Finally you have figured me out. I am not of your kind.

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"To live is the rarest thing in the world, most people merely exist." - Oscar Wilde

Yeah, but they were all your posts.



Hmmmm....

Ha ha. Hardly pal. I'm here to learn and end up biting my tongue most of the time. Unless I have something I think is funny chime in with of course.

This discussion is interesting, but it seems to me, perhaps a little naive. First, the extreme diversity of life on this planet is indication enough that if life can get a foothold it will flourish to the maximum extent that the environment permits. In a Universe of the immensity of ours, the existence of other environments with some degree of hospitability to life is not even arguable. Among those, there will be some that are sufficiently hospitable to permit development of a kind of high social order that we might define as civilization (with variations that we cannot even begin to imagine). Some of those will be technologically based civilizations. It is not a given that old technology is super technology or that the potential for technological development is unlimited. It may be that aliens don't visit us because they face the same limits to interstellar travel that we do. It may simply prove to be impractical, and that's a state that you can hope for with all the fervor you can muster, because the alternative is potentially terrible. If you look at the nature of life on this earth and the way it relates to its own various parts, it would be stupidly naive to assume that old and/or technologically capable means benign. Life is competition by definition. The most incredibly stupid idea I believe I've ever encountered is the notion that we should ever want to let anything that might be out there with a capability of interstellar travel know that we are here, and where we are. We have no way of knowing the nature of what might be listening. It may not matter to an advanced technology whether the real estate is compatible or not. The fact of its being inhabited by another technologically capable life form might be suffient to justify an effort at pre-emptive extermination (and if you don't believe that, look at our own history). Now, I'm not saying that's the only possible scenario, but it's a very real possibility, and because it's real, it's the possibility that should be uppermost in our consideration of the potential for contact, when in reality it is the most discounted. In the real world, for the most part, big fish eat little fish. If you don't know whether the water is full of sharks, diving in wearing a belt of fish heads may be the quickest way to find out, but not necessarily the smartest, unless you're the biggest shark in the pool. Rare? Common? It doesn't matter if they have travel capability and ever find out we are here. Once that cat's out of the bag, there's no putting it back.

^ Agreed.

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So to date at least we know that no hostile advanced alien speciecs has discovered us yet!

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ooops..... wrong forum!!!

Wait.

I suspect that the only reason we haven't been contacted or attacked by a hostile alien race is that we have been capable of showing ourselves to the Galaxy for only the briefest heartbeat of time on the interstellar scale.

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If you can't think of a plausible scenario then your love of this hypothesis is more of an infatuation. It seems very unlikely to me that every intelligent species blunders into the same disastrous experiment. This not-so-bright species is already wondering whether big physics experiments might be the great filter, so aliens would also pause to reflect before doing something that might stranglet their planet, turn it into a black hole, or open a portal to hell.

Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Paragraph.

yeah but the waiting bit has always scared me the most!

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ooops..... wrong forum!!!

While waiting, there is much fun to do.

Will aliens someday contact us with Hostile demands and Intentions?

I say Bring it On...
I'm evolved from a predator lineage and have a bad attitude.

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As I've mentioned before, if there were unfriendly aliens that didn't like us, all they would need to do is throw a few rocks at us. The simple fact that aliens could get to our solar system would mean they would have resources beyond ours.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

That's why in the time that we do have we should do our best to make ourselves a harder target to eliminate.

By spreading to the stars as quickly and efficiently as possible.

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By the time we've spread out into the solar system a bit, we'll have a pretty good idea of what's actually is (or isn't) out there. We can do a lot with large space based telescopes.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Or they could arrive with barely enough fuel and propellant to decelerate into our system, and a failing CELSS after a hundred years of journey time. They might need our help to survive, instead of having enough surplus power to move asteroids in anger.

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New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

Yes, it's possible to introduce handicaps, but the point is that they must be introduced to keep present day humans from being automatically outclassed. It is a common problem in science fiction stories. If there is a crewed alien spaceship contacting Earth, it's a given that they'll have technology beyond ours, and are on the "high ground." So, for story purposes, they either must be friendly, or must have a major handicap to give humans a chance. Otherwise, there isn't going to be much of a story. It's just so easy to think of ways to take out Earth civilization, given space resources.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Personally I find it more likely that humans will be the aggressors when we reach other solar systems, given our history.

It would not surprise me if 1,000 years from now people are lamenting the terrible genocide committed by the Terrans against the Native Alpha Centaurans when we colonized their world by force.

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I would be surprised. History is just that- History.

We argue today about whether or not it would be ethical to kill GERMS on another world...

I think you underestimate the xenophobic nature of humanity. We find it perfectly acceptable to commit the basest atrocities against people so long as we can define them as "Other" rather than "Us."

We may be past or nearly past the tendency to classify people with different skin pigmentation, viewpoints, cultures, or sexual preferences as "Other." But I don't think we're ready yet to treat another sapient race as "Us."

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I think that we might at first. But as time passed, if we interacted, xenophobia would kick in.

I think we're both going to go in circles around eachother, each making good points on this one.,

Because the diversity in Humanity will lead to us both being right.
As long as neither one of us tries to claim humanity as a whole is one way or the other.

True enough.

I'd point out that in any mob, however, the negative aspects win.

It is always the loudest and most ignorant who take charge of the crowd. When mob mentality takes over there is no longer any rational, sensitive, considerate thought involved.

Something will get smashed.

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We're still a tiny minority though - unfortunately most of mankind isn't that considerate.

I would add that anything can happen once people are really scared or see (real or imagined) existential threats.
A couple of misunderstandings with a nearby alien race would certainly have that 'scare potential'...

The possible threat of alien invasion or aggression may have a positive effect and unite the whole human race. It would possibly require such a unit to have even the slightest chance of survival.

Either that or there would be anarchy.

Unless we just sent Will Smith to inject a virus into the mother ship!

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ooops..... wrong forum!!!

I realize this thread is a little stale, but I would like to post an observation.

Another way to counter the Fermi Paradox, besides the Great Filter, would be a Great Barrier. Science has given us great power, but has also shown us limits. Nuclear power, the speed of light. Subatomic particles, the Planck length.

Perhaps there is something that prevents life from traveling from star to star.

Maybe the "speed limit" is much lower than C. Maybe life cannot survive outside its sun's influence. Maybe the ort cloud repels souls.

I don't promote any of these as theories, I just want to say that we don't know. There may be many more variables to Drake's Equation that we are not aware of, and they may also influence the Fermi Paradox.

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Did I just hear a cat?