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The last thing I would want for an alien life is to be humane. We have not really been great in our interactions with other cultures throughout history and they

The last thing I would want for an alien life is to be humane. We have not really been great in our interactions with other cultures throughout history and they were of the same species as us.

0xdada 9y ago
I think you're not interpreting the word "humane" correctly. It's possible for humans to behave in an inhumane manner. In fact it happens a lot to this day. That doesn't mean GP's definition of "humane" is wrong.
- on_and_off 9y ago
  I am aware of this. I am not a native speaker, so the dichotomy between the sense of this word and our most common behaviors as a species has always felt unsettling to me. I kind of like this word, I would love to live in a world where this is a perfect descriptor for our species. Back to the topic at hand, while it would indeed be marvelous to find benefactors from the stars, all the other possibilities are chilling. From cosmic horror to simple warmongering, there are so many ways it could go irremediably wrong.
wasx 9y ago
I put humanity in quotes because I didn't really know what else to name it when talking about some other form of intelligence. I guess I'm talking about that part of our society that craves peace and stability, that has enabled our continued development up to this point. Certainly throughout history we've seen unimaginable cruelty inflicted on "less civilised" societies by colonial and imperialist societies. Hopefully any intelligence which has reached the development of an interstellar society would have those same qualities, frankly I don't see any other way for it to sustain itself. Imagine we came across anew form of intelligent life on Mars, would we exploit and enslave it? I'd like to think living in a global society would prevent such atrocities, at least in the modern era, and hopefully beyond. And I think any society in an interstellar context would behave the same
- pm90 9y ago
  We probably wouldn’t exploit it as long as access was hard. Once space travel becomes more common though, I think we might have a situation like Star Wars where the far away worlds are basically left to their own devices since it would be a huge pain for an earth centered society to enforce laws...

The last thing I would want for an alien life is to be humane. We have not really been great in our interactions with other cultures throughout history and they were of the same species as us.

0xdada 9y ago

I think you're not interpreting the word "humane" correctly. It's possible for humans to behave in an inhumane manner. In fact it happens a lot to this day. That doesn't mean GP's definition of "humane" is wrong.

on_and_off 9y ago
I am aware of this. I am not a native speaker, so the dichotomy between the sense of this word and our most common behaviors as a species has always felt unsettling to me. I kind of like this word, I would love to live in a world where this is a perfect descriptor for our species. Back to the topic at hand, while it would indeed be marvelous to find benefactors from the stars, all the other possibilities are chilling. From cosmic horror to simple warmongering, there are so many ways it could go irremediably wrong.

wasx 9y ago

I put humanity in quotes because I didn't really know what else to name it when talking about some other form of intelligence. I guess I'm talking about that part of our society that craves peace and stability, that has enabled our continued development up to this point. Certainly throughout history we've seen unimaginable cruelty inflicted on "less civilised" societies by colonial and imperialist societies. Hopefully any intelligence which has reached the development of an interstellar society would have those same qualities, frankly I don't see any other way for it to sustain itself. Imagine we came across anew form of intelligent life on Mars, would we exploit and enslave it? I'd like to think living in a global society would prevent such atrocities, at least in the modern era, and hopefully beyond. And I think any society in an interstellar context would behave the same

pm90 9y ago
We probably wouldn’t exploit it as long as access was hard. Once space travel becomes more common though, I think we might have a situation like Star Wars where the far away worlds are basically left to their own devices since it would be a huge pain for an earth centered society to enforce laws...