Aliens: Will They Fear Us or Take Our Resources?

[decibel]

if there were aliens what makes you think that if were scared of them, they won't be scared of us...they might be as much terrefied of us as were petrafied by them,...they jus might want to steal our resources and our oxygen lol

 

[Phobos]

That's why we're broadcasting Men in Black into space...to let prospective invaders know who's boss.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by decibel
if there were aliens what makes you think that if were scared of them, they won't be scared of us...they might be as much terrefied of us as were petrafied by them,...they jus might want to steal our resources and our oxygen lol

This becomes a question of time and technology. Presently, using known physics it appears that interstellar travel is highly unlikely. Ideas like Warp drive and hyperspace drive are rooted in science, but whether such technologies will ever be possible is highly speculative at best; at worst [or perhaps to our benefit], these technologies will never be possible. If they will ever be possible, it appears that the energy requirements would exceed anything that we could manage for a very long time - like thousands or millions of years. Michio Kaku discusses this some I think in his book Hyperspace.

By the foregoing reasoning, it would seem that any ET visitor would be so technologically advanced, and by implication intellectually advanced, and maybe even more highly evolved than us by some relative measure, that we might be lucky to be considered an intelligent life form at all. ET may think of us much like we think of apes; or even ants.

On the other hand, perhaps such lofty concepts such as Warp or Hyperspace drives are only one discovery away. In this case the universe could be a very well traveled place; and any visitors may be only slightly more advanced than us if at all. But this requires that we presently have dramatic gaps in our understanding of physics that seem very unlikely. So, in all likelihood and as a best case scenario, should he show up, we should hope that ET will either ignore us because we are too boring, or that he thinks of us fondly as his pet humans.

 

[decibel]

very true, thanks for the insight

 

[benzun_1999]

if aliens exist

I accept the fact that they will be intelligent than us. But Why can't they exist in another dimension or something that we are not aware of?

-Benzun
All For God

 

[Mentat]

Originally posted by benzun_1999
I accept the fact that they will be intelligent than us. But Why can't they exist in another dimension or something that we are not aware of?

-Benzun
All For God

First off, why should they be more intelligent than us? If they didn't come into existence until after we did, then the chances of their being more intelligent are not too good.

Secondly, I suppose they could mainly propagate themselves in higher spatial dimensions (you were referring to spatial dimensions, weren't you?), but it doesn't seem to likely, since string theory seems to have these other dimensions "curled up" pretty small.

 

[TonySlim]

By the foregoing reasoning, it would seem that any ET visitor would be so technologically advanced, and by implication intellectually advanced, and maybe even more highly evolved than us by some relative measure, that we might be lucky to be considered an intelligent life form at all.

I'm stealing the following from somewhere, but I don't remember where. "Why do we have to assume they're more advanced than us because they have more advanced technology? Look at the people around you in their cars on the road. Could these people have built their cars at home? Do they look like they even know why their cars work?Maybe we'll get the ET version of these people". I don't believe this, but it's funny.

ET may think of us much like we think of apes; or even ants.

I'd think that if they were advanced enough to get here, they'd understand other cultures didn't have to resemble thiers. I'm able to accept Floridians as having a society of sorts, so I trust ET will see it, too.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by TonySlim
I'm stealing the following from somewhere, but I don't remember where. "Why do we have to assume they're more advanced than us because they have more advanced technology? Look at the people around you in their cars on the road. Could these people have built their cars at home? Do they look like they even know why their cars work?Maybe we'll get the ET version of these people". I don't believe this, but it's funny.



I'd think that if they were advanced enough to get here, they'd understand other cultures didn't have to resemble thiers. I'm able to accept Floridians as having a society of sorts, so I trust ET will see it, too.

No doubt this is all highly speculative, but this goes the time elapsed since developing technology. Will we grow more advanced as we continue to evolve? If we continue on our present course without becoming extinct for whatever reason, what kind of human will our technology produce in another million years? Who knows? If we play the odds and call upon my one of my favorite sets of laws, the laws of large numbers, according to the latest revised edition of these laws, I guess we must expect that both situations could occur. We might expect the Q and the Ferringi. Yikes!

Let's hope for a lonely universe.

 

[EvilPoet]

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes
I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering."
-Arthur C. Clarke

 

[Nereid]

Large numbers ... of seconds

I like Ivan's large numbers; when you do even small calculations (on the backs of very small envelopes), you can see why Mr Clarke says 'staggering'.

A million years is <1% of the time it takes the Sun (plus us, of course) to go once round the Milky Way, yet it's at least 10 times as long as homo sapiens has (apparently) possessed the ability to reason abstractly, and approx 100 times as long as there's been 'permanent' human settlements. In this context, 'cultural' considerations (thanks Tony) start to make your brain hurt.

Another of Arthur's sayings seems apposite, something about advanced technology seeming like magic; what would the people who made those wonderful cave paintings (in France, for example) thought of the PC? or a Bose-Einstein Condensate? And that's 'only' ~1,000 generations (the Sun takes well over 5 million generations to make just one journey round the Milky Way).

So, where is ET?

 

[EvilPoet]

The saying you mention is the third of Clarke's Three Laws. Here are all three ...

Clarke's Three Laws

Clarke's First Law
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Clarke's Second Law
"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

Clarke's Third Law
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

So, where is ET?

Phoning home?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Nereid
So, where is ET?

The question is, what are we looking for? If warp drive takes us another million years or so to develop, then the question of what to look for now in an alien race becomes highly problematic...unless we by chance are monitoring for the proper warp drive signiture.

I wonder how long we will use RF. Over so much time as millions of years, could RF be like a flash in pan for technology?

 

[Nereid]

Originally posted by Ivan Seeking
The question is, what are we looking for? If warp drive takes us another million years or so to develop, then the question of what to look for now in an alien race becomes highly problematic...unless we by chance are monitoring for the proper warp drive signiture.

I wonder how long we will use RF. Over so much time as millions of years, could RF be like a flash in pan for technology?

Hmmm, a really brief (and significantly inaccurate, no doubt) summary of the history of technologies used by homo sap. for long distance communication:
- 'runners': >100,000 years (pure guess)
- smoke signals: who knows? say ~50,000 years
- horses+riders: ~10,000 years
- carrier pigeon: ~5,000 years??
- various (other) line-of-sight visual (flashy mirrors, beacon fires, flags, ...): ~5,000 years (say)
- all other EM-based methods, telegraph/phone/etc: <200 years

To what extent are we still using pre-RF technologies for long distance communication? Not much.

A similar sketch of long distance bandwidth vs time might imply that RF will be used, to a significant extent, only as long as there aren't better means readily available (and the trend is already well under way, with optical fibres and IR lasers, and that took <50 years!)

What would Archimedes or Newton make of the latest Nokia mobile phone? How to do a 5,000-fold extrapolation of this?

31 November, 2342: Nokia today released its much hyped 546310i phone. Weighing 2 picograms, this selectron-powered unit modulates the relict neutrino flow using a protocol which traces its ancestry to a 20th century innovation called CDMA. Critics panned it, saying that, at 300 Pqbits/s, it didn't improve much over the Ericsson model released last month.

 

[HIGHLYTOXIC]

they would definitely be better off

if another life form comes to earth, then we can be sure that they will be better than us in terms of technology and, ha! weapons!

but that doesn't mean that they will destroy us or bla bla.. we are no stupid people! i myself can take care of 2-3 aliens very well (until u don't break me off my sleep !)

we would give them a nuclear missile and they would run like hell!

 

[Nereid]

Whence weapons?

What is the source of the human (and other species?) need (is it real?) to develop weapons? Understanding this may be important to making estimates of what we may expect from any aliens.

IMHO, most discussion on ET/aliens/etc is mostly just projection of the writers' own fears, hopes, and desires. Much of the popular literature on UFO aliens (including such films as Indepenence Day) is pure projection unleavened by even the slightest trace of biology or economics (lots of flashy hi-tech of course). At the risk of incurring the ire of a goodly number of PF readers, even the great Carl Sagan had a few scientific blind spots, in the sense that he appears not to have availed himself of some hard-won scientific results from biology.

ET as a branch of human psychology?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Nereid
What is the source of the human (and other species?) need (is it real?) to develop weapons? Understanding this may be important to making estimates of what we may expect from any aliens.

Here is some wild speculation on my part:

It seems to me that this comes under the notion of survival of the fittest. Since we evolved as predators and prey, we naturally gained an advantage by evolving as violent creatures; and later by developing weapons. So in this sense weapons are a direct result of evolution. I would tend to expect that similar scenarios would drive the evolution of species in many worlds. So if ET is like us, he likely evolved the need for violence. Conversely, I suppose we might imagine an ET who evolved as neither a predator or as prey, and who therefore never evolved the instincts or tools for violence.

IMHO, most discussion on ET/aliens/etc is mostly just projection of the writers' own fears, hopes, and desires. Much of the popular literature on UFO aliens (including such films as Indepenence Day) is pure projection unleavened by even the slightest trace of biology or economics (lots of flashy hi-tech of course). At the risk of incurring the ire of a goodly number of PF readers, even the great Carl Sagan had a few scientific blind spots, in the sense that he appears not to have availed himself of some hard-won scientific results from biology.

ET as a branch of human psychology?

It seems that certain aspects of a space faring ET might be anticipated by the requirements of technology. For example, ET must be able to manipulate material objects accurately and precisely. Some kind of analog to our hands and thumbs is required. Next, there would seem to be a minimum brain size allowed in order to achieve things like mathematics; of course we don't know how big this might be. Also, might the size of a creature at least a meet some minimum as a function of brain size, and a typical maximum so as to conserve energy? On the other hand, if the energy needed to survive was virtually unlimited during ETs evolution, I guess the upper limit for ET's size could be independent of his brain size; and he could get very large indeed.

One interesting question here is whether or not there are other kind of brains; brains that have virtually nothing in common with ours. Could ET have a brain more like a PC, or more like our immune system than our brain? Must a brain even be a unique thing? Of course, until we can identify the exact nature of consciousness, I suspect that guessing at the requirements for ET’s consciousness is more impossible than the rest of this guessing. Still, it would seem that ET still needs a reason to get smarter. This could result from the need for competitive advantage, or perhaps by environmental demands; or some other demands that we can’t imagine. So I don’t think that intelligence or any evolved senses absolutely require competition. Perhaps there is hope for a big brain and a kind heart. The bad news is that by our standards, if ET is smart, he probably became smart in a hostile environment; and violence and domination could be a part of his nature just as they are a part of ours.

What about things like emotions or even consciousness for that matter? Could we meet an ET who is not even self aware by our standards? Could ET be intelligent but still have more in common with spiders or plants than he does with us?

 

[Nereid]

Ivan wrote: It seems to me that this [whence weapons?][/b] comes under the notion of survival of the fittest. Since we evolved as predators and prey, we naturally gained an advantage by evolving as violent creatures; and later by developing weapons. So in this sense weapons are a direct result of evolution. I would tend to expect that similar scenarios would drive the evolution of species in many worlds. So if ET is like us, he likely evolved the need for violence. Conversely, I suppose we might imagine an ET who evolved as neither a predator or as prey, and who therefore never evolved the instincts or tools for violence. [/b]

Let's see what Niqqie, Another God, or iansmith could add here, from their understanding of the work of naturalists such as E. O. Wilson, and leading evolutionists.

AFAIK, preditor-prey violence in mammals is pretty specific and contained. More potent is aggression arising from competition for mates, leading to territoriality and much else besides.

Are there other natural solutions to some kind of sexually driven aggression in mammals, esp primates? I don't know, but as maybe orangutans (solitary) or bononos (extreme sexual promiscuity)?

As we're the only mammal which possesses the capability to reason abstractly, and as the homo sap. females are permanently in heat, it may be this combination is the root cause of weapon development. Then comes the question: to what extent is the same explosive combination responsible for the rise of civilisation? intellectual curiosity? (perhaps the good news is that it's taken less than 1,000 years to begin to curb our self-destructive tendencies, and have done so without needing to alter the genes!)

If the characteristic time for significant change (genetic, environmental) is 100,000 to 10 million years, then even the flimsy tale sketched above is weakened further - if aliens have the same chemisty and planetary environment as us, it'd be an amazing co-incidence that any nearby would happen to be within one characteristic time of homo sap.

Comments on your bottom's up ideas, as well as emotions and consciousness, later.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Nereid
AFAIK, preditor-prey violence in mammals is pretty specific and contained. More potent is aggression arising from competition for mates, leading to territoriality and much else besides.

I agree to a point, but going all the way back to the first predator, predatory behavior must have evolved nearly as soon as strategies for reproduction. Again, I am equating predatory behavior with violence towards other species.

Is respect for life a trait likely to occur? This seems to imply the capacity for a philosophy in our sense.

 

[Innexplicable]

First off, back to the riginal question:

1. Ofcoarse as logical beings, it's safe to say we would be cautious on first meeting the aliens, and we would try to be prepared for any possible outcome and we would most likely have our military on high alert. As for fear, any logical, intuitive human being would not be afraid of aliens, since that would require preset beliefs about their motived, without concerning true logic. I believe this would be the same with them.

2. Secondly, one can not truly believe they would come here, of all places, for recourses. Since there are more than enough recourses in out universe to supply our needs forever, i.e. titan is a fuel moon, and it is much bigger than earth, and europa is a water moon, and has more water than earth. Besides, why would they risk fighting other intelligent beings for VERY limited recourses?

3. Their only true reason to destroy us may be as a precaution, so that we may not become more advanced than them and possibly destroy them.

 

[LURCH]

Originally posted by Innexplicable
First off, back to the riginal question:

1. Ofcoarse as logical beings, it's safe to say we would be cautious on first meeting the aliens, and we would try to be prepared for any possible outcome and we would most likely have our military on high alert. As for fear, any logical, intuitive human being would not be afraid of aliens, since that would require preset beliefs about their motived, without concerning true logic. I believe this would be the same with them.

I do not entirely agree. The purpose of fear is self-preservation. If our species (or any species, IMHO) did not fear new things until it was proven that they should be feared, we would likely be extinct. Often the first indication that something should be feared is when it attempts to kill you. For the unwary, this attempt is more likely to be succesfull.

2. Secondly, one can not truly believe they would come here, of all places, for recourses. Since there are more than enough recourses in out universe to supply our needs forever, i.e. titan is a fuel moon, and it is much bigger than earth, and europa is a water moon, and has more water than earth. Besides, why would they risk fighting other intelligent beings for VERY limited recourses?

3. Their only true reason to destroy us may be as a precaution, so that we may not become more advanced than them and possibly destroy them.

Points two and three I do agree quite strongly. I get such a chuckle out of sci-fi where aliens come to Earth for water! They had to fly right passed Europa and all the rest to get here, where pathogens flourish and a technological race (however primative) is also out to make their mission dificult, not to mention the more inconvenient gravity.

Of course, I suppose a story about a bunch of aliens who come to our Solar system, syphon a bunch of water off of Miranda, and then leave without us ever knowing they had been here would lack dramatic tension.

But when my gaming friends ask me for suggestions as to why their alien attackers might be attacking, my answer is allways "xenophobia".

 

[Merlin]

reply to N ex P licatable

Hmmmm. yes ah..., The answer is ; Barring any great technological leaps, we are cursed with fractions of light speed to 99.99999% light speed, still dreadfully slow, by galactic standards, much less intergalactic travel, the ETs will find us, not we them. So by their Tech. standards we might as well still be using runners.

 

[Phobos]

Originally posted by Merlin
... we are cursed with fractions of light speed to 99.99999% light speed, still dreadfully slow, ...

Especially slow for the viewers back home, but much more reasonable for the person making the trip due to time dilation.

 

[Merlin]

Thank you for the kind reply![/color]

 

[Nereid]

LURCH wrote: I do not entirely agree. The purpose of fear is self-preservation. If our species (or any species, IMHO) did not fear new things until it was proven that they should be feared, we would likely be extinct. Often the first indication that something should be feared is when it attempts to kill you. For the unwary, this attempt is more likely to be succesfull.

I'm no naturalist or biologist, but it seems there are several important counter examples. In many islands - not only lumps of land surrounded by water, but also mountain peaks - there were (until good ol' homo sap introduced aliens which promptly proceeded to make them extinct) many animals (mammals and birds at least) which did not seem to have a 'fear gene'. They were at the top of the food chain, both herbivores and carnivores, and had even developed interesting relationships with the local flora (dodos are apparently essential for some species of tree on Maurtius to propagate; unless the seed pods are suitably processed in dodo gizzards, they cannot germinate in dodo poo).

Did they know fear but lost it? Did they evolve fearlessly? Why not fear?

Apparently because it's costly to the individual, where there are no threats, and so those without it had more offspring who were more successful in mating, etc ... evolution at work.

Lions are at the top of the food chain; do they 'fear' anything (other than homo sap)? Tigers? Kodiak bears?

The Earth is a giant island; what is the meta-characteristic like fear that we lack because we're king of the castle?

 

[Loren Booda]

In what manner might Terran biota (have) intimately coexist(ed) with alien life? Extradimensions, micro- and macroforms, psychological states, divine intervention, or our inborn ignorance of our true environment?

Maybe species evolve gradual awareness and trust - first toward life most familiar, then finally to life most diverse.

 

[Nereid]

Thanks LURCH!

Originally posted by Ivan Seeking
I agree to a point, but going all the way back to the first predator, predatory behavior must have evolved nearly as soon as strategies for reproduction. Again, I am equating predatory behavior with violence towards other species.

Is respect for life a trait likely to occur? This seems to imply the capacity for a philosophy in our sense.

LURCH made a really good observation, about fear. Looking at life on Earth, and those mammals which are top predators (or are not prey to another (large) mammal), what evidence of 'gratuitous violence' is there (other than that associated with competition for mates)? How would one assess whether such evolutionary winners have some kind of 'respect for life'? How to determine the extent to which this may, over millions of years, evolve into philosophy?

 

[Nereid]

Emotions and consciousness

Ivan wrote: What about things like emotions or even consciousness for that matter? Could we meet an ET who is not even self aware by our standards? Could ET be intelligent but still have more in common with spiders or plants than he does with us?

Trying to get 'outside ourselves' on these is, IMHO, extraordinarily difficult.

Start with emotions. We know something about these in ourselves, though we continue to make interesting discoveries. What about the aliens already on Earth? What emotions do chimps, dolphins, horses, hyenas, mice, and other mammals experience? How can we tell? What about 'simpler' animals - snakes, turtles, sharks, eels, trout?

It'd be helpful if one of the PF members with a solid biology training contributed here, I'm way beyond my knowledge comfort-zone.

Apparently some social mammals (chimps, dolphins at least) can even mask their emotions from their fellows, in order to deceive, apparently, is one hypothesis.

How certain are we of the extent and subtlety of mammals' emotions to be able to make confident generalisations that could be the basis of informed speculation about ET's emotions?

My guess is, we are still profoundly ignorant.

Consciousness? Such a can of worms! As Mentat said in one of his excellent posts (on some philosophy-related thread, IIRC), without a means of communication, there's no way you can study this scientifically (he'll probably protest at my horribly inaccurate paraphrase). As the only critters who we can communicate with are ourselves, we're at a dead-end on this one.

Ivan, on re-reading your post, I see there are two other paragraphs with good ideas that I haven't commented on yet; later.