Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us? • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by drclau » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #56

drclau wrote: post #48

What bothers me quite a bit, both in more-or-less scientific conversations and in Science Fiction, is that we virtually always assume a human-like psychology for aliens, and we judge what they may want or not based on our thinking. Even when we think about potentially highly advanced aliens, we still assume they'll have a psychology similar to ours, and they'll just be more advanced technologically (ie. the aliens an…

The "Three Body Problem" trilogy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel) ) makes an argument for why the behaviour of an intelligent species is going to mimic humans (or more accurately, humans' behaviour converge towards a universal set of behaviour - one of survival of the fittest). I don't want to spoil the books so i won't discuss any further, but worth a think about if you have read the bo…

Thanks, I had it on my list. I will pick it up sooner, then.

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

#62

Post by bluGill » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #33

bluGill wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The presumption that "today we know precisely how the universe works, and therefore, all stories must follow this mindset", is odd here. Would you insist that Newtonian physics was the Only Way to Think of Things, prior to Einsteinian? Why, then, do you presume this will remain static forever? And therefore, suggest that a story should follow this logic?

While it is possible relativity is wrong, anything that replaces it must fit all the observations we have about the universe that we currently use to prove relativity. That leaves very little room for the replacement for relativity to be different.

Newtonian physics is a special case of relativity when you keep relative speeds slow.

We don't know how quantum mechanics fits in. There is a known hole in current physics. However the size of the hole is small.

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

#63

Post by patcon » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

drclau wrote: post #48

What bothers me quite a bit, both in more-or-less scientific conversations and in Science Fiction, is that we virtually always assume a human-like psychology for aliens, and we judge what they may want or not based on our thinking. Even when we think about potentially highly advanced aliens, we still assume they'll have a psychology similar to ours, and they'll just be more advanced technologically (ie. the aliens an…

Not sure if it's non-human enough, but A Fire Upon the Deep had central characters that had a very non-human way of thinking, though perhaps it could be said that they still "thought" like humans in the end. (I recall the specifics were a slow reveal, so I'm reluctant to say much more.)

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

#64

Post by op03 » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

hans1729 wrote: post #3

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…

Ants are interesting because of the complex behavioral systems emerging from their comparatively simple biological systems, reminiscent of the game of life. Seeing the insane complexity of the human condition (look at the amount of scientific disciplines we come up with) and thinking "nay, this won't be interesting to a higher mind" feels awfully dismissive. sure, depending on the leap of sophistication we may appear…

Recently I had a bunch of snails appear out of nowhere all over the garden. And I spent a whole lot of time, trying to figure out what they were feeding on, cuz some were getting really big. The whole thing was quite fascinating...like how the hell were they producing these huge ass shells without tearing all the plants apart? So I call a good buddy over (PhD in bio something or the other) thinking he would be as fascinated. And guess what...he shows up and all he wanted to do was cook them. So much for higher minds. (we didn't btw)

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

#65

Post by sandworm101 » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #43

imglorp wrote: post #21

The hard fact is there are no shortcuts to interstellar travel, barring new physics. Any trip will consume vast amounts of energy and it will take decades if not centuries or longer. Advanced tech may reduce the expense to your civilization but the fact won't change. While all life, ants or not, may be universally worthy of study, is it worth that much sacrifice? Also, if the ants talk, exchanging messages would make…

> The hard fact is there are no shortcuts to interstellar travel, barring new physics. Do you know that early in the development of trains people were sure it would be physically impossible for humans to travel over 30 mph or so? They thought something would happen with the air pressure or something. Our understanding of physics changes.

Only the crackpots thought train travel impossible. Anyone with experience of air moving at such speeds, ie the everyone in the navy, knew there wouldn't be a problem.

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

#66

Post by drichel » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

cortic wrote: post #35

>The silence implied by Fermi's paradox (“Where is everybody?”) may mean that we are not the most attention-worthy cookies in the jar. I've always thought of Fermi's paradox as ultimately a math problem, assuming a conservative amount of time between a civilization in one star system colonizing a neighboring star system, over billions of years every star system in the galaxy should be colonized by now. The fact that…

We might as well be among the first ones. I find the idea quite fascinating, it kind of puts the Earth back into the center and makes us special in a way.

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

#67

Post by me_me_me » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

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…

There are also people that pour liquid metal into ant colony to cast its internal structure.

It doesn't end well for ants.

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

#68

Post by sleepysysadmin » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

In my scifi book(s), the only reason aliens have to come to earth than say any other planet is to party. There's no reason to dominate or steal our resources. Go to any other system and you have infinite amounts of resources. In fact most star systems will have planets with life but not necessarily intelligent life.

So fundamentally it's just tourism. They come to Earth to drink beer and have fun. Though tourism is very rare because we have been so violent to previous tourists at roswell.

Obviously there are antagonists who do want to destroy humanity but generally speaking its about tourism.

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

#69

Post by bluetomcat » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

Udo wrote: post #12

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 i…

> We also don't assume everyone builds megastructures or emits huge technosignatures

Popular culture skews our expectations towards two-legged creatures flying on saucers, roughly our size, but forms of intelligent life can manifest in radically different ways at micro and macro levels.

Perhaps, what looks like a sand particle to us might be a complex microorganism, in a complex interconnected self-regulating network, with no physical artifacts of "civilisation". Those microorganisms would also be able to form "mega-structures" by mutating the environment around them, just not at the pace and scale we are accustomed to.

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

#70

Post by ruined » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

throwaway2245 wrote: post #55

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…

> I'm sure I'm not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants From Wikipedia for "ant": "More than 12,500 of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been classified." From our human perspective, we are interested in ants. Everybody has seen ants. Everybody is curious about ants. From an ant perspective, humans scarcely exist. There are 10,000 ant species that don't have a relationshi…

and not only this, even among classified species, most colonies will never interact directly with a human. when ants do come into contact with things we have made, they do not comprehend it. and when they interact with us directly, even in a mode where we are identifiable to them as an entity, they can't identify much about us beyond the practical facts that we are dangerous or perhaps edible.