Why do we assume that aliens would be far more advanced than us?

Pharsalus

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Not sure if this point has been brought up, but the assumption that an invading alien species would have a higher level of military technology than us is born out of anthropomorphism. We assume that at some level the intelligent life out there will act like us, and the development of most technologies throughout our history has been spurred on by competition of national armies. Our recent history shows a drift away from lethal competition, but the drive for human progression is based in the evolutionary principle that aggression means success.
Hopefully we can all get along, but if a race had the tech to come all the way to us...
 

wulfy42

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If I remember right the nearest star system to us is Alpha Cenauri..and it's a bit over 4 light years away. Travel within our solar system....while complicated, is predictable based on set specific orbits around the sun (so you can calculate where a planetary body will be at a specific time..and determine the path to get there and arrive at that point in time/space.

The problem with traveling to another star...is that you don't have a specific orbit you can use for your calculations. We know that our sun is moving, and that the suns in Alpha Centuri are moving...but determining the exact trajectory, speed etc would be almost impossible. So determining the actual path to get from here to there.....without missing...would be impossible.


Now...many people think it would just take too long to travel that distance. We have not had any luck reaching any significant fraction of the speed of light. Even if you had enough fuel....you have to factor in both the time to accelerate to the speed required to travel the vast disctance...and the time needed to decelerate as well...which means even with a high speed of acceleration, you could only accelerate for half the distance....then you would have to start decelerating.

With such long distances...you couldn't do much from trial and error....which basically means it's hit or miss...fire and forget...because your not going to know the result for a very...very long time if ever. That doesn't mean it's impossible though.....especially since you could ensure the ship had the ability to adjust as it went. The whole...will you hit the star...isn't so important with such large distances...since your acceleration is in the general direction needed...and course corrections can be made, especially if you don't reach extreme speeds.

To travel the 30+ trillion miles...with our current technology...it would probably take thousands of years to make it, and that is our closest neighbor. The chance of it actually having a planet that could be terraformed is very low (especially due to it's suns etc). We do have planets in our own solar system that can be terraformed though, and by the time we did that...we would be in a position to create very large space ships that could sustain life for many generations, and possibly have the resources on board to restock on various planets/moons if it does reach a system and finds nowhere that can be terraformed.

First step: Create an orbital space station around the earth that can allow various parts to be put together to create larger objects in space (ships etc) and can store supplies etc.

Second step: Create stations on the moon (you can't terraform the moon), that can allow for mining and resource gathering..and even larger scale building. If you can find metals etc on the moon that will drastically increase what we can create since it's so much easier to get items into space from the moon then earth.

Next step would then be to build a large enough ship, with enough supplies....to send to mars and create stations there, to drill for more resources etc. Ice/Water would be needed as well to at least attempt to create livable domed cities on mars. To actually terraform mars we would either need a nice large meteor with plenty of water/ice...or to find ice/water under the surface of mars.

It might just be easier to eventually build large stations on the moon...and jump right to say Titan..which we could probably terraform using only what is on that planet. Which would give us another base of opperations that is further out in the solar system.

After we have all that set up...we could start using all the resources on the planets we have terraformed or even just have stations on.....to build HUGE mini-planet space ships. This ships would be build to sustain life..and probably be about the size of a city. Currently we have not been able to create self sustaining biodomes....there is a consistant loss in minerals etc over time that would eventually mean everything inside would die. The solution to that for now is to have extra supplies that can be used to replace what is lost. That solution would not work forever though. It could work for long enough though to get us to our closest neighbor probably (with a large enough ship, and enough extra supplies. I believe the larger the biodome...the smaller the amount of loss).

If we had buckled down, gotten together as a race and worked together constantly at space exploration, we could certainly have a space station and outposts on the moon by now. It's even possible we could have some on Mars at this point..and be mining/drilling for resources on both mars and the moon.

We didn't though, and it's looking like a unified effort in that direction is not going to happen anytime soon....or ever unless technological advances happen soon. We missed our opportunity...and sadly I think it is too late for us to ever expand beyond this planet at this point.
 

Fallere825

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I have a similar Train of thought regarding aliens, In my mind, Just as we develop Faster then light space travel and venture far into deep space, we fly past the 1st aliens we ever encounter, each looking out the windows of our space ships talking to the crews of our respective spaceships saying "who were those guys?".

In my mind they are not any more advanced then we are, but we won't meet them until we ourselves also have the technology to travel faster then light.
 

Agayek

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Jacco said:
I guess what I'm saying is that because they are aliens, they will certainly have developed along different parameters than we have so their technology in one area might be far beyond ours but an area of ours might be far beyond theirs as well.

Thoughts?
There's an element of anthropomorphism to it, insofar as we as a people are generally incapable of properly understanding a truly alien mindset, and so we tend to make behavioral predictions from assumptions of human-like thought processes, and human technology has always been military first and foremost.

The rest of it is fear. Any alien species capable of reaching Earth within a time and resource limit that makes the trip worthwhile has figured out how to bend physics over the table and stick their dick in it. It is literally beyond our current understanding of the universe, and that implies that the aliens have an understanding of physics that is literally beyond our comprehension.

Combine the two, and it's quite easy to see why people would generally assume that any interstellar alien force would have military technology on par with, if not exceeding that of, their spaceflight technology.

Is it always going to be true? Probably not (I've read some fun sci-fi stories about interstellar alien forces that use flintlock guns for example), but it certainly would be for humanity, so people tend to assume it's true in all cases.
 

Hagi

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If there's anything I've learned from http://what-if.xkcd.com/ it's that if you have the ability to go anywhere near light-speed or teleport stuff around, either of which would be required for travel between solar systems in any realistic fashion, then you don't need conventional weaponry anymore.

It doesn't matter if the species in question has no clue what a bow is, let alone a gun. If you launch any object, any object at all, at a planet at near light-speed it will do serious damage, all that energy has got to go somewhere. As soon as you start launching bigger objects fast enough you're going to punch through a planet's mantle and turn the whole thing molten ( in the case of the Earth at least ).

For teleportation it's much the same. Just start teleporting random objects into Earth's gravity well and sooner or later ( probably sooner ) you're going to fuck things up enough for the majority of humanity to die out. If you're a bit more selective in what you teleport, really big stuff only, it won't be just a majority.
 

Samantha Burt

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Jacco said:
I remember when the film "Battle: LA" came out, lots of people were like "that's unrealistic because if the aliens could travel through space to get here, they would be able to stomp us easily."
My problem was that if they were gonna fly interstellar distances for water, why not land on Europa and just melt the ice? Surely setting up some industrial heaters would be easier than mass extermination of an indigenous species.
 

Overusedname

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This does a good job explaining the assumption. It's weird to break down intelligence to a number, but it does put it in perspective.
 

Mauler

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If they can develop a sucessful technology for ftl travel(hyperspace, Wormholes, etc...) then you could assume they hawe travelled for quite some time to accidentally bump into our grossly underdeveloped civilization then they could hawe the technology to in worst case scenario smash an asteroid into earth so the weapons technology would not be needed for them if the war would break out... also why would they come here and just attack us before studying...
 

King of Asgaard

Vae Victis, Woe to the Conquered
Oct 31, 2011
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Why?
Because if Master of Orion and Civilization have taught me anything, it's that anyone who is not the player character race are a bunch of xenophobic genocide-enforcing dicks who will stop at nothing to blow up your home, and so will make the biggest nature-defying space cannons you've ever seen, stick them on the biggest nature-defying spaceships you've ever seen, and start a-genocidin'.
 

wulfy42

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Why attack us before studying?

Let me list a few reasons:

First...life sustainable planets (Even planets that could be terraformed) could be (and probably are) extremely rare. Huge amount of resources may need to be expanded even with much advanced technology to find them.

Second, we are a warlike species with the ability to destroy this planet, or at least make it much harder for this planet to sustain life in the near future.

Third even though we are sentient...we might seem like insects to aliens that showed up here. Alien to them, and far, far below them in technology (much like a hive of ants might seem like to use...that happen to be situated right where we want to camp)

Fourth, if there is 1 alien race out there that can travel around, there may be more then 1, and the more there are, the more likely one is very aggresive. It just takes 1 aggressive alien race to make all the others more likely to wipe out new species before they become a threat...especially if that species appears aggresive already.

Fifth....in most of our films....we destroy any aliens we meet. If the aliens bothered to translate our signals.....I'd hesitate before befriending us. Safest bet is to just wipe out humanity ..then study us after we are gone.

Sixth, The aliens may need a different atmosphere, temperature etc to live in then us...and they didn't travel all this way to just study creatures living on a planet (they want to live here).

There are more...but it's probably as likely if not more likely that any alien species that did show up...would want to get rid of us...not live with us.
 

Hoplon

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Mar 31, 2010
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Jacco said:
I was just reading the Wikipedia article on the "Wow" signal and it mentioned this:
Scientists say that if the signal came from extraterrestrials, they are likely an extremely advanced civilization, as the signal would have required a 2.2-gigawatt transmitter, vastly more powerful than any on Earth.
Now that strikes me as an odd conclusion to draw because it completely disregards the idea of sectionalized technological advancement.
Sectionalised technological advancement isn't a thing, technological advancements are usually dependant on other technology which in turn effect other things as they advance.

Does that actually tell us anything about alien life? not really, but if certain rules governing things like thermodynamics hold true everywhere then there are limits on what people that build flintlocks know about lots of other things too.
 

Lonewolfm16

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Jacco said:
IceForce said:
Well, if they've developed highly advanced space travel technology, they'd be silly not to have developed highly advanced weapons technology too, to defend themselves.
If you're heading into the great unknown, you're gonna want to defend yourself.

Then again, it's possible they might be a 100% pacifist alien civilization, and the entire concept of battle and combat is completely foreign to them.
Defend yourself from what? The odds of the galaxy being populated with dozens of advanced civilizations are so minimal. Realistically, a space faring civilization would only need weapons capable of destroying natural threats like asteroids and possibly for fighting other members of their own species, neither of which would require Death Star planet lasers. On the off chance you did encounter an alien species, you both would likely be too interested in studying each other to just start shooting.

Unless they're the Covenant in which case we're boned.
Well 1. any alien race interested in invasion is going to be armed for said invasion. And alien movies where they are really friendly and well mannered don't sell tickets, so we get very few. 2. its pretty logical that if they can think of ways to propel spacecraft really really fast they can propel other stuff too. Basically if they have come up with the correct materials, propulsion systems, and guidance systems for space travel, they can make weapons. If there ship runs on nuclear power, they can make a nuclear bomb. If they bend space, they can just weaponize that. If you have advanced enough technology that you can fly through space, you can easily take some of that and weaponize it.
 

Amaror

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Jacco said:
I was just reading the Wikipedia article on the "Wow" signal and it mentioned this:
Scientists say that if the signal came from extraterrestrials, they are likely an extremely advanced civilization, as the signal would have required a 2.2-gigawatt transmitter, vastly more powerful than any on Earth.
Now that strikes me as an odd conclusion to draw because it completely disregards the idea of sectionalized technological advancement.

I remember when the film "Battle: LA" came out, lots of people were like "that's unrealistic because if the aliens could travel through space to get here, they would be able to stomp us easily." Ditto with Independence Day, and any other alien invasion film you can think of.

I just don't get why that is such a popular assumption. I mean, sure they might be more advanced in space flight if they can travel through space, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have developed highly advanced military technology. Or with the Wiki article, just because they might have vastly more powerful radios doesn't mean they have developed computer technology to our level.

I guess what I'm saying is that because they are aliens, they will certainly have developed along different parameters than we have so their technology in one area might be far beyond ours but an area of ours might be far beyond theirs as well.

Thoughts?

Capcha: Hot sauce.

I agree. Our hot sauce technology sets the bar for everyone.
Because when they can travel through space, that means they need a lot of power.
And everything that generates a lot of power can be in some form used to make very powerfull weapons.
And assuming they are coming to Earth to attack us, they are most likely in the mindset to make weapons from their technology.
So Yeah they should have pretty powerfull weapons.
 

BaronUberstein

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"A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive." -Larry Niven

If a species has the ability to cross the stars as a reasonable speed, the types of energy they have access too could very easily be weaponized.
 

Sofus

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Why do we always picture aliens to be incredibly advanced aswell as them only ever arriving here to annihilate or conquer our planet?

The answers are rather simple:

1. Humanity will never be capable of traveling beyond our own solar system, and if we ever did make a proper attempt, then the people we would have to send would be children or infants.

2. Humanity will attempt to annihilate any sentient species which is not our own, should we ever encounter one. If monkey suddenly began to speak, then our first reaction would be that of fear, the next would be our deranged conception that this world belongs to us, and us alone. Making the aliens the aggressor is alot easier for people to accept than having some space hippie alien be sloughtered upon arriving on our planet.

3. We picture aliens to be highly advanced simply because our own species is so very young, and if there is no intelligent life out there that is already capable of spacefaring, then we won't be capable of conquering other planets either. And let's be honest for a moment... humans are only good at swinging clubs.

4. We imagine aliens to be cruel and bloodthirsty because that is exactly what our own species is.
 

Guitarmasterx7

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It's very possible. If they had no concept of self for example, (all the food is everyones, anyone can mate with anyone, everything is done for the advancement of the species, etc) they might not even consider the prospect of killing. On top of that, you're assuming that the way in which they are able to travel galaxies is in any way conventionally understood. They could have access to completely different resources than us. What if there's nothing on their planet that combusts? What if they found a way to turn matter into super fast radio waves and have them deconstruct elsewhere?

Actually when you think about it humans put a lot of our resources as a species into killing each other. And also into luxury for that matter. Take a movie for example. We put millions of dollars and a shit ton of man hours into something, and then millions of people then go there to look at a screen and get mental stimulation. Or even something like food. If a species of aliens all only ate one thing, food would be something like electricity, where you just have it and that's it. No grocery stores, no restaurants, no junk foods, nothing for white girls in their 20s to put on the instagram, no instagram.

I'd actually say it's more probable that we have radically different technology than aliens who have actually been productive enough to master space travel.
 

Mobax

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Overusedname said:

This does a good job explaining the assumption. It's weird to break down intelligence to a number, but it does put it in perspective.
That was a very interesting thought process, but I disagree with Tyson that the 1% difference alone is what makes us smarter. Perhaps an alien species with 1% DNA diff. from us isn't an entire magnitude smarter, but just 1% smarter. After all, early humans were not much smarter then chimps, but we share their DNA. Our brains are able to learn and process and extraordinary amount information. Heck, just look at the amount of information available to you and I right now, we can learn and know more then Da Vinci did. Or we can learn all the work Einstein did in his entire lifetime, and we can build from there.

Of course any aliens who would be able to make it to earth would likely be much further down the intelligence road then us, whether or not they were fundamentally smarter then us, or if they were just more advanced. If that alien's "Einstein" had lived 1000 years ago they've had a millennium to build on those ideas.

More on topic, the assumption aliens would be more advanced then us only applies to aliens that can make it to earth, or are able to send signals to our solar system/galaxy from another system/galaxy. This is almost certainly true because of insanely big space is. As many people have said, the distances to the nearest star 4.24 ly away. To travel that distance in any reasonable amount of time requires so much energy, if a species could produce it they would have to be more advanced then us. We are able to calculate the trips to other stars, they would actually be able to do it. It's similar to Leonardo Da Vinci's design for a helicopter compared to our current ability to actually maker helicopters. That's over 500 years of advancement.

The distances is space also make it almost impossible that we'll ever reach another galaxy, or be visited by aliens from another galaxy. Unless we wait for millions years for Andromeda galaxy to come crashing into the milky way, then we'll be closer =p

I personally believe given the vastness of the universe there is a high chance there is intelligent life. However I also believe it is unlikely we'll ever meet them. Two needles in a giant hay stack.
 

Esotera

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Everyone seems to have focused on our perceptions of aliens, but we live in a relatively young area of the universe that has had little time for solar systems to develop. There are places out there that have billions of years of a head start on us and the conditions for life, I can't even begin to comprehend what that sort of level of technology would look like.

Also I don't assume that most aliens are more intelligent, I'd say it's likely that most are a primitive form of life a bit like bacteria/archaea. The intelligent ones are likely a lot more advanced than us because we are at a very early stage of development for a species...we only really started the race 200,000 years ago.
 

Abomination

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If your species is capable of navigating the stars you're also likely capable of exploiting the resources of said stars.

We're talking about species that could tap into helium 3... or other sources of fuel and power we have not even considered.

If they can propel a ship faster than light speed they can most certainly propel a ballistic faster than light speed.

If we can build the Titanic they could build a Titanic that can travel faster than light speed.

If they were to fire that faster than light speed Titanic at the earth the damage would be cataclysmic.

You think the atom bomb is scary? That's an unrefined explosion compared to what that type of species would have in store for us. What's more they wouldn't even need to get their hands dirty. They could just sit in orbit and toss rocks at us. They would be so advanced they could kill us with rocks.

The idea that a race capable of inter-stellar travel wouldn't be more advanced than us in other fields of science is absurd... the spillover effects of their FTL research would be the equivalent of us moving from the Bronze Age to the Modern Era.
 

Thaluikhain

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wulfy42 said:
The problem with traveling to another star...is that you don't have a specific orbit you can use for your calculations. We know that our sun is moving, and that the suns in Alpha Centuri are moving...but determining the exact trajectory, speed etc would be almost impossible. So determining the actual path to get from here to there.....without missing...would be impossible.
Er...why do you need to know that? You know what the two are relative to each other, and more or less relative to the centre of the galaxy (if you are concerned with circular motion).

Abomination said:
If they were to fire that faster than light speed Titanic at the earth the damage would be cataclysmic.
Er...if they fire it at just less than light speed, yes. Firing at light speed, though, nobody can really say, given that as far as we know, going faster than light is impossible. Assuming it to be possible, there will be all sorts of weird effects very different from what we are used to seeing, we can say what'd it be like as a weapon. Having said that, they'd have the ability to easily make various impressive weapons of some kind or other.