Contact Equals Suicide?

by patio34 44 Replies latest jw friends

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  patio34

  Didn't find an appropriate forum for this unique perspective:

  'Our planet spends billions on searching for extraterrestrial life. Have they never thought seriously about the question: what would happen if we found it, or if it found us. The astronomers tacitly assume that we and the little green monsters would welcome each other and settle down to fascinating conversations.

  Our own experience on Earth offers useful guidance. We've already disvovered two species that are very intelligent but technically less advanced than we are--the common chimpanzee and pygmy chimpanzee. Has the human response been to sit down and try to communicate with them? No. We shoot them, dissect them, cut off their hands for trophies, put them on exhibit in cages, injest them with AIDS virus as a medical experiment, and destroy or take over their habitats.

  That response was preditable, because human explorers who discovered tehnically less-advanced humans also regularly responded by shooting them, decimating their populations with new diseases, and destroying or taking over their habitats.

  Any advanced extraterrestrials who discovered us would surely treat us in the same way.

  Think again of those astronomers who beamed radio signals into Space, describing Earth's location and its inhabitants. In its suicidal folly, that act rivaled the folly of the last Inca emperor, Atahalpa, who described to his gold-crazy Spanish captors the wealth of his capital and provided them with guides for the journey.

  If there really are any radio civilizations within listening distance of us, then for heaven's sake, let's turn off our own transmitters and try to escape detection, or we're doomed.

  Fortunately for us, the silence from Outer Space is deafening.'

  From "The Third Chimpanzee" by Jared Diamond, pages 214-215.

  Spooky, ain't it? Any comments?

  Pat
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  logical

  I agree

  Maybe the people at the top think they are so big and special that they are immune to any attacks and that they will be doing the experiments on the aliens.

  Fools! The chances are their weapons will be more advanced than ours if their space travel techniques are.
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  SixofNine

  Chilling thought, I agree.

  But not spooky really, to me, precisely because of the truth of that last statement:

  Fortunately for us, the silence from Outer Space is deafening.
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  Skimmer

  One item of interest that has just become known in the past few years is that it is becoming technologically feasible to image exosolar planets. This includes spectrographic analysis of atmospheres which in turn can give evidence of life. The plans for space based imaging arrays are already in place and all it takes is the cash for deployment.

  So, if we can take pictures of nearby (ca. 10-20 lightyears) planetary systems, a more advanced civilization may be able to image across distances of 10 to 20 thousand lightyears, and this is a significant chunk of our galaxy. Therefore, turning off the radios is not going to do much for concealment; our atmosphere's spectrographic signature has been visible for thousands of millions of years. While it is not a broadcast of intelligent signs of life, it is still a broadcast of the existence of life.

  If advanced civilizations are somewhere in our galactic neighborhood, they very likely have had sensors pointed our way for a long time.

  Another point to consider is that within another century or so we should be able to build self replicating space probes with interstellar travel capability. Even with a modest average speed of a few hundred kilometers per second and a doubling time measured in decades, it would be possible for a self constructed fleet to deploy reporting stations throughout the entire galaxy in a few million years. That's not a very long time by astronomical standards; about a thousandth of the age of the galaxy. Has such a probe seeding been done already? (Compare with Arthur Clarke's sentinel hypothesis.) Perhaps it's happened more than once. Note that the probe fleet can continue even if the originating civilization collapses.

  Personally, I think there's a good chance that we share the galaxy with others. But maybe not many, the count could be in the single digits. If there were many of them, some would be here by now.

  My guess is that life up to the simple multicellular level (e.g., sponges) is quite common out there. That's what earth looked like for some two thousand million years. Is it probable that it could have stayed that way? The leap to complex animal life may have a very small probability, and the step to intelligent life might be even less likely. We just don't know.
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  XJWBill

  I agree wholeheartedly with the quote from Jared Diamond. The whole history of our planet shows that close contact between cultures leads to conflict, with the stronger dominating or enslaving the weaker.

  Naively to assume that aliens advanced enough to cross the galaxies would automatically be peaceful, benevolent, and cuddly is, I'm afraid, a childish fantasy. The example of Atahualpa is decidely to the point here.

  Exercising my privilege as a freed WT slave to be politically incorrect, I have always thought that the popular fascination with the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence is, at bottom, a religionless redirection of the hope for a Messiah, a deliverer, an all-powerful agent to save us from ourselves, individually and collectively.

  But suppose these "saviors" turn out to be the intergalactic equivalent of 16th-century Spaniards?

  I say, with Voltaire, that we should tend our own garden and not mess with the neighbors.

  Besides, if the aliens did land in Times Square, it would only give the GB something new to mouth about, now wouldn't it . . . ?

  Bill, who still believes if God wanted men to fly, He would have given us wings
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  Seeker

  "Any advanced extraterrestrials who discovered us would surely treat us in the same way."

  "Surely[sic]"? In what way is this a sure thing? Because humans act one way, that implies a universal behavior? Isn't that just as much an assumption as those who assume aliens will be benevolant?

  Maybe the effort required for a civilization to reach the stars automatically weeds out the warlike (because they have already killed each other off). Even the way humans, as brutal as they have been in the past, have made progress in the last century (note, progress, ok?) toward a more enlightened attitude toward fellow humans and animals is an further indication that as a civilition moves up the technological ladder they either improve their ways or die first.

  In any case, no one knows either way, so we'll just have to wait and see. And since the distances involved in space are so unimaginably vast, we may have quite a wait.
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  patio34

  Seeker,

  Mr. Diamond makes that same point in the following paragraphs that I quoted. That is that the capabilities are short-lived if they follow the pattern of life on earth.

  Short-lived abilities because of the warlike tendencies, such as humans have done on earth. One could predict the ending of the technological process because of the wars. Hence, no space travel. Other civilizations, if life developed as earth's did, would follow the same course.

  Interesting point of view.

  Skimmer,
  You seem to be well read on the subject. Frightening we can't hide, after all! Thanks for the enlightenment.

  Bill,
  We SHOULD tend to our own garden, it seems, rather than invite possible conquerors here. It would follow they would be more advanced, given that they have ARRIVED here!
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  SanFranciscoJim

  "Personally, I think there's a good chance that we share the galaxy with others. But maybe not many, the count could be in the single digits. If there were many of them, some would be here by now."

  
  I have no doubt that not only do many other civilizations exist throughout the universe, but that we in fact have been "visited" repeatedly. If any species is technologically advanced enough to travel vast distances faster than the light barrier (or interdimensionally), then they would unquestionably have the common sense to observe the inhabitants of a world they are studying before making an introduction. Planet Earth and it's human inhabitants are still in the stage of development where we believe:
  * We are kings of the universe.
  * We keep the peace by waging war.
  * We have the power to destroy our own world.
  * We still expect God to destroy the world (Armageddon).
  * If we don't understand it, we condemn it and/or kill it.
  Any advanced society would no doubt want to watch us with great scrutiny from a distance, perhaps ensuring that we do not cause our own self-destruction in ways we cannot comprehend, but don't expect any of these UFO's to land on Main Street any time soon, with the Little Green Men approaching us saying "Take me to your leader".
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  XJWBill

  Hiya, Jim! As one fellow slave to another, I support your right to believe whatever seems good to you. Hooray for freedom, intellectual and otherwise!

  However, the wording of your post, specifically "no doubt . . . in fact . . . unquestionably . . . perhaps . . ." have a curiously familiar ring to them, when applied to a predicted future event about which we have no verifiable evidence at present. Catch my drift?

  Also troubling to me is the implicit assumption that ALL members of an advanced society, human or otherwise, would share the benevolence of its most enlightened leaders. Does the word My Lai ring a bell for you?

  And now, dear brother, that you have benefitted from my gracious removal of the speck in your eye--feel free to whale away at the beam in mine!

  Peace,

  Bill

  "If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)
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  XJWBill

  Hiya, Jim! As one fellow former slave to another, I fully support your right to believe whatever seems good to you. Hooray for freedom, intellectual and otherwise!

  However, the wording of your post, specifically "no doubt . . . in fact . . . unquestionably . . . perhaps . . ." has a curiously familiar ring to it, when applied to a predicted future event about which we have no verifiable evidence at present. Catch my drift?

  Also troubling to me is the implicit assumption that ALL members of an advanced society, human or otherwise, would share the benevolence of its most enlightened leaders. Does the word My Lai ring a bell for you?

  The current popular myth that technological progress goes hand in hand with moral progress is simply untrue. Looks good in the movies, but can we depend on it? Was not Hitler's Germany very advanced, technologically, hmmm?

  And now, dear brother, that you have benefitted from my gracious removal of the speck in your eye--feel free to whale away at the beam in mine!

  Peace,

  Bill

  "If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)