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Aw. I don't have audio here at work.. Have to remember to watch it later.
A couple of notes, tho.. We always imagine aliens as being more advanced than we are.. When the odds are just as good that alien life may not have progressed beyond the single celled organism stage.
Any that we make contact with within the next century or so, short of microbial life perhaps on Mars, Europa or similar will likely be at the same stage or more advanced than us.. Because we can't leave our solar system with any speed as of yet. So any contact that we have will most likely be those that are advanced enough to visit us, or through radio waves, which means that they are, generally, at the same or more advanced technological level as us.
Though, the argument could be made that they will certainly be more advanced.. Because if we get a radio signal from 400 light years away.. They're 400 years more advanced than when that signal was sent.
Tyson.. Just to throw a few words about him.. I saw him on the Daily Show a few months back.. Lord.. He does a whole lot better reading from a script than thinking on his feet.. At least, that was the impression I got from that interview. So, i'm curious to watch this one.
I just don't think it's a good idea to send radio waves out there. We may invite species that can wipe us out like us killing rodents.
Sorry, fibber mcgee and molly are already way out there. No way I know of to limit the propagation of radio waves. We can detect them from about 14 billion years out, after all. Although I am sure the fibber will be pretty staticky by the time he gets that far. As will the polka parade, thank goodness.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vision33r
I just don't think it's a good idea to send radio waves out there. We may invite species that can wipe us out like us killing rodents.
Yeah, that was Stephen Hawking's warning also.
My view is that if they can travel faster than the speed of light and toy with inertia, they must have avoided some bottlenecks that threaten our civilization, such as warfare and pollution so strong that it could cause severe climate change, causing mass extinctions. To overcome those bottlenecks would require a high level of cooperation and little aggression, plus a great respect for the ecology of their planet, including any lower life forms (which we might be considered).
So I think it's unlikely that they would be mean to us.
One thing about the idea of aliens being dangerous is that, sure interactions between high and low technology societies was harmful to the lower-tech society pretty much since ever.
However, if we are to assume aliens think similarly to us, we don't explore space to gain resources. If we really wanted to go to space to gain resources the moon has plenty of rare earth elements and it's right next to us...yet we haven't been back there for decades. We have plenty of resources in our solar system. There is even plenty of water in ice form outside Earth. If aliens do think similarly to humans, and survive in similar solar systems as us, they might well ravage their own solar system, but I'd assume that reasons they'd head to other solar systems would be primarily to learn.
Exceptions might be if something disastrous happened to their home world or solar system and they had to leave, such as a neutron star flinging into their solar system that they noticed far enough in advance to have time to evacuate. Then they might be wandering, desperate for resources, lacking FTL travel and decide to colonize Earth. If colonists come here and they think like humans do, they may not want to live next to the crazies with all the hydrogen bombs and we may be screwed.
It seems like species forced to leave their galaxy would be less common than a cheap mechanical probe or small group of researchers that visits new solar systems though.
I can't think of many disasters that would leave a planet less habitable than most planets in the galaxy, and yet leave the species' ability for spaceflight intact, so I'm not real worried about the desperate nomad variants of aliens.
If aliens think similarly to humans...we don't dream of conquering new solar systems, much less inhabited solar systems, nearly as often as we dream of exploring them.
If aliens think similarly to humans we're in trouble - "What's in your rocket?"
Well, we have endangered species lists, and we've been getting more interested in humanitarianism as we've been learning more about the world around us and getting more resources (although we've also been getting more wasteful, and in some ways probably less empathetic towards nonhuman life).
Oh, they'd vaporize us without hesitation if they thought we were a threat, and maybe just if we have something they want, but will we either be a threat or have anything they want much?
If FTL drive proves impossible, coming to Earth could take quite a lot of resources. Water is all over the place if you're willing to melt frozen water. Coming to Earth might be more dangerous than getting their water from frozen worlds due to all the microbes.
I just don't see much of an advantage to raiding worlds containing life for an advanced nomadic spacefaring civilization.
Going beyond our solar system seems advantageous, to me, for the following reasons:
1. To feed our sense of curiosity.
2. To preserve the species over the long term (but use quite a lot of resource investment over the short term). Also, going to the stars or even Mars would probably not save any people. I don't know of many disasters that would leave the Earth less habitable than Mars and somehow allow refugees to escape. Therefore, going to space would be mostly to preserve the species, not individual members of that species. Not everyone will even view that as advantageous.
3. Once in awhile our ability to head to the stars could allow refugees to flee to safety. Those types of disasters won't happen very often though.
4. Old civilizations will eventually use up the resources in their solar system and move on.
So, of those four, given that the preservation of the species is a pretty abstract concept not everyone will be attached to, I'm thinking that the primary drivers into interstellar space will be curiosity and ancient civilizations using up resources.
Humans have been getting better and better at building food and useful materials from everything around them. Presumably, advanced aliens will reach a stage of getting their food by mining materials from asteroids or something. I don't see aliens needing Earth, and Earth will be swarming with deadly microbes anyway.
If FTL travel does prove possible, sure it would take less resources to get to Earth but they'd have more options.
I'm just seeing our two primary threats as a young civilization that was forced to flee from its home solar system to ours (in which case we're probably thoroughly screwed) and an ancient spacefaring civilization with extremely long-lived species that wipes out humanity because it decides they will eventually become competition or a threat.
Younger aliens fleeing from a doomed solar system would be the more likely dangerous...but that would be extremely rare.
So...that basically just leaves aliens perceiving us to be a long term threat. I don't see humans doing that. We're aggressive, but it's for food or fuel or because of nearby or internal threats (including views about angry gods that need sacrifices or the sun will cease to rise). We're not real interested in long term threats, even as our lifespan has doubled in length.
I understand Stephen Hawking's warning in the sense that contacting aliens is a big risk. We'd essentially be trading the learning about a new people and access to new technology for a possible extinction of the human species. We can't know they won't just decide to blast us to smithereens for target practice. Apes are our very close relatives and Like Niel deGrasse Tyson said, we can't have a meaningful conversation with them. They don't think like us. If our world was covered by water octopi are the next most intelligent creatures compared to humans that are sufficiently ambidextrous to use tools. Octopi are not social organisms and male and female octopi often (or always, I forget which) die after mating. Aliens could therefore have a completely unpredictable psychology.
Reasons I'm not opposed to attempting to contact aliens are the following:
*Knowing someone is out there could allow us to be better prepared for if they come here.
*Sending a signal that "I'm here" to the galaxy might alert alien civilizations that there is a potential long term threat here they need to destroy. On the other hand it might act like a poison arrow frog's colorful skin and tell them: There's life here. This solar system is dangerous. Don't come here to colonize or harvest resources.
*Contacting aliens before they meet us could have advantages in terms of understanding each other better before Bubba the trucker decides to fire a shotgun at a flying saucer. Maybe if we learn to speak to them first and allow them to learn about us, Bubba's shotgun firing will be understood simply as some moron not associated with our world governments instead of an attempt to begin an intergalactic war.
Who would you or most humans be more willing to enslave? A smiling visitor who comes up to you and asks to learn your language, or people trying to hide who are ravaging their environment and attacking each other, at risk of blowing themselves to smithereens with hydrogen bombs that you happen to walk in on? Personally, I'd prefer it if the aliens learn there are sane people amongst us before meeting the average person on Jerry Springer. I don't want them to meet the majority of us first. Also if we talk to them, they may be less inclined to dissect some of us. If mice could speak we probably wouldn't attempt to grow ears on their backs.
Throughout much of history humans have perceived other races as not being entirely human because of cultural differences, and so they enslaved them or took their land. If we could convince aliens of that we are passionate, intelligent, curious life before they meet us by initiating communication that could be to our advantage.
- We think advanced aliens will come here and enslave us. We think that because we have done it in our past. Doesn't mean that an advanced species that has attained interstelar travel will do the same. With their level of technology, they probably look at us the same way we look at a group of elephants, hey we could use them but they are stupid. Think about th way we use animals for our entertainment We rob their freedom just because we think we are superior. We do have a more developed brain but we neglect the rights of every other types of life forms just because we deem them inferior. So the fear is that 'they' will do the same to us. Then all of us would be screaming bloody murder, yet we don't think about our own animal on earth. Who knows they might look at us as lab rats or slave labor.
- By just tapping into our satellite TV systems, they could look at what is going on and how the chaos is destroying this planet. In a way they might come and teach us something about civility and peace.
Well, we have endangered species lists, and we've been getting more interested in humanitarianism as we've been learning more about the world around us and getting more resources (although we've also been getting more wasteful, and in some ways probably less empathetic towards nonhuman life).
Oh, they'd vaporize us without hesitation if they thought we were a threat, and maybe just if we have something they want, but will we either be a threat or have anything they want much?
If FTL drive proves impossible, coming to Earth could take quite a lot of resources. Water is all over the place if you're willing to melt frozen water. Coming to Earth might be more dangerous than getting their water from frozen worlds due to all the microbes.
I just don't see much of an advantage to raiding worlds containing life for an advanced nomadic spacefaring civilization.
Going beyond our solar system seems advantageous, to me, for the following reasons:
1. To feed our sense of curiosity.
2. To preserve the species over the long term (but use quite a lot of resource investment over the short term). Also, going to the stars or even Mars would probably not save any people. I don't know of many disasters that would leave the Earth less habitable than Mars and somehow allow refugees to escape. Therefore, going to space would be mostly to preserve the species, not individual members of that species. Not everyone will even view that as advantageous.
3. Once in awhile our ability to head to the stars could allow refugees to flee to safety. Those types of disasters won't happen very often though.
4. Old civilizations will eventually use up the resources in their solar system and move on.
So, of those four, given that the preservation of the species is a pretty abstract concept not everyone will be attached to, I'm thinking that the primary drivers into interstellar space will be curiosity and ancient civilizations using up resources.
Humans have been getting better and better at building food and useful materials from everything around them. Presumably, advanced aliens will reach a stage of getting their food by mining materials from asteroids or something. I don't see aliens needing Earth, and Earth will be swarming with deadly microbes anyway.
If FTL travel does prove possible, sure it would take less resources to get to Earth but they'd have more options.
I'm just seeing our two primary threats as a young civilization that was forced to flee from its home solar system to ours (in which case we're probably thoroughly screwed) and an ancient spacefaring civilization with extremely long-lived species that wipes out humanity because it decides they will eventually become competition or a threat.
Younger aliens fleeing from a doomed solar system would be the more likely dangerous...but that would be extremely rare.
So...that basically just leaves aliens perceiving us to be a long term threat. I don't see humans doing that. We're aggressive, but it's for food or fuel or because of nearby or internal threats (including views about angry gods that need sacrifices or the sun will cease to rise). We're not real interested in long term threats, even as our lifespan has doubled in length.
I understand Stephen Hawking's warning in the sense that contacting aliens is a big risk. We'd essentially be trading the learning about a new people and access to new technology for a possible extinction of the human species. We can't know they won't just decide to blast us to smithereens for target practice. Apes are our very close relatives and Like Niel deGrasse Tyson said, we can't have a meaningful conversation with them. They don't think like us. If our world was covered by water octopi are the next most intelligent creatures compared to humans that are sufficiently ambidextrous to use tools. Octopi are not social organisms and male and female octopi often (or always, I forget which) die after mating. Aliens could therefore have a completely unpredictable psychology.
Reasons I'm not opposed to attempting to contact aliens are the following:
*Knowing someone is out there could allow us to be better prepared for if they come here.
*Sending a signal that "I'm here" to the galaxy might alert alien civilizations that there is a potential long term threat here they need to destroy. On the other hand it might act like a poison arrow frog's colorful skin and tell them: There's life here. This solar system is dangerous. Don't come here to colonize or harvest resources.
*Contacting aliens before they meet us could have advantages in terms of understanding each other better before Bubba the trucker decides to fire a shotgun at a flying saucer. Maybe if we learn to speak to them first and allow them to learn about us, Bubba's shotgun firing will be understood simply as some moron not associated with our world governments instead of an attempt to begin an intergalactic war.
Who would you or most humans be more willing to enslave? A smiling visitor who comes up to you and asks to learn your language, or people trying to hide who are ravaging their environment and attacking each other, at risk of blowing themselves to smithereens with hydrogen bombs that you happen to walk in on? Personally, I'd prefer it if the aliens learn there are sane people amongst us before meeting the average person on Jerry Springer. I don't want them to meet the majority of us first. Also if we talk to them, they may be less inclined to dissect some of us. If mice could speak we probably wouldn't attempt to grow ears on their backs.
Throughout much of history humans have perceived other races as not being entirely human because of cultural differences, and so they enslaved them or took their land. If we could convince aliens of that we are passionate, intelligent, curious life before they meet us by initiating communication that could be to our advantage.
Great points.
They also would need to understand out type of technologies, deciphering radio signals, language.
Who knows maybe SETI does receive messages that contain 'extra terrestrial' codes but to us, we cannot perceive it becasue we do not know it. We can only recognize patterns that we think might be something.
the whole time, there could have been complex transmissions that we might have received but went right over our heads.
Point is, we assume that they would know our technologies, methods of communication and languages. they might be so advanced that they would look at us like an earthworm.
Of course if they see resources that they need, they might just come an take it and in the process take some of us as zoo animals to bring back to their worlds just like we have done to our animal/plant world here on earth. And they would be superior enough to just take what they want. the roles would be reversed and then we would see what freedom means for the inferior race. Thing is humans do things that if done to them, they would find offensive and plain harsh.
It's a crapshoot for whatever signal we send out there. Do we know for certain that they are not already here and observing? Those are valid questions that many don't feel comfortable touching for fear of being called a wack job.
If they come from very far away, they must have FTL capabilities which would make tem highly advanced. Although we could learn from them if they shared technology, one just have to look at the human history to see that most technologies stem from some form of military applications hence we tend to weaponize many things. Imagine being given a form of power source that could eliminate our dependency on fossil fuel? I bet there would be a military application to maintain superiority, then afterwards cascade to the civilian uses. If you're an advanced species looking at this history of humanity, would you befriend us? That would be a big leap of faith.
The flip side is that we would benefit from their intellect and know how but what would we put the new gained knowledge towards? If you tell me eliminating world hunger for example, I'm all for that. But chances are we would likely use it first to blow something up.
The last thing I would say is that, lets say contact has already been made and it's being kept from the normal population, what motives would that be? Breakdown of religious bodies? riots? Somehow, I think humans are beyond that. A lot of us beleive in the possibilities of life on other planets already. Maybe there is an obscure agenda that is detrimental to us, the possibilities are endless..................
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