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This is the 3rd thread of a series of threads I'm creating.
The 1st thread can be found here: http://www.city-data.com/forum/54864538-post1.html It is titled: "Why the Borg are quite possibly the tragic heroes of Star Trek."
The 2nd thread can be found here: http://www.city-data.com/forum/54871893-post1.html It is titled: "Why future animal rights advocates may one day demand the destruction of all nonhuman life except for our pets."
I think if spacefaring aliens discover Earth, there is a reasonable chance they'll desire to destroy humanity, along with all other life on Earth. However, I think there are more likely motivations for this potential behavior of theirs than the motivations of hostile alien societies typically depicted in science fiction and action movies, or the explanations for plausible alien hostility I most often hear mentioned by regular people and public speakers pondering alien behaviors.
Arguments for why aliens might desire the destruction of humanity I hear most often are the following:
1. They might desire our resources - our water, oxygen, and minerals other useful elements.
2. They might desire the Earth itself - to live on, perhaps due to them having ruined their own home world through environmental catastrophe or warfare, and because habitable worlds are so rare they desire to replace humanity on Earth.
3. They might perceive humanity as some kind of long term threat - a potential future rival space-faring civilization that may lack their values and compete with them for space and resources.
4. They might perceive humanity as a disease that should be extinguished - a kind of ultra-complex virus capable of spreading into space to endanger the universe, or that has already "infected" the Earth. People and movies that make this argument frequently cite our species' expansionist nature, warlike nature and the massive number of species our species is driving into extinction.
5. Sometimes people, such as the late, great Stephen Hawking, merely warn of some vaguely defined barbarism aliens might be capable of, without going into specifics. They argue that humans are the only example of a spacefaring society we have so far, and our history is riddled with examples of technologically advanced societies intentionally, or unintentionally, greatly harming, replacing, or destroying more technologically primitive societies.
I don't see the aliens from argument #1 as a large threat, because if there are locust-like alien civilizations that wander from solar system to solar system draining each system's resources and moving on, they don't seem to be nearby, which means them getting here could be quite costly in terms of resource usage. Given the length of time the universe has existed, any alien societies we contact will likely be quite old. I just don't see ancient alien civilizations being so dependent on worlds like Earth for their survival that they'd cross across the galaxy to get here for our Earth. I would think after their likely hundreds of thousands of years of existence they'd have discovered some more reliable way of harvesting resources, or they'd have gone extinct.
I don't see the aliens from argument #2 as a large threat, for many of the same reasons I don't see the aliens from argument #1 as a large threat. Furthermore, I would suspect space stations would have several advantages planetary life would not. Space stations would not have natural disasters. Space stations could have thick armors to repel smaller space debris and, unlike planets, move out of the way of larger pieces of space debris. Space stations would lack the gravity wells of planets, making travel into and out of them easier than travel into and out of a planet's atmosphere. Space stations would lack the strong gravitational pull that leads to dangerous space debris in planetary orbits. Space stations would be better defended from biological weapons. A planetary atmosphere can simply be dusted with some destructive virus to render all life on the planet extinct. A space station can require security codes to enter, be isolated from other space stations, and have trained medical teams in close proximity to any outbreaks. Also, space stations would lack the parasites, creepy-crawlies, and various burrowing nasties that aliens might prefer to not have any contact with.
I don't see the aliens from argument #3 as a large threat, because crossing the galaxy to destroy civilizations that might become potential threats, but aren't threats yet, is a pretty poor way to get rid of threats, and it might create more threats than it removes. Given how rapidly technology can advance, aliens might find themselves, after finally arriving at Earth, facing a far more formidable opponent than they'd originally perceived through their telescopes that had already been detecting ancient light. More importantly though, such species will already, in all likelihood, be surrounded by much more formidable potential threats: members of their own species. Assuming faster-than-light travel is impossible, and no one has discovered any way to build warp drives or wormholes of ways to "cheat" to move at faster-than-light speeds without technically moving at faster-than-light speeds, alien societies likely won't be able to maintain a strong interstellar empire or government. Different systems, each often being several light years away, will evolve their own cultures and societies and often become very different from the founding culture, and not necessarily have any more allegiance to it than the people of Earth after enough time. If faster-than-light travel is possible without massive resource costs, such societies will more likely be swarming in so much chaos and constant change that they'll hardly notice any risks humans pose.
I don't see the aliens from argument #4 as a large threat because aliens could just teach us not to be so disease-like, and give us the technologies to do so.
What I would see as a more realistic threat would be, not so much full societies of aliens behaving like the aliens in the above examples, but rogue individuals or small groups of eccentrics. I think it's worth noting that, if we are to use humanity as our example of what aliens might be like, humans value rarity. Humans have endangered species lists. Humans care more about what they have little of than what they have in abundance, and I could easily imagine the majority of alien societies perceiving naturally-formed life, like the life on Earth, as a rare treasure, and protecting Earth's solar system as a kind of nature preserve. However, among humans there are poachers, and reckless people who endanger organisms on endangered species lists, and with technologies of hundreds of thousands of years old, any careless mistake on the part of aliens might cause humanity a great deal of harm. Any group of alien extremists, no matter how small, could likely render all of Earth extinct with great ease if they wished.
But I don't see the above potential motivations for alien hostility as being likely motivations for why large alien societies might collectively be hostile to us. I would suspect that the majority of alien societies would want what's best for humanity. I suspect that their earliest goals would include finding ways to permanently no longer have to worry about fulfilling their basic survival needs, and they would have had hundreds of thousands of years, or more, to find solutions to these basic problems. I would therefore suspect that most members of alien societies who might contact humans would have moved well above the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and will be focused primarily on the "self-actualization" tip of the pyramid, and attaining a sense of purpose. I therefore don't see most aliens wiping out humanity for reasons of self-interest, except in that, I suspect it would help them achieve a sense of purpose to assist their fellow life forms. I'm therefore optimistic about the nature of any aliens humans are likely to meet.
Like I went over in my second thread, though, it is possible to assist organisms by destroying them.
I can imagine four types of alien cultures that might be motivated to destroy humanity for humanity's benefit. I'll refer to them as type 1, type 2, type 3, and type 4 hostile aliens. I'll describe each culture's characteristics below:
TYPE 1 HOSTILE ALIENS - anti-natalist aliens
Anti-natalist aliens would perceive themselves as having the most benevolent of the four cultures of plausible hostile aliens. They would also, most likely, be perceived by the majority of humanity as the most evil. They would perceive life, or at least life that is capable of perpetually reproducing itself, as always worthy of destruction, for that life's benefit. These aliens would long for oblivion, and live, from their perspective, solely to help other species into the gentle embrace of oblivion, as quickly, and painlessly, as possible. They'd see their life's work as a holy quest, and a never-ending one, because they'd know life is always evolving somewhere in the universe, and if they don't drive that life into extinction before it gains the ability to feel, then it will gain the capacity to feel itself starving, freezing, burning, or being eaten and experiencing all the trauma it is their life's goal to help life to avoid. They would destroy humanity because, in their minds, our species, like most life, is too foolish to realize we'd be better off extinct. If species object and argue that they don't desire their own extinction, the anti-natalist aliens would, if they responded at all, state that life loses nothing from extinction, because once extinct there is no one left to lose anything.
TYPE 2 HOSTILE ALIENS - elitist aliens
Elitist aliens would be driven by the perception that it is in the best interest of some lifeforms for them to exist, but not all. They would have technologically advanced, utopian societies. They would look upon the Darwinian maelstrom of the animal life of Earth with pity and horror. They would look upon humanity with equal amounts of pity and horror. Yes, humans have medicines that can cure disease. Yes, humans can also watch the world crumble around them, and are fully aware of the decay of their bodies as it occurs, and lack the blissful ignorance of the animal world. Elitist aliens would perceive humanity as blindly slogging along in misery, incapable of ending itself. They would take note of human anti-natalists. They would also note that there aren't enough human anti-natalists to end human population growth. Human anti-natalists could only cease reproducing themselves, and therefore only succeed in removing genetics that have led to the most (from their perspective) enlightened of individuals, who might have become some of the world's most self-aware parents. They would also argue against dissenters that humanity stands a good chance of driving itself into extinction in the coming centuries anyway, and in a much less ideal manner than they'd be capable of rendering humanity extinct.
TYPE 3 HOSTILE ALIENS - average consequentialist aliens
This culture of aliens looks upon the universe in the following ways: 1. The goal of life is to maximize happiness and minimize suffering for life. 2. Therefore, life that suffers is bringing down the average happiness of life. 3. Therefore, the solution is to destroy life that decreases the average happiness of life in the universe and continually filter out more and more life from the universe, perpetually honing closer and closer into the perfect life form. I don't see this type of alien as particularly plausible, although I do see it as possible. The main problem I see with this mentality is that a policy of "nuke the squirrels because they are inferior life forms who are dragging down our happiness" does not actually improve the happiness of non-squirrel life. I think their reasoning is therefore flawed, but certain species might evolve some bizarre psychologies that could lead to this kind of long term goal or, more likely, this policy might be the result of some badly programmed sentient machines, scourging the universe of life due to some virulent glitch.
TYPE 4 HOSTILE ALIENS - spacefaring octopi
These sorts of aliens would include species that, due to having drastically differing psychologies from humanity, view death differently than humanity. For example, Octopi are brilliant and skilled tool users, but they die soon after procreating. If an octopus-like species evolved to become social organisms, but continued to die after procreating, I could imagine a space-faring species evolving that just doesn't perceive death as much of a negative thing, if they perceive it as a negative thing at all. They have no complex philosophy telling them to wipe out life. They just don't, instinctively, perceive death as something negative, so they're much more willing to wipe out humanity as a favor to us, or for some trivial reason.
I'm posting this in the philosophy forum because, the way I see it, all four of those above types of aliens have more or less rational perspectives...and aliens that don't want humanity wiped from existence could have perfectly rational thought processes too...and yet most of society never even seems to consider that aliens might want to destroy us not for their benefit, or for the benefit of the universe, but our benefit. I never see those aliens who destroy their fellow life forms for what they perceive as humanitarian reasons, in books, or movies, or when people talk about their own views. I just thought I'd point out what I see as that societal misconception.
Also, one thing I like about science fiction is that it often has a way of opening minds to new possibilities, and ways of looking at the world, at least to me, and my goal for the above post is to hopefully do some of that.
Oh man, I hardly venture into the Philosophy section of CD and this may be a reason. OP, have you ever heard of the phrase K.I.S.S.? I clicked on this thread because it sounded a little interesting but I'm not going to read a short book in order to grasp what you're saying.
.... I think if spacefaring aliens discover Earth, there is a reasonable chance they'll desire to destroy humanity, along with all other life on Earth......
Nope. If aliens are going to be destroying any life on Earth it will be strictly humans that they destroy, no other life forms. Humans are the only life forms that would attempt to obstruct or influence the aliens and they are the only life forms on Earth that are actually dispensable and that the Earth and the aliens would not need. All other life on Earth will be left alone because if they were to destroy all life on Earth then they would end up destroying the entire planet. The planet is a living, energetic being in its own right and all other life forms of Earth are intricately, energetically interconnected to Earth and to each other. The planet and all its life forms are dependent on each other. It would not be a sensible thing for intelligent, technologically advanced, space-faring aliens to destroy the entire planet. They may as well just knock Earth out of orbit and shoot it off into the sun.
Oh man, I hardly venture into the Philosophy section of CD and this may be a reason. OP, have you ever heard of the phrase K.I.S.S.? I clicked on this thread because it sounded a little interesting but I'm not going to read a short book in order to grasp what you're saying.
Yes, thank you for that. It saves me from the possibility of...getting in trouble.
Waded through your post. You're making a lot of assumptions, with out any factual basis
Following is my short 2 cents:
We do not have any evidence whatsoever about any alien species, so I can only ask questions. I'm not able to assume or suppose anything.
Why on earth would a civilisation advanced enough, sophisticated enough for inter STELLAR travel bother with earth?--We are so primitive that our planet is divided into hundreds of 'countries', rather than a single world government. We haven't even evolved enough to stop killing each other.
I don't see that we have enough information to make any kind of accurate predictions about aliens who might visit us.
You use words like 'evil' and other moral concepts. There is no evidence for such assumptions.
The UFO lunar fringe are fond of assuming such beings will be benign. We cannot assume the they will share our moral senses. Or indeed that their thought processes or evolution are similar to ours.
To use a Star trek analogy; they may be like the Vulcans, or they may be like the Borg.
Yes, thank you for that. It saves me from the possibility of...getting in trouble.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WannabeCPA
Oh man, I hardly venture into the Philosophy section of CD and this may be a reason. OP, have you ever heard of the phrase K.I.S.S.? I clicked on this thread because it sounded a little interesting but I'm not going to read a short book in order to grasp what you're saying.
#1. It would take you both about one second to skim the words of the thread to see if you want to read it in detail or not. It bet it took you longer to post your comments than it it would have taken to briefly skim it.
#2. I don't know what you were you looking for in the philosophy forum, if you don't want to read detailed discussions of issues. So far as I can tell, reading detailed discussions of issues is the main purpose of this website.
#3. I have this thing in my brain called passion. I have a deep interest in the world around me and a curiosity about it, and I like discussing this world with my fellow beings who are interested in it. That's a good thing to have that kind of interest, and a desire to explore and discuss this world we live in, and its characteristics. It's an interest to be proud of and an interest to encourage, because it probably benefits society. Discussing that world, and complex ideas about it, can get wordy sometimes, and oftentimes if I'm not wordy enough I find I don't get the proper points across.
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.
They would have some alien reasons, but would probably have at least some, if not many, motivating factors that are very similar to human motivating factors. I appreciate your comment because you've given me the opportunity to explain why this will be the case.
#1. They'll be social organisms, which means they'll have to work together. Otherwise they'd never have made it to space. We can narrow down some of their behaviors by filtering out behaviors that would collapse their society.
#2. and I think this is the more important factor: there is a valid, likely universally understandible way to distinguish right from wrong. That is the weighing of suffering and pleasure. This should be as common of a concept throughout the universe as math is. Societies anywhere in the galaxy should be able to understand that suffering is bad and happiness is good, and this knowledge, unlike any instinct-born moral codes they have, will remain with them no matter how much they genetically modify themselves. Because they'll undoubtedly have existed as spacefaring societies for quite a long, long time, if they are to find us, they'll probably have solved their societal problems of hunger and thirst a long time ago, or they'd have gone extinct. This will likely make their societal goals heavily focused on higher parts of the pyramid of maslow's hierarchy of needs. They'll be focused on things like finding a sense of purpose and finding inner peace and those sorts of higher needs, as opposed to things like finding enough water. Therefore, they'll likely have genetically engineered away many of their moral codes that humans would find incomprehensible - the instinct-driven moral codes, and replaced them with more truly sensible sorts of moral codes, that are more universally understandable - codes focusing on the same kinds of alleviation of suffering and gaining of pleasure that human moral codes tend to focus on. In time, all societies should therefore grow to have ethical codes that are more and more understandable to other societies, regardless of whether they began as hive societies, or instinctively solitary animals like badgers that only worked together because it was their best way to survive.
There is a lot about how alien societies behave that we should be able to make some good guesses about.
Waded through your post. You're making a lot of assumptions, with out any factual basis
Following is my short 2 cents:
We do not have any evidence whatsoever about any alien species, so I can only ask questions. I'm not able to assume or suppose anything.
However, we can make a number of clever educated guesses, and I see no reason not to. We're perfectly capable of filtering out certain behaviors most of them probably don't behave in, or at least arguing why we think they don't. There is no reason to make no assumptions about alien behavior, and if we ever contact them, that failing to even contemplate how the might behave would, I would think, be a major mistake. But, there is certainly a lot we can't know about them, and they certainly could give us plenty of surprises.
Quote:
Why on earth would a civilization advanced enough, sophisticated enough for inter STELLAR travel bother with earth?--We are so primitive that our planet is divided into hundreds of 'countries', rather than a single world government. We haven't even evolved enough to stop killing each other.
Perhaps because we're rare. I would suspect intelligent life in our galaxy is extremely rare, if it even exists outside Earth. I would suspect this because if it were not rare I would think it would have spread across the galaxy by now, given how long any alien space-faring civilization that finds us would likely have been around. People die climbing mountains and rock climbing without ropes all the time, we're still on a planet where there is always more to do to ascend our society. Imagine living in a hundred thousand year old civilization that has solved all its problems relating to needing food and water and cured all disease. There's really only so much a society can be improved through technology before your citizens are living utopian existences. After that, what's there left to do but search for new motivations and new purposes? I could see one of the few planets in the galaxy with complex, naturally-evolved life as being extremely interesting for a great many reasons, even if it meant spending thousands of years in cryo-sleep to get here.
But aside from that, I was never arguing that aliens would meet us. I actually suspect that space-faring aliens don't exist in our galaxy. I was merely arguing reasons why I think hostile aliens would most likely be hostile to us.
Quote:
I don't see that we have enough information to make any kind of accurate predictions about aliens who might visit us.
I disagree. I think we have enough information to make some pretty reliable guesses about, definitely not how all of them will behave, but how most of them that might contact humanity would likely behave. I think I've explained some of my reasoning behind that. If you'd like me to go into more detail about my reasoning, you'll have to explain why you think my reasoning is erroneous in more detail.
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You use words like 'evil' and other moral concepts. There is no evidence for such assumptions.
What I typed was simply that what I called the anti-natalist aliens would perceive themselves as benevolent, and humans would perceive them as evil, not that good or evil were actual things beyond subjective views. I believe I explained why I think the anti-natalist aliens would likely perceive themselves as benevolent, and why humanity would likely perceive them as evil. If you disagree with that reasoning of mine, you'll have to explain your disagreements in more detail.
Quote:
The UFO lunar fringe are fond of assuming such beings will be benign. We cannot assume the they will share our moral senses. Or indeed that their thought processes or evolution are similar to ours.
To use a Star trek analogy; they may be like the Vulcans, or they may be like the Borg.
I certainly agree that they may be like Vulcans, or they may be like the Borg. I don't think I stated anything in this thread that would go against that statement. If you're interested in hearing why I think they would share many of our moral senses, see my response to kevxu, here: Why aliens might destroy humanity for humanitarian reasons If that's an insufficient explanation, I'll be happy to go into more detail. Thanks for your response.
Nope. If aliens are going to be destroying any life on Earth it will be strictly humans that they destroy, no other life forms. Humans are the only life forms that would attempt to obstruct or influence the aliens and they are the only life forms on Earth that are actually dispensable and that the Earth and the aliens would not need. All other life on Earth will be left alone because if they were to destroy all life on Earth then they would end up destroying the entire planet. The planet is a living, energetic being in its own right and all other life forms of Earth are intricately, energetically interconnected to Earth and to each other. The planet and all its life forms are dependent on each other. It would not be a sensible thing for intelligent, technologically advanced, space-faring aliens to destroy the entire planet. They may as well just knock Earth out of orbit and shoot it off into the sun.
.
#1. I think that aliens primarily interested in their own self-interest, who had an interest in the destruction of some potential threat to them, would only destroy humanity and not worry about Earth's other life, but this was thread is mostly about aliens who are not primarily motivated by self-interest, but rather are primarily motivated by some desire to assist Earth life by destroying it.
#2. I certainly think it would be harder to destroy all life on Earth than to destroy humanity. After all, I've heard that organisms have been found living miles beneath Earth's surface. Given that we're probably talking about fairly ancient species though, I wouldn't be surprised if they wouldn't have some way to efficiently rid Earth of most to all of it. If they find a way to turn Earth's surface into a molten sea of magma, for example, not much will make it through that. I don't really see why they'd be opposed to the destruction of the Earth, necessarily, though...although I could see some pretty strong reasons for them to be opposed to flinging Earth into the Sun. That would seem like a big waste of resources. They might instead just strip mine the place for its mineral resources after wiping out all life.
Thanks for your response though.
Last edited by Clintone; 04-08-2019 at 10:38 PM..
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