Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is astrogeology (as etymologically oxymoronic as that is) already a subject?
Maybe aliens will be interested in Earth for Astrogastronomy.
Sorry, no - only the consumption of cultivated humans is allowed.
Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?
201–210 of 299 posts
Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?
#202"Chemical" based intelligence/life is only the bootstrap to "electron" based intelligence/life. Most likely we might be unable to understand that until ourselves cross that line. They will wait for it.
Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?
#203Perhaps a super intelligent civilization would not put up with the limitations of our physical reality and instead upload their collective consciousness into an artificial one. This has the added benefit in that they are no longer dependent on natural resource extraction to expand their population at least beyond the energy requirements to sustain their giant consciousness server. I'm sure I can't be the only one to have thought of this but I'm not well read on the subject. Why go through pain and suffering and various zero sum games when you could open up the possibilities to the infinite?
Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?
#204"Chemical" based intelligence/life is only the bootstrap to "electron" based intelligence/life. Most likely we might be unable to understand that until ourselves cross that line. They will wait for it.
This seems so... obvious, that I'm surprised this potential isn't talked about more. Our own species probably isn't all that far away from generating some variety of machine consciousness. I'd say give it a few hundred years at most.
Heck, this begs the question of why the hell would an intelligent alien species even send their meat bags into space, when they can just upload their consciousness into a machine and have it do their bidding, without any of the limitations of biological systems.
Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
We might not be unique in those senses. If DNA and carbon based life is the standard then we are likely more similar to most life in the universe even if we have small differences in physiology or culture. We don’t share a direct biological origin but we are still made of the same stuff, probably originated under very similar conditions, etc. Unique forms of life likely develop under equally rare conditions in exotic environments. We’re probably just run of the mill meat bags.
Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?
#206>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…
We like to assume they are many orders of magnitude more intelligent than us. But it might be that the human brain represents the optimum size and capability possible for a living organism to sustain, based on requirements for energy consumption and evolutionary competitiveness.
We know that Neanderthals may have had bigger brains, and may have been pushed to extinction by homo sapiens. A bigger brain will require more food and take longer to develop, potentially putting Neanderthals at an evolutionary disadvantage to humans.
Assuming the laws of Physics do not vary throughout the universe and that evolution, if "run more than once" will eventually lead to similar outcomes, that could mean aliens capable of space travel are not significantly more intelligent than us, they've just had longer to develop technology.
And given their apparent tendency to crash their spaceships while visiting earth, you might have a reasonable case for "alien idiots"...
Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?
#207>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…
We like to assume they are many orders of magnitude more intelligent than us. But it might be that the human brain represents the optimum size and capability possible for a living organism to sustain, based on requirements for energy consumption and evolutionary competitiveness. We know that Neanderthals may have had bigger brains, and may have been pushed to extinction by homo sapiens. A bigger brain will require mo…
Evolution has been a mostly unimportant part of human development since at least 2 centuries ago.
An intelligent species engineers itself, not evolves itself.
Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is astrogeology (as etymologically oxymoronic as that is) already a subject?
Maybe aliens will be interested in Earth for Astrogastronomy.
Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There are, literally, millions of planets that can sustain life as we know it. Assuming a human-like mind, that alone is enough to reduce the interest in alien life as something mundane.
There are literally millions of species on Earth, and each one has a scientist interested in it.
Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?
#210>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…
Avi Loeb's technical work is commendable but I'm left wondering if some of the reasoning in this article counts for thoughtful contemplation.
>"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." Is it helpful to ascribe human-like motives to an alien species? Projecting our thought patterns on an alien species will not get us anywhere. There could be numerous reasons or no reason in particular why an alien lifeform might visit us: they are cataloging lifeforms, they are interested in 'ants' like EO Wilson, they might want to harvest resources on our planet, etc.
> "But better yet, we could get in touch with Proxima b and entice the locals to visit and share a water-based drink with us." There's humor mixed in this statement, so I'm not sure if Avi Loeb is being entirely serious. I take the opposite stand of "don't broadcast our presence to aliens". It's common sense that if you're out in the wild, you don't draw attention to yourself.