Has E.T. Made A Call? (Possible Contact from Intelligent Civilization)
ktvu.com
ktvu.com
Imagine a civilization 1000 times more advanced than us. Why would they want to kill the equivalent of cavemen?! And there are so many planets out there, I don't see why they'd want to enslave/destroy ours specifically.
It's not like they could possibly feel threatened by us. It reminds me of some people who wanted to prepare for some kind of war against the aliens. In the very unlikely one is declared, we obviously don't have a fighting chance of any kind. It's civilization-who-can-barely-go-into-space VS civilization-with-faster-than-lightspeed-ships.
But as I said, if they're smart enough to travel the stars then they're certainly responsible enough not to destroy a comparatively irrelevant civilization.
Comparatively irrelevant FOR NOW. But that's discounting the exponential progress of energy consumption. They aren't afraid of our nuclear weapons, but why let us live to develop gamma ray bursts? If they study our psychology at all, they would learn that our leaders wouldn't hesitate to gamma ray burst any potential threats.
Eh, I generally agree with you. Just playing the devil's advocate.
I'd like to say we have things, therefore humans are slightly more likely to build stuff than destroy stuff. I'd hope civilization works that way everywhere, but there is no proof of that. Really, there isn't all that much evidence.
We'd share physics and math, and that's about it.
However, this particular article is nonsense.
anyways my message to you the aliens is "back the fk off before you contract Humanitis. your most advanced doctors would NEVER be able to cure it"
There has been millions of species of creatures on Earth over the time it has been around. We are the most advanced, and frankly the other species aren't really close.
Perhaps we are pretty special.
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3aa.html#killingstar has a very good writeup on the subject.
"Any materials you'd like to give us to help... We're running out of oil," she said.
has more than you'd ever want to read about it, but I'll attempt to summarize: Inconclusive, but possibly something like a supernova or a neutron star collision, probably extragalactic, and almost certainly _not_ engineered by intelligent life.
Still, it's fascinating to think of the possibilities if it's real.
"No, maam, I said 3 BILLION years."
"Oh, good. I feel much better now."
Wars are very expensive and destructive. It's hard to become advanced when you keep destroying wealth. On Earth, as we've become more peaceful, we've also become more wealthy, and more able to travel space. The same logic for why this would be so on Earth, applies elsewhere.
Likewise, a warlike race of aliens is not hard to imagine. Wars are "expensive" in that they cost lots of money, but when america wages war the money that is spent in such great amounts is spent on American troops and government contractors, who in turn take the money they earned and spend it on other goods, so it does not "destroy" the money. In fact, war is generally an economy booster. As far as the destruction of resources, assume this hypothetical alien race is warlike toward OTHER species, not internally. The things they are destroying, then, are not on their homeworld, but on the worlds of those they conquer, and every world they conquer is another batch of resources for them to sap before moving on.
I just think you can't really predict the way another race would develop based on a random sample of 1 (humans).
Knowledge is created by a process of replication (with errors), and selection. In human-level terms, truth seeking requires being open to new ideas, including criticism, and replacing faulty ideas. Attitudes like, "some things should remain mysteries and aren't for us to know," "I can believe whatever I want as long as it makes me happy," or whatever it is behind superstitions, prevent knowledge creation. If those attitudes are too prevalent, and applied to too many subjects, you can't develop space flight, and other advanced knowledge.
Dude, broken window fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window"
You have it backwards. Wars create wealth. That is, in part, why we keep having them.
Physical goods are destroyed. Man hours are used up. How is that wealth creation?
More controversially, war deaths reduce the supply of labor, making it more valuable for those who survive. The Black Plague had a similar effect.
But you could have researched that anyway, without breaking the window first. When you are forced to research something b/c of a broken window, or war, you set aside what would have otherwise been a higher priority.
Being forced to do something is not a good way to discover the best priority. Free choice, while imperfect, works better.
One of the most famous explanations for our need of physical destruction of goods was given in "1984"
Also, some wealth is lost in the form of bullets, bombs, and other weapons that are used in the process. It's not the total cost of the bomb, but it is the cost of the physical material that makes the bomb.