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Comment by froggychairs | Hacker News Reader

Why would aliens have to destroy?

When I go out for a hike in the woods or a hike in a new state/country that isn’t my home. I don’t go out destroying the land around me. I observe and enjoy my time

Maybe these aliens are scientists. Documenting biological life across the galaxy. Maybe they’re VanCampers. Just bouncing from planet to planet for fun

If a civilization has presumably reached FTL travel. I imagine many of their needs have been met and conquest/destruction isn’t required to maintain their supremacy. Lots of empty planets with plenty of resources out there!

Not saying aliens/UFOs are real, but I think it’s very easy to imagine them existing and not being destructive. Or maybe they’re just scouting before the invasion :)

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Seriously. There's nothing here that they can't find out in space in greater quantities and easier access. Except our animal and plant life. And no worries about harvesting us like in movies, it's way easier to grow meat or whatever than travel across the universe for it. We're most likely a curiosity.

> Maybe these aliens are scientists.

Their opsec's way too good for scientists. If they're anything like our scientists, we'd have recovered one of the flying saucers when they tried to go through Arby's drive-through but didn't have enough clearance.

Maybe they're just fictional, and this guy has a Fox Mulder larping fetish.

> If a civilization has presumably reached FTL travel. I imagine many of their needs have been met and conquest/destruction isn’t required to maintain their supremacy.

If we ever achieve FTL travel, do you imagine that it will be available to frat bros doing road trips to Beta Reticuli VI, or will it be this horrendously expensive, economy-wrecking thing that we get to do once or twice and then have to stop because it is almost impossible to do?

We achieved a moon landing for fuck's sake, and the frat bro still hasn't duplicated that one yet (though I will concede he's not doing too shabby).

> Their opsec's way too good for scientists.

I think it’s a mistake to imagine how an alien species would behave based on our own tendencies.

A civilization that has achieved what their (supposed) presence here implies has clearly managed to move far beyond human capability, and our understanding of opsec seems irrelevant.

It could be that with sufficiently advanced technology, “opsec” is mostly irrelevant relative to a species like ours with the capabilities we have.

they said "detection" not "destruction"

And that's fine and all, but it's been nearly a hundred years and they're still doing the same shit? Are we supposed to believe we are the equivalent of a tourist attraction? One where you seem to have a high likelihood of dying?

Not saying I believe this, but for sake of argument…

If these are scientific/observation missions, humanity is going through its most transformative stages of advancement, and the last 100 years have been quite interesting.

If we could go and observe a developing civilization secretly and over a long period of time, I suspect we would.

Rare, but sometimes people die going out on safari in sub-Saharan Africa reserves / game parks. no cite, just google away on this one.

To me the most interesting aspect is that all of the alien discussions and reports spiked after we invented nuclear weapons.

At the same time that’s also when we got mass media, developed our own funky airplanes and got portable cameras etc.

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