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Comment by tialaramex | Hacker News Reader

More seriously, although those stories are a lot of fun, (and also check out his short stories which I felt are better):

It is very unlikely that there is anything out there that is capable of actually coming here, for the same reason it's very unlikely we can ever leave the solar system. A radio "conversation" over many generations - if that's even possible - would be the high point of our civilisation.

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Agreed, unless we haven't gotten a hold of all the physics necessary for trips on that scale. That said, I do think it's overly pessimistic to think that aliens would mistreat us as a matter of course - obviously we've done a lot of that to each other in the past, but I'd like to think that most modern societies (say, Norway, to pick a random example) wouldn't just casually enslave and kill a new tribe. We're at a point in our history where even the idea of colonizing is anathema (not that there isn't plenty of fallout from before that was true...). So I don't have a hard time imagining a species that's thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years ahead of us would have a very different take on interacting with other sentient beings (assuming we make that cut for them).

To add to that point, most colonisation has been about resource capture.If you have technology for inter galactic travel I imagine resource access of the universe becomes abundant. But who knows, maybe we make good pets.

> To add to that point, most colonisation has been about resource capture.

I think you're over-extrapolating. One obvious difference is that colonizers have been exposed to other humans of all kinds, even before colonization. There was nothing about (e.g.) Native American society that you couldn't find in Eurasia + Africa that's even remotely on the same scale as the differences between us and a theoretical alien civilization.

Let's hope it's pets.

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

Look no further than the current political climate of the United States, no matter how noble a society there will always be a segment that will act irrationally out of fear and ignorance. That same segment of a superior alien race could easily act to destroy us.

How can you identify the irrational segment?

Try watching Alex Jones

Love to know where you locate the nobility and with whom.

Dolphins.

We're hardly above colonizing. Just look at all of the wars America has fought over the last 50 years.

Well, that's certainly about interfering with and exploiting, but not what you'd traditionally call 'colonization' - that is, there aren't masses of US citizens moving in to displace Afghans or Iraqis.

Is there any literature that digs deeply into this subject? Ideally by someone far smarter than the average smart person? I've been meaning to read up on this subject...

Well the original post refers to the Three Body Problem series which is a rather interesting take on the topic. The English translations have now been available for a couple of years.

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