Do Aliens Exist? Voice Your Opinion

[Algr]

Larry Niven wrote a short story "Bordered in Black" that, to this day, still haunts me. It was about a "food world" for an alien species consisting entirely of humanoids. Trillions of them - naked, tool-less without even houses; all flora and fauna had been exterminated, leaving the to just swarm the continents, eating and breeding. The other life was the algae-stocked oceans. The title "Bordered in Black" referred the black edges of all the continents where all the humanoids flocked to beaches to get at the only source of food.

I'm pretty good at technobabble explanations for sci-fi ideas, but this is hard to justify. Do the aliens eat sadism?

 

[Algr]

Yah Sorry bit of a tangent. I was riffing off the conjecture of what kinds of aliens we should expect to encounter. I think a realistic future scenario might be "Approaching Sirius B world Four. Oh look another algae world. Logged as Level 1 world, number 2,934,729. Going back to sleep".

Here is a question we won't know the answer to for a long time: For human settlement is an algae world better than a stone dead one? (Both with water). On the one hand, the algae would have created at least some free O². But what if there are 10,000,000 kinds of algae, and 1/1000 of them are deadly to humans?

 

[DaveC426913]

Do the aliens eat sadism?

What do you mean? The aliens didn't recognize the humanoids as sapient. It was no different from a cattle ranch or factory-farmed chickens.

*OK, there is one aspect that I left out: the aliens abandoned the world and it went feral in their absence. Still, the point remains: the humanoids didn't even have the tools or resources to make shelters.

 

[Algr]

The difference is that humans can take care of themselves and it would be far more efficient to let them do so. Also, if they have the technology to make it economical to transport meat from one planet to another, why use humans? Why not chickens or GMO mushrooms that taste just like human, but don't rebel or try to develop technology?

 

[DaveC426913]

The difference is that humans can take care of themselves and it would be far more efficient to let them do so. Also, if they have the technology to make it economical to transport meat from one planet to another, why use humans? Why not chickens or GMO mushrooms that taste just like human, but don't rebel or try to develop technology?

You'd have to read it and let the narrative tell you how it justifies its events. Admittedly, it's a short story in a larger Nivenesque universe, wherein the history and culture of the aliens is further explored.

Full disclosure: I self-reported my post 28, realizing that I dragged a (meta)science topic way off into sci-fi. Mods may delete or split thread at any time.

 

[Jarvis323]

What "Happened quickly" is reproducing molecules and single celled organisms. That suggests that only life on that level is common on other planets. The development of anything with a brain took the vast majority of Earth's history.

The time constraints for the evolution of complex or intelligent life are not clear based on Earth's story.

The Cambrian explosion, Cambrian radiation,[1] Cambrian diversification, or the Biological Big Bang[2] refers to an interval of time approximately 538.8 million years ago in the Cambrian Period when practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record.[3][4][5] It lasted for about 13[6][7][8] – 25[9][10] million years and resulted in the divergence of most modern metazoan phyla.[11]The event was accompanied by major diversification in other groups of organisms as well.[a]

Before early Cambrian diversification,https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion#cite_note-14 most organisms were relatively simple, composed of individual cells, or small multicellular organisms, occasionally organized into colonies. As the rate of diversification subsequently accelerated, the variety of life became much more complex, and began to resemble that of today.[13] Almost all present-day animal phyla appeared during this period,[14][15] including the earliest chordates.[16]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion

I would like to know if the rapid emergence of complex life on Earth was only possible from a long evolutionary chain of simple precursor life, or if the right conditions just finally arrived. But it seems life can can transition from "individual cells, or small multicellular organisms, occasionally organized into colonies" to something like us in about 538 million years or less.

 

[DaveC426913]

The time constraints for evolution of complex or intelligent life is not clear based on Earth's story.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion

I would like to know if the rapid emergence of complex life on Earth was only possible from a long evolutionary chain of simple precursor life, or if the right conditions just finally arrived.

My Cambrian Biologist sister, Queen of The Burgess Shale, who is sitting across from me on the couch, says "the latter":

(Dictated:)

The first "ediacaran" animals were flat and absorbed nutrients through their skin. The sea chemistry changed, allowing them to grow further up the water column. Also, predation was invented. So was chlorophyll.

Also. "Hydrogen Sulphide Barrier" something.

These are factors that led to the explosion.

She says she can "get the name of the paper when she gets home, but: Mark Laflamme, U of T Erindale".

Also: "Go see the Dawn of Life Exhibit at the ROM! Biggest Cambrian Exhibit in North America!"
She painted the murals for it!

 

[phinds]

Why not chickens or GMO mushrooms that taste just like human, but don't rebel or try to develop technology?

Because it would make for a much less interesting story. It was STORY. Try to keep that in mind.

 

[Algr]

Because it would make for a much less interesting story. It was STORY. Try to keep that in mind.

Dave said it still haunts him, so I was playing scientific exorcist.

 

[DaveC426913]

don't rebel or try to develop technology?

Rebel against what? There's no oversight. No aliens. They eat and they breed in-the-wild across continent-spanning fields. And there's nothing else. You see why it's ghastly? Understimulation.

Develop technology from what? There's not even trees. You can't beat someone to death with a handful of algae.

 

[gmax137]

The honest answer is that no one knows. The statistical argument that it's inevitable as there are so many other stars is actually not valid. It may be that the evolution of life has an extremely low probability that outweighs the large number of opportunities.

...

Well then how do you explain that we "just happen" to be on that unlikely world? I mean, what are the chances that our world happens to be the one?

 

[DaveC426913]

Well then how do you explain that we "just happen" to be on that unlikely world? I mean, what are the chances that our world happens to be the one?

Anthropic Principle says so.

 

[PeroK]

Well then how do you explain that we "just happen" to be on that unlikely world? I mean, what are the chances that our world happens to be the one?

If, say, there is only one advanced civilization per galaxy, then each advanced civilization (by your logic) would conclude they are one of many.

 

[Mark44]

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