Is it likely intelligent life will be violent?

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE=Staggerlee]
On a different matter, I’d find it quite hilarious if an alien race 20000 light years away had set out for earth at half the speed of light 10000 years ago, expecting to find a lush paradise, only to find the world overpopulated by warmongers, resources depleted, in the grip of global warming.
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Heh. I recall thinking that the first time I saw the description of some bad sci-fi movie; Battlefield Earth I think, that the aliens had come to Earth to loot it’s natural resources.

< Aliens land, step out of their ship >

Alien : “Pathetic humans ! We have come to your world to steal it’s resources for ourselves !”

Voice from back of crowd : “Too late !”

[QUOTE=Fiver]
For that matter, it’s possible to conceive of an organism that doesn’t even consume other living organisms.
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They exist. Plants come to mind. As for animals, there are a few small animals that have plants living symbiotically inside them and use them to fuel themselves. A watergoing creature called green hydra, and a microscopic worm that lacks a mouth since it doesn’t eat; it can just absorb the little it needs through the skin.

42

[QUOTE=Staggerlee]
Okay, like maybe a gigantic bursting seed pod which spreads its seeds around the planet with enormous force, which eventually mutates to the point where its hardy anaerobic seeds reach escape velocity and whizz off to inhabit other planets? I suppose so.
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Sounds like the Gamera movie, “Advent of Legion”.

43

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Better yet, imagine such a species that starts out as small eggs that can burrow into soil and eventually grow into fearsome insectoid monsters. Or imagine an alien race advanced enough in biology to create such a thing. They could just launch thousands of things the size of a space probe and land them on earth. They would then burrow into the ground and a few years later millions of them explode out of the earth (functioning as a hive mind) and kill everything, then the alien race that created this “weapon” sends some colonists on the slow 30-year boat to Earth.
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In the movie Aliens, Burke was trying to smuggle out a chest burster inside a survivor in order to weaponize it, presumably for the scenario you laid out.

44

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Why would it be impossible? I think it is extremely improbable, but not what I would classify as impossible.

I know very little about physics, but it is my understanding that from everything we know about physics, the light speed constrain just isn’t ever going to go away. That there isn’t really a work around to that. However, working within that framework, I can still easily imagine a scenario where we could be attacked.

Imagine there is an advanced species that lives somewhere in the Alpha Centauri system, and they want to attack us. Sure, from what we know about physics, they aren’t going to ever be able to travel faster than light. But can we be certain there is no way to travel very fast?

I think we could probably, with current technology, have something traveling through space at around 150,000 mph. The Galileo probe was at one point traveling like 106,000 mph through space.

At that speed, it would still take something like 20,000 years to reach earth.

But what if we had something going at like, 33,000,000 miles per hour? That’s how fast you would have to be going to get from Alpha Centauri to earth in 30 years. That’s only 5% of the speed of light.

Thirty years is a long time in the life of a human. But maybe a life form evolving on AC lives for 300-400 years. For them, it’d be a significant journey, but if they were a race that just wanted to conquer, it wouldn’t bother them.

Or maybe it’s a hive-mind type species, in which case maybe they could send a big vessel that functioned as a self-sufficient hive, traveling through space. Within the hive, over 30 years many of them would be born, grow up, and die, but the hive itself would be alive and functioning. Ready to conquer when it got to earth.

Better yet, imagine such a species that starts out as small eggs that can burrow into soil and eventually grow into fearsome insectoid monsters. Or imagine an alien race advanced enough in biology to create such a thing. They could just launch thousands of things the size of a space probe and land them on earth. They would then burrow into the ground and a few years later millions of them explode out of the earth (functioning as a hive mind) and kill everything, then the alien race that created this “weapon” sends some colonists on the slow 30-year boat to Earth.

Working under the current constraints of human biology and physics, sure it is impossible. But change the biologic factor (life cycle, way we reproduce, maximum age) and advance the technology some (but without exceeding the speed of life) and it’s not impossible by any means.
[/QUOTE]

Your ideas are interesting! :cool:

However I still have a couple of quibbles. :slight_smile:

Assuming a civilisation in Alpha Centauri could travel at 33,000,000 miles per hour, they still have to accelerate to that speed, then slow when they arrive. The entire journey is not going to be at that speed.

Also you have to allow for technological advances. The travelling civilisation presumably has difficulty communicating with home planet, while the Earth can continue to research.

Your (creepy!) alien eggs would have to be able to process Earth food and cope with Earth bugs. To be fair, I believe a Mr. Jules Verne posted this idea first…

45

I was under the impression a large brain requires protein, hence evolutionary developed intelligence has a predilection towards carnivores.

46

[QUOTE=The Controvert]
In the movie Aliens, Burke was trying to smuggle out a chest burster inside a survivor in order to weaponize it, presumably for the scenario you laid out.
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I’ve always suspected that the alien ship discovered in Alien wasn’t opperated by the species that jumps out of chests. The mummified corpse of the ‘pilot’ looks like an elephant and has a burst open chest. I think the ship was carrying biological weapons (eggs) and the pilot got infected and suffered for it before they crashed. THAT was the species we needed to watch out for, space travelling aliens willing to use those things.

47

[QUOTE=Sitnam]
I’ve always suspected that the alien ship discovered in Alien wasn’t opperated by the species that jumps out of chests. The mummified corpse of the ‘pilot’ looks like an elephant and has a burst open chest. I think the ship was carrying biological weapons (eggs) and the pilot got infected and suffered for it before they crashed. THAT was the species we needed to watch out for, space travelling aliens willing to use those things.
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What you say makes sense, but it’s difficult to say based on just the pilot - which was some kind of cyborg thing - although it looked like a humanoid lifeform in a seat, it was fused/connected to the seat and equipment.

http://gallery.agonia.net/data/media/38/giger12.jpg

48

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
What you say makes sense, but it’s difficult to say based on just the pilot - which was some kind of cyborg thing - although it looked like a humanoid lifeform in a seat, it was fused/connected to the seat and equipment.

http://gallery.agonia.net/data/media/38/giger12.jpg
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The Aliens don’t seem to be that intelligent, they’re sharp as far as killing goes, but they lack serious problem solving skills…they also don’t seem to have a language. How could they build a ship? Why wouldn’t they have weapons? An incredibly successful species like that would damage their own ecosystem with their gestation habits and ravenous hunting, how could that be sustained?

49

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]

They exist. Plants come to mind. As for animals, there are a few small animals that have plants living symbiotically inside them and use them to fuel themselves. A watergoing creature called green hydra, and a microscopic worm that lacks a mouth since it doesn’t eat; it can just absorb the little it needs through the skin.
[/QUOTE]
I wasn’t including plants because they make use of other organisms (worms, bees, and undoubtedly various microbes). My hypothetical was a species that makes no use of other organisms to get by.

51

[QUOTE=real apathy takes time]
Why not just look around at intelligent life on this planet? The animals we know.
Is most of it violent? No. Most of it is pretty tame and retiring browsers and grazers and gatherers. Only a small portion are hunters.
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You must admit sentience has a nack for massive organized mayhem.

52

[QUOTE=Sitnam]
You must admit sentience has a nack for massive organized mayhem.
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It has a knack for organisation.

All life seems to have a knack for massive mayhem. I was attacked by my cock today.

53

That sounds fowl.

54

[QUOTE=Fiver]
That sounds fowl.
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I certainly hope so

55

[QUOTE=Taber]
I certainly hope so
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:dubious:

Well, yeah, I did mean cock in the fowl, not foul sense.

56

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]

Or perhaps not. Elephants have trunks but they have never evolved sentience.
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Some Elephants will pass the rouge test, one of the most important tests in determining self-awareness.

57

[QUOTE=ForumBot]
Some Elephants will pass the rouge test, one of the most important tests in determining self-awareness.
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Bad news for me! I always put on too much.

58

Im undecided myself but SOMEBODY has to post the traditional quote for this sort of discussion.
My quoting is inexact,but the gist is correct.

Orson Welles “Switzerland had so many hundered years of peace and they invented the cuckoo clock.
Italy had so many hundred years of war,intrigue and assassination and produced Michelangelo,Leonardo Da Vicince,Galileo and the Rennaisance.”

No doubt someone whos not quite so knackered as me will post the actual quote but if not ,my apologies.

59

“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

60

[QUOTE=Small British Shop Owner]
It has a knack for organisation.

All life seems to have a knack for massive mayhem. I was attacked by my cock today.
[/QUOTE]

??? Are you debating me with my own point?

61

[QUOTE=Sitnam]
??? Are you debating me with my own point?
[/QUOTE]

Nope, just clairfying it for us.