Aliens among us.....

[Tev]

So, we all know that conspiracy theories abound when it comes to wondering what's out there. Lately even Stephen Hawking has got into the mix about alien speculation and dire warnings of what may come if we attract enough attention to our little mud-ball of a planet. Do you have a favorite pet theory? Do you think the little green men walk among us? What about the lizard people that rule from the shadows?

I found this fun little article in what I can only assume is a standard internet tabloid today. If there are intelligent aliens out there I think that this would be a rather fun way for them to be sneaking around.

Then again if they were intelligent at all they would leave us to our own devices and park a bockade just outside the moon's orbit to make sure we don't stray too far.

[Hanuman]

As much as it would be convenient to believe the whole warp driver vulcans first contact blah blah EVERYONE LETS BE FRIENDS "thing" I think as a species we have out heads SO far up our own asses that this is really not all that probable.

I mean, consider how a species would be changed, culturally, if they evolved with another similar yet lesser developed self aware species, or if THEY were the lesser species and had to rise up, OR if there were 30 different self aware species on their planet and they had to fight, tooth and claw to survive all the way from the ocean to space travel.

Or consider a microcosm in our own society... sure we have people we look up to, but we also have stupid hics driving around in pickup trucks setting off firecrackers and shooting their guns into the air because they like the sound. Do you think one of those people, on their own, could build a pickup truck? Compare that to a species who are not REALLY evolved enough for spacetravel yet they still BUY it.

I think we should be both proud of, and wary of, our capacity for cultural uniqueness in the universe.

[TDK]

I don't really have an opinion on aliens, I just think Stephen Hawking is full of crap.

[Azisien]

Among us, seems unlikely.

Buzzing around the universe, probably razing and nuking each other just like we are/might be, seems likely!

[Revising Ocelot]

*sees Azisien's avatar*


The aliens aren't among us yet. They're still hanging around up there, smug and secure that we're unaware of them, and that-

ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.



Your form is weak. We are the Harbinger of your perfection.

[Azisien]

We are still forming a consensus on these flying cockroaches. 2203494827 platforms suggest RAID, 2203494826 platforms suggest facepalm.

[bluestarultor]

Frankly, with how war-like we are and the fact that any alien race that comes out here would be advanced beyond our wildest dreams, I really don't see any solution but mass death. If they're peaceful, the nukes we send up to greet them aren't likely to make a good impression and they might just decide we're nasty little critters and the universe is better off without us. If they're war-like, well, we're just as fucked, only they fire the first nuke. I mean, at best, they'd maybe keep a few of us around as pets either way, with the peaceful ones likely keeping more of us, but the entire concept of us becoming equal with them relies damn heavily on there being something like Starfleet posting rules that say they can't interfere with developing worlds and then coming to greet us when we're ready. Technologically, that could happen in the next decade, but socially, we're pretty much boned.

[tacticslion]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

but the entire concept of us becoming equal with them relies damn heavily on there being something like Starfleet posting rules that say they can't interfere with developing worlds and then coming to greet us when we're ready.

... and also someone who cares and is scrupulous enough actually watching to make sure they do so. I mean, how much crap would do people get away with on their jobs now, just because the boss isn't watching. If new species are "common" to said race, and we seem just like the violent klingons, there's really no value to them not to wipe us out, and whoever would give the order might consider themselves a hero as they went on military tribunal. That said we can't even presume they think like us. Can we presume that aliens are all "enlightenment and serenity"? No. We can't. We can't presume they're all war-like, either, but if one believes in the evolutionary process, it seems they must be to have survived. We really can't presume anything: do they think like us? Do they have a term for "war" or even "peace"? Can they understand the concept of outright, purposeful "lying" or even outright purposeful "truth"? Do they think in terms of their species, in terms of themselves as individuals, in terms of themselves as groups within their species (we do), or in terms of themselves as a singular species among many? Do they even classify creatures according to "species"? What of their religion(s), if they have them? Human languages have concepts that don't translate - we have ideas that simply don't work with other human mindsets, so how could we presume alien mindsets work similarly enough to communicate properly?

That said: how can we even be sure that alien life works on our terms? I mean, if its an arsenic-based life-form (a theoretical possiblity at super-cold tempuratures) than us living could be a hostile act - our body heat could cause untold damage just being near them (even as we were killed by their endless cold). To be super nerdy, we'd be to them like theoretical "fire elementals" would be to us. Cell-phone communication would be like neutron-bombs, and laser sattelites could be death-rays.

Is it possible that there is alien life? Yeah - there's a lot of space out there. Is it likely we'll meet them. Nah. Our star will probably get to us (either by solar flare or sputtering out) before they do or before we get to them.

I also wrote, like, a three-page paper on alien life and its potential problems in coming and showing up here. I am not posting it at this time.

Edit: I do wish to clarify: "possible" is very different from "probable". I have no illusions that aliens are probably out there, only that they are possibly out there.

[stabbity death]

I have a bet going with a good friend that we're going to find alien life before alien life finds us.

[Steel Shadow]

I think in general we give aliens a little too much credit. The universe is a big place, so it's likely there's at least some form of life out there. It may even be radically different from what we're used to thinking of as life. But given the universe's bigness and such, the likelyhood of it finding us is as likely as us findnig it. And then there's it reaching us, which would mean it has incredibly advanced tech, compared to us at the moment. I'm not even sold on space travel being realistically possible.

Plus, holy crap, do you guys know how difficult it was for life on earth to reach the point it has at the moment? The amount of times the clock was reset is disturbingly high. Even if there is life out there, the odds are very much in favour of it not being as lucky as we were. Who knows, we might well be the most advanced race in the universe. Well there's got to be one somewhere.

On the other hand, if there are aliens zipping around the place, I don't think we're going to be that interesting to them, aside from the odd lab experiement. Why even bother blowing us up?