Something I read recently kind of frightened me about the whole extra-terrestrial intelligent life thing. If we were to stumble upon an intelligent life form more advanced than us, would we really expect them to view/treat us as equal? The thing I was reading used the metaphor of you viewing other lifeforms on our planet as equals, which we surely don't.
Likewise, if we ran into intelligent life forms less advanced than us, would we be willing to accept them as equals or would we view them as subordinate or lesser beings?
Another interesting thing to think about is, assuming we make it to the point where humans can move beyond a single planet, how long would it take for humans on the various planets to start evolving different traits? How would those affect social hierarchy in humanity as a whole?
Life on mars, yes or no and why so?
2,990
June 07, 2012 03:24 PM
Something I read recently kind of frightened me about the whole extra-terrestrial intelligent life thing. If we were to stumble upon an intelligent life form more advanced than us, would we really expect them to view/treat us as equal? The thing I was reading used the metaphor of you viewing other lifeforms on our planet as equals, which we surely don't.
Likewise, if we ran into intelligent life forms less advanced than us, would we be willing to accept them as equals or would we view them as subordinate or lesser beings?
If intelligent, or just "advanced" life is not often in the universe (or more precisely encounters are not often), then I don't think the more advanced party would look down on the other. It would be such a sensational thing, that... that.... I dunno.
Anyways, I don't think the concept of "equal" is applicable, since probably the differences would be so big, that maybe we couldn't even communicate with each other for long.
Sure, the "equal right to live or to do whatever" may be applied, but there's a little chance IMHO. The differences between morals and other things, what the species value and what not, could be just too big to apply any rights. The most probable thing is just we won't live together, so equality would be meaningless.
Equality could mean we just let each other live and mind our own businesses. I don't know about that, humanity may slowly be going in the right direction and maybe one day we will let the other species be. Dunno
And size differences aren't even mentioned. Maybe we are just not noticing each other. Maybe the Sun is intelligent, it's just too slow for us to understand.
11,263
June 07, 2012 04:13 PM
Something I read recently kind of frightened me about the whole extra-terrestrial intelligent life thing. If we were to stumble upon an intelligent life form more advanced than us, would we really expect them to view/treat us as equal? The thing I was reading used the metaphor of you viewing other lifeforms on our planet as equals, which we surely don't.
Unless they are significantly different to us then you can look at human history to see what happens when a more advanced group of people make contact with a less advanced group.
June 07, 2012 05:25 PM
As I mentioned in my last post and way2lazy2care also said in his, I doubt we are ready on any level to really engage with extraterrestrial lifeforms regardless of their technological advancement. The human race as whole wouldn't know what to do with ourselves or our ET-counterparts.
1,058
June 07, 2012 05:43 PM
Something I read recently kind of frightened me about the whole extra-terrestrial intelligent life thing. If we were to stumble upon an intelligent life form more advanced than us, would we really expect them to view/treat us as equal? The thing I was reading used the metaphor of you viewing other lifeforms on our planet as equals, which we surely don't.
I think this is a complete wildcard, since we only have one example of intelligence to base predictions on. Even among humans, behavior varies widely depending on culture. There isn't even an agreed upon definition for "intelligence" yet, or "life" for that matter.
An alien intelligence could conceivably be so alien that we would not even know it was intelligent.
How rare is life in the universe? How rare is intelligence among life? What is life? What is intelligence? These are the big questions that finding alien life could help answer.
Or, failing that, sythesizing new forms of life and intelligence here on earth.
June 07, 2012 07:19 PM
Unless they are significantly different to us then you can look at human history to see what happens when a more advanced group of people make contact with a less advanced group.
This depends on a common interest in a type of resource.
What could an advanced group want from earth that it would not easily get elsewhere?
Minerals or compounds? Unlikely - just nothing too special here (and why use energy lifting it out from the gravity well of a planet when you can mine asteriods).
A planet to live on perhaps? Also unlikely I think. We are already starting to observe extrasolar planets and it looks quite likely that there are a lot of earth like planets out there (unless they are already taken ;) ).
793
June 07, 2012 07:54 PM
What could an advanced group want from earth that it would not easily get elsewhere?
Servants with less guilt than if they were your own species.
1,524
June 08, 2012 04:21 AM
An advanced group would "use" us, and all other living beings really, as a "tool" to increase their capacity for empathy.
All other agendas would be a dead give away as to just how primitive they really are. Look at humans and how they generally treat animals as dumb bags of flesh without long-term emotion and memory. Ask yourself about the thought process of a bile bear who has killed its own young and then committed suicide, in order to avoid long-term suffering. How can a "dumb bag of flesh" possibly understand the concepts of death and empathy and altruism so clearly? Given that bile bears are a human invention, it's evident that the value of human intelligence is grossly overinflated and should by no means ever be used as a gauge to measure what is or is not "advanced".
Now, keep this lesson on (the lack of) empathy and (the general uselessness of) human intelligence fresh in your mind while you go back and review all of the posts in this thread. The truth is quite scary, isn't it? To be fair, there are a few anomalous posters who buck that trend, and thank f**king God for that.
All other agendas would be a dead give away as to just how primitive they really are. Look at humans and how they generally treat animals as dumb bags of flesh without long-term emotion and memory. Ask yourself about the thought process of a bile bear who has killed its own young and then committed suicide, in order to avoid long-term suffering. How can a "dumb bag of flesh" possibly understand the concepts of death and empathy and altruism so clearly? Given that bile bears are a human invention, it's evident that the value of human intelligence is grossly overinflated and should by no means ever be used as a gauge to measure what is or is not "advanced".
Now, keep this lesson on (the lack of) empathy and (the general uselessness of) human intelligence fresh in your mind while you go back and review all of the posts in this thread. The truth is quite scary, isn't it? To be fair, there are a few anomalous posters who buck that trend, and thank f**king God for that.
1,003
June 09, 2012 06:15 PM
I think there are some microbes and such on mars right now!
They're left behind from previous crafts we sent to Mars.
Some of these microbes are extremely durable, they'd survive the whole trip from here to there and remain alive on the surface of Mars too for hundreds of years.
They're left behind from previous crafts we sent to Mars.
Some of these microbes are extremely durable, they'd survive the whole trip from here to there and remain alive on the surface of Mars too for hundreds of years.
June 10, 2012 02:16 AM
They're left behind from previous crafts we sent to Mars.From what I've seen, the probes are constructed in extremely quarantined/sterilized environments to avoid this situation. Sending up a biological sensor crawling with biology would be a pretty big oversight... I hope they would be able to overcome such a dumb mistake.
. 22 Racing Series .
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