Originally Posted by Jacob1207

I respectfully disagree with the thesis of this thread's originator, which I take to be that it is likely that aliens advanced enough to get to Earth will be unfriendly or even hostile to us. There are several reasons for my opinion.

First, the universality of certain moral precepts in all human cultures. This is an argument from covergent evolution, albeit cultural and not biological evolution. Anthropologists tell us that all cultures have proscriptions against things like murder and rape, although they sometimes have different standards for those crimes (some allow vigilante justice, for instance). Cultures that are cool with murder will tear themselves apart and so don't last very long. I think this is good reason to suppose that any sufficiently advanced aliens will at least have laws against genocide.

Second, advanced societies and cultures are unlikely to destroy life just because it is less advanced. There are no nations nowadays that say it is okay to destroy other countries. The closest you come is Iran saying they want to destroy Israel, but they usually couch it in terms of self defense, showing that you must at least pay lip service to respecting the rights of other nations. Also, consider the presence of technologically primitive societies in the Amazon rain forest: we at least try to not take all of their land for logging and such, and don't go around killing them just because we can. And I think the vast majority of people now would say it is immoral to hunt a species to extinction and we look at the folks who killed off the dodo as unthinking brutes whose acts should not be emulated.

Third, warlike races would be unlikely to survive a long time or to be able to cooperate long enough to develop interstellar travel; even if they didn't die off they wouldn't get here. This was a major concern of Carl Sagan's; he often speculated that the answer to the Fermi Paradox was that intelligent life often killed itself off through nuclear war or the like.

Fourth, the most advanced human societies are the ones that, in general, do the best job of respecting human rights. The English-speaking countries, Western Europe, and Japan are the most technologically and economically advanced areas of Earth and--generally--do the best job of protecting human rights. Gender equality, social welfare programs, freedom of speech and of religion, due process of law, et cetera tend to be most highly developed in those countries that are most advanced, and racism and other sorts of bigotry, including that against sexual minorities, tends to be lowest there. On Earth, the most powerful societies are those that do the best, albeit still not a perfect, job of respecting the rights of others.

Fifth, warfare is actually diminishing on Earth--in objective terms. Even taking into account the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are fewer wars going on now and fewer people dying in war than in previous decades, and possibly than in any prior time in human history. Most political scientists who've studied the issue will agree with this, though they'll differ about the reason(s) for the decline and whether it is likely to persist or not. Of course, there will be increases and decreases in the level of global violence, but the long term trend is for there to be less warfare as the world becomes more developed and economically inter-dependent. Just try to imagine France and Germany, who fought four wars between the early 19th and mid 20th century, going to war now: it's virtually inconceivable. Also, consider dueling, a much smaller-scale example of inter-personal violence. "Gentlemen" used to settle disputes very frequently in such contests (people were killed in only a minority of duels) but now real duels are virtually unheard of in advanced society, despite their prior ubiquity. It is quite likely that an alien civilization able to get here would also have at least largely done away with warfare.

Sixth, the argument that they'd kill us to take our stuff is not very good, in my judgment. Resources are much more abundant in space where they could more easily be obtained (it takes much less energy to take off from an asteroid with mined ore than from a planet with its much greater gravity). If they want water, that apparently exists in spades on Ceres and in the Oort cloud. Why go to all the effort of killing us for stuff like that?

Seventh, they'd probably want to learn from us, even if they'd already encountered several other advanced alien races and killing us would make this much harder. I think they'd be interested in seeing what our cultures, literature, and art are like; seeing how we think; and seeing what we have come up with as we've wrestled with the mysteries of life in this great universe that we share together. We learn from less advanced cultures all the time (like the fact that even they don't allow murder), why wouldn't they?

None of this proves that any alien race sufficiently advanced to get here would be peaceful, but I think the case for that is much stronger than the case that they'd want to eat us and take our stuff. Incidentally, I tend to believe that the rare Earth hypothesis is likely correct: advanced life, though possibly not simple, single-cell life, is probably rare in the universe, with intelligent, space-faring life slightly more rare still. I think it is very unlikely that we'll encounter advanced alien life in the next century or two.

Originally Posted by Xchel

Originally Posted by Xchel

Originally Posted by John Jones

Thanks for joining BAUT!

Originally Posted by Abbadon_2008

On the other hand, we have lots of cats. So they might negate any kind of preemptive move by rascally rodents.

Originally Posted by Jacob1207

I respectfully disagree with the thesis of this thread's originator, which I take to be that it is likely that aliens advanced enough to get to Earth will be unfriendly or even hostile to us. There are several reasons for my opinion.

First, the universality of certain moral precepts in all human cultures. This is an argument from covergent evolution, albeit cultural and not biological evolution. Anthropologists tell us that all cultures have proscriptions against things like murder and rape, although they sometimes have different standards for those crimes (some allow vigilante justice, for instance). Cultures that are cool with murder will tear themselves apart and so don't last very long. I think this is good reason to suppose that any sufficiently advanced aliens will at least have laws against genocide.

Second, advanced societies and cultures are unlikely to destroy life just because it is less advanced. There are no nations nowadays that say it is okay to destroy other countries. The closest you come is Iran saying they want to destroy Israel, but they usually couch it in terms of self defense, showing that you must at least pay lip service to respecting the rights of other nations. Also, consider the presence of technologically primitive societies in the Amazon rain forest: we at least try to not take all of their land for logging and such, and don't go around killing them just because we can. And I think the vast majority of people now would say it is immoral to hunt a species to extinction and we look at the folks who killed off the dodo as unthinking brutes whose acts should not be emulated.

Third, warlike races would be unlikely to survive a long time or to be able to cooperate long enough to develop interstellar travel; even if they didn't die off they wouldn't get here. This was a major concern of Carl Sagan's; he often speculated that the answer to the Fermi Paradox was that intelligent life often killed itself off through nuclear war or the like.

Fourth, the most advanced human societies are the ones that, in general, do the best job of respecting human rights. The English-speaking countries, Western Europe, and Japan are the most technologically and economically advanced areas of Earth and--generally--do the best job of protecting human rights. Gender equality, social welfare programs, freedom of speech and of religion, due process of law, et cetera tend to be most highly developed in those countries that are most advanced, and racism and other sorts of bigotry, including that against sexual minorities, tends to be lowest there. On Earth, the most powerful societies are those that do the best, albeit still not a perfect, job of respecting the rights of others.

Fifth, warfare is actually diminishing on Earth--in objective terms. Even taking into account the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are fewer wars going on now and fewer people dying in war than in previous decades, and possibly than in any prior time in human history. Most political scientists who've studied the issue will agree with this, though they'll differ about the reason(s) for the decline and whether it is likely to persist or not. Of course, there will be increases and decreases in the level of global violence, but the long term trend is for there to be less warfare as the world becomes more developed and economically inter-dependent. Just try to imagine France and Germany, who fought four wars between the early 19th and mid 20th century, going to war now: it's virtually inconceivable. Also, consider dueling, a much smaller-scale example of inter-personal violence. "Gentlemen" used to settle disputes very frequently in such contests (people were killed in only a minority of duels) but now real duels are virtually unheard of in advanced society, despite their prior ubiquity. It is quite likely that an alien civilization able to get here would also have at least largely done away with warfare.

Sixth, the argument that they'd kill us to take our stuff is not very good, in my judgment. Resources are much more abundant in space where they could more easily be obtained (it takes much less energy to take off from an asteroid with mined ore than from a planet with its much greater gravity). If they want water, that apparently exists in spades on Ceres and in the Oort cloud. Why go to all the effort of killing us for stuff like that?

Seventh, they'd probably want to learn from us, even if they'd already encountered several other advanced alien races and killing us would make this much harder. I think they'd be interested in seeing what our cultures, literature, and art are like; seeing how we think; and seeing what we have come up with as we've wrestled with the mysteries of life in this great universe that we share together. We learn from less advanced cultures all the time (like the fact that even they don't allow murder), why wouldn't they?

None of this proves that any alien race sufficiently advanced to get here would be peaceful, but I think the case for that is much stronger than the case that they'd want to eat us and take our stuff. Incidentally, I tend to believe that the rare Earth hypothesis is likely correct: advanced life, though possibly not simple, single-cell life, is probably rare in the universe, with intelligent, space-faring life slightly more rare still. I think it is very unlikely that we'll encounter advanced alien life in the next century or two.