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That would be really weird for them to be hiding from us behind the sun. What's in it for them? They arrive in Sol to set up a base but the carbon-based predato
by lolc 7y ago
That would be really weird for them to be hiding from us behind the sun. What's in it for them? They arrive in Sol to set up a base but the carbon-based predators on the wet planet must not be disturbed. Why should they care about us in that specific way? That tale sounds a lot like typical human hubris to me.
- mrfusion 7y agoWe hide to observe animals all the time.
- lolc 7y agoMost of the time we don't.
- dylan604 7y agoWe also install remote/un-manned viewing platforms all the time. They sometimes require us to revisit them periodically to collect the data and load fresh media/power/etc. Then we upgraded them to use solar to replenish power, and installed wireless communications to make it so we don't have to visit. Maybe we just need to start listening for rogue broadcasts from our planet for these ET-phone-home devices?
- wonderwonder 7y agoWhy do we have rules about disturbing the tribes in the amazon or the Sentinelese. Maybe there are established rules about contacting primitive cultures? Maybe they are just watching for the Fermi Paradox to take care of us.
- ojosilva 7y agoWe tend to try to predict alien behavior basing it more or less on our own, 10000 year-long history. If intelligent life that travels the billion-old stars actually exists, I doubt we would be able to put their intentions and modus operandi into words with our constrained ideas and limited, lonely planet vocabulary.
- krapp 7y agoOf course, for most of that history, the default result of a more technologically advanced culture meeting a more primitive one was the former immediately enslaving or committing genocide against the latter. And let's be honest, if the Sentinelese were sitting on anything worth killing for, they would be long dead or "civilized" onto a reservation by now.
- lolc 7y agoHere we're talking about meeting a culture not made of human subjects. We know nothing. When they're able to cross interstellar space we're unlikely to have anything they'd want. They'd be so advanced technically we might not even detect them given our limited understanding of physics. The thing I do see an alien species could want from us is our capability to understand a blueprint and to reassemble them physically from transmitted information. Because that is how they might travel between galaxies. Their assembly, I hasten to add, would be a rather stupid thing to do on our part. If we want to live. But we might do it anyway because we're curious. How are the scenarios of brute predators, noble protectors, or imperial fleets any more worthwhile to consider than those of the incessant replicators? My answer: Because our culture likes that kind of tale. Because we project our predatory and social features onto an unknown. So whenever somebody explains phenomena like blips on a radar with an alien species that happens to be eerily similar to us I think of how people made god in their image and either rail against the blatant human-centrism or just disengage.
- lolc 7y agoA cosmic conspiracy. I like it. As a sci-fi story.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]