E.T brace for impact!

SEANoftheDEAD

Great article in yesterdays Guardian, about preparing Earth for E.T's arrival.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jan/10/earth-close-encounter-aliens-extraterrestrials

Are we slowly been perpared for the big news?

Mahatma coat

Odd article that, bit too GodBothery for my tastes

caseyann

utopianruins wrote: »

Great article in yesterdays Guardian, about preparing Earth for E.T's arrival.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jan/10/earth-close-encounter-aliens-extraterrestrials

Are we slowly been perpared for the big news?

Oh interesting article.Scientists now saying World should be prepared.I wonder why they are doing that when rubbishing it for decades.:rolleyes:


They argue that a branch of the UN must be given responsibility for "supra-Earth affairs" and formulate a plan for how to deal with extraterrestrials, should they appear.
Or have they been appearing all along.

iamstop

Nah the UN is no good, they'll make an MNU

Torakx

Cant have a world government without unity and cant have unity without a common enemy.
Possibly before a world government there will be a massive dash to start wars and reap resources before each world state is confined to shooting aliens instead of each other.
Pew Pew! i suppose on the plus side better to be shooting at shadows than each other but then who is gonna sort the over population on the planet when the fighting here stops?
Oh maybe thats already covered in the plans...
Sheep Flu anyone?

RGDATA!

caseyann wrote: »

Oh interesting article.Scientists now saying World should be prepared.I wonder why they are doing that when rubbishing it for decades.:rolleyes:

why do you think?

nyarlothothep

I would love to see it but you could say the 90s were the preparation with the UFO mania (X Files/Roswell and so on) and nothing ever came of it. However I think whether an alien species will resemble us is a very anthropocentric assumption. Although the prepare for the worst advice is sound, not because the worst is probable but that if our intergalactic visitors are badasses then we'll be prepared. A film like The Thing really gets to down to the idea of what alien could be, you'd want to be very well defended in the event of meeting an alien like this, or the Alien xenomorphs. But I think our chances of meeting such as civilization is limited given that to the best of our knowledge FTL requires immense amounts of energy even if it is possible to send a ship at superluminal speeds and then ramp up the energy reserves to keep it intact. Such a civilization would either be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more intelligent than us or incredibly ancient or both probably. Would they care for our asinine politics and primitive behaviour? I doubt it.

caseyann

RGDATA! wrote: »

why do you think?

Perhaps they already have undisputed facts that they already exist. The increasing video and photographic imagery that is now so readily available in nearly every household via internet,they feel no other choice but to begin to disclose the truth.Or perhaps they fear that it is coming.
Why else would you say about an Alien who does not exist and never have come across them or their dna that we should be prepared and i quote(Evolution on alien worlds is likely to be Darwinian, which may mean extraterrestrials share our tendencies for violence and exploitation) If they have no reason to say such thing,If there has never been any sign of them here.

Not like government and scientists etc.. have never hidden things from the public before.

espinolman

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Such a civilization would either be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more intelligent than us or incredibly ancient or both probably. Would they care for our asinine politics and primitive behaviour? I doubt it.

Why do some people always think the level of technology is related to intelligence , i mean a small minority invent some things and because of that you think that makes you more intelligent , no it does not , it means the ones who developed the technology are more intelligent .
And suppose the aliens stole the technology from another race , that does'nt mean they are intelligent , but that they would be barbaric .
Who always ends up in power , the barbaric ones , they are willing to steal , rape and pillage and feel no remorse .
So they are the alien invaders who may be coming .
Not the nice ones , no the civilised aliens would probably be exterminated and their technology stolen .

namloc1980

caseyann wrote: »

Perhaps they already have undisputed facts that they already exist. The increasing video and photographic imagery that is now so readily available in nearly every household via internet,they feel no other choice but to begin to disclose the truth.Or perhaps they fear that it is coming.
Why else would you say about an Alien who does not exist and never have come across them or their dna that we should be prepared and i quote(Evolution on alien worlds is likely to be Darwinian, which may mean extraterrestrials share our tendencies for violence and exploitation) If they have no reason to say such thing,If there has never been any sign of them here.

Not like government and scientists etc.. have never hidden things from the public before.

Because the only model for life that we have is planet Earth. We don't know how ET's may evolve so the only model we have to go on is what happened here with evolution, survival of the fittest etc.

I think that there really can be no doubt that ET life exists somewhere in the vastness of space and the trillions upon trillions of stars out there must harbour life bearing worlds. With the number of known extrasolar planets now topping 500 and increasing consistently the discovery of an Earth-like planet is only around the corner IMHO. What would this ET life be like?? Who knows? I imagine microbial ET life would be reasonably plentiful but larger complex creautures like us, not sure. The Earth has had a relatively stable history for billions of years and also our Sun is a very stable star allowing more and more complex life to form over the course of billions of years on this planet. I don't think life is unique to Earth but I think the stability that has allowed us to evolve into complex organisms is probably very rare.

Torakx

Thats evolution in the form of survival of the fittest.Maybe if that was the case, that can be seen as an overall intelligence.
End of the day the better species wins and if that species ever made it here it would most likely have better technology and a superior attitude with regards evolution.
Kudos to any species that manages this lol
The universe has no morality imo.Its just space and matter and so on.
But anyway i doubt that will ever happen to our species in my lifetime anyway.

nyarlothothep

espinolman wrote: »

Why do some people always think the level of technology is related to intelligence , i mean a small minority invent some things and because of that you think that makes you more intelligent , no it does not , it means the ones who developed the technology are more intelligent .
And suppose the aliens stole the technology from another race , that does'nt mean they are intelligent , but that they would be barbaric .
Who always ends up in power , the barbaric ones , they are willing to steal , rape and pillage and feel no remorse .
So they are the alien invaders who may be coming .
Not the nice ones , no the civilised aliens would probably be exterminated and their technology stolen .

I see your points, however when I say intelligent I mean that the current problems confronting us with regards to making FTL travel possible may require an understanding of the universe that is incomprehensible to us with our current level of intelligence. Moreover you can argue that an educated person is more "intelligent" than an educated person from Ancient Greece as they can draw upon more collective intelligence from history with knowledge of calculus, science, modern philosophy etc.

Likewise if aliens stole the technology then they would require the intelligence to understand it and reverse engineer it, otherwise they would be like the pakleds and stuck in space.


In addition if those aliens didn't have the technology to begin with a more advanced species could be very hard to exploit, they could just deploy a counter defence with their superior technology against such actions and no amount of ruthlessness or sabre rattling would make any difference. However I agree that a species they may well have variances in intelligence or even a non thinking class of slave workers. On the other hand they may be collective intelligence like the Borg.

SEANoftheDEAD

nyarlothothep wrote: »

On the other hand they may be collective intelligence like the Borg.

A drone society is the peak of evolution in my opinion and if there is a race out there somewhere i think they'll be actually like this and it would be a disaster if they find our planet.

I agree with Hawkins, if aliens find us, it'll be like when the Spanish found central America.

Torakx

Interesting you mention a drone society.Its pretty much how we are becoming ourselves.
Its just not in our faces as we believe we are free to do what we want.
In reality we are all part of the machine and can choose to hold it up or fade away and die of starvation.
For example i was born on earth, on a land mass name Ireland.Yet i have no right to just walk into a field and grow food to live in peace on the land or travel to another land mass in peace.

I must register property with higher authorities and if i dont they will come and enforce their will on me.If i fight i will end up with nothing or in prisoned and if i agree i must follow their rules and give them ultimate ownership.
So i must forget those ideas and live how they say.Get a job, feed them with taxs etc.
We are pretty much a drone class but with the freedom to enjoy ourselves as long as its by the higher authorities rules.Maybe the price of evolution of man.
You can argue that the government is there because we vote it in,but then it gets complicated when considering advertising,propoganda and general social engineering that naturally happens as a result of television and soaps/movies etc.
Not that i have the ultimate solution but my point being we are fairly similar to a drone class.

tallaghtmick

ill gladly be a slave for her :cool:

Jeboa Safari

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Such a civilization would either be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more intelligent than us or incredibly ancient or both probably. Would they care for our asinine politics and primitive behaviour? I doubt it.

Even if they were intelligent beyond our imagination, I think they'd still be interested in life throughout the rest of the universe, especially life that could potentially eventually match their intelligence. If our race are still around in thousands or millions of years, I think we'd still have interest in other species we share the universe with.
It would be interesting to see what our responses would be to finding both less and more technologically developed species than our own which are or will eventually be capable of contact.
The article is interesting, we'd be right to be prepared, but it would be great if we found evidence of alien life

caseyann

Jeboa Safari wrote: »

Even if they were intelligent beyond our imagination, I think they'd still be interested in life throughout the rest of the universe, especially life that could potentially eventually match their intelligence. If our race are still around in thousands or millions of years, I think we'd still have interest in other species we share the universe with.
It would be interesting to see what our responses would be to finding both less and more technologically developed species than our own which are or will eventually be capable of contact.
The article is interesting, we'd be right to be prepared, but it would be great if we found evidence of alien life

Only ones who need worry about anyone is them about our governments and mental people.

Torakx

Yep, humans are the type of barbaric species that would steal technology and destroy a whole species then travel around the universe causeing more destruction and havoc.

Jeboa Safari

Torakx wrote: »

Yep, humans are the type of barbaric species that would steal technology and destroy a whole species then travel around the universe causeing more destruction and havoc.

I don't think so, if there were several races of aliens, presumably a peaceful co-existence would be in place, and we'd have to live with that, I doubt we'd be allowed, even if we wanted to, which I don't think we would.

nyarlothothep

utopianruins wrote: »

A drone society is the peak of evolution in my opinion and if there is a race out there somewhere i think they'll be actually like this and it would be a disaster if they find our planet.

I agree with Hawkins, if aliens find us, it'll be like when the Spanish found central America.

I didn't mean a drone society, a collective intelligence would be sentient and would be able to exercise intuitive reasoning, a drone society wouldn't be able to do this, it would never progress, I would posit that in most cases intuitive intelligence is a pre-requisite for space travel. In any case the borg drones were part of a whole, the drone itself was an extension of the collective mind, to think of it as a drone would be to individualize it when it would be more akin to a part of the body as Beverly put it.

As for us being a drone class I think its more complicated than that but I'm too lazy to go into it.

Torakx

Jeboa Safari wrote: »

I don't think so, if there were several races of aliens, presumably a peaceful co-existence would be in place, and we'd have to live with that, I doubt we'd be allowed, even if we wanted to, which I don't think we would.

Hows that worked for us so far with countries?
To me it would be the same, just instead of countries it would be solar systems or planets and a race for resources so we thrive without fore thought to the damage we do to the enviornment or our neighbours.
Until the governments learn to grow up and the humans who run them we will possibly always have these tendencies.
But no matter we wont be polluting the universe too much yet anyway.
I think most of the satelites and junk we have fired out there is probably only gone as far as the moon lol

That can all be discounted for me though if we are dominated by a more intelligent race or species.Or just people who actually have some sense.

Mr Plough

Another report on it here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVtJvUNklP0

Fear, pandemonium, equanimity and delight: human responses to extra-terrestrial life.

How will people respond to the discovery of extra-terrestrial life? Potentially useful resources for addressing this question include historical prototypes, disaster studies and survey research. Reactions will depend on the interplay of the characteristics of the newly found life, the unfolding of the discovery, the context and content of the message and human information processing as shaped by biology, culture and psychology. Pre-existing images of extra-terrestrials as god-like, demonic, or artificial will influence first impressions that may prove highly resistant to change. Most probably people will develop comprehensive images based on minimal information and assess extra-terrestrials in the same ways that they assess one another. Although it is easy to develop frightening scenarios, finding microbial life in our Solar System or intercepting a microwave transmission from many light years away are less likely to be met with adverse reactions such as fear and pandemonium than with positive reactions such as equanimity and delight.

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1936/656.abstract

enno99

You will have all kinds of problems with them but on balance it will be a plus

Bill Clinton 2005

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3F3CXspsuo