

Study: If aliens exist, they probably want to destroy us - cwan
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/0110/Study-If-aliens-exist-they-probably-want-to-destroy-us

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civilian
I'm going to quote from the novel blindsight because I think it sums up the
scenarios much better. <http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm>

================

>>Once there were three tribes. The Optimists, whose patron saints were Drake
and Sagan, believed in a universe crawling with gentle intelligence—spiritual
brethren vaster and more enlightened than we, a great galactic siblinghood
into whose ranks we would someday ascend. Surely, said the Optimists, space
travel implies enlightenment, for it requires the control of great destructive
energies. Any race which can't rise above its own brutal instincts will wipe
itself out long before it learns to bridge the interstellar gulf.

>>Across from the Optimists sat the Pessimists, who genuflected before graven
images of Saint Fermi and a host of lesser lightweights. The Pessimists
envisioned a lonely universe full of dead rocks and prokaryotic slime. The
odds are just too low, they insisted. Too many rogues, too much radiation, too
much eccentricity in too many orbits. It is a surpassing miracle that even one
Earth exists; to hope for many is to abandon reason and embrace religious
mania. After all, the universe is fourteen billion years old: if the galaxy
were alive with intelligence, wouldn't it be here by now?

>>Equidistant to the other two tribes sat the Historians. They didn't have too
many thoughts on the probable prevalence of intelligent, spacefaring
extraterrestrials— but if there are any, they said, they're not just going to
be smart. They're going to be mean. ==============

I really hope Sagan is right, and I'm a little annoyed that these researchers
didn't mention the idea.

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dasht
Slow news day :-) But, here:

Think about technological humans coming upon and conquering, say, rain
forests. We see resources like land, some top soil, lots of sunlight. So,
sometmes we denude the land, chase away all native life, and install cattle
(or whatever).

Then later (or simultaneously, elsewhere) we realize what a tragically,
stupidly wasteful thing we've just done. The native complexity of the life ...
left relatively unmolested ... was of vastly greater value than what we put up
instead. A more advanced civilization would have kept a cooler head and pretty
much just explored the garden unless it was absolutely necessary destroy it
and change the use of the land.

Why would Earth be different to intelligent, space-faring life? Might they not
be frugal and greedy and experienced enough to, if they were "here", keep out
of site and interfere as little as possible?

~~~
Udo
There is nothing, nothing here on Earth that couldn't be much more easily
mined in the outer solar system, or any other solar system for that matter.
The idea of Earth having resources that would make it necessary (or even
feasible) to go through all the trouble and mine this planet is simply not
viable. In fact, it's horribly dangerous for any alien civilization to come
here for this purpose. Pretty much every ounce of material on this planet is
contaminated with self-replicating organisms that would wreak havoc on any
foreign ecosystem.

There are still some nefarious reasons why an outside civilization may attack
us, for example to bolster a slavery-based economy or for religious purposes.
There are certainly other reasons we can't even think of yet. But resources?
No.

Territorial reasons are also void, since we can't project any meaningful power
beyond close earth orbit and we couldn't even mount a serious planetary
defense come to think of it. Pretty much anyone could just strip mine the
entire solar system - including the Moon - without us being able to do
anything about it.

~~~
inboulder
You're neglecting many reasons extra terrestrial life may pose a threat.

The most obvious is they may want our planet, they want to live here, and if
they've managed to travel across the vast void of space, wiping out humanity
probably won't be particularly challenging for them.

Also, your second point is invalid, territorial reasons are not void. We may
pose no threat now, however a technologically superior civilization may
conclude we pose a future threat, and so wipe us out now before we can become
one.

Also, the old 'dangerous biology from somewhere else!' is almost entirely null
and void, organisms are adapted to their environment, they usually pose
negligible risk to any other environment already inhabited by biological
organisms. This is why, for instance we don't treat organisms from thermal
vents as 'oh noes, biohazard material'.

~~~
Udo
> _You're neglecting many reasons extra terrestrial life may pose a threat._

I'm ignoring the ones that are so far in the realm of speculation with today's
knowledge they could go either way. For example the argument "they may want to
live here" could be valid, but there is just as much reason to believe that
any space-faring civilization bent on aggressive expansion should already have
significant terraforming capabilities, thereby making uninhabited worlds an
easier target. The second issue with this particular argument is the
probability that Earth would be a perfect environment for a given alien
species: We simply don't know how many earth-like planets are out there. If
there are many, the probability of compatibility would be high, but so would
the number of less-problematic alternative planets to choose from. If there
are few, chances are our world needs to be terraformed anyway in order to make
it habitable, meaning there is no reason to choose it for colonization over
many other (uninhabited) candidate planets in the first place.

> _wiping out humanity probably won't be particularly challenging for them_

Nobody said it would be.

> _Also, your second point is invalid, territorial reasons are not void. We
> may pose no threat now, however a technologically superior civilization may
> conclude we pose a future threat, and so wipe us out now before we can
> become one._

That's a misunderstanding. I did categorize reasons like this one as spiritual
or "other", because it's not rooted in a concrete need to eliminate us right
away. Never mind the categorization: yes, that's a possibility I tried to hint
at with the paragraph " _There are still some nefarious reasons why an outside
civilization may attack us [...] There are certainly other reasons we can't
even think of yet._ "

> _Also, the old 'dangerous biology from somewhere else!' is almost entirely
> null and void, organisms are adapted to their environment, they usually pose
> negligible risk to any other environment already inhabited by biological
> organisms. This is why, for instance we don't treat organisms from thermal
> vents as 'oh noes, biohazard material'._

I really dislike your polemic style, so let me answer in kind: the caretakers
of countless pacific islands and other isolated places who are currently
struggling to protect habitats from invasions of foreign species would
probably like to subscribe to your newsletter. Little did they know how
unfounded their concerns had been until you came along.

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martythemaniak
I'm sure that after they kill and enslave the vast majority of us, the few
remaining survivors will be given crummy reservations where we can live our
lives in griding poverty while our alien overlords blame us for not accepting
the space zombie god Zork as our lord and saviour.

------
yesimahuman
Isn't there another possibility that is inline with #1, that Aliens could
exist but that the path from them to us can not be traveled by them due to
distance and life support constraints, and not knowing where we are located.

~~~
ryandvm
That's the boring (and most likely) possibility.

------
ajscherer
I feel like you can come up with any type of wild speculation, and if you base
your reasoning on the theory of evolution (even in the most hand-wavy way)
people will treat it almost like its a scientifically verified truth.

"Evolution operates predictably" do we know this because scientists have a
track record of reliably predicting evolutionary outcomes, or do we think this
because evolution seems like it should've been predictable standing in 2011
looking back? Don't a lot of unpredictable things look predictable in
hindsight?

Furthermore, I can't think of any practical benefit of having done this study.
If aliens don't exist, the study was a waste of time. If aliens exist and
intend to kill us, we are probably fucked anyway and hence the study was a
waste of time. If aliens exist and are nice, the study was wrong and thus a
waste of time.

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bartonfink
[http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/aliens.php#The_Fermi_Parado...](http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/aliens.php#The_Fermi_Paradox~The_Killing_Star)

I think those three laws state that case pretty well. And I think it's pretty
bleak if that case is, in fact, correct.

~~~
iwwr
Charlie Stross presents an alternate explanation in the novel 'Accelerando'.
Advanced civilizations may evolve at an accelerating pace, so anyone moving
away from the central star (and source of energy) won't be able to catch up.

~~~
bartonfink
Interesting. I'll have to add that to my reading list.

~~~
iwwr
There's also the possibility that signals just merge into the background after
a few light years. So they are saying that our radio signals have already
travelled a few decades, but they also diffuse under the 1/r^2 law. If there
were an identical to Earth, how close would it have to be for SETI to pick up
the radio chatter?

It's also possible that aliens use higher-bandwidth optical or above signals
in order to communicate. Already as the Earth's networks swell with bandwidth,
most of it is coming from optical installations rather than radio links. Even
radio is relatively low-powered, so it's unlikely a lot of it is visibly
leaking into space.

~~~
6ren
theory: background radiation is actually alien messages. The sky is completely
filled with it.

The reason we can't read it as a signal is not because it has diffused, but
because it's compressed so effectively that, for us, it is indistinguishable
from noise.

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civilian
The full text of Simon Conway Morris' article in "Philosophical Transactions
in The Royal Society A" is free:
[http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1936/555....](http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1936/555.abstract)

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inboulder
I think this article makes a fantastically gross error, the conclusion is
fine, however the authors gloss over the fact that any space-faring life has a
high probability of being machine-intelligence, not squishy biological life
which 'evolved in the same manner as on earth'. (note, this is already the
trend with our space exploration)

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iwwr
All told, an alien civilization that saw us would probably be millions of
years ahead of us and likely not need our planet for expansion. Habitable
space becomes very large if you can colonize bare bits of rock or construct
your own habitats.

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indrax
Essential Reading:

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/>

