empathy for that life form.
My point is that we need to learn about what an organism's existence is like before determining whether or not it should exist. We can't just say it would be the most sensible path to leave everything alive.
[/b][/b]QUOTE=kevxu;54885638]Why aliens might destroy humanity for humanitarian reasons
The subject title seems ridiculous.
Aliens wouldn't have our human/humanitarian reasons, they would have alien reasons coming from an alien creature.
Yeah.
And OP spends too much time "thinking."[/quote]
Thinking's fun, or at least it can be.
Last edited by Clintone; 04-11-2019 at 08:27 PM..
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