Hacker News Reader

Looking at the level of interest/affection we have for intelligent animals on our own planet isn't exactly reassuring.

We know/strongly suspect dolphins/whales/etc are intelligent. But we don't care enough about what they might have to say to really try to communicate them.

And we know gorillas are intelligent. We even know we can teach them to communicate on a simplistic level -- but we don't really do it. We just don't care to. Occasionally we take one from captivity, establish communication aaaand... leave it as a curiosity for some sub-set of under-funded researchers.

No-one's going into the jungle to liaise with the gorilla tribes, help them through their troubles, educate them, present them with technology, medicine, etc.

The best we've managed on either count, on a species-to-species level, is to start to try to raise their perceived value to a level greater than that of slight inconvenience. (To halt the wanton slaughter we were previously, casually and without much remorse, engaged in.)

So would aliens ever come to Earth to stock up their zoo or fill out an encyclopedic survey of the galaxy and its life? On-Earth experience suggests that part is near-guaranteed if they ever swing by.

Might they ever establish communication with a handful of such subjects, mostly to see if it could be done? Again on-Earth experience suggests that's also plausible-to-likely.

But would they ever establish "contact" as our culture defines it? On-Earth experience makes that look less likely than their visiting in the first place.

The only real hope we have for contact, is if the Aliens perceive themselves to be only marginally more advanced than ourselves [1]. But for that to be plausible starts to eat into the requirement/assumption that they be significantly more advanced than ourselves.

[1] more along the lines of Spaniard/Native American interactions, than human/gorilla.

I wasn't arguing the aliens would treat us well. They very well might not. But they'd probably make some form of contact with us. That was my only point.

I think it's guaranteed. Just think about if we got that technology.

If suddenly magically a ship capable of zipping around the galaxy appeared in NASA's hands, other than disassembling it and trying to replicate it, what would we use it for? Looking for other life and inhabitable planets.

No reason to think aliens wouldn't do the same. It's obvious, IMHO.

It is not obvious. If aliens are smart enough to get here, they are also smart to observe that contacting us will cause great chaos. We are simply to primitive. We have famine, racism, wars, and overall a lot of issues that do not warrant contact at this time.

Unless there is one galactic hegemon, there's going to be someone who says "fuck it" and decides to come visit.

Unless there's no one.

I think the argument is that the 'fuck it' level is not necessarily contact in terms of communication with the entire world but may be filled by simply picking up a couple specimens/pets and rolling onwards...

Which, interestingly, is well within some people's model of current alien contact.

But the "some form of contact" that's most likely is rudimentary communication with whatever small cross-section of people they kidnapped for study/captivity.

The rest of us would never know and just go on wondering "where is everybody".

I think there's at least some reason to be a little more optimistic. Aliens technologically capable of visiting us are likely to have progressed through much of the same social development we have, and more (assuming that the pattern that has held for our species is common, which seems reasonable). We are still doing terrible things to each other, but not as often as we used to; I think it's likely that aliens would be kinder than we are. Then again, it's also possible that they might accidentally harm us - even a gentle child can crush an ant without meaning to...

I don't think it's reasonable at all to assume that the pattern of our species is universal or even common.

The problem with the assumption is that our sample-size, as far as our species is concerned, is one. The very concept of society may not exist for an alien that is a single collective intelligence or for one that has simply developed a very advanced set of instinctual responses without higher-level thought.

> We still have tons of interest and even affection for animals on our own planet

Which is a human characteristic shared by hardly any (if any) other species on Earth. So why do you suppose that fundamentally different life will have that human characteristic?

> if intelligent life does exist in our galaxy which is more advanced than ourselves, it will obviously try to contact us.

More advanced than ourselves, presumably, in the mode of what it means for humans to be more advanced. And you are again presupposing that said beings have human-like interests and will be excited about sending us prime numbers on the radio. This isn't a 'certainty'. This is no better than an article of faith on your part.

> We still have tons of interest and even affection for animals on our own planet who are far less advanced than ourselves.

Actually, as far as our interactions with other life forms go, we either ignore them (intestinal bacteria), keep them away (diseases), exterminate them (pests), or harvest and devour them (farming), or kill them for sport (hunting). The utterly insignificant fraction that become objects of our affection are those that are extremely close to us on the evolutionary scale. This wouldn't be the case with a civilization advanced enough to visit. Not even close.

If someone somewhere discovered a new breed of cockroach, would you care?

I wouldn't, but I can assure you there are lots of scientists on this planet who would care.

Your examples involve creatures that we already know about and have interacted with and "integrated" into our lives (one way or another).

But I suppose the counter-example is "it depends who finds us" -- if it's an intergalactic scientific exploration team of aliens, they'll probably be as nice as can be. If it's an intergalactic mining company, maybe not so much.

The equivalent here would be the contrast between a scientific expedition to explore new species in the Amazon Rainforest (i.e. people who would be benign and take an interest in new species) vs. a bulldozing crew out to find more land in those same rainforests ("Oh look, a bird. Ok boys chop down that tree").

Comparing a few (not "lots of" as you claim) specialists scattered around societies around the world is not a good representation of civilizations around the universe (or at least, we can't assume it to be).

As human as it is, most exploration has been grounded in financial and egotistical needs, not scientific exploration. Maybe the civilization is just as curious as we would be and thus would come for selfless reasons, but that's a pretty big assumption.

Being more advanced as a civilization doesn't mean that they would be more advanced as species. Any species capable of making computers or more intelligent machines than themselves would seem to be capable of developing unlimited technological advances given enough time. There hasn't been meaningful biological evolution in humans for thousands of years and it doesn't matter.

If it were a Mars cockroach, we would desperately care.

Except it would be extremely unlikely for us to be the first new species such a space-faring civilization would be coming into contact with.

At galactic scale, there's not much difference between a Mars cockroach and a regular cockroach.

> At galactic scale, there's not much difference between a Mars cockroach and a regular cockroach.

There's not much difference between one species and another here but we still study all of them in great detail.

Don't mistake your lack of intellectual curiosity about a certain subject as being a trait shared by everyone else. I don't care about football but that doesn't mean nobody else does.

Similarly, as I said already, if you're going to go cruising about the galaxy, you're going to put people on that ship who are interested in what they're going to find. Otherwise there's no point.

Oh come on. That analogy is so weak I can barely believe you're serious.

See my response to the other guy who brought up a similar analogy.

pretty sure scientists would care about a new breed of cockroach. So it would make sense for some alien scientists, or perhaps just undergrad science majors to come and check out life on different planets.

One big mistake people do is conflate society as a whole with all its members.

Society, as a whole, probably doesn't care about a new cockroach species. But there is someone who does, just on Earth.

Similarly, among any civ that has the basic biological impulses required to become an interstellar civ, there are going to be people who want to branch out on their own, who want to study something on their own, who want to be the first to contact something new. It's all those millions of edge-case members that will do the amazing stuff.

The interest and affection we have for pets is a very different situation than that of an intergalactic civilization's view on intelligent life. If they respect other life, intelligent or not, in the galaxy, chances are they would be very unwilling to interfere. I'd be very excited to visit a planet with other life on it but I would give an extreme amount of thought about whether I wanted to risk introducing pathogens or exposing an intelligent civilization to knowledge and technology far beyond its time (the immediate philosophical and psychological impact of discovering that you are not alone in the universe cannot be predicted, especially with alien races).

If, on the other hand, they didn't respect other life not as advanced as them, why would their actions be any different than that of humanity for thousands of years when dealing with less intelligent life forms?

Not to mention they may have religious or cultural reasons to contact/convert/kill any other form of intelligent life.

indeed. again, looking at world affairs, that might be a greater motivational force than anything else.

>>The idea that advanced aliens wouldn't bother talking to us / visiting us if they could because we're too primitive is obviously wrong. We still have tons of interest and even affection for animals on our own planet who are far less advanced than ourselves. <<

Look, there are many ponds of varying sizes, a couple of meters to hundreds of meters in diameter, in the woods near my home. Some of them most likely have life of some form. How interested are you in going there and study that life or even just check out what life there is? None? Right. That is the whole point of the article. You already know there is life there, it is not unique. Why bother?

Your are making the exact mistake the author cautions against. We think we are important, most likely we are a dime a dozen in the vastness of the galaxy.

There are people who are interested in the contents of those ponds, and they already have been studied.

The people who are curious about the ponds (planets) are the ones that would be put on the ship.

Not to mention your analogy is terrible. Those ponds aren't interesting to me because they are nothing special. They don't contain anything that we aren't constantly surrounded with everywhere.

On the other hand in the galaxy, planets with life on it are special. And intelligent life even more so.

Your argument is extremely, extremely weak. As I said, it's obvious, if aliens were cruising around the universe the whole purpose of it would be to find other intelligent life and inhabitable planets and interesting stuff. If we were doing it, that would obviously be our purpose, there's no reason to think that wouldn't be the purpose of any other intelligent life.

>Not to mention your analogy is terrible. Those ponds aren't interesting to me because they are nothing special. They don't contain anything that we aren't constantly surrounded with everywhere. On the other hand in the galaxy, planets with life on it are special. And intelligent life even more so.

No - the whole point of the article is that they're not. Sure, it's a tiny proportion of planets. But in an unimaginably vast universe, there have got to be billions of them - and while there would surely be aliens who study some other civilizations, once you've seen a few million human-level civilizations you've seen them all. Analogy: even though four-leaf clover are rare and interesting as clover go, still the vast majority of four-leaf clover in the world have never been examined by a human.

But it doesn't matter that in the entire universe there are tons because anything outside of our galaxy might as well not exist when you're talking about communication / contact.

So just focusing on the galaxy, even if life arises on every planet where it is capable, it's not going to be common. The planets with life on them will be few and far between. And as I said, based on our evidence, not even all (or any necessarily) of those will have intelligent life.

>>There are people who are interested in the contents of those ponds, and they already have been studied.

But has every single pond been studied no matter its size. Do people rush to study a new discovered pond 5 meters in diameter? Is it that novel that people will rush to it? No, because there are millions of ponds just like it. That is who we are, a little pond maybe 1 meter in diameter (probably should call it a puddle), nothing extraordinary about it. There are a millions of other 1 meter ponds/puddles around the world, why would our pond/puddle be singled out? What is so special about our tiny pond/puddle? That is the point of the article. You are not thinking big enough.

I addressed every point you bring up.

You insist we're nothing special, there's no reason to believe that.

If that were the case and there's human like intelligent life all over the place in the galaxy then we should start picking up their signals pretty soon.

Even more so, we should have picked some up already (because certainly some of them should have been ahead of us.) But we haven't found anything. We are quite possibly alone in the Milky Way in terms of intelligent life, and if we aren't, the advanced aliens are very far away indeed.

ehhh you arent really backing up your points. We have to take this argument for what its worth, i mean we are basically talking a thought experiment along science fiction lines right here... and thats ok, makes for an interesting change. BUT in lines with that you have to from a thought experiment standpoint justify your arguements...

The original author went to great length to justify his arguments, I think a lot of his are flawed, but they are at least fully thought out/hashed. You cant play this thought experiment game without playing by the same rules...

You believe intelligent life is rare in the galaxy, also you believe inter galactic distances are so vast that even with mature FTL travel those regions will remain inaccessible. I dont really see a strong justification for the second postulate, the first i am on the fence about

The analogy doesn't really hold because ponds in the forest are going to be much more homogenous than planets. If every pond we looked was unique, we would probably be more interested in individuals.

Of course, there's no reason to assume that life on different planets is more diverse than different ponds, but it seems more likely.

Humans have spent a massive amount of time and effort studying other forms of life on this planet. As a species, we clearly have an intense interest in that, demonstrated in everything from what we look at on Reddit, to what books are purchased to what types of vacations people like to take, to gardening and cultivation, to the number of people that work in fields directly related to the environment or animals.

Your premise is invalid.

Right, and thanks to all that time studying it is very likely that whatever is in the pond is nothing new. Which is kind of the point of the article. Whatever is in the pond is most likely nothing we haven't seen before. Now, studying the depths of the Arctic is a different matter. Are you saying that we are so rare (just like Arctic species hundreds of meters below ice) that aliens will rush to study us?

The whole point is that we are probably average, just like the life in the pond is probably average, which is the reason nobody will put us on their priority list.

If life is so common that alien civs just have their total pick of who to study, then we should see some evidence of all these neighbors.

Remember, civilizations are composed of billions of beings. You only need one being to decide to come study this pond, or otherwise enforce a rule against anyone doing it.