What IF: Aliens are not so smart afterall?

ALIENS ahhhh! DUM DUM DUM

Lets say they probably were very smart at one point but once they had what everyone needed they simply became lazy.

They started watching there cool tv's learning from the internet. letting there robots do all the work. Spending most of the time Playing video games. not needing to read or go to school anymore since they invented something for that too.
I mean they probably have all this cool technology and flying through space and all that but at the end they started letting the machines think for them.

I guess if this was true we wouldnt have to worry about aliens personally but of their machines and technology.

Maybe that is why they havent introduced themselves afterall since we are probably smarter in person and they dont want to embarrass themselves.

Them being here and being able to show themselves would be proof enough that they aren't dumb.

Lazy maybe but not Dumb...

Welcome to ATS.

F & S for your efforts.

I look forward to reading more.

peace

I always taught advanced aliens might be slightly more intelligent then us if they are not artificially modified, but not that much, maybe some races less then us. But they would have technology and knowledge of that technology.

Bring most humans in this day to 200 years ago and there's a lot of people that could quickly judge us as stupid.

In an other view, they might has well be implanted to be more intelligent or genetically modified. GMA's
And if aliens do exist it seems they are smart enough to not come see us.

Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's Footfall is a science fiction novel about an alien race whose technology is derived from a record left by an ancestral race that died off before their species evolved sentience. They try and invade Earth and ultimately have their butt handed to them because we developed our technology on our own and even during their attack are able to come up with technology to defeat them. It's a good read.

First of all, any alien species capable of sending probes or themselves to us are at least a little more advanced from us. Enough to change our world, that's for sure.

It's no different than if someone landed here and gave us the know how and tech to traverse the universe and meet other races. There would be many that don't have that ability that we may not be smarter than one on one, but as a collective we posses technology they do not have. No different. Where are you going with this, ultimately?

One of my favorites of all time...Battle Star Galactica is based of machines trying to take over.

reply to post by MainLineThis


I thought i said "they started letting their machines think for them". So.... aliens wont be sending anything. Aliens
Aliens

If they have been coming here, and if they have been coming here for thousands of years Traveling vast distances i highly doubt they would be dumb...

which Aliens

1) If that were the case; they are totally *beep* when contact is made; we will snatch every piece of technology possible by any mean necessary.....and turn around colonize them.

2) They are so dumb thinking us are like ants and kill us all.

Originally posted by the_0bserver85
1) If that were the case; they are totally *beep* when contact is made; we will snatch every piece of technology possible by any mean necessary.....and turn around colonize them.

Is this a peaceful EA gesture? To take advantage of others just because you are smarter?

I would say alot of them are dumb. They still use strobe lights on their craft. Have a terrible time maneuvering about, tumbling to & fro in the wind. They're not looking terribly smart upto now.

lol just playen calm down

Intellegence would have to be defined, I know people who can regurgitate facts dates and figures at the drop of a hat, but stumble at boiling an egg.

Maybe thats all the traveling ones do, travel and report. Other ones may have the music, peotry, writing, philosophy etc back on their home planets.

reply to post by EnigmaAgent


yeahp thats pretty much the idea

lol makes me think that the Human race will turn out like that

reply to post by wasco2

Baby elephants in platform shoes flying hang gliders!

Well, as with the eternal question whether we are alone or not; we'll know when we'll know. Or perhaps never.

An interesting thought on intelligence though, is that while the human brain has indeed evolved during the last centuries, and while knowledge can be accessed almost instantly at any place, personal knowledge is only changed, not "upgraded". For example, 200 years ago, most people could hunt and fish, build shelters and traps and so on, but how much of that can people still do today? Without reading some serious books on hunting and fishing? Instead, that knowledge has been swapped with knowledge of, say, computers, driving, writing, singing, and so on. Thus, any intelligence with the same evolutionary pattern as ours would most likely use computers and advanced machines.

Another proposition is completely organic development, with an intelligent species condemning technology or not inventing any in the first place (although that would be hard since such development needs to be directed somehow).

In any case, I believe culture and politics also play a major role on any development, let alone religion. Maybe they view the world with absolute seriousness, thus excluding any games of any kind? Maybe they never saw the point in entertainment, or maybe they don't have such feelings? Maybe their major religion/s is all about development and exploring the universe as quickly as possible? Or maybe they are pretty much like us, except they never stopped at the moon, but continued on?

As said before, we'll just have to see...

It doesn't seem people are getting what the OP is saying.

Possession and use of high technology does not make one smart. You could go back in time, give a cave-man a flashlight, and teach him to press the button to turn it on. He would probably be considered a god among his peers for having a stick that makes light. It wouldn't make him any more intelligent.

A 16 year old kid can drive a car, that doesn't mean he has any idea how to manufacture or fix one. We all have computers, how many of us actually understand the physics and science involved, could any of us actually make a computer? By that I mean MAKE, not put components together. Could you manufacture a hard drive, a processor, an LCD monitor? I doubt it. Yet we use these things every day and are actually quite good at it.

Now, in a situation where aliens are visiting Earth, the possibilities of how they got here, and what kind of species they are is endless. Yet everyone always sticks with the same idea that they are just a vastly more advanced race with intelligence that makes ours look infantile. The OP is saying that doesn't have to be the case, and I support his idea 100%.

The technology they use to get here would obviously be very advanced, but that doesn't mean the beings that are using it are. In my opinion, if a species can get to the point where they can manufacture technology to travel the universe, I think a few things would be very likely.

Number one, the user interface would be very easy. Think about just walking in, sitting down, and saying "take me to planet xxxxx" and the ship does everything for you. No real intelligence needed there. We are pretty close to having cars that will literally drive themselves. I realize cars and space ships are different, but if you are to the point where you can travel the universe, I don't see any reason why you couldn't have such a user friendly interface.

Second of all, their technology would be EXTREMELY robust. No fragile little lunar lander floating around. These ships will last thousands of years without need of any maintenance. Their power source would also last almost forever, or the ship would automatically refuel itself. Whether it be mining asteroids or planets for resources, taking in gases from space, taking energy from suns along their travel. Again, no substantial intelligence needed, because you don't have to repair or refuel anything.

Now this does mean that there was a species extremely advanced that made these things. But, by no means, does that mean that those are the ones still using these craft.

Think about if there was a global collapse tomorrow. There would still be cars, there would still be solar cells, all sorts of other technology. The access to this technology wouldn't be anywhere near what it was before TSHTF, but pretty much anything we can use today, someone, somewhere could use after TSHTF.

So I find no problem with the idea that if Aliens are coming to Earth right now, they could be few in numbers, and not much more advanced in their current state than we are. They could be the remains of a collapsed society, several generations removed from a world where people actually knew how to build, or understand, their technology, but they are still able to use it due to an easy user interface.

Another idea, is that perhaps there is a solar system somewhere with one planet that is extremely advanced, and another planet that is roughly as advanced as we are. For whatever reason the advanced planet doesn't conquer the primitive planet, and instead shares/trades/sells their technology to this lesser advanced planet. Then people from this planet that is close to us in technology, using the technology from their neighboring advanced species, come here to earth.

Both of these scenarios are very possible if you believe Aliens are visiting the planet. Talking about aliens is largely an exercise in imagination, and I'm sorry to say it seems most people don't have a very good imagination, because the only situation they can imagine is the boring old idea that aliens are just a million years more advanced than us and were simply advancing for a longer period of time. While possible, there are an unlimited number of other possible scenarios to explain aliens coming here, and not all of them require the visitors to be extremely advanced compared to us.

S&F OP, I really like your idea, I wish there were more people talking about (somewhat) fresh ideas like this.

If aliens exist, and if they are here, then at best it is presumptive to just assume that they are somehow more advanced.
I'm more inclined to believe that they just discovered and utilize a different set of physics than we have yet to discover.