Step away from the 10 foot blue guy! by whozit

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Step away from the 10 foot blue guy!

POSTED BY: WHOZIT
UPDATED: Thursday, May 6, 2010 04:38
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Sunday, April 25, 2010 2:31 AM

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece

This explains what happened on "Pandora", it also explains that freak Keith Olbermann.........and he's stupid.

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Sunday, April 25, 2010 2:52 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans"

Reminds me of the James Woods NSA character he played in CONTACT, where he asked Dr. Arroway, “Why is it the default position of the eggheads that aliens would always be benign?”

Bones: "Don't 'rawr' her!"
Booth: "What? she'rawred' me first."

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Sunday, April 25, 2010 5:13 AM

BYTEMITE

Granted you have to be wary, if you can't see the motives it's in your best interest to assume the motives are NOT.

But, on the other hand, there's also no reason to assume extraterrestrials would have human mentality. People forget that in order to be spacefaring, a race would have to create a completely self-sustaining biome upon their ships to support them over long distances. Which suggests that the aliens would have to have some resource managing capacity, and as such, if their biomes are self sustaining, why then would they NEED to conquer other worlds for resources? Worlds which could have any number of unknown and hostile factors?

Another factor to consider is that a space-faring race traveling a long distance would also have to be inclined to not be blood-thirsty or war-glorifying, because they would have destroyed themselves LONG before they came upon us.

Extraterrestrials like you see in V are very unlikely. There would be no way for such a race to survive it's own constant plots against itself, and if they need their food from the planets they conquer, which could take a long time for they to do so... Well. It appears the only thing the V have going for them is a very fast initial growth rate from birth, and they're cannibals. See what I mean? These proposed races, they'd EAT themselves before they encountered us.

The most likely intelligent organisms we'd encounter wouldn't be organisms at all. They'd be constructs of an older race, long since died out. Machines don't grow old and they require fewer resources. So what you really have to worry about is machines that think all organics need to be purged from the universe because of their destructive potential. And in that case, we're probably boned anyway, as the machines wouldn't have any reason to contact us first before sterilizing the planet.

This is probably one of the best reasons why we ourselves won't ever become space-faring and encounter an indigenous people. Indigenous people who would react with the same kind of uneasy mistrust that creates a Dances with Wolves scenario. Who have the same general anatomy, physiology, hell, even earth-like cultures, gestures, FACIAL EXPRESSIONS, who are attractive to us (pet-peeve, in case you haven't noticed!). People, as we are right now, the way we think and interact with each other and manage resources, we probably couldn't become a space-faring race. We'd have to become, by and large, SANE.

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Sunday, April 25, 2010 6:16 AM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

Encountering an alien race, benevolent or hostile, is about the only thing that might get humans to cooperate worldwide, and even then I think that is asking too much of us primitives.

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Sunday, April 25, 2010 9:28 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
People, as we are right now, the way we think and interact with each other and manage resources, we probably couldn't become a space-faring race. We'd have to become, by and large, SANE.

Bingo.

There's also that a side-effect of that human insanity is part of why as long as governments exist in their current form, this is a dead letter issue.

There was a study done way back, that showed even if over 70% of a colony was hardcore fanatic loyalists, it would *still* go "off the leash" the very instant it was self-sustaining, after all why not when it isn't cost-effective for the folks consuming all your resources for their benefit to send their triggermen to make you keep sending those resouces, especially when they're at the bottom of a gravity well and you have a limitless supply of rocks.

See, that's the key, the whole Authoritarian mode of thinking starts howling in horror at the very idea of anyone out of their reach, out of their control, and so long as THAT mentality persists at the top of all our logistics and research heirarchies, you can forget about space travel as anything but a novelty - one reason they built the space shuttle the way it is, as an orbital satellite maintainer, is that the powers that be do not WANT their slaves and peons to have the capability to flee.

No matter how you run it, the scenario always comes up the same.
Colony "Screw you, we declare independance!"
Earth "Then you must die!"
Colony "Oh yeah, eat rocks, groundlings!"

And so on, and so forth.

-Frem

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Sunday, April 25, 2010 9:48 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
Encountering an alien race, benevolent or hostile, is about the only thing that might get humans to cooperate worldwide, and even then I think that is asking too much of us primitives.

I once thought exactly that. Until...well, I saw how humans act in response to such large scale events....

Again, I refer to Contact, when the crowd gathered at the VLA observatory, in New Mexico. It was a sample of all manner of kooks, religious nuts, pop culture sheeple.....

The ignorance of our species would be on its fullest display, I fear.

Bones: "Don't 'rawr' her!"
Booth: "What? she'rawred' me first."

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Monday, April 26, 2010 3:40 AM

BYTEMITE

Well, being that Contact is a fictional event that was written by a guy who liked to include religion versus science/technology/progress aesops in his work, I'm not really sure we can say that would be how it would go down.

Granted there will be some nutcase "The aliens are really fallen angels leading us to the last temptation!" and "The World is Ending!" asshattery, but I put a lot of stock in human complacency. People will stay home, if they can, no matter who awestruck or terrified they are, passive participants in the most momentous event in their entire lives. That is if they don't get bored and change the channel to that porno/romcom they saw on the tv guide.

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Monday, April 26, 2010 4:08 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

I once thought exactly that. Until...well, I saw how humans act in response to such large scale events....

Again, I refer to Contact, when the crowd gathered at the VLA observatory, in New Mexico. It was a sample of all manner of kooks, religious nuts, pop culture sheeple.....

The ignorance of our species would be on its fullest display, I fear.

Sounds like you're planning a Tea Party!

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Monday, April 26, 2010 4:48 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

I once thought exactly that. Until...well, I saw how humans act in response to such large scale events....

Again, I refer to Contact, when the crowd gathered at the VLA observatory, in New Mexico. It was a sample of all manner of kooks, religious nuts, pop culture sheeple.....

The ignorance of our species would be on its fullest display, I fear.

Sounds like you're planning a Tea Party!

That makes absolutely no sense, what so ever. Try to focus on what's being discussed in each thread, if you can.

Bones: "Don't 'rawr' her!"
Booth: "What? she'rawred' me first."

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Monday, April 26, 2010 5:05 AM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

I once thought exactly that. Until...well, I saw how humans act in response to such large scale events....

Again, I refer to Contact, when the crowd gathered at the VLA observatory, in New Mexico. It was a sample of all manner of kooks, religious nuts, pop culture sheeple.....

The ignorance of our species would be on its fullest display, I fear.

Sounds like you're planning a Tea Party!

That makes absolutely no sense, what so ever. Try to focus on what's being discussed in each thread, if you can.

Oh, I'm terribly sorry if your tiny Raptor lizard brain is incapable of making the connection between "all manner of kooks, religious nuts, pop culture sheeple" and the Tea Party people, who absolutely encapsulate the idea of all manner of kooks, religious nuts, and pop culture sheeple.

Try to keep up. Or try to resist responding, since you claim responding to me is beneath you. It's funny, because you say that, and then you just can't help but respond to every single post I type...

Makes you pretty pathetic, doesn't it?

Mike

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero, Real World Event Discussions

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Monday, April 26, 2010 5:21 AM

MINCINGBEAST

if aliens do exist, i hope for a moment that is less rodenberry, and more lovecraft. no sexy vulcans: just cosmic horror.

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Monday, April 26, 2010 6:00 AM

BYTEMITE

Chthulu came from Pluto, and blackholes are sentient.

Vulcans are sexy?

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Monday, April 26, 2010 6:32 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Quote:
I once thought exactly that. Until...well, I saw how humans act in response to such large scale events....

Again, I refer to Contact, when the crowd gathered at the VLA observatory, in New Mexico. It was a sample of all manner of kooks, religious nuts, pop culture sheeple.....

The ignorance of our species would be on its fullest display, I fear.

Unfortunately (because I'd rather believe otherwise), I'm forced to agree. As to it bringing the world togethe, I think it would only do so if it were a threat; if they were friendly, I see the same dissent among nations as was portrayed in Contact as well, and unless they landed in many places at once, I think it would do more to drive nations APART than bring them together.

I'm not sure I'd call it "ignorance", more the nature of many in our species, from what I've observed. Certainly ignorance comes INTO it, but fear and politics I think would be more of an influence.

"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10

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Wednesday, May 5, 2010 11:28 PM

MANGOLO

I think Douglas Adams got it right: Aliens would hardly notice us.

Maybe give us a heads up when they whack our planet to make way for a new and improved Earth2©.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/strange-frame/182133437902

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Thursday, May 6, 2010 4:02 AM

DREAMTROVE

I think Byte touched on something that people often ignore: The coming of the american colonists worked out just fine for ants. There's nothing saying we'd be in direct competition.

That said, I think hawking has a point. Consider this possibility: If our tech level was about 100 years from now, with no political change, then the situation would much worse, potentially, as regards war. The reason we haven't had a serious drag out bio-war is not that we have these codes of honor, but that we don't have the technology to fight such a war. Sure, someone can introduce a plague, and then everyone on both sides dies. In order to have a war, you need defense. If you had a plague and a cure, you could attack me, but it still wouldn't be a war unless I also had a plague and a cure.

Now, picture the potential fallout of such a society, which I assume would be capable of space travel. The planet probably wouldn't destroy itself, but it might go so far that touching down on the surface meant death for the escaping humans, even if there were still enemy humans on the earth. The escapees could go to another planet if they knew where one was, and how to get there, which I'm assuming such a future society would know.

The end result, escaping humans of a losing side or an escaping human race of a winning side would find themselves landing on a new planet with no real social change from a society that would make a planet unlivable.

Thinking about it, I suspect that hostility might give rise to desertion of the planet much more readily than cooperation

Remember, the colonists who came to america did so after leaving europe, and they were not leaving europe because they had reach peace and harmony there, and wanted to spread that peace and harmony.. They left for two reasons

1) they were fleeing oppressive empires

2) they *were* oppressive empires

ETA

Mike, chill. Or rather, topic.

Rap, Byte has a point, Contact is fictional, and sure, it's an SF forum and this is SF, and it's all valid, it can't be taken as a ole source. We also have a lot of real world examples of contact, invasive species, etc. to go from.

Byte, An argentine ant scenario is fairly likely, which is pretty close to V, so I'm not ruling it out. This is, of course, assuming that there is any interaction between humans and aliens. The argentine ant invasion had no more effect on us than we had on the ants when our ancestors first came here. Most life forms do not interact.

Cthulhu is from Yuggoth? I thought he was from Vhoorl, but he may have more directly come to us from Yuggoth, which brings up another interesting possibility, that whoever *does* come to earth does so from a planet that is most like not their own. If you can colonize Earth you can colonize other planets, moons, and have probably already done so.

Niki

I'm not sure, I think that the globalists have been trying for years, maybe centuries, to bring us together through fear, and it doesn't seem to be working. I suspect trade brings us together, but if fear did, I don't think the result would be peace. I suspect it would be more like civil war, because the fear and conflict of society would continue into the fabric of whatever such a fearful people would created.

Think soviet union, and then what would happen if such a planet were to colonize something else.

Mangolo is right of course, but it's more fun to consider the possibility that not only would aliens come, but that they would come for us.

Byte

yeah, that was the whole point. The puritan tease. Not the original point, but once the love letters started pouring in for Spock, they caught on.

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Thursday, May 6, 2010 4:32 AM

BYTEMITE

Good point.

Though there had to be enough cooperation before the split that the necessary technology required for the trip was invented.

Also, TPTB had to at least have some interest and investment in some of it, as I notice not ALL of the colonists were fleeing the oppressive empire, but rather seeking economic opportunities for it. Thus the charter the Virginia Company received from the British crown.

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Thursday, May 6, 2010 4:38 AM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

What? You wouldn't trust the beings who promise change, hope and universal health-care? Shame on you!

Thats raciss.....Um, speciess!

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