E.T.s. Turn out the lights. They may not be coming...

I call it controlled cosmos. They were never allowed to interfere with us without being subject to punishment themselves. They are here among us and were battling for control but they lost.

We cant even provide a simple answer for ourselves in regards to why humans do what they do.

Simple electro-magnetic propulsion has still to be realized.

No global governance.

Cant sustain a civilization.

Still value CONTROL over reason, belief over truth, what we do rather than why we do it.

originally posted by: subtopia
We cant even provide a simple answer for ourselves in regards to why humans do what they do.

Simple electro-magnetic propulsion has still to be realized.

Actually it has. The first spacecraft to use it was Deep Space One

nmp.nasa.gov...

a reply to: ScientiaFortisDefendit

Fission is decent but fusion is far superior. Perhaps when we master that and genetics (to artifically enhance our intelligence) we might be worthy.

originally posted by: Boscov
a reply to: mysterioustranger

Our current human civilization is still in infancy. Possibly aliens have visited and decided to give us more time to mature. If our current civilization has been around for, let us say 10,000 years (just a guess), maybe they think we need another 10,000 years before they check up on us again. Why do we believe we are ready? It is not our choice. Another 10,000 years to us may seem like a few days to them. So, sure they check in on us from time to time. Sometimes we have been destructive, sometimes we seem very creative, sometimes we get sick, other times we prosper and grow. They, if they exist, have us and our environment under control in perspective to the universe. Here on Earth, we think life and our environment is so effing important, and so effed up, because all we see is what we see.

We are too damn needy already, what would happen if they showed up? We would want, and want, and need, and want. They may be our universal bretheren, but they do not have to care for us like a mother to an infant. This could be a protected upbringing, but maybe this is the Big Leagues of universal life, here on Earth. Either way, we have to survive on our own, not expect someone to love us or empathize with us.

I would liken a relationship with humanity/aliens to be similar to explorers finding and trading with natives.

Interference would disrupt our way of life. If we are to achieve the level of sophistication that the explorers have achieved, we much achieve that on our own to be successful.

If we were given what were not ready to wield and grouped into alliances with parties whose intentions we did not fully understand, we would destroy ourselves and our futures would be taken wildly off course.

One must reach a certain level of emotional, cultural, and intellectual maturity to wield a firearm.

Imagine giving us savages access to advanced technologies, be them medicine or propulsion. You KNOW it would be entirely misappropriated and used for nefarious purposes, simply because we as a people are not ready to travel the stars.

The people engaged in this discussion very likely are at least aware of what is inappropriate behavior. Consider your own family or friends... do we not all have family or friends that seem to be entirely beneath where we feel they should be emotionally, to the point of almost embarrassing to us?

I consider the rest of humanity my crazy relatives who I wish weren't related to me, but I love them anyway.

As a general take on human perception, if it isn't understood and is frightening then kill it. If there is ET observance of planet Earth, which I personally doubt then there would be no benefit and quite detrimental to the ETs to introduce themselves.

Upon contact nothing but general insanity would ensue in the human race.

I think an ultra intelligent space traveling race would see us as the same way we see ants.

Stop saying they don't make contact because we wage war and pollute, that is utterly simplistic.

This space-faring race(if they exist) has probably figured out how to cull resources from space, planets, asteroids etc. They've probably waged more war and polluted more rivers and lakes than we can dream.

They didn't make it to their current level of sophistication by being studious hippies. War, technological innovation and profit go hand in hand. Stop being childish simpletons.

As I've said it before

IF there are any aliens hovering above us.. I would be very wary of them.

What logical reason would they have for coming here?

Of course they would be incomprehensibly more advanced than us so discussing this makes no sense seeing how we couldn't relate to them in any kind of way.

But I see only two possibilities.

They're neutral:
They're here simply to learn and observe,
and only interfere when we are about to commit global suicide.
Helping us any sooner wouldn't make sense, they wouldn't be able to learn from our evolution anymore since they would be the cause of it.

OR, they're hostile:
Seeing how we are reluctant to learn from our mistakes, and our only successful parts of civilization thrive on greed. They would quickly take over to make use of our resources.

"But maybe they see themselves as ''Saviors of the universe'' and are actually here to help us!"

No.

Take a look around.. wouldn't they have done so a long time ago?

Besides that too.. doesn't make sense.
When we see apes in the wild, tearing their siblings limbs off.. we don't go in there to give them anger management classes. It's always best to not interfere with other species.. evolution is doing a perfect job, you can only make it worse. To them, humankind is comparable to a fetus at best, we are not ready to encounter any of their ways.

I wonder if Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson likes his chicken regular or extra crispy.

lol always a big concern. Aliens may have visited Parliament or Congress, and like most of us faced with the same individuals, concluded there was no intelligent life, a world where the utterly clueless determined policy and the way of life for the masses. They may have visited the world's most "Cultured" people, and concluded the world was filled with snobbery and an inflated sense of self importance, along with an irrational craving for valueless items.


Thankfully that is not likely to be the case. Consider yourself a seasoned explorer reaching a new civilisation, loosely speaking. You would most likely spend significant time studying them, learn of their thoughts, reactions, mentality. You would observe a large difference in their thoughts and reactions. Querying their organisation you would recognise individual thoughts from each of them, they key part being a lack of hive mentality in the masses. Thus you establish you are faced with a chaotic society of conflicting, usually self, interests.

Faced with that, you recognise each individual may hold different values. In some rare cases, the hive mentality may play a greater part, and thus you identify culturally compatible life. That of course is on the basis the visitor had an advance hive like society. In the event the visitor had a more human-like society, perhaps you would have more cause for concern.

originally posted by: hammanderr
Stop saying they don't make contact because we wage war and pollute, that is utterly simplistic.

This space-faring race(if they exist) has probably figured out how to cull resources from space, planets, asteroids etc. They've probably waged more war and polluted more rivers and lakes than we can dream.

They didn't make it to their current level of sophistication by being studious hippies. War, technological innovation and profit go hand in hand. Stop being childish simpletons.

I'd have to agree. That notion is simplistic. However to say otherwise would be equally simplistic. The typical simpleton likes nothing more than to speculate, then assume his conclusion is fact. The previous poster may have been correct, but there is little point in batting backwards and forwards unsupported "factual" statements about reasons when none of them are proven or based upon any concrete. Your argument is in fact rather pointless and based more on your world view than probability.

As your end note is somewhat hostile, I'll elaborate:

In regards to pollution and war, you present yet another loose assumption based entirely upon your own perception of "intelligent society". If you were even to look as far as the animal kingdom, you would see a vast spread of different mentalities throughout, including hive mentality. I'm sure you're inclined to point our that hives conflict with each other, but again you would be making assumptions about evolution and development. Founded on hive mentality, an evolved society may have ditched conflict entirely. The point is that any number of paths may have been taken during the development of a civilisation. Indeed, any path is a possibility, so the previous poster is quite fair in his statement. Of course for every passive peace loving society, there is the threat of the opposite, one apparently exhibiting your own outlook. I can very quickly conclude which I would prefer to encounter.

As for pollution and resources, all growing societies are likely to his the resource wall at some point, and each of them may have tackled it in a different manner. Renewable resources, and a minimal footprint are certainly a logical direction to pursue, far more so than destroying and over-mining your own home, so he deserves a little more credibility than yourself on that front.

Finally in regards to "They didn't make it to their current level of sophistication by being studious hippies. War, technological innovation and profit go hand in hand. Stop being childish simpletons."

I believe this is best summarised by "Nonsense". I'm sure your imaginary race is highly warlike, aggressive and ruin every planet they land on. Seeing however that you have no facts, and there is no basis for your statement, you appear to be the childish simpleton in this case.

There is a vast difference between squandered personal profit and profit for society. Looking at the population and productivity of this planet, far far greater things could have been accomplished long before now if resources weren't stockpiled and squandered by the affluent, with no benefit for advancement and growth. Picture an entire society working towards a mutual gain (if indeed you are capable) and you will find vast difference.

I would imagine there are all types of higher life forms as well as what we would consider less intelligent life forms. The ones which have unlocked the infinate are most likely here all the time observing us sending us to and fro. If they ever showed up they would most likely be worshiped as gods. I think humanity may make some intelligent choices because they may be seeded within us to make them, same with some foolish choices. As to meeting aliens its a matter of time for the public, nothing more than that.

When I think of higher alien life it reminds me of Star Trek's Q:

originally posted by: SamHill
I wonder if Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson likes his chicken regular or extra crispy.

Who says he eats fried chicken at all?

If it matters when I saw him eat lunch at a conference he was eating a delicious sandwich of sliced turkey and cucumbers on what I think was rye bread.

Seems like he's into healthy foods.

originally posted by: simon155
As for pollution and resources, all growing societies are likely to his the resource wall at some point, and each of them may have tackled it in a different manner. Renewable resources, and a minimal footprint are certainly a logical direction to pursue, far more so than destroying and over-mining your own home, so he deserves a little more credibility than yourself on that front.

They presumably would mine the resources of their solar system and beyond, not their own planet. We could be doing this now with our own level of technology and several companies including Seattle based Planetary Resources are planning to do just that.

It is wrong to assume aliens would be limited to just the resources of their planet. A super intelligent species might have decided to move most of their polluting industry into space where its pretty much impossible to pollute an irradiated moon for example.

Such a species might leave their home planet a serene garden oasis while they are carving up the other lifeless bodies in their solar system and perhaps beyond.

It's not a matter of techno hippies vs techno nazis. True intelligent spacefaring species will probably have struck a balance between preserving their homeworld and converting vast amounts of resources well beyond all of those on Earth to energy and objects.

sry could not resist

Q

Hm but doesn't this hypothesis suggest aliens have no desire/capability to love and nurture - which seems to conflict with most of our human reports about them. And also the general flow of the universe which seems to have love and nurture embedded in some respect even if it's only a tiny tiny percentage. Maybe they found a way to be more intelligent or were just born that way but if they have no capacity to love and nurture then # do we really want to meet them anyway and embrace their completely apathetic nature? I don't. Presumably they're Vulcans.... Plenty of people still look at ants with curiosity and wonder, we also choose to love and nurture those that may be "less intelligent" than ourselves. So if nothing else, we need to get out into space and be better than these aliens that have abandoned us because they only care about "intelligence"! PAH!

This is not a question of if... it is a question of when. When will the human race look at the numbers?

Statistically speaking the number of stars our galaxy present would be enough to prove there is a 0% possibility of us being alone in our galaxy, not to mention the astronomical figures the rest of the universe presents. And thats only for goldy lock planets like earth.

Who's to say other life forms on planets even need sun and water like we do?

There could be thriving life on jupiter, right at home swimming in oceans of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, breathing helium, and absorbing background radiation.

originally posted by: AlongCamePaul
This is not a question of if... it is a question of when. When will the human race look at the numbers?

Statistically speaking the number of stars our galaxy present would be enough to prove there is a 0% possibility of us being alone in our galaxy, not to mention the astronomical figures the rest of the universe presents. And thats only for goldy lock planets like earth.

Who's to say other life forms on planets even need sun and water like we do?

There could be thriving life on jupiter, right at home swimming in oceans of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, breathing helium, and absorbing background radiation.

Not likely given what we know.

originally posted by: subtopia
We cant even provide a simple answer for ourselves in regards to why humans do what they do.

Simple electro-magnetic propulsion has still to be realized.

We have ion engines. One took the Dawn spacecraft to Vesta and Ceres.

No global governance.

That's a function of the fear and mistrust in the world. The UN could be a sort of global parliament but most nations are not ready for that including our own apparently.

Cant sustain a civilization.

Sure we can. You and I are here talking on the internet. That's a civilzation.

Still value CONTROL over reason, belief over truth, what we do rather than why we do it.

Now that I agree with.