The point is: we don't know. Pirates or drunken teenagers are not less likely than official ambassadors or a science team.

Why would the first visiting aliens be flying the equivalent of a B747?? Maybe they're just joyriding in daddy's vehicle...

Are you sure?

Well... Maybe because they are just a bunch of drunken teenagers wanting to harass us?

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Neptune, Titan, Stars can Frighten...

Pirates are from Earth , they kill and steal goods because of their value.And maybe because it is more enjoyable to steal than to work !
But in an advanced civilization , I don't think you have to work ! Everything is very cheap , and there is nothing of value on a primitive planet to steal !



may be . . maybe ... but something says to me an interstellar vehicle is a little more than a terrestrial car . . and if Einstein has it right , any travel will be years long , noway to comeback and found your relative alive .... that cannot be a joyride going to another star !




YES !!!



I know America ways are spreading fast , but this is so ridiculously ethnic to me !

Hmmm, I can think of plenty of things a primitive planet would have that would be of value, especially to an advanced, jaded civilization. Primitive art pieces, fashions of jewelry, patterns and designs of cloth and weaving hitherto unknown, medium of expression unknown, In short, we have novelty value.
And unless this hyper advanced race can make matter in industrial quantities from the raw radiation of a thousand stars, they will be wanting the ice of our comets, the gas of our Jupiter's, the metal of our asteroids. You can't hand wave some wondrous Star-Trekian utopia, and expect the universe to work that way, just because it would be 'nice'.
Primitive world like ours could offer what North and South America offered Europe, quaint native customs and art, and plenty of untouched raw materials.

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Maybe not very politically correct but I don't think much of primitive art. Anyway if primitive art has some appeal it is because we are human and also the artists. I doubt we can really appreciate arts and motive of the spiders from tau Ceti , and i don't want to talk about those stinky worms from Vega II!

You don't have to appreciate art to like art to it, rich people just have to like it. People will ooh and awe the spit sculptures of Betelgeuse, the algal patterns of Wolf 359, and critiques will say things like, 'magnificent imponderability' and 'in the mode of the pre- baroque modernist, but with a succinct abstractionism that magnifies the modulation." Rich people will buy them, artists will imitate them, and life will go on as it does.

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I think archeological information about cultures would be very valuable to space faring aliens. Or just about any kind of information at all. Everything in the universe is made of information at some level so the gathering of such information as a means of gaining more knowledge may be the most valuable commodity of all in a universe.

Mineral and chemical resoruces are abundant but biologically produced informational resources, as in other alien cultures appear very rare; so i would assume there is a higher premium on knowledge and information of other planetary cultures. Obviously alien art, literature, philosophy, religion would be highly sought after.

It was not a prediction, just an illustration of a possible scenario, derived from very common behavior patterns on earth.

You are obviously better informed than we are

Life, by any of our current definitions, always does have needs.
I think it's debatable whether anything that has no needs whatsoever, can actually be called alive.

Hmm. I doubt it though. Reciprocity's a pretty basic motivator in a great many situations. Species which probably aren't self-aware at all (insects, ect) have developed reciprocity purely by natural selection. If groups gain from it, the odds are they will eventually do it once it occurs to them.

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I agree with the last part - we might have nothing of value for the aliens to steal. But the first part - there is always going to be something limiting or damping the explosive (effectively infinite rate) growth of the economy. Whatever the damping factor is is going to have some value which will be traded on. It might have nothing to do with anything we have here on earth, but I'll bet it will be there.

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Hmm:
- We are obstructing their view of Venus. :-P
- We're in the way of their hyperspace bypass, and we've had several years of warning to evacuate. The plans were clearly on file in the Alpha Centauri CE office.

[eyeroll]
We're not "spiritually lacking". We're just alive and self interested, like anything else on the planet. If we weren't self interested, we wouldn't be alive for long. That goes for practically all life everywhere. As far as us being "mentally lacking", we're a lot better at the whole mental thing than anything else you can point to. I don't see gorrilas erecting textile mills.

I can be as misanthropic as the next guy at times, but I also resist the notion that there's some radically different way we (or other aliens) could be where no conflict obtains and everything is rainbows and unicorns; or that we need to feel guilty about the way we are.

So in general, if aliens are going to be hostile to us:
- They have some interest which is counter to our interests.

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It could be as simple as a matter of fight over resources. Any time one organism uses one resource, it is unavailable to another organism. Also, they may be xenophobic for reasons besides basic biology, their predominant culture my have some religious issue with us.
As the old axiom goes, it only takes one to start a war.

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Hmm. Along those lines - what if they have a completely controlling mental construct that takes over host sentient organisms and societies, tailored to pushing all the right psychological buttons of the particular species involved, with the goal of propogating throughout the universe. It would need to subvert our natural self and family interest, and turn us into agents for it's own propogation (hence the conflict, and the predatory nature of the thing).

If it is advanced enough, complex enough, then it would almost be like a form of life in it's own right, self-aware, even though it only exists as a belief system in our heads.

And the conquest of planet Earth wouldn't require an invasion fleet at all, just a bit of multi-stage prosyletizing. After which we'd begin scanning for some other non-infected species with which to share. (bwahahaha). The "invader" would be the mental construct itself, the invading civilization as much a victim as the target civilization.

Even more sinister - the more networked, the greater communication rate amongst ourselves - the greater the propensity for abstract ideas, the more vulnerable we would be to this sort of attack. If memes are "viruses of the mind", this could be an interstellar "plague of the mind" to which intelligence is uniquely vulnerable. Interesting idea for a sci-fi story.

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I can agree with that and the above post by the crying crow.

But then don't you think it is badly contra productive to invade these people ? It is much better to not disturb them and steal them undercover or by remote ! You just take the golden egg and don't kill
the goose !

Maybe the stuff is just valuable/antique if the population that created it is dead...

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[Foot mouth in put]
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

Hmmm, nothing like instant antiquing if the society that built it is dead, though that may be like killing the golden goose.
Maybe they don't like competition. After a few million years, one would develop a. . . keen, self-interest.
Maybe they have made a definition of mind that we don't qualify for, therefore we must be expunged.

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Funny -- around here it seems the more advanced we get the more we have to pay for everything.

Who else would they steal from? Civilisations that are more advanced than their own?

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

I agree Disinfo Agent, galacsi seems to assume that advanced civilizations will be all wise and Utopian. Sure it is nice to dream that way, but utopia seem to be based on a deep seated human laziness. Listen to the wording, "But in an advanced civilization , I don't think you have to work ! Everything is very cheap " Sounds like a race of interstellar slackers to this monkey. That is your utopia? How does this society of hippies get anything done? Oh but of course, robots, lots and lots of robots. Well maybe, but weren't computers supposed to free us from all manner of drudgery? Well yes they did, while inventing new forms of drudgery. Even is all manual labor is done by computers, you will need people to repair them, program them, herd and wrangle them. In short, they may serve us, by making us service them. Sure you can hand wave some advanced society and say " that is what they are like ,we can't assume what they might be like." Excuse my ignorance, but that is paradoxical. Your pulling something right out of the air, and when one tries to base on the one thing we DO know, us, one is accused of assuming.
i do think that advanced societies are going to be arrogant sons of a gun, boasting how wise and beneficent they are. But we shouldn't take such ramblings at face value.

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Hey you do your provocation , i do mine !

Are you sure the scope with what you look at aliens , is not just a plan mirror ?