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UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

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Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#11

Post by jerf »

philwelch wrote: post #4

This is almost amusingly irrelevant--if contact is actually made with an alien intelligence and this guy tries to step up and say "I'm in charge of this", there's no doubt someone more powerful would try and take over.

If contact is made by an alien intelligence, it is very likely to end up being entirely on the alien's terms. Even if the aliens pursued a hands-off approach (or relevant-manipulator-off-approach as the case may be) and allowed us to duke out who represented Earth, it would be solely because they chose that path, not because we had any say in it. Maybe in another couple hundred years that won't be true, but it's likely to stay true for longer than the UN is going to still be an entity.

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#12

Post by nandemo »

moe wrote: post #5
Astro9k wrote: post #2

"they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent" I'm curious what the probability is that this statement is true. Alien species that have been around much longer than us may view humans as microbe-like in intelligence.

Indeed. Human arrogance I would say. If an alien civilization was to find and visit us (by means other than microbes riding an asteroid...) then their technology is at least a few hundred years ahead of ours.

Another possibility is that -- regardless of their technological level -- they'll have completely different values and won't be interested in earthlings at all.

For instance, in Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" the Martians ponder destroying the Earth "for aesthetic reasons".

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#13

Post by nandemo »

ugh wrote: post #10
moe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Human arrogance I would say. If an alien civilization was to find and visit us (by means other than microbes riding an asteroid...) then their technology is at least a few hundred years ahead of ours.

Wikipedia has a helpful timeline of life on Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution#Basic_tim... You would most likely meet completely unintelligent microbes on Earth. Or no life at all. Maybe some stupid animals or plants. The likelihood of meeting intelligent life during the existence of this planet is something like 0.004 percent (200,000 years of intelligent life on a 4.5 billion year old planet…

> Wikipedia has a helpful timeline of life on Earth:

Err, I had no idea that flowers appeared later than mammals and birds. Is that a well-known fact that I should've learned in high school?

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#14

Post by ugh »

endtime wrote: post #8
kyleslattery wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Astrophysicist Neil Tyson makes a great point on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-uZZ7RdL5E Essentially: chimpanzees share ~98% of our DNA, yet we don't view them as having anything near our intelligence. If it only takes a 2% difference for this to happen, imagine how more advanced alien species might view us.

What does DNA have to do with it?

The point is that our next relatives on the tree of life are very similar to us in many ways but we would nevertheless consider them pretty stupid. Pretty much all impressive human achievements will be forever inaccessible to them. DNA is just a very striking way of illustrating that similarity with the one big difference.

It is similarly imaginable that evolution could, without breaking a sweat, spit out intelligence that would consider us stupid the same way we consider chimpanzees stupid. They can do some cute tricks but that’s about it.

He basically wants to open our eyes to the idea of a vast scale of intelligence, not between village idiot and Einstein but spanning much wider. Meeting someone that is just as intelligent as we are seems unlikely.

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#16

Post by ugh »

nandemo wrote: post #13
ugh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia has a helpful timeline of life on Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution#Basic_tim... You would most likely meet completely unintelligent microbes on Earth. Or no life at all. Maybe some stupid animals or plants. The likelihood of meeting intelligent life during the existence of this planet is something like 0.004 percent (200,000 years of intelligent life on a 4.5 billion year old planet…

> Wikipedia has a helpful timeline of life on Earth: Err, I had no idea that flowers appeared later than mammals and birds. Is that a well-known fact that I should've learned in high school?

Flowers are complicated, their late arrival is not really surprising. 130 million years is also not exactly recent. It’s not like some cavemen lived in a world without flowers.

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#17

Post by patrickgzill »

Astro9k wrote: post #2

"they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent" I'm curious what the probability is that this statement is true. Alien species that have been around much longer than us may view humans as microbe-like in intelligence.

"Thinking meat. Dreaming meat."

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#20

Post by jayro »

philwelch wrote: post #4

This is almost amusingly irrelevant--if contact is actually made with an alien intelligence and this guy tries to step up and say "I'm in charge of this", there's no doubt someone more powerful would try and take over.

A few months back we decided to take a risk and do an "X-Files" episode (as opposed to our normal fare of tech and startups) and interviewed Richard Dolan, an historian in the field of UFOs and national security. It turned out to be one of our most popular shows to date and we covered this very topic in some detail. It's definitely worth a listen if you're interested in this kind of stuff: http://techzinglive.com/?p=248
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