Famous argument against alien life

Blenton

It's also based on the assumption that aliens would just come crashing down to the planet making themselves aware to everyone. We don't know what the motive is of extra-terrestrial life, and we can assume if they have the technology to travel here from a distant area in space, they have the technology to hide themselves from our current detection.

Chronos

Why would aliens 'hide' from us? Any critters smart enough to 'fly' here from another star system would not feel threatened. The 'Prime Directive'? I think not. I dont know of any biologists frightened, or morally bound to inconvenience for the sake of tadpoles.

ideasrule

There are good reasons for something like a "Prime Directive". For one thing, perhaps the aliens are conducting a scientific mission and don't want to disturb the civilization they're studying. For another, maybe introducing advanced technology too soon has proven disastrous in the past. It's also possible that intelligent life is extremely common in the galaxy, and that Earth is uninteresting compared to the other worlds.

Chronos

I might agree there are reasons, I only object to the 'good' part. Why would god-like beings bother to conceal their existence? We are no more interesting than an ant farm to them. I hope it stays that way.

aPhilosopher

Why would they be "god-like" beings and not just intelligent life with more advanced technology? Scientists have a lot of fun with "ant farms" and other "primitive" life. Is it not possible that they would want to study the emergence of planetary civilizations?

jreelawg

If you think about it, any biological beings who travelled all the way to earth, would probably be planet less. Or at least it wouldn't be feasible to make it back to their planet. Considering the effects of time dilation their planet may have changed a whole lot since they left. They may not even be able to keep communication with their planet. Their mission directors may all be dead.

It is likely that the mission would instead be carried out by drones, or robots with pre programmed intelligence. Part of this would probably be to protect itself, and to use caution.

They wouldn't know how advanced we might be. Especially since time dilation means that by the time they make it here, earth will be much more advanced. Say they heard us testing nukes. We might expect a couple of thousands of years to pass by before they reach us.

Now assuming they decided to send out some drone ships anyways, this would mean that they must be stable, capable, and concerned enough with the very long term. If this is the case, they might be concerned with proliferation of their technology.

The drones they send out first would likely be programmed to stay and not return. Returning would give earth thousands of years at least to catch up technologically, and would risk losing superiority and control of mankind. I would expect the first coming to be a mission designed to establish some kind of covert control over us, monitor us, and make sure that we do not become too advanced as to be a threat. In essence, the first coming would be designed to prepare for the second coming thousands of years later. Once they have scouted us, and sent information back, it would be thousands of years at least before a fleet, or exodus could reach us. You could imagine they would take extra precaution not to screw up thousands and thousands of years worth of work, planning, and effort.

Chronos

It's ant farms all the way down, imo. After expending all the energy necessary to arrive here, I doubt 'safe' contact with primitive life forms would be a priority.

BigFairy

Agreeable.

fillindablank

Interstellar travel has been feasible since the first rocket was lit by the Chinese. You must be mistaking interstellar travel with faster than light travel. There is no need to travel faster than light to get to another star or colonize the galaxy. There are at least 2 ways to get to another star, you can send people or something that will become people. The first is tough, the second should be fairly simple and neither requires travelling faster than light (although in the first the original crew will not be the ones that reach their destination). In fact if there is any terrestrial life attached to the Voyagers we may have already done the second.

BigFairy

how would you choose between them,

fillindablank

Technology would govern the choice. Also how long a view people have which is typically just a few days ahead. If people took the long view and realize that life that evolves on another planet from Earth DNA is still us, we could start colonizing right now. Just load bacteria cultures on small cheap probes and start launching them.

Of course that is oversimplified but it is essentially within our technology now. This method would rely on evolution and the probes randomly hitting a suitable planet (not quite random, there would have to be some AI involved to land on a planet once the ship reaches a solar system). The drawback to this method is that while we would spread terrestrial life throughout the galaxy, it could take millions of years to arrive, it would take millions of years to evolve, who knows what the odds are of intelligent life evolving, it would almost certainly not be human if it did and we would never have any real contact with them but we would share a genetic ancestry.

The technology to send actual people to other systems without FTL is still a bit off. It would require suspended animation. Either an artificial womb with suspended embryos or actual suspended adults. Should be possible eventually.

Of course FTL changes all of the above and that may or may not be possible.

BigFairy

Thanks for your response.

philnow

Hmm, I theorized the exact same thing and told it to a few friends who thought it was really clever, but an hour later I thought to myself "would other intelligent life, firstly, have any incentive whatsoever to visit us, and secondly, would they be noticed even if they came? (granted that they have the technology to get to earth, one could assume they would have the ability to be unnoticed).

"Or there is a possibility that intelligence is inherently unstable and always tends to destroy itself before it has time to get out of its solar system. (we dont care about simple life incapable of leaving its host). Or we are in the center of the universe (as recently suggested to explain the redshifts) and the first intelligent beings, which i dont find that implausible."

Considering that Fermi's argument is based on the plethora possibilities for evolution of intelligent life, I really doubt that EVERY SINGLE such life would have destroyed itself.

fillindablank

Of course not, but what kind of civilization would they be if they don't? Intelligent life doesn't necessarily have to have a technological civilization. They don't even have to have a social order like ours. I would think that a social system like ants or bees would be more likely to survive but would they be technological?

Going back to my theorized ways of colonizing it's possible earth was colonized like that by another civilization. Probably not because we haven't heard from them. There wouldn't be much point in doing that and not broadcasting EM like we do.

We evolved from predators which has a large effect on our social systems. If a civilization evolved from prey their social system would be different. They would probably be much more timid and paranoid and might not advertise their presence for fear of attracting predators. It is possible that type of civilization is more likely not to destroy themselves too. They might have been herd types which we aren't. A herd heritage might be better suited to survive. We weren't meant to be crowded and our society is suffering because of it. (and yes I've read Niven)

cavemen

Chicken and the egg question. :)

DaveC426913

No argument that involves the motives of alien creatures can be used to in an attempt to refute their existence or visitation.