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

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

#221

Post by mrmonkeyman » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 5:52 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…

We have studied (exactly) 0.00000000000001% of the total ant population.

Also, no ant ever has understood he is being studied (which is the more interesting point). We would experience superior beings as "natural experience" and be totally oblivious to them.

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

#222

Post by jkingsbery » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 5:55 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…

Agreed. Taking the "ant" argument to it's logical conclusion and based on https://xkcd.com/1610/, there very well might be some alien who is part of a very advanced society and struggling in grad school, and that alien's advisor (unhelpfully) is suggesting how cool it is that we earthlings manage to do what we're able to do despite how primitive we are.

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

#223

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

The most depressing thought I had recently was that there aren't any extraterrestrials with the capability of space flight. Pretty sure they exist, but just imagine if we're the most advanced ones? Kind of embarrassing/sad. Can you imagine traveling to another planet? The aliens gaze at us expecting some technological geniuses, and who walks out but Frank Dunce in his MAGA hat and "I'm with stupid" t-shirt?

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

#224

Post by grahamburger » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:00 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…

I think the argument is that while ants are indeed interesting to us as a subject, not every single anthill gets our attention. There are probably lots of anytime anthills in out of the way places that have never had human interaction.

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

#225

Post by jkingsbery » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

I have no way to verify the author's claim, but it strikes me as likely self-refuting to argue that life seems so rare because actually it's super common.

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

#226

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by jkingsbery » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:06 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.

Given that horses run faster than 30 mph [1], and people have been riding on horses for a while before trains were developed [2], this seems unlikely.

[1] https://horseandrider.com/western-horse-life/fastest-a-quart...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse

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

#228

Post by thelazydogsback » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

Our species is at the most interesting point (now + coming few generations) in its evolution I'd think (creation of WMDs, genetic engineering, effecting plant-scale changes, artificial intelligence/life, spacefaring, etc.) - a tipping point that makes us most "interesting" at the moment -- so if there's a civilization that's been around for millions (if not billions) of years, I'd expect that they are here now, and that they are in a form (tiny, distributed, etc.) that isn't recognizable to us unless they decided to manifest in a specific form. I'd wager that if we are not the lone civ in the galaxy, that this is probably the case.

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

#229

Post by bostonsre » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:12 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…

I think the important part of that statement is "examine _every_ ant". I don't think our ant professors have the bandwidth to investigate every ant hill on earth. We could very well be one of millions or billions of inhabited planets. Also if there are millions or billions of inhabited planets, then chances are a large proportion would have more advanced inhabitants than us. I would guess that just like here on earth, scientists would gravitate more towards investigating the more advanced species with very few interested in ants like us.

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

#230

Post by MajorBee » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

duopixel wrote: post #52

> When weighing the risks involved in interactions with less-developed cultures such as ours, these advanced civilizations may choose to refrain from contact. I think establishing communication with a more advanced civilization would be deeply disrupting to our culture. We would ascribe their cultural practices to their advancement, and get a bunch of people doing "alien cargo culting". Imagine they were strict veget…

I have full faith (some pun intended) that as soon as an alien civilization shows up (however slightly more advanced they might apparently be), there will be entire religions based around them as the gods. Hell, I'm sure there will be a few existing ones that will claim these are the gods that they were talking about all this while, the Great Reckoning is here, etc.