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I think the fears of some ET empire with Darth Vader (or similar) at the head is very misplaced. Just think of the economics... "let's go exploit that world 10

I think the fears of some ET empire with Darth Vader (or similar) at the head is very misplaced. Just think of the economics... "let's go exploit that world 10 LY away from us that we don't fully understand and which will still takes us an insane amount of time to enslave and milk resources from!" What a scalable strategy given the size of space... one might even say it's astronomically large! The resource consumption alone would be a very speculative bet by any would-be invaders... unless they were already close at hand, but we're probably already too late to prevent that.... Naw... if there is any alien apocalypse to worry about it's that some advanced civilization saw a life friendly Earth through their telescopes, perhaps millions of years ago, and decided to seed the place with their own bio-material and without any regard to what life might be there. It won't be a marching army, but a "Terra forming" project that may well already be underway if its happening at all, I would expect.

mrob 8y ago
The motivation isn't exploiting Earth resources, but killing us before we can kill them. Most humans don't believe non-human species have any right to life, so why would sapient aliens believe humans have any right to life? Humans have a non-zero probability of growing powerful enough to be an existential threat to the aliens, so the safest option is to preemptively eliminate them. And even if the aliens are convinced that humans are 100% alien-friendly, it would still make sense to kill us all because there's a chance we'll develop uncontrolled recursively self-improving AI ("intelligence explosion"), which would be a threat to the aliens without us intending it.
- sbuttgereit 8y ago
  "so why would sapient aliens believe humans have any right to life?" I'm suggesting that it doesn't matter and that there are other, more significant factors that render this concern moot. "Humans have a non-zero probability of growing powerful enough to be an existential threat to the aliens, so the safest option is to preemptively eliminate them." Non-zero, but near zero. The same sorts of constraints on resource coordination and how much one can likely play with the physics involved not only constrain our would be destroyers, but constrains us as well. Any aliens advanced enough to hear our signals and have the realistic ability to contemplate a move against us can probably do the math: the likely threat of any alien civilization is from a practical perspective, zero, to them or us. The costs are too high, the barriers are too high, the risks are too remote, the rewards are too low. But here's a different perspective. While hand-wringing about the risks, we completely ignore the possible rewards of actually making contact. Given that the benefits for all involved in knowledge transfer could well be non-zero and is much more likely to be accomplished. The only issue there is that it's likely to be very, very slow. So maybe they have knowledge about achieving commercial scale fusion energy production. Maybe they help us to understand the dangers of recursive AI (which I also think are overblown). Maybe they can help us understand how to colonize our own solar system (much more realistic than interstellar colonization). Maybe they can help us escape our tendency to indulge in distinctly emotional responses, especially when confronted with the unknown, and rely a little more on reason and rationality... If I were to gamble on this topic, I'd bet on the more possible, optimistic outcome than on the less likely doomsday scenario. And in the meantime, I'm going to hop into my car (and thereby taking a real risk) and pick up my son from school. Cheers!
  - pmoriarty 8y ago
    "Any aliens advanced enough to hear our signals and have the realistic ability to contemplate a move against us can probably do the math: the likely threat of any alien civilization is from a practical perspective, zero, to them or us. The costs are too high, the barriers are too high, the risks are too remote, the rewards are too low." This argument reminds me of economic theories that assume all humans are so-called "rational actors". Even humans, which are in most ways like us and who we have some hope of understanding, do all sorts of things which most of use would consider "irrational", insane, self-destructive, and otherwise incomprehensible. What justification could there be for assuming alien intelligences think in terms of costs, risks, or rewards? Or that they are in any way "practical" from some human's point of view? Your argument also ignores the possibility that they have technologies or capabilities that might seem impossible (or even unimaginable) to humans of today (or perhaps of any time). Something that seems undoable to us, like FTL travel, might be possible or even easy for them. We don't know what we don't know.
tigen 8y ago
You can't know or understand possible ET motivations or capabilities. Humans routinely drive other species on Earth to extinction, our own cousins. We also damage our own planet's environment. It may be logical for an ET to just destroy us the way you might destroy a harmful bacteria, which might otherwise spread unpredictably. It wouldn't be about wanting slaves or raw resources (although as someone said, Earth itself might be considered somewhat valuable).
- sbuttgereit 8y ago
  "You can't know or understand possible ET motivations or capabilities." True, but my argument is that their intentions fundamentally don't matter. The real costs of acting on ill-intentions through interstellar space would probably give any real life Klingons or Romulans pause. Meanwhile we fly, sometimes even into space, drive, walk outside, stay inside, eat/drink things that we shouldn't (but enjoy), and a thousand other risks which are substantially more real on an everyday basis... and many of those risks also come with rewards that can make life much more full and rich. I think making contact with aliens would most likely just 1) confirm we weren't alone or 2) might actually be of benefit as we exchange knowledge and ideas, and/or 3) tell us that evolution tends to creates fearful, xenophobic entities where it also develops intelligence... in that order and with no further consequence than the knowledge.

mrob 8y ago

The motivation isn't exploiting Earth resources, but killing us before we can kill them. Most humans don't believe non-human species have any right to life, so why would sapient aliens believe humans have any right to life? Humans have a non-zero probability of growing powerful enough to be an existential threat to the aliens, so the safest option is to preemptively eliminate them. And even if the aliens are convinced that humans are 100% alien-friendly, it would still make sense to kill us all because there's a chance we'll develop uncontrolled recursively self-improving AI ("intelligence explosion"), which would be a threat to the aliens without us intending it.

sbuttgereit 8y ago
"so why would sapient aliens believe humans have any right to life?" I'm suggesting that it doesn't matter and that there are other, more significant factors that render this concern moot. "Humans have a non-zero probability of growing powerful enough to be an existential threat to the aliens, so the safest option is to preemptively eliminate them." Non-zero, but near zero. The same sorts of constraints on resource coordination and how much one can likely play with the physics involved not only constrain our would be destroyers, but constrains us as well. Any aliens advanced enough to hear our signals and have the realistic ability to contemplate a move against us can probably do the math: the likely threat of any alien civilization is from a practical perspective, zero, to them or us. The costs are too high, the barriers are too high, the risks are too remote, the rewards are too low. But here's a different perspective. While hand-wringing about the risks, we completely ignore the possible rewards of actually making contact. Given that the benefits for all involved in knowledge transfer could well be non-zero and is much more likely to be accomplished. The only issue there is that it's likely to be very, very slow. So maybe they have knowledge about achieving commercial scale fusion energy production. Maybe they help us to understand the dangers of recursive AI (which I also think are overblown). Maybe they can help us understand how to colonize our own solar system (much more realistic than interstellar colonization). Maybe they can help us escape our tendency to indulge in distinctly emotional responses, especially when confronted with the unknown, and rely a little more on reason and rationality... If I were to gamble on this topic, I'd bet on the more possible, optimistic outcome than on the less likely doomsday scenario. And in the meantime, I'm going to hop into my car (and thereby taking a real risk) and pick up my son from school. Cheers!
- pmoriarty 8y ago
  "Any aliens advanced enough to hear our signals and have the realistic ability to contemplate a move against us can probably do the math: the likely threat of any alien civilization is from a practical perspective, zero, to them or us. The costs are too high, the barriers are too high, the risks are too remote, the rewards are too low." This argument reminds me of economic theories that assume all humans are so-called "rational actors". Even humans, which are in most ways like us and who we have some hope of understanding, do all sorts of things which most of use would consider "irrational", insane, self-destructive, and otherwise incomprehensible. What justification could there be for assuming alien intelligences think in terms of costs, risks, or rewards? Or that they are in any way "practical" from some human's point of view? Your argument also ignores the possibility that they have technologies or capabilities that might seem impossible (or even unimaginable) to humans of today (or perhaps of any time). Something that seems undoable to us, like FTL travel, might be possible or even easy for them. We don't know what we don't know.

tigen 8y ago

You can't know or understand possible ET motivations or capabilities. Humans routinely drive other species on Earth to extinction, our own cousins. We also damage our own planet's environment. It may be logical for an ET to just destroy us the way you might destroy a harmful bacteria, which might otherwise spread unpredictably. It wouldn't be about wanting slaves or raw resources (although as someone said, Earth itself might be considered somewhat valuable).

sbuttgereit 8y ago
"You can't know or understand possible ET motivations or capabilities." True, but my argument is that their intentions fundamentally don't matter. The real costs of acting on ill-intentions through interstellar space would probably give any real life Klingons or Romulans pause. Meanwhile we fly, sometimes even into space, drive, walk outside, stay inside, eat/drink things that we shouldn't (but enjoy), and a thousand other risks which are substantially more real on an everyday basis... and many of those risks also come with rewards that can make life much more full and rich. I think making contact with aliens would most likely just 1) confirm we weren't alone or 2) might actually be of benefit as we exchange knowledge and ideas, and/or 3) tell us that evolution tends to creates fearful, xenophobic entities where it also develops intelligence... in that order and with no further consequence than the knowledge.