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Human-alien relationships

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S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
Hands up if you think there are space-faring alien species or alien species with space-faring capabilities out there.

Then I'd like you to ponder the following passage from The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski:

We ask that you try just one more thought experiment. Imagine yourself taking a stroll through Manhattan, somewhere north of 68th street, deep inside Central Park, late at night. It would be nice to meet someone friendly, but you know that the park is dangerous at night. That's when the monsters come out. There's always a strong undercurrent of drug dealings, muggings, and occasional homicides.

It is not easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. They dress alike, and the weapons are concealed. The only difference is intent, and you can't read minds.

Stay in the dark long enough and you may hear an occasional distance shriek or blunder across a body.

How do you survive the night? The last thing you want to do is shout, "I'm here!" The next to last thing you want to do is reply to someone who shouts, "I'm a friend!"

What you would like to do is find a policeman, or get out of the park. But you don't want to make noise or move towards a light where you might be spotted, and it is difficult to find either a policeman or your way out without making yourself known. Your safest option is to hunker down and wait for daylight, then safely walk out.

There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe.

There is no policeman.

There is no way out.

And the night never ends.
Click to expand...

What is our planet doing?
We're sending out probes explaining who we are and probably giving away our location in the process, if that hasn't already been done by all the broadcasts that is emitted from our planet all the time.
It might pay off to send out a friendly message as we're simply incapable of containing all the stuff that might be picked up by aliens, so we might as well gamble on them being friendly.

On the other hand, they might not be friendly - and all we've been doing is making it easier for hostile species to find us.

Maybe there aren't any aliens out there.
Or maybe, they are out there and might come to destroy our planet, or just slingshot a planet destroying asteroid our way.

The scary thing is that it could happen tomorrow.
 
S

Steelrain

Member
If someone wants to travel that far to fuck us up then fuckit.

Hopefully we irradiate this bitch just to spite them.
 
TheContact

TheContact

Member
SquiddyBiscuit said:
Hands up if you think there are space-faring alien species or alien species with space-faring capabilities out there.
Click to expand...

Honestly, you have to be extremely close minded to think that, in all the Universe, we are the only space-faring civilization. The human brain literally can't comprehend the size of the Universe, and to say that we're the only advanced civilization is freaken STUPID.

I'd say that any other species is hostile, and us sending messages into space displaying a map of where we're located is simply the biggest mistake the humans have ever done (in regards to extra terrestrials)
 
P

Pai Pai Master

Banned
I support human-alien relationships as long as they look like the sexy blue chicks from Mass Effect.

It's a fair point though if you believe there is life out there. They could be even bigger assholes than most humans.
 
iNvid02

iNvid02

Member
MP14i.jpg
 
C

Clydefrog

Member
I always thought an organism that can travel the vast distances of space would be so far advanced that the idea of violence isn't even part of their existance.
 
N

Neuromancer

Member
1. Probably there are space travelling aliens somewhere else in the universe but there's no way to know for sure. So that's just speculation on my part.

2. Well we were probably going to die as a species sooner or later. May as well be at the hands (?) of a malevolent alien. It'd be more interesting than another asteroid, a global pandemic or mass nuclear (or worse) war. Plus the sun is going to go super nova eventually (a couple billion years or something).


Lovely Salsa said:
I don't get it, what is there to gain for destroying our planet?
Click to expand...
Other than the inherent impossibility of guessing the intents and motivations behind an utterly unknown species there could be a few reasons I could speculate such as some weird religious or cultural ideals.
 
Indrid Cold1

Indrid Cold1

Member
I came into this thread expecting talk of scantily clad green Venusians with 3 tits, now I'm mildly disappointed.

I actually think the arguments against active SETI or METI or whatever you want to call it are very valid, and find myself agreeing a lot with David Brin on the subject, but icantfaptothis.jpg
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
It should be noted that space is not only vast in area, but in terms of time as well. It's not enough to ask "is there life out there?" but "is there life out there that exists at the same time we do with approximately a similar/higher rate of growth in technology?".
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
Lovely Salsa said:
I don't get it, what is there to gain for destroying our planet?
Click to expand...

Safety.
Kill us before we for X reason kill them (which may very well be the same reason they'd have for destroying us).

When it comes to the survival of your entire species, that might be enough of a reason to kill us, especially when you consider the reasons we kill other intelligent species here on Earth.
We slaughter dolphins, great apes, whales, and many other intelligent species for fun, food, and money. As a general rule, intelligent beings have no inhibitions when it comes to killing other (less) intelligent beings, so doing it as a safety precaution even sounds noble when compared to all the killing of less intelligent animals for relatively minor (in comparison) reasons).

They also have nothing to lose at attempting to destroy us, as even if we survive we wouldn't be able to decide who slingshot a random asteroid, which they wouldn't have to do from their home world, in the event of the target being able to backtrace the trajectory of the asteroid.

The above is in the event that the alien species in question is so far advanced that they have no need of human slaves or our earth resources. Those could also be reason enough for all we know.
 
K

KarmaCow

Member
MC Safety said:
Well, the Earth has a lot of exploitable natural resources and a population of what? seven billion or so potential slaves?
Click to expand...

Eh, if you're space faring I would imagine machinery would be cheaper and more efficient than maintaining needy flesh sacks.
 
S

Steelrain

Member
Neuromancer said:
1. Probably there are space travelling aliens somewhere else in the universe but there's no way to know for sure. So that's just speculation on my part.

2. Well we were probably going to die as a species sooner or later. May as well be at the hands (?) of a malevolent alien. It'd be more interesting than another asteroid, a global pandemic or mass nuclear (or worse) war. Plus the sun is going to go super nova eventually (a couple billion years or something).



Other than the inherent impossibility of guessing the intents and motivations behind an utterly unknown species there could be a few reasons I could speculate such as some weird religious or cultural ideals.
Click to expand...

Nope. The Sun will become a white dwarf :p
 
N

Neuromancer

Member
Steelrain said:
A lot of people say this, I don't really understand their reasoning though.
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Yeah I mean we've made it to the moon and we're pretty damn war like. Let's say for argument's sake we develop the technology to get to the nearest star (40 light years away if I recall correctly) within the next thousand years, I still don't think we'd have transformed into a peaceful race by then.


Steelrain said:
Nope. The Sun will become a white dwarf :p
Click to expand...
Oh well that sounds bad too!
 
K

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
Lovely Salsa said:
I don't get it, what is there to gain for destroying our planet?
Click to expand...

This is the classic question. It's been argued that "Mars Wants Women" style science fiction largely grew out of cultural imperialism taken for granted - the view that any 'foreign' group invading a new land would do so because well, gosh darn it, they just want the good stuff that's there. Oh and as a matter of course they slaughter all the natives.

Which does seem to fall apart in the context of outer space. A civilization that had the capability to travel among star systems would, through extrapolation, long since have conquered problems with resources and extracting useful resources from all the stuff floating around in the universe.

It would seem to be a complete waste of time and materials to pick a planet that had intelligent life on it, and go to war to steal some water that you could find floating around as chunks of ice elsewhere.

This does, of course, make one huge assumption. That the spacefaring civilization in question is rational.

A lot of science fiction authors, and Sciencey Thinkers, speculate that in order for a civilization to come together and master traversing the universe, they'd be forced to adopt a high degree of pragmatism and rationalism. That seems reasonable. But with infinite unknown possibilities, it could be wrong. There could, for instance, be a civilization crawling around the galaxy that believes it is trying to find Space God. And through whatever quirk of dogma, thinks any other intelligent life it finds is fake intelligence and should be exterminated so as not to offend Space God. Or whatever other scenario you care to imagine that would make aliens (alien to us) malevolent.
 
V

V_Arnold

Member
Aliens do exist, yeah, but they are only alien to a certain extent to us.
I do believe that there is a reason for why we are not seeing that, and it is for a bit more than the usual ("oh, imagine how hard it must be for any species to travel across planets with traditional fuels and linear travels, omg" - of course it would be!) reasons.

I believe that the reason they are kinda leaving us alone at this point is that if we see ourselves as a big society (as One, not the fucking different country names, no), the past few decades and the ongoing one is showing such amazing advancements in every single front that there would be no point for an outsider observer to mess up a planetary event like this one. We can see them, we can communicate with them at will, but at this point in time, any kind of communication needs to be managed in a way that relies on personal matters, because once someone has the so-called "real proof" of this, the evolution of our civilization definitely gets altered by a heavy fact. And if we can get there by our own, then why interfere?

Of course, my belief is a bit different than the night in the park deadly cold space+huge weapons and afraid beings everywhere theory - it is quite the opposite. Our level of existence is a huge experiment, one that our mass consciousness decided to explore - one where we are seemingly alone, until we realize for real that we are not. And then we will be able to see why we are not alone - we never are, never were, never will be alone.
 
J

Jin_7

Member
Coming all the way here, maybe they'd need a new planet or resources?
I wouldn't want to be discovered by ourselves.
 
V

Vilix

Unconfirmed Member
Kang_Kodos_Hitchhiking.jpg


You bet your ass there's aliens. And that's exactly why we need more guns.
 
M

Mister_Bubbles

Member
Clydefrog said:
I always thought an organism that can travel the vast distances of space would be so far advanced that the idea of violence isn't even part of their existance.
Click to expand...

That's also a scary thought. They may be so advanced and incomprehensible that the concepts of pain and suffering are unknown to them. Imagine the horrors that might be inflicted upon us, even without malicious intent, by a consciousness that does not follow the same moral guidelines as humanity.
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
Mister_Bubbles said:
That's also a scary thought. They may be so advanced and incomprehensible that the concepts of pain and suffering are unknown to them. Imagine the horrors that might be inflicted upon us, even without malicious intent, by a consciousness that does not follow the same moral guidelines as humanity.
Click to expand...

For that matter, there might be space-faring aliens that lack any form of awareness or intelligence.
They might just destroy all other lifeforms automatically per their survival instincts because other life is competition.

Or maybe they are such extreme resource hoarders that they want to utilize all resources in the universe to survive as long as possible.

KittenMaster said:
I thought this was going to be about the Captain Kirk type of relationship.
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blame space said:
i thought this thread would be sexier
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Sorry guys :p
 
M

MC Safety

Member
KarmaCow said:
Eh, if you're space faring I would imagine machinery would be cheaper and more efficient than maintaining needy flesh sacks.
Click to expand...

Maybe. But I wouldn't want to attribute any characteristics or beliefs to a wholly unknown quantity.

To be more precise, then: The aliens would have an exploitable population of roughly seven billion.
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
Steelrain said:
What resources do we have that couldn't be obtained far easier from asteroids or uninhabited moons?
Click to expand...

Maybe they want both, maybe they're not selective or efficient aliens.

Personally, I think outright destruction is more logical than any form of alien enslavement or theft (like you said, resources are probably easier to obtain from asteroid).
But we have no idea what might be going on in an alien's mind, all we know is that these are all possibilities just based on what we humans do (the only space-faring species we can extrapolate from).
 
R

Ragingbegal

Member
carfo said:
i'll give u 3 reasons

1) resources
2) resources
3) resources
Click to expand...

Any civilization capable of reaching our planet and terraforming it to an atmosphere allowing them to survive would also be capable of reaching a similar planet devoid of intelligent life unable to fight back. Why waste resources invading a planet when you can just go somewhere without a struggle.

That's assuming any species would be able to break the light barrier and survive to begin with, which there's no evidence that's possible.
 
S

SteveWD40

Member
We eat most things that are not us, some we see ourselves in and don't (dogs), why wouldn't they eat us?

Any civilization capable of reaching our planet and terraforming it to an atmosphere allowing them to survive would also be capable of reaching a similar planet devoid of intelligent life unable to fight back. Why waste resources invading a planet when you can just go somewhere without a struggle.
Click to expand...

Pretty much, unless as I say they see us as tasty morsels they would be better off getting resources from Asteroid belts / comets etc...
 
Rentahamster

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
SquiddyBiscuit said:
For that matter, there might be space-faring aliens that lack any form of awareness or intelligence.
They might just destroy all other lifeforms automatically per their survival instincts because other life is competition.
Click to expand...
How does a species acquire space-faring capabilities without any intelligence? They are some sort of biological entity that evolved to survive in space? Like the Zerg? Even if there were biological entities that could survive in space, it's very unlikely that they could evolve interstellar travel, much less point them in our direction.

SquiddyBiscuit said:
Or maybe they are such extreme resource hoarders that they want to utilize all resources in the universe to survive as long as possible.
Click to expand...

If they're advanced enough to do that, I don't see why they don't just harness energy from one of the many other stars out there. What makes our sun so special? If they need minerals, or water, or something material, why not just mine one of the multitude of other planets out there? What makes Earth so special?
 
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