4 ms·

>Aliens being non-peaceful fails logic Um, why?

lukebitts 5y ago
Here's a fun answer: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/HowToInvadeAnAlienPlanet https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/HowToInvad... Just the "Motivation and Planning" category will reveal several reasons. My favorite is that there is almost no reason to go through the trouble of colonizing our planet, if you need any of our resources you can mine asteroids and no one will fight back. Unless of course the aliens are Evil.
- DennisP 5y ago
  That sounds like ants reasoning "there's no reason for humans to mess with our ant hill. There's all that land right over there, and they won't have to fight us for it." If the aliens are millions of years ahead of us, it's pretty optimistic to think they'll take us into account at all, unless maybe as a mildly interesting subject of nature documentaries.
  - lukebitts 5y ago
    I guess beings so strong and powerful that they would destroy us without a second thought, like we do to ants, would fall into the "Evil" category in my comment above.
fighterpilot 5y ago
I agree with that and this is my thinking behind it. (1) The number of filters they've passed through without destroying themselves suggests that they've overcome tribalism. The late-stage species most prone to violence are also the ones most prone to self destruction before they developed the tech to traverse space and get to Earth. We don't have good predictions on the destructive potential of future tech, but suppose that tech advances in 1000 years means that every individual can easily make a weapon as destructive as a nuke. If such advances are possible, only the species predisposed to peace will survive. (2) Resource abundance from technology removes the selective pressure towards tribal conflict, in the same way that it achieved that for the evolution of bonobos. They are genetic bonobos, not chimps, and violence is anathema to their genetic predisposition (assuming they're biological). Aliens may not have been that way in their ancestral past, but they would evolve in that direction post abundance.
- generalizations 5y ago
  > The number of filters they've passed through without destroying themselves suggests that they've overcome tribalism. We can't know that - once you can spread to multiple planets, even planet-killer tech isn't an extinction-level event. > selective pressure towards tribal conflict Over thousands, or millions of years; not only that, but you have to have selective pressure against tribalism to actually remove the instinct. Otherwise there's no pressure, and it can remain, just like any other vestigial organ.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    "even planet-killer tech isn't an extinction-level event." We're talking about probabilities. You're right that a civilization that has violent tendencies may not self-destruct since it may turn out that the destructive potential of future technology is confined to the capacity of city-scale destruction instead of solar-system-scale destruction. Or they may escape their host planet quickly and diversify before nukes or whatever comes after nukes wipes them out. But it seems to me that the probability of extinction is non-trivially positively correlated with violent and tribal tendencies once that civilization reaches our stage of development. And so that nudges the odds towards an advanced alien civilization being peaceful. "Over thousands, or millions of years" Yeah, over a million years, which is not much on cosmic timescales. If FTL travel isn't possible, it'll take many millions of years to go anywhere. I believe it won't end up as a vestigial organ and will be actively selected against. Tribal conflict has a positive reward to the victor in a resource constrained environment but is negative sum over both parties. Without the payoff to the victor then all we are left with is a negative sum outcome which should be selected against. The only thing I'm not sure of is tribal conflict over reproductive capital, although I can imagine that technology could make that abundant as well.
    - ttonkytonk 5y ago
      What is reproductive capital?
      - 5y ago

Here's a fun answer: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/HowToInvadeAnAlienPlanet https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/HowToInvad... Just the "Motivation and Planning" category will reveal several reasons. My favorite is that there is almost no reason to go through the trouble of colonizing our planet, if you need any of our resources you can mine asteroids and no one will fight back. Unless of course the aliens are Evil.

DennisP 5y ago
That sounds like ants reasoning "there's no reason for humans to mess with our ant hill. There's all that land right over there, and they won't have to fight us for it." If the aliens are millions of years ahead of us, it's pretty optimistic to think they'll take us into account at all, unless maybe as a mildly interesting subject of nature documentaries.
- lukebitts 5y ago
  I guess beings so strong and powerful that they would destroy us without a second thought, like we do to ants, would fall into the "Evil" category in my comment above.

fighterpilot 5y ago

I agree with that and this is my thinking behind it. (1) The number of filters they've passed through without destroying themselves suggests that they've overcome tribalism. The late-stage species most prone to violence are also the ones most prone to self destruction before they developed the tech to traverse space and get to Earth. We don't have good predictions on the destructive potential of future tech, but suppose that tech advances in 1000 years means that every individual can easily make a weapon as destructive as a nuke. If such advances are possible, only the species predisposed to peace will survive. (2) Resource abundance from technology removes the selective pressure towards tribal conflict, in the same way that it achieved that for the evolution of bonobos. They are genetic bonobos, not chimps, and violence is anathema to their genetic predisposition (assuming they're biological). Aliens may not have been that way in their ancestral past, but they would evolve in that direction post abundance.

generalizations 5y ago
> The number of filters they've passed through without destroying themselves suggests that they've overcome tribalism. We can't know that - once you can spread to multiple planets, even planet-killer tech isn't an extinction-level event. > selective pressure towards tribal conflict Over thousands, or millions of years; not only that, but you have to have selective pressure against tribalism to actually remove the instinct. Otherwise there's no pressure, and it can remain, just like any other vestigial organ.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  "even planet-killer tech isn't an extinction-level event." We're talking about probabilities. You're right that a civilization that has violent tendencies may not self-destruct since it may turn out that the destructive potential of future technology is confined to the capacity of city-scale destruction instead of solar-system-scale destruction. Or they may escape their host planet quickly and diversify before nukes or whatever comes after nukes wipes them out. But it seems to me that the probability of extinction is non-trivially positively correlated with violent and tribal tendencies once that civilization reaches our stage of development. And so that nudges the odds towards an advanced alien civilization being peaceful. "Over thousands, or millions of years" Yeah, over a million years, which is not much on cosmic timescales. If FTL travel isn't possible, it'll take many millions of years to go anywhere. I believe it won't end up as a vestigial organ and will be actively selected against. Tribal conflict has a positive reward to the victor in a resource constrained environment but is negative sum over both parties. Without the payoff to the victor then all we are left with is a negative sum outcome which should be selected against. The only thing I'm not sure of is tribal conflict over reproductive capital, although I can imagine that technology could make that abundant as well.
  - ttonkytonk 5y ago
    What is reproductive capital?
    - 5y ago