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tekramrepus


Registered: 02/20/02
Posts: 2,253
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The elementary concept of "If Aliens are here, then why haven't they "X"" 1
#28278427 - 04/15/23 05:57 AM (9 months, 9 days ago) |
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Aliens. Let's talk about aliens. Let's talk about us, and our world. Let's go!
Whenever I discuss aliens with people, I frequently run into the argument that "If Aliens are here, then why haven't they "X". Why haven't that invaded us? Why haven't they landed on the white house lawn? Why haven't they revealed themselves to everyone?
At first thought, its a logical question. If you haven't REALLY thought about it much, the question makes sense. However, once you start to really think about the concept of aliens visiting new worlds, with other living, sentient beings....you realize the question itself falls apart.
Let's put ourselves in the shoes of the "aliens". At some point in our future, if humans don't destroy ourselves, or aren't wiped out for whatever reason....and we don't have to restart/reset our progress....we will eventually be in a position where we can visit other planets....and potentially visit planets that harbor intelligent life.
First of all - we will never just randomly go and visit a planet with life. We will likely have hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of 'probes' or 'drones' that we send out into the universe, scanning for desirable qualities, such as minerals, interesting planets, sentient or biological life, etc.
Once we determine a planet has sentient life.....how do we approach that? Do we just go there and announce ourselves? What about the language barrier? Do we know ANYTHING about this life form?
So.... Step 1 - Probing for life Step 2 - We would likely observe from a distance, and try to acquire as much information on this planet and life form without being detected,
Step 3 would, by its very nature, be a very, very complex undertaking. Step 3 would be contact.
IMO - and this is the meat and potatoes of this post..... The very process of initiating contact with another intelligent life form would be an EXTREMELY delicate, advanced undertaking.....that we will likely have developed an entire SCIENCE with several branches within itself, just on the nature of initiating contact.
You see, once you make contact with a lifeform .....you change that life form....forever. You are literally an "alien", making contact with a life form.....and you have the potential in your hands to forever alter their evolutionary path......
You're initial contact WILL change them. And that's a HEAVY responsibility.
So , back to my post point....whenever I hear people say something like "If aliens are here, then why don't they just land on the white house lawn?" They say this often, as a way to dismiss the possibility that alien life has ever visited and/or observed life on earth. As if to say, if alien life was aware of life on earth, they would come down and announce themselves. When you take the time to think about it....that's likely the LAST thing they would do.
Initiating contact with a sentient lifeform on another planet might be something that is best done over multiple generations. You might first start to slowly give clues as to your presence.....to warm the species up to the possibility of life beyond their own world. Then you might start to show even more things....like strange lights, etc. Maybe you'll make brief contact, in a non threatening way, with a few of their specifically selected members..... I mean, we have no idea.
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thetruthsohelp
Stranger

Registered: 03/17/22
Posts: 363
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Re: The elementary concept of "If Aliens are here, then why haven't they "X"" [Re: tekramrepus]
#28279149 - 04/15/23 03:37 PM (9 months, 8 days ago) |
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Good post, I would imagine that any galactic federation of planets would have some sort of prime directive in place for non-interference in more primitive cultures. But this is obviously just pure speculation as is much of everything on this issue.
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Lucis
Nutritional Yeast

Registered: 03/28/15
Posts: 15,622
Last seen: 1 month, 28 days
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Re: The elementary concept of "If Aliens are here, then why haven't they "X"" [Re: tekramrepus]
#28279859 - 04/16/23 12:27 AM (9 months, 8 days ago) |
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What do you think about the Fermi paradox and the Goldilocks zone?
-------------------- ©️
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Rahz
Alive Again



Registered: 11/10/05
Posts: 9,229
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Re: The elementary concept of "If Aliens are here, then why haven't they "X"" [Re: tekramrepus] 1
#28280180 - 04/16/23 08:19 AM (9 months, 8 days ago) |
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It's always been a fascinating subject for me and I agree with many of your ideas. Loading up lifeforms and shooting them off is romantic. Sending out a multitude of probes makes much more sense.
People tend to think about aliens not just through a human lens but through current technology and historical behavior. This is what produced the idea that aliens made slaves of humans to dig for gold. While there are other possible human oriented goals it seems reasonable to consider that a space faring species may not need anything mineral, biological or otherwise.
Humans and Earth may be very inconsequential.
Also, there may be no aliens. The Fermi paradox may not be a paradox when considering that we don't really have an accurate method of predicting the formation of life or life that will evolve into space faring beings.
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace "You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi
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tekramrepus


Registered: 02/20/02
Posts: 2,253
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Re: The elementary concept of "If Aliens are here, then why haven't they "X"" [Re: Lucis]
#28280291 - 04/16/23 09:45 AM (9 months, 8 days ago) |
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Quote:
Lucis said: What do you think about the Fermi paradox and the Goldilocks zone?
The Fermi paradox applies to this thread in a way you probably least expected.
I view the Fermi paradox much in the same way I view the "If aliens are visiting earth, then why aren't they landing on the white house lawn?" concept/idea.
The Fermi paradox relies FAR too much on our limited human understanding of 1) life, 2) the universe, and 3) communication
Let's discuss life. First of all, our concept of life is very , very crude and limited. We are human, and we live on earth, and so therefore our concept of life is based on those two dimensions. What about non-physical , sentient life? What about life that exists as vibration and/or frequency? What about life that exists on different multitudes? For instance, there might be life that is small, ie, bacteria size, or exponentially smaller, that is sentient, and very intelligent.....and likewise, there might be lifeforms that are the size of universes.
Then the concept of our universe. The idea is that if the universe is SO BIG....why haven't we come across other life yet? First of all, we really don't know the boundaries of our universe, nor how many universes exist, nor how many dimensions of existence. Alien life could be SWARMING, an infinite array of sentient colonies of life, and yet perhaps we are the only one in our isolated universe....or in our galaxy, etc. If you look at a petri dish, you can have colonies of bacteria that never touch....all in one petri dish.
What about communication? We assume aliens will communicate with what...radio signals? We assume that at some point in their evolution, they decided to, like us, use radio signals, and therefore we should be picking up those signals. That's a LOT of assumptions.
For all we know, we are LIVING in a giant alien. Or, maybe EVERYTHING is alive, and we just don't have the intelligence or sensory organs to understand/perceive it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, humans are not as smart as we pretend to be. I wonder if ants ever wonder why humans haven't formed an alliance with them, and tried to communicate with them. Do you think ants have a concept of sharks that live in the ocean? Let's be honest here..... ants are just doing ant stuff. They are limited by their ant bodies/minds. Humans are no different. When we try to imagine what alien life is like, or what GOD is like....we are doing so with our little baby human minds.... that are so incredibly limited.
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tekramrepus


Registered: 02/20/02
Posts: 2,253
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Re: The elementary concept of "If Aliens are here, then why haven't they "X"" [Re: thetruthsohelp]
#28280295 - 04/16/23 09:48 AM (9 months, 8 days ago) |
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Quote:
thetruthsohelp said: Good post, I would imagine that any galactic federation of planets would have some sort of prime directive in place for non-interference in more primitive cultures. But this is obviously just pure speculation as is much of everything on this issue.
You are right though. Although it IS pure speculation....it follows some logic.
If a specie manages to survive long enough to become interstellar, they are likely also at point going to farm planets in order to create a diversity of genetics, and then collect those genetics to use for various purposes. Any specie that is actively going around and farming/mining/collecting/seeding planets.... will almost definitely have a protocol in place for how to interact with a novel planet, containing novel species.
There will likely be entire sciences dedicated to how you conduct yourself when exploring a novel planet.
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
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Re: The elementary concept of "If Aliens are here, then why haven't they "X"" [Re: tekramrepus]
#28280810 - 04/16/23 04:30 PM (9 months, 7 days ago) |
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Xenos deserve not but exterminatus and a planet warming greeting.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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