4 ms·
To an alien without our particular brand of 21st century capital ethics, I'm not sure that the US is winning Civilization Earth.
by woodruffw 3y ago
To an alien without our particular brand of 21st century capital ethics, I'm not sure that the US is winning Civilization Earth.
- giantg2 3y agoIt likely would be the biggest threat given the weapons tech though. You generally want to study the things that pose the biggest threat for self preservation.
- gtop3 3y agoThis is highly speculative on both of our parts. I do think it's presumptuous to assume we'd be a threat to an entity that traveled >4ly. It sounds a lot like picking which classical civilization to study based on how strong their bows are when you are traveling in a stealth bomber.
- giantg2 3y ago"I do think it's presumptuous to assume we'd be a threat" You don't have to be a threat, just appear as the biggest possible one. "based on how strong their bows are when you are traveling in a stealth bomber." One has to know what a bow is and that they only have bows to come to that summary conclusion. If you have no knowledge of the capabilities, caution is warranted - whether we're talking about civilizations or a new species of spider.
- krapp 3y agoWe're talking about beings capable of harnessing enough energy to travel interstellar distances, possibly even harnessing (let's say for the sake of argument) strange new physics like warp drive or wormholes. They'll know at a glance whether we're a threat just by our scale of energy output, and they'll be able to tell from light-years away. No species that hasn't already colonized their solar system or started mining the plasma from their home star is going to be worth worrying about.
- giantg2 3y ago"They'll know at a glance whether we're a threat just by our scale of energy output," Except we don't use our most powerful energy source (nuclear weapons).
- krapp 3y agoThey would still be orders of magnitude past that. Probably Kardashev type 2 at least. A couple of nukes probably aren't going to scare them.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoI think advanced aliens would laugh at our kardashev scale and say "well it's a lot more nuanced than that" especially considering we don't see a single shred of evidence that anyone out there has a dyson swarm. It's probably the wrong metric to use. If they're up there, whatever they're up to, it's probably really interesting and not just about energy consumption.
- oceanplexian 3y agoIf you somehow found a way to get a wooden arrow with a stone arrowhead on it into the engine of a Stealth Bomber at the wrong time and place, you may very well cause a big fireworks show. Less has taken down the engines of commercial airliners when a screw comes loose or something. Advanced technology != invincibility. Actually, a lot of times the more advanced tech is, the more vulnerable it is to catastrophic failure.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- whoknows234 3y agoSeems a bit odd that a being that could build a craft that flies further than 4 light years would end up crashing.
- nickpeterson 3y agoMaybe a bee got in the cockpit?
- marci 3y agoIt was an interplanetary endeavour. Unfortunately, some programmers encoded intersystem travel using the Universal Unit, while others used the Multiversal Metric System.
- woodruffw 3y agoYou’d think that would go to the country or countries with tenuous chains of custody over their nuclear weapons, not the US. (I’m saying that mostly for the sake of argument, not because I think your reasoning is incorrect.)
- cool_dude85 3y agoImagine watching two beetles fight and deciding that you need to pay most attention to the stronger beetle because it's a better fighter.
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoAdvanced aliens may be even more capitalistic.
- woodruffw 3y agoSomeone should let the Singaporean cranks know, then!