# Alien dilemma friend or foe **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 10, 2021, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alien-dilemma-friend-or-foe/930184 "2021-01-10T15:32:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dark\_Sponge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dark_sponge/32/121_2.png) [@Dark\_Sponge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dark_Sponge)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2021, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alien-dilemma-friend-or-foe/930184/21 "2021-01-11T22:54:56Z")
> [@Baal\_Houtham](#): > > And then there is that enduring, vitally important, motive for visiting primitive cultures: Religious conversion. Yes, if God exists then naturally He also created the other forms of life in the Universe and they would also be aware of Him. ---
**Author:** ![Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de053/32.png) [@Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackknifed_Juggernaut)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2021, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alien-dilemma-friend-or-foe/930184/22 "2021-01-11T23:06:19Z")
So if we discovered ant-like creatures on Mars, we’d take all their shit and build churches for them? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2021, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alien-dilemma-friend-or-foe/930184/23 "2021-01-11T23:32:28Z")
Sure. For the lulz. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2021, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alien-dilemma-friend-or-foe/930184/24 "2021-01-12T06:04:44Z")
I tend to agree with the OP, but it’s a bit more complex than the OP implies. [LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy) is correct that a case could be made for a kind of preemptive self defence; wiping out upstart species before they can pose a threat. I don’t think it’s completely rational but I also can’t see any reason why at least one species might think it makes sense, particularly a species that has faced threats previously (ala Star Control 2). Also our first encounter with extraterrestrial tech might be with self-replicating probes, which seem something fairly trivial to manufacture compared to vessels for lifeforms to travel in. Although it makes no sense for these probes to be explicitly hostile, it may well be that humans are so primitive right now that we have no way to stop such probe(s) chewing up our land. > [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > I cannot really prescribe the motives of aliens. So, I look to history. What happened when explorers of the past, your Columbuses, Magellans, your Marco Polos discovered the new worlds? A lot of extrapolations from the past don’t work, and this is much more than extrapolating from the past. An alien contact scenario involves a species likely at least millions of years equivalent technology ahead of us (see spoiler). They will have travelled past sources of e.g. energy, water, precious metals _billions_ of times the accessible volume of the earth. It’s a very different situation; the only possible thing of value and interest is the life here, with probably a particular interest in the sentient life. Movies have primed us to expect aliens not much more advanced than humans now; that have similar motivations and social structures to us, that we can compete with and fight wars with. But, the universe is extremely old compared to the speed it appears that sentient civilizations evolve. Even if life requires a Population I star, the window for sentient life to appear is still billions of years wide. Two random sentient species are likely to be separated by at least millions of years equivalent technology. “Apes or gods but not men” was how Arthur C Clarke put it, I think. ---
**Author:** ![not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/not_what_you_d_expect/32/3246_2.png) [@not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/not_what_you_d_expect)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2021, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alien-dilemma-friend-or-foe/930184/25 "2021-01-12T11:47:19Z")
Maybe we taste like Truffles or Oreos or something to another species. We could be very valuable. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2021, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alien-dilemma-friend-or-foe/930184/26 "2021-01-12T15:27:21Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > I cannot really prescribe the motives of aliens. So, I look to history. What happened when explorers of the past, your Columbuses, Magellans, your Marco Polos discovered the new worlds? > … Akin to what @Mijin said above, your comment tells us what _humans_ have done when they are the superior discoverers. Applied to the OP, it says what we would likely do upon sending our starships to e.g. Alpha Centauri and finding some folks with airplanes and computers and maybe able to orbit their planet for weeks at a time. It says substantially zero about what would happen were the sheath(s) on the other pseudopod(s). ---
**Author:** ![Squidsak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Squidsak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squidsak)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2021, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alien-dilemma-friend-or-foe/930184/27 "2021-01-13T16:52:42Z")
my issue with your example is the explores were humans as are the indigenous savages and we come from the same planet so our needs are very similar and the investment in conquering them is so much cheaper ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2021, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alien-dilemma-friend-or-foe/930184/28 "2021-01-14T16:52:40Z")
Of course not. We’d break out the pesticides. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alien-dilemma-friend-or-foe/930184.md?page=1)