What Do We Have To Offer?

a reply to: Peeple

Newcatle Brown Ale, Rock Music, and Weed would bring the alien tourists here in huge galactic cruisers.

originally posted by: Peeple

...And they ask you: "Why would we want to make contact with Earth?"

What's the answer?
My question is what positive attribute is unique to humans?
What do we have to offer?

originally posted by: Sookiechacha
a reply to: Peeple

Art. Comedy and tragedy, music, dance, story telling. Science, design and innovation, history, regret, shame, hope and tenacity. intellectual growth, ecstasy, fear and sorrow. Beauty and grotesqueness.

Maybe not in that order.

Sookie is on the right track...

What do we have to offer? I suspect quite a bit. A fallacious analogy is often presented in the hallowed catacombs of ATS and facsimile media that goes something like this: "Aliens would not be any more interested in us as we are to a colony of ants..."

I don't agree with that simplistic example because homo sapiens sapiens is a highly complex organism both individually and collectively, sentient beings with intricately engineered infrastructure and social engineering that has evolved over thousands of years. Humans have accomplished exponentially much more over a few millennia than ant colonies have only barely and marginally replicated over millions of years.

Would aliens be interested in such sentient, albeit still potentially self-destructive beings? Of course! We've already terraformed the planet - in as many bad ways as beneficial ones - a process that is ongoing -and accelerating. Perhaps they want to see how such matters resolve - or not. Perhaps they hope to step in to save the planet -if not the hapless humans so callously abusing it.

Would curious aliens seek to learn about the minds of a sentient race? How it functions, interacts with other minds, deals with controversy, love, hate, conflict, reproduction, survival, hunger, apathy, empathy, curiosity, humility, and a myriad other emotions, motivations, stimulations, and so on. Of course they would.
Let’s be realistic. Even if the problem of traveling interstellar distances is solved by some superior race, and they are (or have been) able to not just locate the Earth, but also make the journey to reach us – the investment in resources, even at “light speed” or some wormhole device, etc., would be enormous. Aliens are not going to make the investment, or the trip – without a purpose.

Lets’ just hope that the purpose is, was, or will be edification only. As with the now infamous “Prime Directive”, a logical, safe, and practical way to learn as much as they want about us – without interfering with humans whatsoever -or minimally at best. How?

They can learn just about everything they need to know by basing themselves on the limb of the moon, just at the visible edge of the far side. A few scout ships to collect samples and data is all we might see. Most of the rest is easily discernible just by eavesdropping.

So what can we offer? I’ll answer like this: Suppose you work as any scientist, educator, politician, philosopher, sociologist, anthropologist, geologist, biologist -any number of disciplines. You are approached one day by a few MIB-equivalents and told that there was a secret expedition planed -and would you be interested?: A beautiful, blue-green bio-rich planet was discovered. Would you like to go and observe the life, plants, animals, and sentient beings of several races interacting and developing on a water-covered and diverse eco-system planet in another solar system?

What do we offer? Knowledge. Knowledge of life on a new world, a different world. Knowledge of sentience among another species. Knowledge to improve themselves (and maybe us too if they have the inclination).

Or…. Stephen Hawking et al, may be right: they wouldn't make the journey if there wasn't something really worthwhile in it for them. May be it IS the gold, water, DNA, zygotes, cows, souls, or choose your favorite conspiracy theory. Who knows (does anybody on Earth REALLY know?)?

I think (hope): they're mostly scientists, with a few security/logistics/support crews to keep things humming (and safe). And what we offer, all that we offer them is awareness, truth, erudition, insight, wisdom, enlightenment, familiarity, scholarship.

What we get in return remains to be seen...

Why are we "more civilized" humans fascinated by current primitive cultures and past ancient cultures? Why are we fascinated with how the ancestor species of us homo sapiens lived?

Type 1 would be the most likely to interact with us, even though space would still be a challenge for them. Thing is the farther up the ladder, the less likely it would probably be for them to communicate with us, even though hypothetically, the higher types should have an easier time traveling space.

If it were an ancestor race, it would be no different then ether a watchful parent watching children, to lab rats if they were still around. All the while, I wonder if the Dark Side of the Interdimensional theories could be a problem for both said species.

Other then that, religion, cows, and the secret cow level.

We have nothing much to offer super advanced aliens. Maybe something to offer those only just ahead of us - if such exist sufficiently close enough to ever interact.

I was discussing this with my son yesterday. If you attain free energy, effective freedom from food, immortality etc etc - what the hell is left? What would be their purpose, or ours if we achieved that. I guess exploration might be the only thing left. Just a sort of dusty cataloguing of what is out there for no other reason than they have nothing else to do. a reply to: Peeple

a reply to: nerbot

And then there's Ozzy!

a reply to: Peeple

They are here to learn how to serve man.

Soon or later we all of us will be on the menu. All of us.

originally posted by: mamabeth
a reply to: Peeple

What do we have to offer? A renewable food source.

Bio-compatability with Earth.

a reply to: Peeple

May I postulate that perhaps why they dont mess with us too much....is they are us...from the future...mess with us in their past? Then they dont exist.

Follow me here...maybe, maybe...because we do see them...now...they succeeded...otherwise we wouldnt be seeing things

ETA: They made it...and it must have been something horrible in our future, to force them to come back...but that also means...WE made it as well

a reply to: erbdds

...and Bowie, Iggy, the Pistols, Jazz, Beatles, Stones, the Damned, the Clash, Bluegrass, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dead Kennedy's, NWA, Run DMC, etc, etc, et al.

Hell, live performance in general, poetry, plays, art, novels.

I can think of a LOT of reasons I'd want to visit aliens (unless they were some odd hive-mind that didn't do individuality and art at all) even if they were a lot more primitive than I am.

Tech wise? Probably not much TBH (assuming they had the ability to travel here) but food, arts, culture, people? They'd line up to see us and we would do the same (if political #e-bags and humorless dullards didn't get in the way, which is a big IF).

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: Quadrivium

What if they're the artists formerly known as angels and demons, so technically they'd have maybe more soul.

Oh I believe that is EXACTLY what they are and they are Jealous over the souls we have.

If reality is actually consciousness (a point of view) interacting with or giving meaning to patterns of energy, then every living thing in the universe is helping to "keep it real," literally. The more living things there are existing and observing the universe, the more real and stable it is and the less likely it will disintegrate into chaos.

We offer them a whole planet just bustling with living things interacting with reality and helping keep it real.

originally posted by: Peeple

My question is what positive attribute is unique to humans?
What do we have to offer?

Unique genetic material.

The same thing we search for in the Amazon or the depths of the oceans. You never know when you will find some plant or animal that holds the key to curing cancer in humans, or a way to unlock cellular regeneration, or some other useful enhancement.

If a species has the technological ability to travel between the stars, imagine what they can do with DNA. Every new living thing they discover would be like getting a new encyclopedia set with totally new information. A tadpole may have the cure to a plague on another planet. The DNA of a weed may hold the key to adapting an animal species to an otherwise inhospitable planet.

You'll find the same basic elements everywhere in the universe, but every living thing will evolve to be uniquely adapted to it's environment.

a reply to: Peeple

novelty .