# Would an alien race necessarily be pro-social **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 13, 2013, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091 "2013-08-13T00:48:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/61 "2013-08-14T12:11:36Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > We can’t rule anything out. All we can do is try to weigh up what is more likely. That’s effectively the same thing, and I haven’t seen any metrics on this determination of likelihood you’re doing. > [@](#): > > There are at least a dozen different technologies we could list that look tractable right now and could completely change the kind of sentience that we will encounter. > It’s likely that an interstellar species will have mastered at least one of them. That’s all. _Why_ is it likely? What’s the necessary connection between AI and travel? Or genetic engineering and travel? I’m not seeing it. > [@Mijin](#): > > I’ve assumed no such thing. Are you the OP? Because the OP wrote > [@](#): > > I am assuming no species would develop the level of technical sophistication necessary for interstellar travel unless they had pro-social tendencies and that was what I was referring to. And no, if one alien managed to produce viable tech for FTL by yourself (thousands of generations, remember?) that does _not_ make them a society. It might not need a chain of invention that includes AI - the real world is not always a _Civilization_ discovery tree, serendipitous discoveries happen. Read “The Road Not Taken” by Turtledove for what happens when an alien species assumes that the path of technology is fixed. For all we know, FTL may require some way of thinking about physics we’re just not trying yet. I doubt it, myself, but there you go - I’m human, after all. ---
**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:** [August 14, 2013, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/62 "2013-08-14T14:08:27Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > What’s the necessary connection between AI and travel? Or genetic engineering and travel? I’m not seeing it. If you’re not seeing the connection that’s because there is none, and no-one has suggested there is. What I am saying is this: interstellar travel looks to be a much more difficult problem than developing AI, say. Certainly it looks likely that humans will develop general AI before we can send a contingent to a planet orbiting another star, let alone invade. Similarly with neural implants, GE, nanotech, and so on. Now very obviously their history is not going to parallel ours. All I am saying, is that given that a random interstellar species will be much, much more advanced than us, not just a little bit, I think it’s a good bet that they will have a good mastery of at least one of these technologies. It stretches credulity IMO to imagine a species millions of years more advanced than us having black spots over much of what present day humans are already gaining an understanding of. > [@](#): > > And no, if one alien managed to produce viable tech for FTL by yourself (thousands of generations, remember?) that does _not_ make them a society. It might not need a chain of invention that includes AI - the real world is not always a _Civilization_ discovery tree, serendipitous discoveries happen. I didn’t say they would be a society, I said “equivalent to”. Modern-day science requires many parallel strands of science, engineering and mathematics pushing forwards. Many of these strands don’t have a specific goal; they are not applied sciences, but they then prove to be absolutely essential in understanding a phenomenon or developing new tech. Now, you could say interstellar travel could be different to this, and a single discovery or a single branch of science is basically all that’s needed. It doesn’t look like a good bet for that though. There are many separate problems involved in safely transporting an organism several light years to another planet and then landing successfully. Even detecting the planet in the first place has required some pretty impressive maths and physics insights, and of course engineering. So, this hypothetical super-clever entity has sufficient memory to be pushing many separate strands of science and mathematics together and can crosslink insights from these fields appropriately. His brain is essentially playing the role of many humans cooperating. Even if you disagree with that way of phrasing it, the fact is if he’s performing non-goal oriented science and maths, and pushing those fields much further than humans have to date, there’s a good chance he’ll advance one or more of the fields we’ve listed. ---
**Author:** ![SirGalahad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/71c47a/32.png) [@SirGalahad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SirGalahad)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/63 "2013-08-14T16:54:42Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I think it would be a horrible misunderstanding of the nature of uncertainty to declare “all bets are off” here. We can obviously speculate on what is likely and what is less likely. > > I don’t know whether the aliens will have ships made of candy floss. > But for various reasons it seems unlikely. > > I haven’t suggested that “my logic” is better than anyone else’s. All I’ve done is stated an opinion and given the reasoning why I have that opinion. If that reasoning is flawed, I’d be the first to want to know that. Really. > > But I haven’t read anything in this thread to suggest that, and it doesn’t help that so many posts have been about trying to label positions as “religion” or “liberalism” and just haven’t addressed the topic at all. Two problems … your “likely” and “less likely” are different from mine. I believe you are operating under the delusion that aliens will have the same social evolutionary goals and engage in the same thought processes as yourself Second, your “candy floss” example is predictably ridiculous, since the scenarios I’ve suggested, such as aliens embracing instinct or eschewing passive social standards, are in no way as blatantly and passively-aggressively insulting or condescending as your floss comment. It’s non sequitur that my warlike or “politically incorrect” aliens equate candy spaceships. The suggestion is beneath you, as you know, and the implications are quite frankly rude. ---
**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:** [August 14, 2013, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/64 "2013-08-14T17:05:02Z")
> [@SirGalahad](#): > > Two problems … your “likely” and “less likely” are different from mine. I believe you are operating under the delusion that aliens will have the same social evolutionary goals and engage in the same thought processes as yourself Nope, I have been clear that that is not the case. If you think I’ve assumed aliens will have the same social evolutionary goals and engage in the same thought processes, quote it. > [@](#): > > Second, your “candy floss” example is predictably ridiculous, since the scenarios I’ve suggested, such as aliens embracing instinct or eschewing passive social standards, are in no way as blatantly and passively-aggressively insulting or condescending as your floss comment. The example however refutes your point that “any sci-fi type scenario is as good as another” implying all bets are off. It’s not “beneath me”, it’s a reductio ad absurdum. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/65 "2013-08-14T17:15:25Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Assume there are aliens, if they exist would they be a pro-social species, and would those pro-social attitudes extend to life on this planet? > > I am assuming no species would develop the level of technical sophistication necessary for interstellar travel unless they had pro-social tendencies. Those devices cannot be built in isolation, as far as I know. You need millions of organisms working together as a society for long periods of time to achieve that goal. You have to respect the wants/needs of other people in your civilization to be advanced and big enough to eventually develop interstellar travel. > > But social insects are pro-social, however they won’t hesitate to attack an outsider. And humans are no different we are pretty adept at shutting off our pro-social attitudes at the edges of the society we identify with and depend on for protection. > > According to computer models, the best survival model is one where organisms cooperate, unless and until one becomes a threat or a welcher (these work better than everyone for himself models or models where people are too nice that they get taken advantage of). Then that organism who is cheating or a threat is punished and/or shunned. Wouldn’t that rule apply across the universe? Would most technologically advanced species have developed a pro-social attitude, but they turn it off when individuals threaten the collective or are not important to it? > > On another note, I’ve heard humans are more egalitarian than some other apes, and it could be because we evolved to throw stones. As a result of this, no alpha male could bully all the other males in a small tribe. If one did, the others would gang up and beat him to death. This led to the selection of egalitarian traits in hunter gatherer societies. With the advent of agriculture the opposite happened and bullies could roam free again since they controlled the military and police. So I have no idea if an alien species had this in their background. What if humans had evolved from babboons (who are generally assholes) rather than going through a phase of egalitarian hunter-gatherers in our history? > > Wouldn’t a species capable of interstellar travel also be capable of advanced neuroscience, and as a result change their own brains to become whatever is productive based on their goals? It is obvious that we as humans are still relying on failed cognitive programming that worked in our past environment but doesn’t work now (xenophobia, eating unhealthy diets, not taking risks like climate change seriously while freaking out over spiders, being easily distracted by celebrities and wedge issues, religious superstition, etc). > > Would an alien race be benefited by programming themselves to be capable of extreme evil in the face of outsiders? Or would there be more benefits from programming pro-social tendencies into their brains? If an alien species could program and reprogram their minds, what kind of ethics and morals would they pick and how would that relate to contact with the humans? > > So aside from evolution affecting possible alien behavior, there is also the reprogramming of cognition by aliens. Any species advanced enough to travel across space would be advanced enough to rewire their own brains (or whatever they have). Are there any reasonable benefits to aliens intentionally making themselves hostile to other intelligent life? > > On the subject of aliens being hostile, I can’t really see many motives. What do we have that they want? Would they keep us as slaves? Machines are more productive than slaves and aliens have nothing to gain from enslaving us. Our natural resources are dwarfed by the natural resources a truly advanced civilization could find in the galaxy not to mention make themselves out of fusion. Any hyper advanced society has probably perfected fusion and by proxy alchemy, the ability to make any element out of (abundant) hydrogen. So our natural resources mean nothing. > > If they find our atmosphere hospitable (which would be a major coincidence) they would probably know how to terraform a different planet. > > The only realistic reason I could see them being hostile to humans is if aliens wanted to study biology and preserve biodiversity, and saw humans as a threat to the biological life on this planet. Humans are causing a 6th extinction right now, so if an alien race was interested in preserving biodiversity, I could see them killing us all. Aside from that I can’t see any real reason aliens would be dicks. > [@SirGalahad](#): > > The Europeans who sailed to North America in the 16th and 17th centuries were technologically far ahead of the North American aborigines, and very well developed culturally and philosophically. They didn’t need to be dicks to the native peoples … but they slaughtered them. They also enslaved them and tried very hard to stamp out their cultures and traditions. The natural resources and land could very likely have been shared comfortably, but genocide and aggression suited the white explorers and immigrants more than negotiations and diplomacy. > > Why would intelligent aliens be more altruistic than our planet’s most forward thinking nations? We are warlike … why wouldn’t aliens be the same? > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > [Morning-Light-Mountain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga#Pandora.27s_Star): “There is only one Universe and it can only contain one life. Me.” > **[Berserker (novel series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(Saberhagen))** > > The Berserker series is a series of space opera science fiction short stories and novels by Fred Saberhagen, in which robotic self-replicating machines strive to destroy all life. > These Berserkers, named after the human berserker warriors of Norse legend, are doomsday weapons left over from an interstellar war between two races of extraterrestrials. They all have machine intelligence, and their sizes range from that of an asteroid, in the case of an automated repair and construction base, down t... What possible reason would an alien race have to expend resources to come this far to begin with? Unless they discovered a limitless source of free energy, I don’t see it. ---
**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:** [August 14, 2013, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/66 "2013-08-14T17:21:33Z")
> [@SirGalahad](#): > > Second, your “candy floss” example is predictably ridiculous, since the scenarios I’ve suggested, such as aliens embracing instinct or eschewing passive social standards, are in no way as blatantly and passively-aggressively insulting or condescending as your floss comment. It’s non sequitur that my warlike or “politically incorrect” aliens equate candy spaceships. The suggestion is beneath you, as you know, and the implications are quite frankly rude. Also…I shouldn’t let this go. I’ve had veiled insults thrown at me several times in this thread, including twice now in this post of yours. Meanwhile I have not insulted you or anyone else. Saying, as I did, “If we can’t say X is unlikely, we can’t say Y is unlikely either” is, at the worst, a straw man / hyperbole (I don’t believe it’s that, because the argument works, but that’s all it could be). ---
**Author:** ![SirGalahad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/71c47a/32.png) [@SirGalahad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SirGalahad)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/67 "2013-08-14T17:21:35Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Nope, I have been clear that that is not the case. If you think I’ve assumed aliens will have the same social evolutionary goals and engage in the same thought processes, quote it. > > The example however refutes your point that “any sci-fi type scenario is as good as another” implying all bets are off. It’s not “beneath me”, it’s a reductio ad absurdum. When the aliens show up in warships with hulls composed of chitinous polysaccharides, you won’t be laughing then. Parva leves capiunt animas. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/68 "2013-08-14T21:09:43Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > What sentient races have in common, at least those that create interstellar ships, is problem solving. They make their environment better for themselves. > And their environment includes their own bodies: for example, I’m sure you would agree with me that medical care among sentient species is probably very common. A species that allowed infected wounds to just kill the host, despite a knowledge of how to prevent that death, would likely be atypical. Even that might be somewhat debatable. The medical care that is implemented by much of Terran humanity is clearly opposed to natural selection, meaning that _homo sapiens sapiens_ has chosen to subvert evolution for emotional reasons. Injuries, yes, that may be a slightly different matter, especially if a pro-social species engaged in interstellar travel have a limited cohort to staff the vessel(s), but to infer that blind adherence to hippocratic principles would always logically follow is highly questionable. Remember, we are talking about alien species, their ideals and thought patterns would almost certainly differ from ours, and as we have not yet accomplished long distance space travel, we have little idea what non-technical aspects would be involved in surviving and mastering it. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/69 "2013-08-14T21:27:23Z")
Why do people assume alien will be so intelligent, enlightened and sophisticated and won’t be a bunch of dumbasses like most humans? I mean we have some pretty smart people who design and build airplanes. But it’s not like you have to be an aerospace engineer to ride in one. “Welcome to Earth! We have so much to learn from each other!” “Whatever delbra\*pt. I just fix the anal probes. You probably want to speak to my Overzorb…Morp.” ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/70 "2013-08-14T22:04:22Z")
Again, the pedantic reason to me is that that behavior would had been common between the aliens too, and it’s more likely to me that they would had destroyed themselves before reaching for the stars. \*\*\*We \*\*\*may not make it BTW, but if anyone is reading this in the year 3000, congratulations! And good luck out there. ---
**Author:** ![Mnemnosyne](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mnemnosyne/32/3347_2.png) [@Mnemnosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mnemnosyne)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/71 "2013-08-15T01:15:34Z")
There’s a problem I see with the ‘different levels of advancement’ assumption, also. If the timeframes are large enough (and it sounds like they’re being assumed to be) then it seems plausible that there are two general levels of advancement by FTL-capable alien species: either not as advanced as possible, or as advanced as possible. There’s no reason to assume technological advancement is infinite, after all; as far as we currently are aware, there are fundamental physical limits that prevent any further advancement once those limits are reached. Therefore it seems entirely probable to me that there is a ‘final level of advancement’ that can theoretically be reached, and at that point…there is no more technology to discover, improve, or refine. A civilization that has reached this level therefore has two other types of civilizations it can encounter: equals, and lessers. It would therefore be reasonable to exterminate all lessers, in order to prevent them from ever becoming equals. All civilizations at this point of advancement would have basically the same motivation for exterminating all lessers, so I see no reason why one civilization at that level would intervene to protect a lesser. Interaction among the equals may well be peaceful and social, or it may be a status of cold war, maintained by MAD, or any number of other possible political arrangements. But in no case is there any particular benefit to any of those endgame civilizations in allowing other civilizations to achieve the same status. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/72 "2013-08-15T02:01:29Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Again, the pedantic reason to me is that that behavior would had been common between the aliens too, and it’s more likely to me that they would had destroyed themselves before reaching for the stars. > > \*\*\*We \*\*\*may not make it BTW, but if anyone is reading this in the year 3000, congratulations! And good luck out there. That’s what I suspect is going to happen, indeed. ---
**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:** [August 15, 2013, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/73 "2013-08-15T04:21:57Z")
> [@For You](#): > > The medical care that is implemented by much of Terran humanity is clearly opposed to natural selection, meaning that _homo sapiens sapiens_ has chosen to subvert evolution for emotional reasons. No, we haven’t. Medical care long pre-dates any knowledge of evolution, and even afterward, it’s debatable whether it’s a subversion. And it doesn’t follow that it’s for emotional reasons. If I repair my microwave, am I being emotional? We chose to try to minimize pain, aid healing and prolong life, for initially just ourselves and our tribe. I would expect most if not all sentient species to act similarly; use their intelligence to give themselves an advantage in their environment. ---
**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:** [August 15, 2013, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/74 "2013-08-15T05:47:52Z")
> [@Mnemnosyne](#): > > There’s no reason to assume technological advancement is infinite, after all; as far as we currently are aware, there are fundamental physical limits that prevent any further advancement once those limits are reached. Therefore it seems entirely probable to me that there is a ‘final level of advancement’ that can theoretically be reached, and at that point…there is no more technology to discover, improve, or refine. Good point. One thing I would say for such a scenario (without trying to sound like I am “answering” it), is that we would have even more reason to suppose they will explore neural and genetic augmentation, AI, VR etc. Because they will rapidly reach the limits of progress in the external world, and any improvement to their lives from then on can only be from looking at the internal world. Not to mention they’ll have little else to apply their intellects to. > [@](#): > > A civilization that has reached this level therefore has two other types of civilizations it can encounter: equals, and lessers. It would therefore be reasonable to exterminate all lessers, in order to prevent them from ever becoming equals. All civilizations at this point of advancement would have basically the same motivation for exterminating all lessers, so I see no reason why one civilization at that level would intervene to protect a lesser. Interaction among the equals may well be peaceful and social, or it may be a status of cold war, maintained by MAD, or any number of other possible political arrangements. But in no case is there any particular benefit to any of those endgame civilizations in allowing other civilizations to achieve the same status. And this is a good argument. I still think by the interstellar stage species will have largely modified themselves, but I think the game theory of this is fun, so I’ll put that to one side. One argument against destroying lessers is that it draws the attention of the other equals. It’s pretty risky being the _first_ Equal species to decide to destroy Lessers, as you’re now not just an Equal, you’re an _aggressive_ Equal. The other 4 may decide that they need to band together and wipe you out before you can threaten them. Of course the Equals could collectively decide to destroy Lessers, but if all of them really are only motivated by self-interest at the species level (and note few if any species we know of are like this: humans, for example, are instinctively self-interested at the _tribal_ level), it doesn’t look like a very stable situation. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/75 "2013-08-15T09:06:25Z")
One interesting idea is that of the _post-intelligent_ future; an idea explored by Karl Schroeder and Milan Ćirković, and to some extent in the movie _Wall-E_ as well. The human race might create competent and self-maintaining but never-the-less non-sentient robot spacecraft to ferry themselves around the universe, then gradually lose their own innate intelligence until they are little more than animals or passive spectators. We might encounter a race of imbeciles dependent on their spacecraft to survive, with no real interest in the external universe except as a lot of pretty lights. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/76 "2013-08-15T16:09:04Z")
Except, the doughy humans in wall-e were not explorers, or the descendants of explorers, they never left the system, they were specifically hanging around waiting for Earth to become habitable again. Given the enormous effort and difficulties just getting past a heliosheath, much less to other systems, it seems highly unlikely that the kind of decline you describe would happen. Not impossible, obviously, but not very likely, especially assuming FTL. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/77 "2013-08-15T16:25:19Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > If you’re not seeing the connection that’s because there is none, and no-one has suggested there is. _Au contraire_, you have very much suggested there is a connection, by emphasising the likelihood of an ordered sequence of mastery, with FTL late in the chain. > [@](#): > > What I am saying is this: interstellar travel looks to be a much more difficult problem than developing AI, say. Why? We _could_ send crude interstellar ships on very short notice right now, if we were willing to lob nukes a-la Orion and didn’t really care about the human cost. We’re nowhere near true AI. > [@](#): > > All I am saying, is that given that a random interstellar species will be much, much more advanced than us, not just a little bit _Why_ is this a given? There’s no _logical_ reason given by you as to why interstellar travel has to be so final in a chain of invention. Yes, yes, “shoulders of giants”, pyramid of invention, that’s all fine - but that’s only human history. > [@](#): > > It stretches credulity IMO to imagine a species millions of years more advanced than us having black spots over much of what present day humans are already gaining an understanding of. Why not? We have technological black spots throughout our history, where culture, geography or just chance have conspired against invention. Who would imagine **two continents-worth** of sophisticated city builders _never_ coming up with wheeled vehicles, for example? But that was a thing that happened. > [@](#): > > I didn’t say they would be a society, I said “equivalent to”. Pedantics. Same difference - they would not be - I’m not postulating some creature with internal debates or a hive-mind here, just long-lived and hyper-intelligent. > [@](#): > > Modern-day science requires many parallel strands of science, engineering and mathematics pushing forwards. Many of these strands don’t have a specific goal; they are not applied sciences, but they then prove to be absolutely essential in understanding a phenomenon or developing new tech. Hyper-intelligent and with all the time in the world… > [@](#): > > Now, you could say interstellar travel could be different to this, and a single discovery or a single branch of science is basically all that’s needed. It doesn’t look like a good bet for that though. There are many separate problems involved in safely transporting an organism several light years to another planet and then landing successfully. Simple question - will they be the same problems for all organisms, or are some of our concerns trivial for creatures with vastly different possible physiologies? Say, completely different timescales of living, or dormancy periods requiring no sustenance, or uber-radiation resistance. And that’s all completely overlooking the idea that it might be something we just haven’t even conceived of yet, that is trivially simple to implement - again, see “The Road Not taken” > [@](#): > > Even detecting the planet in the first place has required some pretty impressive maths and physics insights, and of course engineering. There are several solutions to finding planets that don’t involve anything too complex, once you’re already in space - the shotgun approach, for instance. Throw small probes at every interesting star - billions and billions of probes. Hell, make them Von Neumann probes for maximum effect. We could do that with tech we have today, if we already had a sizeable foothold in space. > [@](#): > > So, this hypothetical super-clever entity has sufficient memory to be pushing many separate strands of science and mathematics together and can crosslink insights from these fields appropriately. His brain is essentially playing the role of many humans cooperating. No, just one very clever human - would you call every idiot savant their own society? Lots of human geniuses do the same thing, making connections. That’s nothing special. > [@](#): > > Even if you disagree with that way of phrasing it, the fact is if he’s performing non-goal oriented science and maths, and pushing those fields much further than humans have to date, there’s a good chance he’ll advance one or more of the fields we’ve listed. I’m not saying he’s doing that - I’m suggesting a singular research focus that just happens to travel up a path we don’t even know exists, and the result, for him, is FTL travel. That’s all he does, that’s all he gets out of it. He discovers a method to make his own private space vehicle travel interstellar distances without any concern about the trip. Maybe it’s a spacefold drive, maybe it’s a wormgate, maybe he tames a Space Whale, it doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is, that’s no less likely than your necessary pyramid of invention, _until_ you come up with some reasoning other than combinations of “It’s a given” and “That’s how it’s worked for humans (except when it hasn’t)” ---
**Author:** ![SirGalahad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/71c47a/32.png) [@SirGalahad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SirGalahad)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/78 "2013-08-15T16:34:36Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Why do people assume alien will be so intelligent, enlightened and sophisticated and won’t be a bunch of dumbasses like most humans? I mean we have some pretty smart people who design and build airplanes. But it’s not like you have to be an aerospace engineer to ride in one. > > “Welcome to Earth! We have so much to learn from each other!” > > “Whatever delbra\*pt. I just fix the anal probes. You probably want to speak to my Overzorb…Morp.” This is a good point … consider the Captain of the Exxon Valdez. There have been several ship and boat mishaps lately due to dim-witted or drunk Captains/ pilots. And the airliner that skidded on the runway sideways … was that a Korean plane? If the aliens that build big shiny ships to send into space hire similar crews, we may not be dealing with their best and brightest. Also consider that an advanced and progressive alien race may use sub-contractors from a less evolved species to do the hard or dangerous work, like in Fifth Element (the Mangalores). The home planet may be ruled by urbane, logical cloud-city dwellers, but they may hire violent and relatively primitive races to go into the void and deal with insignificant planets like ours. ---
**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:** [August 15, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/79 "2013-08-15T17:18:42Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > _Au contraire_, you have very much suggested there is a connection, by emphasising the likelihood of an ordered sequence of mastery, with FTL late in the chain. Saying that I think interstellar travel appears to be a more difficult problem than general AI is not to suggest any connection whatsoever. Try again. Or actually…don’t. > [@Mijin](#): > > All I am saying, is that given that a random interstellar species will be much, much more advanced than us, not just a little bit > [@MrDibble](#): > > Why is this a given? There’s no logical reason given by you as to why interstellar travel has to be so final in a chain of invention. Yes, yes, “shoulders of giants”, pyramid of invention, that’s all fine - but that’s only human history. You have not parsed my point correctly. I am not saying that interstellar travel is necessarily at the end of a chain of invention. Here is my point, again (and please this time, respond to the point. Don’t chop out individual sentences and ignore the actual argument): The universe is thought to be approximately 14 billion years old. Life has been on earth for about 3.5 billion years, with multicellular life only appearing in the last billion. Given this information, and the fact that there is no reason why evolution on two planets should be synchronized, the chance of any two random sentient species having evolved at exactly the same time (to within mere thousands of years) is extremely remote. The overwhelming probability is that one species will have had millions of years more time. Of course, one race may also advance more quickly than the other, so the time difference won’t tell the whole story. But nevertheless, on average, we’d expect one species to be far more advanced than the other. Agreed? So, now, we put our hand into the bag of sentient species, and pull two out. And we see one is Homo sapiens…a species which is not interstellar, and which currently considers interstellar travel to be a very difficult problem to solve. The other, all we know about them for sure is that they are an interstellar species. We don’t _know_ which species is more advanced. But if I had to guess I’d say the interstellar species; because all I know about them is that they’ve achieved something we have not. And, is the difference in technology likely to be small or big between the two species? The difference is likely to be big, for the reasons outlined above. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091/80 "2013-08-15T18:03:45Z")
> [@Mnemnosyne](#): > > There’s a problem I see with the ‘different levels of advancement’ assumption, also. If the timeframes are large enough (and it sounds like they’re being assumed to be) then it seems plausible that there are two general levels of advancement by FTL-capable alien species: either not as advanced as possible, or as advanced as possible. If the time frames are large enough its is possible that no two FTL capable species exist in close proximity at the same time. Someone cracking the code to FTL flight does not mean that society will have the resources to engage in FTL flight. It certainly doesn’t mean that societies will remain stable long enough to develop much of an interstellar footprint. > [@](#): > > A civilization that has reached this level therefore has two other types of civilizations it can encounter: equals, and lessers. If it last long enough to run into anyone else. > [@](#): > > It would therefore be reasonable to exterminate all lessers, in order to prevent them from ever becoming equals. Why expend the energy and resources when other civilizations are likely to just self destruct. If sending troops to Iraq is economically draining, how draining would it be to send stuff to Alpha Centauri? > [@eburacum45](#): > > One interesting idea is that of the _post-intelligent_ future; an idea explored by Karl Schroeder and Milan Ćirković, and to some extent in the movie _Wall-E_ as well. The human race might create competent and self-maintaining but never-the-less non-sentient robot spacecraft to ferry themselves around the universe, then gradually lose their own innate intelligence until they are little more than animals or passive spectators. > > We might encounter a race of imbeciles dependent on their spacecraft to survive, with no real interest in the external universe except as a lot of pretty lights. There was a sci-fi fantasy series based on the notion that humans developed a supercomputer that was charged with preserving human life and the computer decided that the best way to preserve human life was to knock everyone back to the middle ages to keep people from killing each other en masse. The computer stifled any technology that would lift humans out of middle age squalor. The problem with interstellar travel (and space travel generally) is that it is hard to justify the expense. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-an-alien-race-necessarily-be-pro-social/666091.md?page=5)