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Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#11

Post by crazydoggers »

> Fermi’s paradox is pretentious in that it assumes we humans have some sort of cosmic significance.

I don’t at all think this is the issue with Fermi’s paradox. I think sentience is an interesting enough phenomenon that others with sentience will be interested. As soon as you understand the mind of the other, there’s a basic interest in meeting other minds.

The real issue is simply the vastness of time and space, and perhaps an underestimation of the difficulties involved in bridging those. Especially economic costs of space travel.

And it’s kind of like the point made in this clip about the silliness of Fermi’s paradox... it’s like assuming if no lobster shows up to your dinner party, lobsters don’t exist.

https://youtu.be/TK0vmOCHiDs

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#12

Post by Udo »

In general we don't assume that of everyone. What we do assume is that at least some aliens would be interested, because we assume intellect comes with innate curiosity. In an advanced culture, even a small number of individuals exhibiting an interest would be enough to form a field of study, just as it is here on Earth.

Asserting that nobody us studying is because we're uninteresting to every single alien creature is a baffling statement, given the odds. The odds are far greater in my opinion that we're alone or at least functionally alone, even though I must admit I hate the notion.

We also don't assume everyone builds megastructures or emits huge technosignatures, but it throws us off that apparently nobody does.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#13

Post by yoz-y »

ballenf wrote: post #9
nend wrote: post #2

>We may be a phenomenon as uninteresting to them as ants are to us; after all, when we’re walking down the sidewalk we rarely if ever examine every ant along our path. Not really the most convincing argument. There are professions that study ants. And I'm sure I'm not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants. Pretty sure aliens would still be interested in us even if we were as primi…

The point is that we're one of (large number) of ant colonies and there's nothing particularly interesting about us vs. any other ant colony. Even if ETs study ants generally, there's nothing unique about us to give us a greater than 1/(large number) chance of being studied.

Last time a new mammal was discovered here it was international news.

If an alien civilisation has trillions of trillions individuals, there must be quite a bit of them interested in any possible niche. This assumes that an interstellar species would be naturally curious.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#14

Post by donatj »

nend wrote: post #2

>We may be a phenomenon as uninteresting to them as ants are to us; after all, when we’re walking down the sidewalk we rarely if ever examine every ant along our path. Not really the most convincing argument. There are professions that study ants. And I'm sure I'm not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants. Pretty sure aliens would still be interested in us even if we were as primi…

Let’s say though it took several generations to travel to the ants, would we bother?

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#15

Post by bluGill »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

I'm writing a kids story (with my son, its quite fun to discuss the story and plan the laser fights) about an alien that is visiting earth to complete his Alien PhD - I am going to get some sarcastic jibe about backwaters and wasting years away from any decent fun etc. I think we might consider that level of interest lucky. :-)

With the speed of light being as slow as it is, that Alien must be very long lived to consider such a trip. The PhD should start observing the dinosaurs and for lack of enough data continue on to humans.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#16

Post by 3395810 »

I assume that any culture that is capable of developing interstellar flight will have a high degree of curiosity. We humans study even the most "mundane" life forms on our planet and try to study the rest of the universe outside of our planet. That is why I think extraterrestrials would want to make contact with us.

> We may be a phenomenon as uninteresting to them as ants are to us; after all, when we’re walking down the sidewalk we rarely if ever examine every ant along our path.

However, there are people who do study ants.

I think Roadside Picnic is a good novel but not indicative of how extraterrestrials who are capable of visiting Earth would actually behave.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#17

Post by Caprinicus »

ballenf wrote: post #9
nend wrote: post #2

>We may be a phenomenon as uninteresting to them as ants are to us; after all, when we’re walking down the sidewalk we rarely if ever examine every ant along our path. Not really the most convincing argument. There are professions that study ants. And I'm sure I'm not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants. Pretty sure aliens would still be interested in us even if we were as primi…

The point is that we're one of (large number) of ant colonies and there's nothing particularly interesting about us vs. any other ant colony. Even if ETs study ants generally, there's nothing unique about us to give us a greater than 1/(large number) chance of being studied.

We have devoted large amounts of time and resources to studying the differences between seemingly similar ant colonies, and we have lived alongside ants for our entire existence as a species.

Imagine now that we had never seen an ant, had a totally different biological origin to the ants, and had no idea why they did what they do because we had no cultural conception of them as an entity.

We’d only be more interested in ants.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#19

Post by Blikkentrekker »

> Fermi’s paradox is pretentious in that it assumes we humans have some sort of cosmic significance.

No, it assumes that of all the incalculable advanced civilizations it hypothesizes to exist, at least some would be interested, not all, not the majority, not a significant number, but at least one in a million.

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