6 ms·

It occurs to me that, should extraterrestrial life exist - we might be more likely to be visited first by rules-flouting rogue individuals than by an official m

by tofof 6y ago

It occurs to me that, should extraterrestrial life exist - we might be more likely to be visited first by rules-flouting rogue individuals than by an official mission. This also neatly explains problems like the "aliens have interstellar travel, but not spectroscopy and can be stopped by wooden doors" mentioned elsewhere in the comments -- A couple of good ol' boys off to deface a nature preserve (Earth to our aliens, the Nazca lines to our GOB's) by driving circles in it could do so today in a truck with active-torque differentials, wireless radiofrequency entry and activation, catalytic conversion of exhausts, an on-board diagnostic computer, turbocharging engine, liquid crystal display and a cmos camera, radar-based cruise control, lidar detector, GPS navigation relying on atomic-clock level timing precision..... without needing to know a thing about how even a single one of those components actually worked, and could be stopped by simple stone bollards.

elliekelly 6y ago
I haven’t stopped thinking about this since the American missionary was killed by the uncontacted Sentinelese people. What if Earth is the uncontacted & protected community of the galaxy?
- AwaAwa 6y ago
  The short story "The road not taken" by Harry Turtledove springs to mind.
- rtsil 6y ago
  That supposes Earth is special and deserves a particular treatment. It seems likelier that we are too far from interstellar civilisations to be visited by them, or that there's no interstellar civilisations because of a Great Filter, or even simply that earth is not interesting enough for them to visit. Or worse, they do visit, but the human race is not interesting enough for them to make their presence known to it.
  - astrofinch 6y ago
    Most planets don't have life.
    - jadell 6y ago
      True. We haven't confirmed a single other one yet, which is why actually finding one will be probably the most significant discovery humans ever make. But I would imagine that an interstellar civilization that has discovered thousands of life-bearing planets would start to develop some criteria about what type of life is interesting or not. It could just be that nothing on Earth meets the criteria to be interesting.
- mulberrybush 6y ago
  Once Zefram Cochrane hits warp 1 the Vulcans will reveal themselves
  - jotm 6y ago
    Ah fork, here comes WW3 and the Eugenic Wars...
DennisP 6y ago
“Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.” “Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him. “Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7320721-teasers-are-usually-rich-kids-with-nothing-to-do-they https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7320721-teasers-are-usually...
Apocryphon 6y ago
Michael Crichton's Sphere has a good section about the "anthropomorphic problem", about how we imagine extraterrestrial life as essentially human. Regardless of how they look, they still act human in our imagination. Why apply concepts like "rogue", "mission", "rules", or even "individuals"? There's no guarantee such ideas mean anything to these things. For all we know, the UFOs themselves are not actual artificial spacecraft, but "biological" entities. Or autonomous drones. Or they're not even extraterrestrial, but visitors from the future. Or some sort of interdimensional phenomenon. Or they're some sort of mythological being out of human religion- perhaps Abrahamic entities like the Angels of Mons. Or that they're the manifestation of mankind's collective unconsciousness, a sort of high-level tulpa. Or they're just some kind of weird unknown cosmic particle, a high-altitude form of quantum ball lightning. Those possibilities are tongue-in-cheek, but my point is that if you're going to start assuming that UFOs are just spacecraft from an unknown alien race... then you start making assumptions upon assumptions and the whole thing just devolves into science fiction tropes. And honestly, those tropes are no more probable than the crazy Fortean explanations I've offered. It's fun to talk about, but why take these thought experiments seriously?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ohvirginia 6y ago
Gimme a break. The "problems" you mention in "other comments" come from someone talking about a fiction: War of the Worlds. But if you're going to discuss the hypotheticals, like why they might visit or reveal themselves or not, I think it's interesting. Why assume they would just show themselves openly? Sure, people use the lack of "public open mass contact" to dispute that ETs exist. But that's only 1 theory that fits that data point (but doesn't fit the centuries of accounts, and now video evidence of sky vehicles). I think it's interesting to consider many other reasons why we have not had "mass open contact": - humans are idiots and we're not worth the effort. Has a representative of any country ever gone to an ant hill and done an official representation species-to-species? But actually ants are pretty clever, so it does not do them justice. - maybe they're private and sensitive, and scared of our germs. - maybe they're just not very sociable. They prefer to stick with their own kind. - maybe they don't care that it would be a "big thing" for Earth/humanity. To them, using portals to travel the universe is not a big thing. - maybe they are doing "secret surveillance" to observe the Earth lifeforms and they don't want to distort the data by interacting - It would mess us up to much. Prime directive. - Our world government thinks it would mess us up/ mess up the status quo too much, and they negotiated a "stay" on open contact. - The ETs have no interest in suppressing nor promoting us, they just use Earth/Moon/Solar system as some sort of transit point, and openly revealing themselves would complicate their goals. - There has been mass contact, in small stages, but it's been so muddied by disinfo and shaming that people think there hasn't been. You can spend all day thinking about reasons for and against. It's fun, but it doesn't address the video evidence and "contact" accounts. Why not a #"Me Too" moment for UFO contactees? Doesn't everyone have a right to be heard and believed before being subjected to further scrutiny and investigation in order to establish believability?
puranjay 6y ago
I wonder if we're just too uninteresting to be visited by extraterrestrial life. Maybe there is a part of the universe that's teeming with life and resources that extraterrestrials prefer to visit instead. Going by our own immediate galactical neighborhood, we're a veritable oasis in a desert as far as life is concerned. So maybe they've mapped out the galaxies, discovered our little planet, and decided that it's too little reward for too much travel.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Finding exoplanets is far harder than you think. The only way to meaningfully inspect a planet is by visiting it.
  - puranjay 6y ago
    With our current technology, yes. But we're talking about an alien race capable of traveling light year distances. I'm sure their planet searching capabilities would be far ahead of us as well.

by tofof 6y ago

elliekelly 6y ago

I haven’t stopped thinking about this since the American missionary was killed by the uncontacted Sentinelese people. What if Earth is the uncontacted & protected community of the galaxy?

AwaAwa 6y ago
The short story "The road not taken" by Harry Turtledove springs to mind.
rtsil 6y ago
That supposes Earth is special and deserves a particular treatment. It seems likelier that we are too far from interstellar civilisations to be visited by them, or that there's no interstellar civilisations because of a Great Filter, or even simply that earth is not interesting enough for them to visit. Or worse, they do visit, but the human race is not interesting enough for them to make their presence known to it.
- astrofinch 6y ago
  Most planets don't have life.
  - jadell 6y ago
    True. We haven't confirmed a single other one yet, which is why actually finding one will be probably the most significant discovery humans ever make. But I would imagine that an interstellar civilization that has discovered thousands of life-bearing planets would start to develop some criteria about what type of life is interesting or not. It could just be that nothing on Earth meets the criteria to be interesting.
mulberrybush 6y ago
Once Zefram Cochrane hits warp 1 the Vulcans will reveal themselves
- jotm 6y ago
  Ah fork, here comes WW3 and the Eugenic Wars...

DennisP 6y ago

“Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.” “Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him. “Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7320721-teasers-are-usually-rich-kids-with-nothing-to-do-they https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7320721-teasers-are-usually...

Apocryphon 6y ago

Michael Crichton's Sphere has a good section about the "anthropomorphic problem", about how we imagine extraterrestrial life as essentially human. Regardless of how they look, they still act human in our imagination. Why apply concepts like "rogue", "mission", "rules", or even "individuals"? There's no guarantee such ideas mean anything to these things. For all we know, the UFOs themselves are not actual artificial spacecraft, but "biological" entities. Or autonomous drones. Or they're not even extraterrestrial, but visitors from the future. Or some sort of interdimensional phenomenon. Or they're some sort of mythological being out of human religion- perhaps Abrahamic entities like the Angels of Mons. Or that they're the manifestation of mankind's collective unconsciousness, a sort of high-level tulpa. Or they're just some kind of weird unknown cosmic particle, a high-altitude form of quantum ball lightning. Those possibilities are tongue-in-cheek, but my point is that if you're going to start assuming that UFOs are just spacecraft from an unknown alien race... then you start making assumptions upon assumptions and the whole thing just devolves into science fiction tropes. And honestly, those tropes are no more probable than the crazy Fortean explanations I've offered. It's fun to talk about, but why take these thought experiments seriously?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ohvirginia 6y ago

Gimme a break. The "problems" you mention in "other comments" come from someone talking about a fiction: War of the Worlds. But if you're going to discuss the hypotheticals, like why they might visit or reveal themselves or not, I think it's interesting. Why assume they would just show themselves openly? Sure, people use the lack of "public open mass contact" to dispute that ETs exist. But that's only 1 theory that fits that data point (but doesn't fit the centuries of accounts, and now video evidence of sky vehicles). I think it's interesting to consider many other reasons why we have not had "mass open contact": - humans are idiots and we're not worth the effort. Has a representative of any country ever gone to an ant hill and done an official representation species-to-species? But actually ants are pretty clever, so it does not do them justice. - maybe they're private and sensitive, and scared of our germs. - maybe they're just not very sociable. They prefer to stick with their own kind. - maybe they don't care that it would be a "big thing" for Earth/humanity. To them, using portals to travel the universe is not a big thing. - maybe they are doing "secret surveillance" to observe the Earth lifeforms and they don't want to distort the data by interacting - It would mess us up to much. Prime directive. - Our world government thinks it would mess us up/ mess up the status quo too much, and they negotiated a "stay" on open contact. - The ETs have no interest in suppressing nor promoting us, they just use Earth/Moon/Solar system as some sort of transit point, and openly revealing themselves would complicate their goals. - There has been mass contact, in small stages, but it's been so muddied by disinfo and shaming that people think there hasn't been. You can spend all day thinking about reasons for and against. It's fun, but it doesn't address the video evidence and "contact" accounts. Why not a #"Me Too" moment for UFO contactees? Doesn't everyone have a right to be heard and believed before being subjected to further scrutiny and investigation in order to establish believability?

puranjay 6y ago

I wonder if we're just too uninteresting to be visited by extraterrestrial life. Maybe there is a part of the universe that's teeming with life and resources that extraterrestrials prefer to visit instead. Going by our own immediate galactical neighborhood, we're a veritable oasis in a desert as far as life is concerned. So maybe they've mapped out the galaxies, discovered our little planet, and decided that it's too little reward for too much travel.

imtringued 6y ago
Finding exoplanets is far harder than you think. The only way to meaningfully inspect a planet is by visiting it.
- puranjay 6y ago
  With our current technology, yes. But we're talking about an alien race capable of traveling light year distances. I'm sure their planet searching capabilities would be far ahead of us as well.