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Is it smart to reach out to aliens?

Is it smart to reach out to aliens?

  • Total voters
    25
Goshin said:
Again, you have only one example, Homo Sapiens, to point to as an example. There is no certainty that the same would hold true for how aliens would view others not of their species.
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Is it such a stretch to imagine that the relationship between technology and social mobility would be so dissimilar to our own?
 
lizzie said:
That isn't what I'm saying. If they are that technologically superior to us, it will be on their terms. They have the upper hand, and we are inferior in that sense.
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True. I wasn't trying to deny that.

I was simply saying that it'd probably be in our best interests not to "tempt fate." :lol:

IMO, we should keep a look out for anyone nearby, but not go out of our way to draw their attention if we can help it.
 
NoC_T said:
Is it such a stretch to imagine that the relationship between technology and social mobility would be so dissimilar to our own?
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I don't think the argument is that social advances can't happen alongside technological development, but that they don't necessarily have to either.
 
Cardinal said:
I don't think you know what a sociologist's discipline is.

And read my post more slowly.
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Do you agree with Hawking on geopolitics? Or do you only tout his opinion on subjects outside his discipline when it is convenient.

You are desperately trying to distract from the intellectual dishonesty of holding opposing positions simultaneously.
 
Cardinal said:
I'm going to assume that splitting the atom is one of those areas in science you don't get to skip on your way to discovering faster than light travel. Us having nukes would be as much of a game changer as realizing that an island nation we're invading is armed with muskets: everyone knows about them already. No, I think if you want to get the drop on aliens you're going to need something a little fancier than that.
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FactPile » We are the 10% - Daily debates about Comics, Movies & Video Games.

If you pick the right threads people actually talk of the feasibility of things like this, armors, weapons, nukes, everything is looked at very carefully, calculations are made, and battle situations are created and tested out.

Since you and I at this point are arguing about a fictional yet possible battle in the future between a slightly or (depending on when we meet them) extremely advanced humanity and an alien species you may as well duke it out with people on a forum website that is much much more specialized at this particular kind of debating, if not, ignorance is bliss my friend.

As for being fancy? No need to be fancy when you have a weapon that can level miles of land on end with the energy of millions of tons of TNT.

Explosions are also quick and hard to spot in space if we get in to the realm of space warfare. Unless they spot the tiny carriage for the warheads a detonation in space is determined to be an extremely quick flash and then nothing (due to the conditions of space as compared to planets with our atmosphere or an atmosphere in general). Nukes are much more deadly in space than anywhere else, and if humans ever met aliens the biggest and most important battle will always be space, not planets, for many reasons.
 
Luftwaffe said:
Depends on the disparity of technological superiority, if nukes do the same damage to them as it can do to us then we will have a lot of leverage as well.

Nuclear bombs in today terms have powers in the megatons of TNT, the center of a nuclear explosion can reach unimaginable temperatures. The sheer amount of energy is insane, maybe they have better body armor than us? Maybe their ships are faster or have more weapons? But unless they are THAT far ahead of us where they can suddenly just tank megaton bombs then we will not be powerless, humans love their nukes, I'm sure we have a ton as well as the capability to rebuild our cold war instinct of building the best WMD's we can possibly make.
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We might never get close enough to actually use them.

In strategic and tactical terms, space is the ultimate "high ground." They could simply park out by Jupiter and hurl asteroids at us from there.

If they're really advanced, and really patient, they could even theoretically do the same thing from a solar system or two away, using a relativistic kill vehicle.

There could be one on it's way right now, for all we know. We'd be none the wiser, and basically powerless to stop it even if we were.
 
Cardinal said:
Shut up.
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Wow. Why don't you just admit you were wrong to tout his opinion on one subject outside his discipline and deny it on another. Your doing so is clearly agenda driven.

It's ok, we all do these things sometimes. The important thing is that we recognize it and improve our positions.

I don't see how abandoning your support of Hawking on this materially hurts your position herein, so there's really no debate-based reason for you not to concede this. The only reason to refuse is pride.


Also, it's not nice to start a thread with someone's quote and then tell that person to shut up when they have you in a corner.
 
Luftwaffe said:
FactPile » We are the 10% - Daily debates about Comics, Movies & Video Games.

If you pick the right threads people actually talk of the feasibility of things like this, armors, weapons, nukes, everything is looked at very carefully, calculations are made, and battle situations are created and tested out.

Since you and I at this point are arguing about a fictional yet possible battle in the future between a slightly or (depending on when we meet them) extremely advanced humanity and an alien species you may as well duke it out with people on a forum website that is much much more specialized at this particular kind of debating, if not, ignorance is bliss my friend.

As for being fancy? No need to be fancy when you have a weapon that can level miles of land on end with the energy of millions of tons of TNT.

Explosions are also quick and hard to spot in space if we get in to the realm of space warfare. Unless they spot the tiny carriage for the warheads a detonation in space is determined to be an extremely quick flash and then nothing (due to the conditions of space as compared to planets with our atmosphere or an atmosphere in general). Nukes are much more deadly in space than anywhere else, and if humans ever met aliens the biggest and most important battle will always be space, not planets, for many reasons.
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No cheating. The premise of the thread is that we meet aliens at our current development. You could say that a piece of lead is also quite deadly, but it's the delivery system that is crucial. We already have missile defense systems that can shoot other missiles out of the sky, and as it stands missiles are our only means of delivery for a nuclear bomb. I'm dubious at the idea of aliens not being able to deal with such crude projectiles.
 
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Cardinal said:
I don't think the argument is that social advances can't happen alongside technological development, but that they don't necessarily have to either.
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I don't see how they couldn't. Now it may be merely coincidental that the period of our greatest strides in social development just happened to have coincided with our most rapid rate of scientific and technological advancement. My understanding of the process is one of symbiosis, as evidenced by proportionate historical change.
 
Luftwaffe said:
It's all theoretical however, is my point.

Science finds the truth only through observation, we do not have observation of this happening.

The value of theories like these = ???
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We are observing them, the question is how to enter them and survive and where do they go(?)
 
NoC_T said:
I don't see how they couldn't. Now it may be merely coincidental that the period of our greatest strides in social development just happened to have coincided with our most rapid rate of scientific and technological advancement. My understanding of the process is one of symbiosis, as evidenced by proportionate historical change.
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Frankly, I'm of the opinion that the "social evolution" you're referring to here doesn't really exist in the first place.

Human society and human nature really haven't changed at all. What's changed, is our overall level of wealth and prosperity. Fat, happy, and carefree people simply aren't as readily inclined to turn to violence and theft as the desperate and needy variety.

There's just no real point to it in most cases.

Honestly, I think that's probably the best we could really hope for from any "advanced" alien species we might theoretically encounter as well; that they'll be content and well supplied enough not to really need anything from us, or our piddly little planet, and inclined to either look upon us as a novelty (as modern Westerners tend to look at tribal hunter-gatherers), or ignore us outright as such.
 
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NoC_T said:
I don't see how they couldn't. Now it may be merely coincidental that the period of our greatest strides in social development just happened to have coincided with our most rapid rate of scientific and technological advancement. My understanding of the process is one of symbiosis, as evidenced by proportionate historical change.
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There are examples of technological advancement symbiotically leading to advancement, but I would argue that the framework for that social advancement had already been in place.

Example 1: our invention and use of the atomic bomb created a revulsion in the world's consciousness at the idea of using such weapons again. That being said, that revulsion couldn't have happened if we did not feel a sufficient level of empathy to begin with.
Example 2: advances in agriculture lead to the idea that everyone has the right to be fed. Again, however, that idea wouldn't have gotten such a foothold without empathy...again. So the faulty assumption is a certain quantity of empathy.
 
Gathomas88 said:
Frankly, I'm of the opinion that the "social evolution" you're referring to here doesn't really exist in the first place.

Human society and human nature really haven't changed at all. What's changed, is our overall level of wealth and prosperity. Fat, happy, and carefree people simply aren't as readily inclined to turn to violence and theft as the desperate and needy variety.

There's no need for it.

Honestly, I think that's probably the best we could really hope for from any "advanced" alien species we might encounter; that they're content and well supplied enough not to need anything from us, or our piddly little planet, and inclined to either look upon us as a novelty (as modern Westerners tend to look at tribal peoples), or ignore us outright as such.
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But what prompted this sudden superabundance of foodstuffs where there had always been scarcity, if not the Agricultural Revolution, which in turn was made possible with emergent technology? Or the mechanisation born of the Industrial Revolution that followed it. These changes don't begin and end in a vacuum of revelation. They have a fundamental impact on everything we recognise as being part and parcel of our society. Four centuries of slavery was eclipsed in the blink of an eye for a reason.

I'm not quite sure how you arrive at the conclusion that our own society doesn't differ at all from, say, those that existed in classical antiquity. Personally, I'd struggle to justify the position that they're mirror images of each other.
 
NoC_T said:
Because the image of a greedy banker, sat rubbing his hands in glee as he repossesses a family home home, doesn't quite gel with the image of a society in which economic, educational, health and social issues have been long since resolved against a backdrop of scientific advancement ten thousand years beyond our own.

Because the prospect of hunter-gatherers chasing down deer and dressed in animal furs, in Washington in 2014 strikes me as a vaguely amusing notion.
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So you assuming that because of science their will no greed. Star Trek shows advance alien society were greed is exist humans in Star Trek still have greed.
 
NoC_T said:
But what prompted this sudden superabundance of foodstuffs where there had always been scarcity, if not the Agricultural Revolution, which in turn was made possible with emergent technology? Or the mechanisation born of the Industrial Revolution that followed it. These changes don't begin and end in a vacuum of revelation. They have a fundamental impact on everything we recognise as being part and parcel of our society. Four centuries of slavery was eclipsed in the blink of an eye for a reason.

I'm not quite sure how you arrive at the conclusion that our own society doesn't differ at all from, say, those that existed in classical antiquity. Personally, I'd struggle to justify the position that they're mirror images of each other.
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Short answer? Population growth. :shrug:

Larger and larger groups of people require larger and larger supplies of foodstuffs and other essential goods to keep them alive. This, in turn, requires more and more innovative forms of industry to produce those foodstuffs and essential goods, which also necessitates more and more complex means of social and societal organization to keep that "productive" system in working order.

Technology kind of "snowballs" off of that over successive generations, as does culture and social philosophy.

This doesn't change the fact that the human species itself has not fundamentally changed, however. There frankly hasn't been enough time for any such adaptations to take hold.

To contrary, we're much the same cavemen we ever were, and beholden to the same instincts. What's changed, are our circumstances.

We don't have to behave like callous brutes to survive, so we by and large don't. :shrug:
 
Cardinal said:
There are examples of technological advancement symbiotically leading to advancement, but I would argue that the framework for that social advancement had already been in place.

Example 1: our invention and use of the atomic bomb created a revulsion in the world's consciousness at the idea of using such weapons again. That being said, that revulsion couldn't have happened if we did not feel a sufficient level of empathy to begin with.
Example 2: advances in agriculture lead to the idea that everyone has the right to be fed. Again, however, that idea wouldn't have gotten such a foothold without empathy...again. So the faulty assumption is a certain quantity of empathy.
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Isn't empathy per se somewhat moot, considering it's an inbuilt extension of our psychology that predates any social discourse? The architects of history's most brutal and oppressive tyrannies were human beings, also. That's like saying a capacity for thought is an essential prerequisite for building a nuclear power plant. One might just as easily decide not to do so.

You can argue that the water wheel necessitated no significant social upheaval, but aside from advances that occur sporadically, periods of massive technological change will always occur alongside equally colossal social revolution.
 
cpgrad08 said:
So you assuming that because of science their will no greed. Star Trek shows advance alien society were greed is exist humans in Star Trek still have greed.
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Ya know, right about know, I'm thinking that course of Swahili could have been a good move, after all.
 
Cardinal said:
The place is earth. The year is now. We have heard for the first time in human history alien signals, and if we reach out to them they can find us. Do we

a)Contact them, under the logic that any alien race is likely to be highly civilized by our own standards, and will therefore be benevolent. After all, we can see a gradual easing off of barbarism in recent history. Conquering and pillaging is no longer glorified, and is punished when possible. It seems natural to assume that an alien race has already passed trials similar to our own, and only by civilizing itself would it be able to cross the vast interstellar space to reach us.

In my debate opponent's own words:



b)Not contact them and wait until we know more, under the logic that the only example we have of an intelligent species (our own) is one that has acted badly to each other, other species and the earth for most of recorded history. If there's even the remotest chance that they could be as awful as we have been, why take the chance? We might be too unenlightened by their own standards to be worth treating as equals. There's the possibility they might not even consider us sentient. We might be their food.
c)nanoo nanoo

From Page Not Found - Debate Politics Forums
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I really don't understand the question.....are you talking about legal or illegal aliens?:confused:
 
Navy Pride said:
I really don't understand the question.....are you talking about legal or illegal aliens?:confused:
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Pure gold. Thanks Navy. However, we're discussing actual aliens. As in "from another planet."
 
Cardinal said:
The place is earth. The year is now. We have heard for the first time in human history alien signals, and if we reach out to them they can find us. Do we

a)Contact them, under the logic that any alien race is likely to be highly civilized by our own standards, and will therefore be benevolent. After all, we can see a gradual easing off of barbarism in recent history. Conquering and pillaging is no longer glorified, and is punished when possible. It seems natural to assume that an alien race has already passed trials similar to our own, and only by civilizing itself would it be able to cross the vast interstellar space to reach us.

In my debate opponent's own words:



b)Not contact them and wait until we know more, under the logic that the only example we have of an intelligent species (our own) is one that has acted badly to each other, other species and the earth for most of recorded history. If there's even the remotest chance that they could be as awful as we have been, why take the chance? We might be too unenlightened by their own standards to be worth treating as equals. There's the possibility they might not even consider us sentient. We might be their food.
c)nanoo nanoo

From Page Not Found - Debate Politics Forums
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You may think I am full of it, but I do believe we have been watched for a very long time. So I really do not think it matters if we reach out or not. I do think other superior intelligence life out there is quite aware of mankind's existence. But superior intelligence does not mean they are are peaceful, that they developed along the same track as we.
 
Gathomas88 said:
Short answer? Population growth. :shrug:

Larger and larger groups of people require larger and larger supplies of foodstuffs and other essential goods to keep them alive. This, in turn, requires more and more innovative forms of industry to produce those foodstuffs and essential goods, which also necessitates more and more complex means of social and societal organization to keep that "productive" system in working order.

Technology kind of "snowballs" off of that over successive generations, as does culture and social philosophy.

This doesn't change the fact that the human species itself has not fundamentally changed, however. There frankly hasn't been enough time for any such adaptations to take hold.

To contrary, we're much the same cavemen we ever were, and beholden to the same instincts. What's changed, are our circumstances.

We don't have to behave like callous brutes to survive, so we by and large don't. :shrug:
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The hungry always felt they needed to be fed. At what numerical level does satisfying hunger suddenly become imperative or initiate scientific advancement? It surely didn't take us thousands of years to realise that starvation is unpleasant. These revolutions occurred in spite of hunger, not because of it. To my knowledge, the starving masses weren't responsible for invention. This was the product of scientific advancement made possible by sweeping changes in the philosophical perspectives wrought during the Renaissance.

Prior to agricultural innovation, population was severely restricted. There was only hunter-gathering and then later, subsistence farming at feudal level. There is no population without food, Gath. This doesn't occur in reverse. Disease and sanitation also were factors; both addressed by the upcoming period of scientific advancement.

I'm not arguing that our biological make-up has changed. The rate of technological advance and social mobility outpace evolutionary change by a factor of orders. Yet, for all it's constancy, our biology hasn't precluded rapid advancement in either sphere.
 
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