Even if it meant the cruel enslavement of the entire human race, I’d still want to encounter an extra-terrestrial.
Because that’d be so freaking awesome.
I bet they’d have a really cool language!
Agreed.
And think of the culture too. Generally aliens in films / TV are pretty dull and as a result often find humans “fascinating”.
In reality, the fascination would be mutual and they’d have lots of cool stuff to show us.
As well as, obviously, the more significant point of all the technological and scientific knowledge which a species capable of interstellar transport could bring to the table.
They speak English: with an American accent. I’ve seen the movies…
Anyway it’ll never, ever happen. The distance is too great. But yeah, count me in as one who often thinks of these things and would love to participate.
The novelty would wear off after the first few years of making cuffs and flies and cutting velvet.
There was a book called “The Alien Years” where aliens land, cause all sorts of damage by basically stepping on things, look around a bit, then a few years later take off again. They take utterly no notice of humans.
That would be really annoying.
To give you some indication of how it might be to meet an alien, I would imagine meeting Michael Jackson would be about as odd and other-worldly.
Are you sure that’s the right title? I looked it up on Amazon and the book seems to be about an enslavement scenario, not one where the aliens simply ignore us.
That’s definitely the cover I remember. I had only skimmed it in the bookstore, however, so I might have gotten things wrong.
I think the ‘utter indifference’ scenario is more likely that the ‘enslavement’ scenario. What chance is there that aliens will be sufficiently close to us in capabilities and goals that they would benefit from enslaving us, or have to actually fight us to achieve their goals? More likely relations would be either indifference (if goals and requirements differ) or, much less likely, a pest-removal scenario if we get in the way.
And yet, that is probably about what would happen. Even if alien life was some form that we could recognize, it is likely that their perception would be so different that we could not communicate at all except in the most facile and rudimentary sense, or that they would be so far advanced compared to humanity in every way that it would make as much sense for them to converse with us as it would for you to speak to a butterfly. Even being able to converse in a very literal sense–say, in mathematics–may not be possible if there is not a common set of shared concepts; for instance, if the alien race had no conception of integers or discrete set theory. Consider a race whose mathematics was all inherently statistical in basis, such that you can’t even start with a number set. How would you talk about a distribution function without starting with discrete numbers?
Meeting an extraterrestrial race would be interesting in concept, but likely very frustrating in practice. We certainly wouldn’t be swapping literature and cultural customs a la the unlikely humanoid-filled, mono-cultured universe of Star Trek.
Stranger
Who says the extra-terrestrial would be intelligent? It’d probably be some kind of space virus.
Can you tell me what it would mean for a mathematics to be inherently statistical in basis, such that the math would not start with a number set?
Personally, I’d be happy just to see a picture of one. Just look how different all the life forms are that originated on our planet. I would expect something that originated in a different gravitational field and temperature may be something we could have never imagined. How laughable is it that movie aliens always have humanoid form, with two eyes, arms, legs, etc? Show some imagination people. Even crazy looking ones like in Aliens still basically have a humanoid head.
Not really; that’s the whole point. But to give a taste of it, consider a system based not upon counting integers, but rather expanding the deviation of a statistical curve to encompass a progressively larger range.
There is actually a branch of integral calculus that starts from this basis, but it is nothing intuitive to our brains. We just don’t think in terms of distributions; we think of one, two, and many.
Stranger
Are you sure that you just dont want to be gang probed?
To be fair there are lots of different species here on Earth that have similar attributes. I don’t think it’s ridiculous to assume any intelligent life form might have similar attributes such as two arms two hands etc…
I’m pretty sure ET would need a set of hands to build a spaceship.
That’s more plausible for features that have evolved on earth independently on more than one occasion.
What I’m getting from you both is essentially, “they’ll be so different it won’t matter.”
I don’t think I agree with this, mainly because we’re talking about ETs coming to Earth, not us going to their planet. If they can conceive of such things as space, space ships, interstellar travel, propulsion, extraterrestrials etc, then we share those concepts and they must not be so different or advanced the whole encounter is meaningless or overly frustrating.
If they’re not more advanced, but simply just very, very different, then they’re probably never coming, because the concept of coming or going doesn’t exist for them.
If they are more advanced, even super super advanced, if they still possess the inclination to visit another planet then I don’t think they’re so advanced they wouldn’t notice us or completely miss how it is we communicate.
Not necessarily. Perhaps they construct their technology biochemically by extruding and controlling with enzymes. Or maybe they change their own construction to be spacefaring without vessels. Maybe they are a collective amorphous entity, like a really sophisticated version of a jellyfish.
Assuming that alien life would be even roughly analogous to life on Earth, much less bipedal humanoids, is self-centered and constrictive. Some of the most intelligent non-primates on Earth, such as cetaceans and cephalopods, have such vastly different means of locomotion, manipulation, and basic environment that it would be hard to have a shared perspective on anything but basic concepts. And intelligent life from another planet is virtually guaranteed to have a dramatically different evolutionary path. Pointy-eared humanoids with hemocyanin-based blood is just about the least likely possibility.
Stranger
In the book, the aliens conquer us, but their motives and actions are incomprehensible. They wipe out huge numbers of humans, and IIRC perform cruel experiments, but no one knows what they’re getting at. In the endthey just leave.
It wasn’t very good, and I don’t remember a lot of it.
A rock has no concept of coming or going, but in the right storm, a rock sliding down a hill can come right down on top of my car, and keep going on about its merry way.