Alien Life - Do We Really Wanna Meet It?

[V]

People got excited when they went to Mars and thought they found fossilized microbes in the soil (but didn't); we leave plaques on satellite probes like Voyager I for non-humans to read and consider the "KEO space time capsules" full of Earth junk and messages to be shot into space for some alien to find; we pay astronomers to look for signs of alien planets too distant for us to reach, but that might be inhabited by something else... and others to listen for signs of intelligent or organic signals in the cosmic background racket of the stars.

...Why?

Do we really wanna find an alien? Even if it's just a bacterium that might infect earth? Even worse, what if it's a gross tentacle thing that has no interest in reading our plaques and messages and instead would rather co-inhabit the earth, or take it over? Or maybe just slaughter us for fun like Predators or comical Martians? Or even worse be stuck with a million immigrant catfood-loving prawns?

I don't quite understand the fascination beyond fantasy of meeting aliens. What makes us think they will be friendly, or even want to meet us? What makes us think the meeting won't be harmful for both sides? I think I recall even Stephen Hawking suggesting it's not wise to encourage alien life to visit this planet, if we look at our own history of exploitation and colonization of newly-discovered lands, and the phenomena of invasive species being harmful, on Earth alone, never mind Rigel 7. We aren't advanced enough to go any further than Mars realistically, so if something came from outside the solar system, you can probably be sure if it does arrive in a big spaceship it's got the technology to shred our asses.

...do people actually REALLY not wanna be alone in the universe that bad? Are we hoping aliens will come out of the blue and solve all (mainly self-caused) social and economic problems?

What do you think? Should we so cheerfully/desperately try to meet aliens or not, and why?

 

[Elton John]

Lol, you said it all by yourself!

If they exist and they aren't as technologically advanced as us we are going to rape them. It's proven by history. If they exist and they are more technologically advanced let's just hope that they won't share the human nature.. The best scenario for both species would be to be equally advanced, imo.

Yeah, it's also possible that they'll have a bacterium for which we won't have immunity or vice versa. But I don't know. I don't worry that much about it. Last time I heard something we were alone in a huuuuge radius.

 

[Darth Angelo]

Assuming they are inteligent enough to be void of/overcome emotion and awe they would look at our species objectively and unlike us they wouldn't see a bizarre and interesting new race they would see a great injustice. Our history paints a pretty clear picture of who and what we are. Da Vinci, Shakespere etc are proof that we have potential for amazing and beautiful things but we are still human and as far as the wellbeing of the planet is concerned we always have and always will be doing a hell of a lot more harm than good. Bottom line: we do not deserve to be here, let alone be at the top of the food chain and in total control over the planet and everything else that lives here.

I believe any alien species advanced enough to travel to us wouldn't that impressed with us and it would be like Independence Day, no meetings, no chances just total extermination of the entire human race but probably only the human race (maybe the chimps too just to be sure). The thing about almost every other species on the planet is that through time they have developed a necessary but respectful equilibrium with the enviroment they live in as Smith explained in the Matrix. Marauding male Lions massacring cubs may seem psychotic and barbaric but it is done for a reason and as traumatising as it may be to them the females are able to come to terms with it and understand why it must be done (the act itself even brings them into heat ready for the new stronger cubs with a higher survival chance). It's not pretty but at the same time it's not pointless, there are no values or emotions behind the act, it's just nature, it's only business.

Ok im waffling ill try and wrap it up, from an outside our history would be a sad and depressing story, we don't care enough, we live for the now and we will never change not as a whole at least not for a very very very long time. To them it wouldn't be genocide, it would be justice, a second chance for something new to evolve to the top in the hope that they are more like the Navi from Avatar. Self aware and human in most ways but more respectful and responsible with their position. Hell they probably wouldn't even occupy they clearly have the resources to find and inhabit any planet they like they would just be doing it for pretty much every other spieces out there as a favor.

 

[Vergil's Waifu]

Could be worse, could be like some hentai films that I've watched and they could rape us.

I gotta agree with Stephen Hawking. Plus the whole thing scares me (yea, something else.)

It'd be great if aliens were like Vulcans from star Trek, peaceful and logical, but something tells me it'd be more like Independence Day or Mars attacks (now there's a f***ed up film).
Seriously, Do we really need to know, I'm sure that I don't want to.

 

[Meg]

Well, seeing as how I don't believe in aliens you can probably guess how I feel about people trying to find them.

On a related(ish) note, I'm really not a fan of all this "its human nature" stuff. What is? Human nature applies to everyone. Last time I checked there are people (i.e. me) who don't enjoy violence or hurting others, or whatever. People can and have changed and will continue to change (slowly). Certain parts of the world may have farther to go than others in some areas, but we are getting there. We don't have slaves anymore and women have the right to vote. We're not hopeless.

........maybe I'm just getting tired of all these movies/books/games with the overdone message of "humans suck, but there is hope." My goodness is that getting annoyingly overdone. UGH!

.........what were we talking about again? XD

 

[V]

I suppose just pull up the news and check out how many protesters are being shot at, how many despots are trying to cling onto their power, how many murders there've been this month, how many people are too poor to eat, how many child rapists are up for trial... etc.

Of course I do not believe that "this is what humanity is like". Humanity is a mixed bag. There is good and there is bad in there. Most people aren't bad, I don't think, but we still haven't managed to rid the world of oppression, starvation, slavery, poverty, violence and inequality which means these traits cling on so damn hard they have to be something inherent. Why else do they keep cropping up? The system? We make the system. We allow the system to be. So it's still our fault that these things take place, whether a direct result of our actions or an indirect result - such as from apathy or ignorance or being part of the machinery of a nation that oppresses another.

To be honest, I wouldn't have humanity any other way. To control us and try to make us all the same would not only be hell, but it would remove our humanity. We have to choose good over bad, progress over regression, and in our own time; but we're not quite there yet, not as a species. Maybe one day we will develop beyond what we are now, and leave our animalistic qualities further behind. I hope so. In fact, I hardly doubt it. If we were once cavemen, with extremely primitive laws and customs, and we are what we are now, where we've developed social care, concepts of morality and decency... then there's a lot of hope we'll put the same distance between what we are now and something much better in the future. My main hope is that someday the world will NOT be run by money, and we will not go to war for financial or material gain.

 

[Elton John]

While It's true that the human nature keeps changing and that the behavior between humans gets slowly better and better(Even thought those having the power still set their priorities differently like Lexy said), our behavior towards anything non-human is still very oppressive imo.

We set our own rules to the nature. We never care too much about the environment. There used too be forests and wild animals where our huge cities exist today or where mine or your house is. We never asked anyone else. We just built our buildings and said to the other species "go away. Now it's our place".

And we are not talking about survival here. Our survival was secured many years ago. But instead of stop expanding over the nature we keep multiplying just because we can. We castrate our pets because we can't take care of all the stray animals. But before becoming unable of doing that we did really well in reaching a population of 6 billion people worldwide!

Finally, I'd like to say that our oppresive nature also lies in other smaller things like the fact that we kill flies just because they're flying next to our food or mosquitos just because they're pinning us. If you think it from the insect's side you'll see that it's not fair at all.

So, I guess our behavior towards (possible) alien organisms would depend on whether they'd look like us or not. The more similar we'd be the better for them - Granted that our rulers' set of priorities would have changed till then.

(yeah, yeah that final line is a bit messed up grammatically)

 

[Blitz]

If they exist and they aren't as technologically advanced as us we are going to rape them. It's proven by history. If they exist and they are more technologically advanced let's just hope that they won't share the human nature.. The best scenario for both species would be to be equally advanced, imo.

But IF they are hostiles, It would be a Gears of War scenerio.

Anyway, I don't believe in aliens. Sure, they'd shred our as*es, if they had more technology, but, I'll pray that doesn't happens, even not believing it.

 

[darkslayer13]

i don't see any reason why aliens would show up here anyway. a peaceful species would realize that we could not be trusted (well some of us can but not enough to matter). and a hostile one wouldn't want this planet after all we have done to it. (its not as bad as some people try to make it sound but there are still probably better ones out there ) and if they did show up for some stupid reason it wouldn't matter if the they were hostile or not. if they didn't start a war we would. (there are nice, caring people who would want peaceful coexistance but they would not be in charge). it also wouldn't matter if they had better technology then us anything we didn't have we would just steal.

 

[cheezMcNASTY]

we need to focus on advancing our own technology without killing ourselves. when we meet alien life, we need to be able to steal their stuff that we need, should we need it.

people don't stop to consider that we may be the ones arriving on someone elses planet with guns saying "resources nao, gtfo, our planet nao". i'd rather have it be that than the other way around...

 

[LordOfDarkness]

Consider the fact that we've sent things out there into the space around us, and only recently managed to get towards the end of our Solar System. If there were alien life forms past our Solar System with far more superior technology than us, they would of got to our planet a long time ago. So consider that if there were aliens past our Solar System, perhaps within the next Solar System or whatever, and they were able to travel at a much faster rate than we ever could; wouldn't they of already got here by now? Unless you consider these two things.

Firstly, they already did arrive here, many years ago (And for some reason live in secrecy among us, figuring out what our species is like and somewhat evolving their natural ways to coincide with ours) Blending in among us like camouflage you might say. This would give reason to believe that the so called alien life form is able to adapt and change itself to the surrounding environment it has come to exist within.

Or, they aren't alone within their Solar System and therefore harbour no desire to venture into the great unknown and discover our tiny little planet.

So I believe the question, to me at least is, do they really want to meet us?

 

[Dante's Stalker]

I think the question is would they want to meet us? We're a puny race that is short of 'new on the scene', considering how long the universe has existed before we came along.
I'm sure if there is alien life out there, they relocated to the next galaxy when they saw how primal our ancestors were and how fast we were populating the world. I've always thought that there's a reason why we haven't found another planet containing life, and I believe that reason is us. Like someone before me stated, we've destroyed the planet a whole lot more than we've tried to keep it in order. If I was an intellectual 'alien' lifeform, I would want to steer clear of this place, too.