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

[k-ossuburb]

Here's an outsider thought. What if the alien species was just a single-celled organism and it happened to catch a ride, and survive the billion-year journey to our planet where it happened to crash on the moon and leave enough of the little guys intact? Panspermia is a common hypothesis among a lot of conspiracy theorists and science fiction writers (as well as one religious origination that I'm not going to name) but it could happen.

The water bear has been shown to survive in space without much issue and been capable of re-animating itself as soon as it comes into contact with a livable environment, it is also entirely possible that life would be based on another element instead of carbon, silicon has been a favourite among science fiction writers, but scientists are looking into creating inorganic forms of life using other base elements.

There's also the chance that it is organic life, but has come from Mars or one of the moons of Jupiter, alien life doesn't have to come from another galaxy, it just can't be from earth, which means our local planets will suffice.

None of these have to be technologically advanced, because single-celled organisms don't particularly need that for their evolutionary development. However they might be very evolutionarily advanced given how well they've adapted to changing environments they could've gone through several species before reaching us, however because space doesn't provide an abundance of energy the process is significantly slowed á la entropy.

Now, just in case some of you reading this aren't completely familiar with evolutionary theory for some reason, let me clarify that just because something is evolutionarily advanced it doesn't mean that it's become more humanoid or even evolved a brain; evolution isn't decided on how advanced it is by what features an organism has, but how many iterations of it had come before and how well it has evolved to deal with its environment (specialization).

There's plenty of examples here on earth of highly-evolved organisms that have not only been around for a shorter time than we have (relatively speaking) but also haven't reached an intellectual evolutionary stage like we have. Fruit flies and single-celled organisms are prime examples because they can go through several generations in a very short span of time which can make them highly evolved and capable of going through hundreds of mutations and adaptations to their environments, which does make them significantly highly evolved even though they wouldn't know how to craft their own tools.

Basically, what I'm saying is that alien life doesn't have to be something that comes in a space ship to be considered a threat. I'm actually writing a horror/sci-fi novel where a single-celled life-form comes to earth and starts a pandemic that nobody can deal with because of how foreign it is; think Day Of The Trifids on a micro-scale, or the "red weed" from War Of The Worlds). I'm also trying to say that life also doesn't need a space ship to arrive here, there's plenty of other methods of panspermia available that life can survive so long as it is evolved enough to deal with it.

 

[mechman123]

I personally would like to see a movie or game in which humanity has only recently reached or is on the virg of FTL (but the world still looks remarkably like it does now with some obvious advances), and than encounters aliens that are at the same or comperable stage of technology. No tricked out anti-grav vehicles, uber energy weapons, or force fields. And to top it off, they would be just as new to the whole dealing with extra terrestrials as we would be. Talk about tension. It could even flip back and forth between the POVs of different people on both sides to show their reactions to the relization that they truely arent alone anymore. It would be a nice change of pace.

 

[Chaos Marine]

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.

You're reminding me about a short story I read years and years ago. The shtick of the story was that after discovering how to make iron, there was some kind of a connection to it that could allow faster than light travel or some such and races would go around with early 1900s flintlock rifles. They tried to invade the earth and got absolutely slaughtered because they invaded 1990s Earth. Because they were able to travel through space and raid other planets for resources, they never developed beyond that level. It was a strange, strange book.

But realistically, one could not develop proper space travel technology without advanced computational abilities because of necessary number crunching. Which would require advanced electronics to be capable of high power-low heat CPUs etc.

The thing about technologies is how it has a ripple effect where one technology will invariably affects others.

 

[archvile93]

Have you ever heard of a technology base? What this means is that you can't create advanced works of technology without the knowledge and ability to manufacture the base parts. For example, you can't create skyscrapers without the knowledge and technology to create high quality steel at reasonable prices and in large amounts even if you have a strong enough understanding of physics to conceptualize them. Of course, steel can also be used for many other things as well, which our species has explored and created new things based on. If aliens have advanced, extremely long range space craft, they would need a very advanced technology base to produce them, such as cheaply creating various metal alloys, and computer systems we humans have never heard of, and an understanding of natural laws we haven't even begun to consider (Think necron level understanding), if they have those things, it would not be even slightly surprising that they've applied these same things to other fields, such as communication and weapon systems, architecture, and terraforming.

 

[Brandon237]

Everything can be weaponised in a heart-beat and every technological and scientific advancement has implications for parallel branches of technology.

Even if they CAME with no weapons, they'd likely still be able to rip us apart with an "unintended" weapon if they wanted to. Hell flying fast enough with a large vessel over major cities would be a brutal tactic... and dumping whatever fuel / leftovers they had either straight onto us or weaponising into a crap-ton of thermo-nuclear devices would likely not be that hard a task if they could make the journey here.

 

[MXRom]

Put it like this.

If contact comes from them first, they are obviously more advanced than us. They have developed technology that not only allows them to travel the vast distances of space, but also withstand the dangers of space. They will have a way to protect its occupants from space debris ranging from the size of a pebble to the size of a car traveling at speeds faster than anything we can produce, and just shrug it off, or dodge, or destroy said threats. By that merit alone, nothing humanity has would be able to penetrate said protection because nothing we have can launch a projectile that fast or generate enough energy to melt it off. If they are willing to expend the resources needed to reach our system from wherever they come from, they'd better have a damn good reason, and you can bet they'll be kitted out for the worst, cause it's gonna be a long way from home.

Other technologies would be dependent on the race itself, and the culture that shaped it. If they are pacifist, or expansionist, they wouldn't even bother coming to Earth. Why waste resources and manpower prying off the existing occupants when there are plenty of vacant planets in the system? A race like that will very likely be omnivorous or herbivorous, as their evolution shaped them to be aggressive only when avoidance was impossible.

If they were here to invade, they would most likely be carnivorous, as they compete with each other and other species for resources. Because of such heavy competition, it can be assumed that said race will be very well advanced in terms of military.

Of course there are plenty of other factors that determine what they could be, but I assume this to be the basic model.

 

[HoneyVision]

Obviously aliens only exist in fiction. And in fiction, the bigger the threat and the bigger the struggle, the more satisfied we feel as readers, viewers etc when the hero redeems the planet. What's the point of having primitive aliens? They pose no threat, and if there's no threat then there's no conflict.

 

[oZode]

Chances are we would be invaded by alien drones, which could be done by us even given a few centuries and self replicating probes if they do spread would prove quite prevalent in space indeed, much more so than a flesh life form. The motive of the drones would however not be one that gives much opportunity for resistance because they'd wipe out us for whatever threat we may pose due to our teching.

They may prefer to keep a distance, use some rocks to crash the moon into Earth or if not that, kinetically bombard any place where lights shine at night. Though that's assuming the aliens turn out to be dicks, but optimistically given a hundred years we could probably be able to fight my hypothetical drones much more effectively given our predictions of 22nd century tech [as big a gap as 1900s to today I imagine].

Why, Curiosity's descendants may be strip mining asteroids in Alpha Centauri in less than a millennia.

The path in which a technology loving species could go may be surprisingly different to us, like perhaps they don't give a damn about the stars like we do due to their planet not having stars to see? They'd make technology sure, but their advanced civilization may be more inclined to live underground off geothermal energy instead.

Than you got civilizations who may have preferred the imaginary world to the real one, and transferred their minds/souls/consciousness into a massive planet wide computer that only needs the sun to run.

Or perhaps they do like space, but just nomadically go around in its depths, living off material in asteroids far from any star or planet.

That being said chances are if space faring they would know how to drop a rock on something from orbit to hurt it.

Though the universe does have reoccurring elements, and something like humans will surely form, at least something like humans in mindset [I.e the best mindset] but how often is the problem. If there was like, ten intelligent species like humans [including us] in the same galaxy around, seven of which less advanced, two of which more advanced, chances are the chances of meeting would be quite unlikely. But than again it is the more advanced civilizations that make the most noise, or so it would seem.

Yet, I see one other possibility.

FTL could be possible in that we get to the point where we can go to a dimension that has where we want to go in the universe. Like let's say we know a planet twenty light years away got life. Than we could go to a reality where the universe is completely the same except slightly shifted twenty light years in our direction. Therefore we now have much quicker access to that star system.

If that is true, it could be likely less patient species found this out and used their interdimensional portals to explore the universe while not actually exploring their own one, rather many other realities that are the same as their own but with slightly different placement.

Probably really unlikely though, but seeing it's future stuff what isn't possible?

 

[Carnagath]

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.

I'd bet both my testicles that evolution through conflict is a universal constant. There can be no such thing as an advanced civilization with no concept of battle.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Going off-topic here but as a history buff, I feel the need to correct you
Columbus did indeed find an advanced civilization, perhaps more advanced in some ways than his own. The Aztecs and
Mayans built massive temples and great waterworks (like the floating gardens of Tenochtitlan). They had huge cities holding millions of inhabitants. The conquistadores didn't win because of a huge technological advantage, but because of the diseases they (mostly involuntarily) spread among the native population.

Yes and no. While it is certainly true that the conquistadores spread disease which had a devastating effect, they still had to fight several battles in which their superior arms and armour were deciding factors.

OTOH, it's generally overlooked that they found local allies and didn't mind joining in existing conflicts, rather than conquering a united opposition from scratch.

 

[Soundwave]

It's also worth considering that you probably couldn't live on a planet that was already supporting life, and that as far as we know, there aren't any mineral deposits on earth that you couldn't find elsewhere in our solar system, in greater abundance. Also, as has been mentioned before, it makes more sense to drop a rock on the earth than it would to mount an invasion anyways.

 

[Thaluikhain]

and that as far as we know, there aren't any mineral deposits on earth that you couldn't find elsewhere in our solar system, in greater abundance.

True, and this is a point often overlooked.

However, our planet is the only place with life on it (known), which may make it more valuable as a curiosity. Oddly enough, aliens hunting us for sport or stealing our stuff isn't that far-fetched, given human attitudes. At least compared to mining Earth for things easier to get elsewhere.

 

[oZode]

Avatar did it, and the main reason Avatar pulled it off was with role reversal. Humans were painted as bad, imperialistic, unsympathetic conquerors, while the Navi were seen as the underdogs with incredibly humanoid traits that didn't make them entirely uncanny or unlikable by appearance.

Avatars aliens were only superficially human like, behind all that they're little better that a hivemind seeing they are kept in "harmony" by the world brain. Humans I had sympathy for in that setting- they were getting desperate as unlike the privileged na'vi humans come from a world where there is no "god" or entity that keeps nature harmonic. Humans had to advance their tech to survive.

Humans had to spend millennia to domesticate animals, na'vi only need to connect with them through their hair braids.

And what is this concept of "bad" you speak of? I didn't know there was a objective bad or good. Anything through the right wording can be justified. The Nazis for instance, do you think they believed they were evil in their genocide? Do you believe the mongols saw themselves as bastards or savages? Do you think Pizarro saw himself as the destroyer of worlds?

I can make the case na'vi don't even have free will, and are slaves to a evil alien hive mind that holds back them. It's all propaganda in the end.

That's another thing, aliens are probably not even going to have our sense of morality. Why assume they'd be peaceful? Why assume they'd be genocidal? Their policies for dealing with alien us may be quite different. For all we know they may stage a limited invasion to see how tough we really are to see how they can help us defend from whatever other threats the universe has or act peaceful to infiltrate our society and take over.

 

[Weaver]

What if the aliens don't have FTL technology and just happen to live for a really long time and are resistant to solar radiation?

The 50 years to Alpha Centauri seems like a long time to humans, but it's not if you live 2000 years.

 

[oZode]

What if the aliens don't have FTL technology and just happen to live for a really long time and are resistant to solar radiation?

The 50 years to Alpha Centauri seems like a long time to humans, but it's not if you live 2000 years.

They still can always drop rocks on us, and that alone is a serious advantage even if we could technically whack them with a missile brought by space rocket.

Or even better yet, they even could use their five hundred years worth of alien crap hardened into a single big pile of shit dropped on New York to kill millions.

 

[Johnny Impact]

I find the more realistic depictions of aliens to be the less relatable ones, e.g. films like Starman. If aliens have mastered technology allowing them to travel here in a reasonable time frame, without undue energy expenditure -- something we can't even imagine how to do -- the safest assumption is their tech would be so far beyond ours it would seem like magic. So it is with the Starman: The alien had these ball bearings that would essentially do anything he wished them to do. He came expecting peace and was still able to blow up cars when he felt the need.

For the other end of the spectrum, try the Worldwar series by Harry Turtledove. The alien technology is barely superior to Earth's, allowing us eventually to reverse engineer most of it.

 

[Voulan]

I've always had an issue with this when watching Hollywood films as well. There's a number of probable explanations, though.

As with most alien films (and most pointedly when they first started appearing in films, in the early 20th century), aliens are usually presented as horror characters because they reflect anxieties we have about ourselves at the time seen through in a non-human but humanoid species. Aliens are usually involved with an invasion plot, and as such are reminiscent of other cultures invading. For example, alien films were very popular during the World Wars and especially during the Cold War (also because of the Space Race). The idea of an alien species taking over earth and humans is very much the same fear as the Communists or the Nazis doing the same. As such, their being more powerful and capable reflects that fear.

Then of course we have the distinctly Westernized idea of constant technological progression. When the British and later the Americans colonized other cultures, they found them backwards and even unintelligent because they found no need to change their way of living or 'improve' on it in some way. Thus the idea of another species having the same mindset of constantly improving and moving forward makes more sense to a modern audience - and also presents a fear of being like those colonized cultures, of being outdated by a more 'superior' species.

They can also present a post-modern fear of how much science can do. We're reaching a point where people are starting to reject technology because we are losing touch with nature and non-human animals, and even changing what it means to be human - along the lines of pollution and climate change, animal carnism and consumption (in particular factory farming), genetic experimentation and exploitation. Aliens are a human-like species that are completely immersed with technology, so they often present the what-could-happen scenario.

So they're a conundrum of what we want to be, but also fear to become. In short.

 

[Heronblade]

The OP is correct to state that technological superiority in a space faring race is not guaranteed, but it is a far more likely scenario than the alternative. The art and science of traveling that kind of distance makes incredibly powerful tools of destruction child's play to develop on the side, even for a relatively unintelligent and largely peaceful species. If you recall, Earth's space programs were initially based on tech developed for the first ICBMs, and a very large chunk of the toys developed by military R&D come at least in part from NASA research, from modern body armor to the Navy's new Gauss cannon.

Just for instance, even if dealing with a normally peaceful species that came unarmed...

One of the more likely possible means of FTL travel is a Alcubierre drive, a kind of warp device similar in theory to that found in Star Trek. One of many challenges to overcome with the design however is a massive burst of energy generated upon stopping the ship. This burst is calculated to be more than powerful enough to destroy and/or massively irradiate very large areas in front of the vessel. Presumably, our travelers would have found some means of mitigating its effect, but that does not mean they could not use it to their advantage instead.

 

[Able Seaman Staines]

At the start of the 20th Century the average life expectancy was 31. Today it has risen to 67. In the past is has been as low as 20 and as high as 35 in various societies. Science has more than doubled the average life expectancy. The oldest confirmed person ever lived to be 122. Now if we come to a better understanding of human biology and develop tools that can alter and improve the performance of out bodies so that they last longer and can be essentially completely renewed, why wouldn't we potentially choose to live forever ? We need this technology for space exploration.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

It's an easy assumption to make because in order to resolve the problem of long range space travel, they would have created a vast assortment of technologies with obvious military application that easily dwarf anything we could field. Moreover, from a military standpoint, their means of conveyance lends superiority over an entire theater of conflict that humanity as a whole could barely contest; if you assume they have the ability to fire weapons accurately from space, they would have a tremendous advantage in any conflict.