Poll: First Contact - If Intelligent Aliens Arive, Would They Invade?

[Thaluikhain]

Conflict breeds invention and competition. That's just how Humanity works.

Competition does not have to be in the form of an outright conflict, though.

In any case, the main point was that some time before being able to destroy another civilisation in another system, a civilisation has to develop the ability to destroy itself, something that was unknown throughout human history.

Imagine if the losing side of a war had the ability to devastate the biosphere...sooner or later someone would. Hence, it seems that war would have to be abandoned beforehand, or you don't get to progress very far.

Having said that, this is making a guess about what our future will be like, and nobody can really say for sure.

 

[MonsterCrit]

The need the conquer and dominate would be inherent in any intelligent life. To rise to the level of interstellar travel they would have to overcome all natural predatory forces and have control over access to all resources in their native biosphere. You don't get that way by being nice and peaceful.

But there's also a level of pragmatism. To invade , will take time and resources so the resources they would hope to gain would have to outweight the value of the resources they are expending. So unless the skin of our faces is like the equivalent of boner pills or spanishfly or the cure for cancer for their species. We're not likely to be worth the trouble to invade.

 

[Dalisclock]

Really depends what they are like and what they what. They may be thrilled to meet another intelligent species, disgusted by how insanely violent we may seem, see us the same way the Europeans saw the people of the lands they colonized(Either as primitives or a particularly clever form of beast) or ignore us completely.

They probably wouldn't bother to invade if they really did want to get rid of us. If they can travel across instellar space, it stands to reason it would be easy enough for them to grab a couple asteroids on the way in and redirect them to earth, which would be more then enough to knock civilization back a couple hundred years. And there wouldn't be much we could do about it either.

 

[dyre]

-snip-

The problem with Bostrom's theory in my opinion is that it relies on the idea that habitable worlds have been around for a long time, relatively speaking it's fairly possible that Earth like planets are only possible around stars with in our spectral class. Due in part to the fact that Blue-white stars don't last long enough to develop habitable worlds. Also most of the materials needed for life to be possible are only created by blue-white super giant stars. So generally speaking, life in the universe is probably only a few billion years old all told, just because it takes time to get the necessary resources developed by stars and gathered in high enough concentrations for life to happen.

Edit: Also it discounts any theory that evolution eventually results in a post physical species.

Also besides that extinction level events happen relatively often, even full scale nuclear war is very unlikely to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth. The only thing that can wipe life off the face of the planet are one of two things. The failure of Earth's magnetic field, or the sun entering red giant stage of it's life.

That was my first thought as well, but I find it to be statistically implausible. It could be that humanity is on the cutting edge of advanced life in this galaxy, but highly unlikely. Even if life-sustaining planets have only been around in this galaxy for the ~4.5 billion years that Earth has existed, then surely intelligent life will have evolved on other planets at slightly different rates. Some planets would be faster, some would be slower, but the order of magnitude by which we interpret "faster" and "slower" would be in the hundreds of millions of years. So, for your argument to apply, then you must believe not only that life-sustaining planets can only have existed for the past 4.5 billion years, but also that on every one of those planets among the 100+ billion stars of this galaxy, it takes at least 4.5 billion years for microorganisms to evolve into highly intelligent life. Earth, and humanity, would have to be literally the galaxy's best habitat for the evolution of intelligent life, which seems like a bit of a stretch.

I'm not aware of any academic consensus about "post-physical" species, can you elaborate?

Nuclear war might not wipe all humanity off the planet (I disagree on the "very unlikely"). There isn't a consensus on that. And even if it didn't wipe out every single human, it might reduce humanity to pockets of survivors below the minimum sustainable population threshhold, which would eventually die off. In any case, I was only using nuclear war as an example of self-inflicted extinction. By the time we have interstellar travel, we will probably come up with even more effective methods of mass destruction.

 

[RJ 17]

Any species that sees us as a problem on our own planet is likely to have other options, being absurdly more advanced than us. They simply could sit back and open betting books on weather we'll wipe ourselves out, or unify and fix our problems, which would be far easier and more entertaining than wiping us out. On the other hand if they're morally opposed to how we're conducting ourselves, they're still likely to see us as valuable, because we're sapient life forms. They then could easily and covertly subvert us and remake our society into something they see as beneficial, which would be mutually beneficial to both us and them. It'd also require less resources and effort than wiping us out, while providing a net gain. Because honestly to wipe humanity off the planet they'd basically have to destroy the world. Which would damage resources and destroy native life, which also means reusing the planet would be far more difficult. Also talking resources, an absurdly more advanced species can probably produce the resources of earth with little, or no effort, so our resources would have little, or no meaning to them anyways.

These are hypotheticals we're dealing with, right? I don't see why you're putting so much effort into trying to invalidate my opinion on the matter.

For all we know the first alien lifeform that contacts us could have received broadcasted McDonalds commercials and traced the signal as a means to seek out their one true god: Ronald McDonald.

Could be that aliens land and say "Yeah, we actually created you and all other life on this planet as a science experiment when we were mastering the intricacies of String Theory. Just thought you'd like to know that everything you call "religion" is a complete lie. It was all us."

Who knows? There could even be another race of humans out there amongst the stars!

Or there could be a race of hostile aliens that go from one star to the next searching for resource-rich planets who have some kind of beam-field weapon that they sweep across inhabited worlds that, when attuned to a species' DNA, would vaporize any lifeform containing that DNA. After all, as the saying goes: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. A hostile alien force with the technology necessary to reach us could have a weapon that "purges" the planet of sentient life while leaving everything else intact.

 

[Thaluikhain]

For all we know the first alien lifeform that contacts us could have received broadcasted McDonalds commercials and traced the signal as a means to seek out their one true god: Ronald McDonald.

That would require them to be pretty close by, our signals haven't had time to reach very far.

Also, since there is a limited amount of McDonald's customers in deep space, they've not been too concerned about sending powerful advertising able to reach very far out.

 

[RJ 17]

For all we know the first alien lifeform that contacts us could have received broadcasted McDonalds commercials and traced the signal as a means to seek out their one true god: Ronald McDonald.

That would require them to be pretty close by, our signals haven't had time to reach very far.

Also, since there is a limited amount of McDonald's customers in deep space, they've not been too concerned about sending powerful advertising able to reach very far out.

And yet have you been inside a McDonalds lately? I'm quite certain a number of the customers in there the last time I went were aliens in disguise, MIB style.

 

[Thaluikhain]

For all we know the first alien lifeform that contacts us could have received broadcasted McDonalds commercials and traced the signal as a means to seek out their one true god: Ronald McDonald.

That would require them to be pretty close by, our signals haven't had time to reach very far.

Also, since there is a limited amount of McDonald's customers in deep space, they've not been too concerned about sending powerful advertising able to reach very far out.

And yet have you been inside a McDonalds lately? I'm quite certain a number of the customers in there the last time I went were aliens in disguise, MIB style.

Unless going to a McDonald's disqualifies one from being considered intelligent, that might have some bearing on this thread.

 

[RJ 17]

For all we know the first alien lifeform that contacts us could have received broadcasted McDonalds commercials and traced the signal as a means to seek out their one true god: Ronald McDonald.

That would require them to be pretty close by, our signals haven't had time to reach very far.

Also, since there is a limited amount of McDonald's customers in deep space, they've not been too concerned about sending powerful advertising able to reach very far out.

And yet have you been inside a McDonalds lately? I'm quite certain a number of the customers in there the last time I went were aliens in disguise, MIB style.

Unless going to a McDonald's disqualifies one from being considered intelligent, that might have some bearing on this thread.

See? The invasion has already begun! THEY'VE COME FOR OUR FAKE-MEAT CHEESEBURGERS!!!

 

[omega 616]

I think if an alien race is advanced enough to reach us, they have probably thought "there is no intelligent life there". We say Some primates and dolphins etc are intelligent but I don't see them driving or doing anything to really understand the world around them, we are astounded when they balance a ball on their nose.

So what if aliens see us like that? What if they are observing us like a planet sized zoo?

 

[RJ 17]

The point is that all things are possible[footnote]That really does mean that your scenarios could be true, I'm not saying they're totally impossible. In fact, if we live in an infinite universe or infinite multiverse, then not only is your scenario true in some of them, but it's true in an infinite number. Infinity is weird.[/footnote],

Yes, I played BS:Infinite too, and I can't wait to meet my Ronald McDonald worshiping aliens. :3

Beyond that, all I was saying in my original post (the one you quoted was a few posts removed fro my original post) was that I agreed with the notion Stephen Hawking put for that, judging by our history at least, whenever an advanced society encounters an inferior one, it tends not to work out so well for the inferior one.

You asked for one resource that Earth has that doesn't appear in abundance elsewhere? Humans, for one, is a resource that Earth has in abundance that can't be found elsewhere. Its also - by our standards - a habitable planet. Suppose an alien species is on a nomadic journey because their home world met with some catastrophic end. They find our planet, its conditions match the conditions they're require to inhabit it, and so they decide to "evict" us and claim our home as their own.

My point being that there could be any number of reasons for an alien civilization to be openly hostile towards us upon first contact. Just as there's any number of reasons for them to be peaceful - or at least ambivalent - towards us upon first contact. As a bit of a pessimist, though, I tend to lean towards the former.

 

[FalloutJack]

I'm going for 'impossible to tell'. We have so many ideas on the subject that are explored that we already known thait could go either way.

 

[The White Hunter]

While it is true that almost every resource can be collected easier without conquering the Earth, the Earth does have something rare, in the form of living things.

Want to wipe out everything that isn't you, or stick weird creatures in your alien zoo or whatnot, than the Earth is the place to visit.

Hell, for that matter, find a workforce, if the aliens are in a bad way.

Those are good points, but I think there are two things to consider. Any extraterrestrial species making interstellar trips can probably support the crew of a ship indefinitely with food. So that probably wouldn't be a reason to invade. Also getting examples of Earth life forms won't take a full invasion, just some covert snatching of specimens.

Wanting to wipe humanity out for reasons of xenophobia are quite possible, but equally possible is they wouldn't bother, because of not seeing us as a credible threat.

Slave labor, or some for of paid labor are possible, aliens might even want to employ us because we are capable of things that are physically impossible for them.

I would think a sufficiently advanced species capable of interstellar travel likely to be more curious about the universe than wanting to conquer our mudball, but who knows.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

That was my first thought as well, but I find it to be statistically implausible. It could be that humanity is on the cutting edge of advanced life in this galaxy, but highly unlikely. Even if life-sustaining planets have only been around in this galaxy for the ~4.5 billion years that Earth has existed, then surely intelligent life will have evolved on other planets at slightly different rates. Some planets would be faster, some would be slower, but the order of magnitude by which we interpret "faster" and "slower" would be in the hundreds of millions of years. So, for your argument to apply, then you must believe not only that life-sustaining planets can only have existed for the past 4.5 billion years, but also that on every one of those planets among the 100+ billion stars of this galaxy, it takes at least 4.5 billion years for microorganisms to evolve into highly intelligent life. Earth, and humanity, would have to be literally the galaxy's best habitat for the evolution of intelligent life, which seems like a bit of a stretch.

I'm not aware of any academic consensus about "post-physical" species, can you elaborate?

Nuclear war might not wipe all humanity off the planet (I disagree on the "very unlikely"). There isn't a consensus on that. And even if it didn't wipe out every single human, it might reduce humanity to pockets of survivors below the minimum sustainable population threshhold, which would eventually die off. In any case, I was only using nuclear war as an example of self-inflicted extinction. By the time we have interstellar travel, we will probably come up with even more effective methods of mass destruction.

Extinction level events are common occurrences, so life would have to evolve much faster other places than earth to justify this. As if you look at things that have happened on this planet, complex life is not a new thing, it just gets smacked down on a regular basis. Any intelligent species would have had to be able to prevent such things to be significantly more advanced than we are now, it's just as likely they'd be wiped out by a significant ELE if it happened to them at the stage we're at now, or earlier.

It's a loose theory that with enough time to evolve a species can evolve past the need for physical bodies. Like say uploading our selves to digital spaces, or evolving into energy based beings. There is no academic consensus yet because we've never even encountered such beings. That said it's also not impossible.

Considering that a lot of "academics" believe that Nuclear Winter is possible despite the theory it's possible was made by Carl Sagan, using a model of the earth that had no oceans, meaning a flawed pseudoscience theory at very best. The fact that humans live on every continent and many island in far greater than sustainable numbers, and our entire nuclear stock pike is a firecracker compared to a single comet strike. I call it highly unlikely that we'd be able to exterminate ourselves, a large majority of the population, sure, but we survived the ice ages, so we're pretty well resilient enough to survive anything we can do to our selves at this point.

 

[Strazdas]

@KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime: Did a marvelous turn explaining how we, with our current technology, could redirect a comet's trajectory. I'll just add that any interstellar species presumably has (at least) fusion power as the basis of their drives and energy production. Assuming no new physics, no use of exotic matter, just the incredible amount of energy from fusing hydrogen, you could do more than move a comet. You could use a robotic craft that was little more than big deuterium tank and a fusion rocket, land it on Ceres, then steer it right into the target of your choice. We'd see it coming, but so what? We don't have the technology to stop it, even if we nuked it to pieces. A rain of pieces would get the job done just as well.

If you want to go stealthy though, comets are the way to go. Comets move pretty quickly, and they're not as massive as a dwarf planet or giant asteroid. It's hard to imagine that a species contemplating interstellar hostilities will not have the ability to land a small robotic craft on a comet, and steer it. The craft then refuels from the comet itself, then hops off to find another suitable kinetic weapon.

I think you have misunderstood me a bit here. i had no doubt the aliens could steer the comet into earth. i was asking could WE - humans - steer a comet at the aliens. because if we can thats a pretty big "These guys are dangerous" sign right there.

 

[Yopaz]

The only exceptional part of our planet is us being on it, us and the other life present on this rock. If there's a spacefaring species out there capable of traveling the vast expanses of space to reach us then they're very not not going to bother doing so just to attack and risk destroying the only thing that makes this rock special.

Y'know, unless they're giant colossal dicks I guess, which is theoretically an option as well.

We also have a high oxygen concentration, lots of water, lots of metals and an atmosphere that ensures a fairly stable climate. Redox chemistry actually places a demand on an atmosphere containing either oxygen, chloride or fluorine, but the two latter interact dangerously with organic components making oxygen a likely necessary resource for advanced life.

Probably not for the resources - if they have approx. light speed traveling tech(if they didn't have it we would've found them) to arrive this desolate waste-solar system they could just extract the things they need from non-living inhibited planets. Hell, we have 7 extra planets in this solar system.(much more if you include moons)

If they DO invade it would be for a our planet - as in, Earth is not too hot nor cold and aliens can't be bothered to find a new planet - assuming that they have similar origin of life as we do.

So out fate falls to their ethics.(or their fate to our ethics) Logically, I would eradicate humans and purge the life out of the Earth for the security reasons and continued survival of my(that is, alien) species. Sentient lifeforms can be difficult to understand/predict and are potential threat - especially after the first contact has been made.

However, those aliens may favor the harmony between two intelligent species - after all, space is big enough for the two ruling races. In this case less advanced one hits the jackpot. Rules the galaxy together etc.

Well, if you have the choice to mine resources from an inhabitable environment versus the choice of mining form a habitable environment the choice is easy. We have lots of mineral deposits in the ocean which we can get to without too much work, but there's more work than mining what's available on land.

OT: I'd say it's impossible to say. I can give plenty of reasons they would, plenty why they would not. It could go both ways.

 

[Paragon Fury]

The better question is; why wouldn't they?

If life on Earth is anything to extrapolate from, there would be no reason for a much superior force and race to conquer a lesser one. Hell, the only reason it doesn't happen with humanity right now is MAD; if MAD didn't exist then there would be no reason for the United States or Russia or China or the EU to NOT try to physically dominate the other nations.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

I don't know if they will invade.
I do know that I will try to have sex with them, no matter what they do.

 

[Fox12]

They would be stupid if they did. There are plenty of planets that have valuable resources, that don't have life. Besides, if they're powerful enough to reach Earth then, trust me, they don't need our paltry resources.

The only reason to destroy us is if they want to remain the only intelligent life in existence.

 

[Barbas]

What, and share responsibility? I'd just hang around in orbit and watch the little mushroom puffs go off. Either that or I'd virus-bomb it from orbit; if they can travel that far through space then they must be able to introduce lethal diseases to the environment of another species.

I might buzz a few cities, actually.

It's also possible that some of the things that we've invented are things they haven't, leading them to want to trade technology.

Or this. This one's better than mine.