warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
You assume that their goals would include solar system colonization. Maybe they just want to explore? Who knows what their goals are.. You can't assume that stuff!
Theories about aliens
- Thread starter Kyriakos
- Start date
You assume that their goals would include solar system colonization. Maybe they just want to explore? Who knows what their goals are.. You can't assume that stuff!
Yeah, we're certainly disagreeing on a lot. Let me ask you a question about how you project humanity's 'future history'. What do you think will arrive first, in our technological capacity? The ability to 'easily' terraform our local planets or the ability to 'easily' send a ship to another system. As well, what's going to be possible *first*, the ability to send an interstellar ship capable of terraforming or sending an interstellar ship capable of dominating 20th century humanity? My opinion is that interstellar flight is going to arrive (in our capacity) well before Mars is terraformed.
And to answer the question I posed upthread, if *I* was capable of funding my interstellar trip at high speeds, I would go to the far living planet instead of the close dead planet. I am not terribly worried about two-way communication, and I wouldn't suffer any loss of information from 'home' because I'd always receive signal from 'home' in real-time.
You say that it wouldn't be 'rational' for me to go, but I disagree. The inherent value of a living planet is enormous, and likely worth the trip. And because *I'd* go, I cannot accept that it would be completely unlikely that an alien would come here.
I think even trying to place human ideals or goals on an alien civilization, like the desire to explore, or the need to expand beyond their own planet, is too speculative. We have a difficult enough time identifying intelligence on our own planet, who are we to really say what an alien civilization is? Or even what "life" is? Is a virus "life?" Would we know life if it smashed our little robot rover right in its front facing camera? What if there is an intelligence out there not based on carbon like us? What would that intelligence do? What does that intelligence want?
dIZZyBlIZZy
Batteries not included
Seems logical, but you and Winner are doing the same thing; equating a human line of thinking to something inherently nonhuman.
As far as visiting this world, two things to wonder.
1. If a creature is capable of a feat that is far beyond our comprehension, such as interstellar travel, then is it possibly reasonable that the motives of said creature are also beyond our comprehension?
2. I may have misunderstood a lot of posts here, but it seems like everyone is going 50s scifi thinking in that if there is life out there; they must be far more advanced than us and they can always survive in a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere like here. If you could take a tech level of all life in this universe, were would we stand? Also, what does such a creature breath. If a creature is of a race that could reach this system, is it not plausible that Venus or Titan could be habitable for them instead of Earth? Or what if the air they inhale is made of water vapor and SuO2?
I'm assuming my own opinion that we are not alone, nor have we been visited.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Exactly.
If the aliens are civilized and intelligent, statistically speaking it is far more likely that they are tens of thousands or even millions of years more advanced that us.
dIZZyBlIZZy
Batteries not included
Likely, but you speak on a tendency, not an absolute. Furthermore, they could be creatures that are civil and intelligent that are not capable of reaching here. If they can then yes they are more advance, but what of those that, like us cannot leave their own system and their furthest achievement is one of their satellites (assuming such a world has one or more, we got lucky and had Luna)?
Power_of_Beer
Prince
We should make the assumption that life on planet earth is mediocre, because this is the most probable case. So we must define life as we know it on earth: a system that is is somehow closed from its surroundings, has a metabolism and reproduces itself. The chemistry it is basing on is the same as ours. This is the most probable form of life, as it is the only one we know so far, so I think there are forms of life which are similiar to what we know. Other forms of life are just unlikely at our present knowledge.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Just statistics. If we run into an intelligent alien species, it's unlikely they'll be exactly as advanced as us, technologically. It follows that they are more advanced than us, then.
...or we find some evidence of bacteria or fungus growing on a nearby planet with water. If they run into us, more than likely they will be more advanced.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Yeah that's why I said intelligent.
I am trying very hard not to. I am not stating that I know the thoughts of an alien species or civilization. I am only stating that the motives/capacities of any interstellar civilization are very unpredictable to us, because a lot of our economic thinking is biased by our instincts. I have a wide spread of imagined motives I can place onto another civilization, because there're a lot of variables around fixed constants. As far as I can tell, all biological intelligent behaviour is based on the rules of economics and biased by instincts. This is as true for humans as it is for dragonflies.
This is why I am trying to state the economic case for visiting Earth. After that case is made, it's a question of whether a civilization's instincts would accept those economics. Using myself as an example is merely to show that it IS reasonable for an intelligent race to behave in a certain way, because it is what *I* would do. You cannot say "that would never happen!", if it's something I would do!
It is possible if their intelligence is vastly higher than ours. But it needn't be true if their intelligence is merely different from ours. I mean, like I said, we can figure out the motivations of different animals (and their behaviour) because we know how evolution shapes their behaviour.
There's no reason to assume that they'd be vastly more intelligent than us, because humanity should be capable of funding interstellar flights before we're capable of hyperintelligence. That said, there's no reason to assume they're NOT hyperintelligent, either, if Singularity trends are actually a universal law rather than a consequence of human behaviour.
I assume that they won't need actually planets to thrive. On this, I agree with Winner "we don't have anything that's not already really common". A space-borne civilization should be able to thrive in our asteroid belt, without needing the planets.
West 36
Can count up to 4
Aliens on Earth? Unlikely. In the universe? Sure, it seems incredibly unlikely for there not to be other 'life' out there, but what 'life' in other places of existence might be could be something utterly incomprehensible to our minds. We've only recently begun to understand what we've got here, and we're certainly not finished in figuring that out.
When these kind of questions are asked, I'm left to thinking about the massive extinctions in our planet's past. We have 3 domains and 6 kingdoms of life. We can argue for eternity (as is in fact the case) how life began but wherever it formed, in some primordial pool or what have you, what came out and survived is what we have living today, but what didn't make it? Billions of years have passed, and with it many possibilities of how things could have started, evolved, gone extinct, etc. So even on some Earth twin way out, the most minute differences, the luck of some small organism over another, could drastically change life or add a new branch to it.
My point being, life as we know it is only the result of the circumstances we have here.
When these kind of questions are asked, I'm left to thinking about the massive extinctions in our planet's past. We have 3 domains and 6 kingdoms of life. We can argue for eternity (as is in fact the case) how life began but wherever it formed, in some primordial pool or what have you, what came out and survived is what we have living today, but what didn't make it? Billions of years have passed, and with it many possibilities of how things could have started, evolved, gone extinct, etc. So even on some Earth twin way out, the most minute differences, the luck of some small organism over another, could drastically change life or add a new branch to it.
My point being, life as we know it is only the result of the circumstances we have here.
Miroslav I
Warlord
Once this planet were terraformed and than comes the hijacking...several times, with catastrophic outcome...now we are at the end of the fourth period...
Enjoy those times.
Miroslav
Miroslav I
Warlord
Ignore the first sentence, maybe I've just been kidding. Maybe. :]
Read the second sentence again.
Miroslav
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