9 ms·
Aliens are looking down on us right now thinking, "we'll make contact as soon as they advance past the steam engine"
by cush 4y ago
Aliens are looking down on us right now thinking, "we'll make contact as soon as they advance past the steam engine"
- mc32 4y agoIf it were only that easy to keep them from invading earth!
- kidme5 4y agoIf aliens have the capacity to interact with us, they've probably been doing it for a long time. We're their pet project, why would they invade?
- mrcartmeneses 4y ago“Mostly harmless”
- mc32 4y agoThe cosmos is not startrek -one doesn’t travel vast multigenerational distances in space and time to “just observe”. If we could travel to an extra-solar habitable planet. Do you think we’d be like, huh, nice carbon based life, just like us. Awesome now let’s go back “home”. Or if we let off some earth mammals the beasts would be like, you know what, humans, take me and my descendants ten/a thousand generations down back to earth.
- JadeNB 4y ago> The cosmos is not startrek -one doesn’t travel vast multigenerational distances in space and time to “just observe”. If we could travel to an extra-solar habitable planet. Do you think we’d be like, huh, nice carbon based life, just like us. Awesome now let’s go back “home”. This sounds awfully knowledgeable about travel over multi-generational distances when neither you, nor I, nor any other human has ever done it. Maybe you're right that it's not what we would do, but how can you, I, or any human possibly know whether it's what an alien species would do?
- mc32 4y agoNeither people, nor animals, nor plants travelled long distances to habitable places to then be satisfied and turn back. It doesn't happen on a continental scale so it's even much less likely to happen on an interstellar scale. If it's half habitable, you're gonna make that place a "home". It's a nice fantasy to think you can zip back to the home planet after prancing around the galaxy making discoveries and reporting consequential and timely information back home.
- tluyben2 4y agoYep, and we are humans with a track record of breaking the prime directive everywhere we went on earth, so why not other worlds? If there is microbal life on mars, we will kill it soonish.
- incongruity 4y agoFirst - there’s plenty of evidence of intercontinental trade prior to colonization/ migration in Humanity’s past. Second, you have a very anthropomorphic perspective built in to your thinking. What if they had lifespans measured in centuries or longer? What if they had radically different views of life and death and generational cooperation? Alien life is, by definition, alien. It’s hard to say what would/wouldn’t be true.
- mc32 4y ago>there’s plenty of evidence of intercontinental trade prior to colonization/ migration in Humanity’s past. What? How is it possible to trade intercontinentally without there being a colony to trade with first? that makes no sense. One does not go to a deserted island to do trade, with whom, the birds?
- incongruity 4y agoWith the inhabitants who are already there, of course. Your contention is that intelligent life wouldn’t travel long distances without the intent of colonization. Human history sort of argues against that to a point. Europeans were trading broadly before developing colonial empires. Travel wasn’t the thing that ensured colonization.
- 7speter 4y agoIf thats the case they probably send drones every once in a while to see how things are progressing.
- incompatible 4y agoWe may not actually be all that interesting.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoWhat if the alien civilization is so advanced that a jump across the cosmos takes about as much effort as driving a couple of miles down to the mall for us?
- mc32 4y agoThe physics that would allow that does not exist.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoThe physics that we currently understand does not allow that. Our current model of physics is barely a few hundred years old. We’re talking about a civilization that’s potentially hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us.
- mc32 4y agoWe're millions of years ahead of slugs never the less our advanced intelligence is incapable of changing physics. I doubt alien intelligence even if further advanced can change the nature of physics. Yes, there is a possibility we will learn more and there are other pathways, but at the moment, that is fantasy, so it would all be speculative.
- evilduck 4y agoThis does make the assumption of aliens having similar lifespans. A life form that might live 500 or 10k years would view the personal cost of those distances much differently than humans, who view it as suicide. It also assumes similar moral and cognitive processes of what to do when encountering another planet's life, neither of which must hold true for a society or species to become spacefaring. Likewise, an alien's AI probe could be effectively immortal and that would drastically shape its opinions on a return trip. Or maybe they're intergalactic mayflies with innate knowledge for reaching orbit or relativistic speeds but they die each day and a new generation takes over tomorrow. All distances are suicide missions, even trips across their own planet. It would totally normalize multigenerational trips. I think it's short sighted to make any assumptions of human similarities when it comes to first contact. Cephalopods have independently developed significant intelligence in parallel here on Earth and they might as well be aliens to us despite a common evolutionary ancestor way back. A completely independent evolutionary path leading to intelligence could be incredibly counter to our expectations.
- mc32 4y agoWe only know what we know. This is what we build off of. Also there are physics limits. We cannot go FTL and even getting to light speed would mean vast quantities of energy. Could there be new physics? We can’t make decisions on something so far seems quite unlikely. Speaking of cephalopods, do they seem less aggressive than other species? Have they gone vegan? Is it more or less likely the species that goes vegan wins the race? And even if they did it would mean that they had to subdue a more aggressive species. In other words, pacifists cannot unilaterally (en)force peace.
- evilduck 4y agoYou don't need FTL or even near C speeds to traverse a galaxy. We only pursue those ideas because it's the only way for humans to send off a request for information and get something back before our great great great great grandchildren die of old age. For the traveler's frame of reference interstellar travel with current technology is within reach of single human lifespans if you're fine with a one way trip (and extreme cost without an expected payoff). If a species lucked out with some right-sized planets and orbital arrangements they could end up with a great gravity slingshot by happenstance that drastically reduces their energy needs in space. The awareness of the tyranny of the rocket equation again assumes human sized likeness of aliens. If human-like intelligence arises in ping-pong ball sized beings on a low gravity planet they could have a much easier time than we do escaping their planet and physics would be on their side for extreme-G launches that would otherwise be fatal to us. So much discussion about aliens is hinged on them just being a copy of us but located somewhere else. It doesn't take a ton of imagination to envision plausible and entirely different starting scenarios that enable greater success in space travel without inventing new physics or exotic engineering.
- tyingq 4y agoThey may not think of it as an invasion if they are exponentially more advanced than we are. Any more than I worry about bugs I might step on and kill walking across the lawn.
- mc32 4y agoIt’s irrelevant what they think. We care about us and our well-being. Invasion does not mean prejudiced extermination. If they ignored us as we might ignore insects when we discover new habitat then, yeah, I’d want to keep them from coming.
- zepolen 4y agoWhat would you do if you can across an array of ants that were spelling out simple mathematical formula on the ground?
- tyingq 4y agoI don't know that would be representative of the potential gap between us and them. We seem pretty far from faster-than-light travel or whatever other thing would allow them to visit.
- pmontra 4y agoTo clean the Petri dish? ;-)
- spaceman_2020 4y agoInterestingly, the authenticity and legitimacy of UFO disclosures has been ramping up recently, right as we come closer to the cusp of fusion, AI and quantum computing breakthroughs. We’ve gone from stories in pulp magazines to reports in NYT and the Congress. Interesting times ahead
- pyinstallwoes 4y agoAdd self replicating nano material with competing biology to the mix! (Viruses). Self replicants for everyone&
- incompatible 4y agoThese are the super-advanced aliens, that can travel all the way to Earth and secretly observe us, but accidentally come into the field of view of a random jet plane?
- Azrael3000 4y agoWhile I do not follow these discussions I'd argue that the advent of drones plays a major role in that. Additionally as long as our space tec remains as primitives we are quite boring as a civilisation
- mc32 4y agoAliens may exist, but the phenomena people are reporting as UAP are not from aliens. There is money to be made by selling the idea of aliens and alien visitors to the public and to government (who go along with the idea because it can lead to more funding).
- pfdietz 4y agoIt's quite easy to keep aliens from invading Earth, by cleverly exploiting their nonexistence.
- killingtime74 4y agoIn a way hydro, solar and wind put us past this hurdle. I guess they’re coming!
- cbozeman 4y agoHydro is just a steam engine at non-steam temperatures.
- computerfriend 4y agoAnd wind is just a steam engine with less steam.
- ksaxena 4y agoAnd Solar is just a steam engine with less steam, and less engine.
- eptcyka 4y agoNo, hydro is mostly solar - the water wouldn't be flowing downwards to the sea if it wasn't for weather caused by the sun. Solar isn't less steam and less engine, it's literally just solar, whereas everything else but geothermal and nuclear is solar with more steps. Natural gas and oil is just solar stored in paleo compost.
- 4y ago
- dreamcompiler 4y agoI like to think they're saying "We'll make contact when they realize they don't have to build a fusion reactor because there's already one in their sky."
- arlort 4y agoIt's interesting how you're assuming that a species which obviously has been navigating way past the point where any useful power can be extracted from their star would not see the utility of developing fusion power
- krsdcbl 4y agodepending on the tech our hypothetical aliens employ, we might argue they solved hyperefficient power storage before fusion?
- sva_ 4y agoFusion sounds like hyper effective power storage/retrieval to me.
- lagrange77 4y ago> past the point where any useful power can be extracted from their star I guess, if a species used a Dyson sphere for so long, they will certainly have colonized other solar systems, which each have their own star to milk.
- dreamcompiler 4y agoI'm assuming that such a species would themselves have fully exploited the energy output of their local star(s) before they embarked on building an artificial one. And that they would view any species trying this in reverse order as unintelligent.
- HereIGoAgain 4y agoThat's assuming a lot I think. Having the ability to create a large amount of power on demand is a lot more useful than it's popular to think these days.