Preventing your own extermination.
If several intelligent races are known to exist in the galaxy, there’s a non-zero risk of conflict at some point in the future. Especialy if you think long term (say, hundreds of thousands of years). Nick other intelligent races in the bud (at least those with a potential for agression and for space travel) and you avoid this risk.
Isn’t it the height of hubris to assume an alien species would think and act like we do?
Also, I have a problem with the concept of rewiring our brains to get rid of instincts. Without instincts, we would lack desires and motivations, and without those, there would be no point in living. So, you would have to choose which instincts to remove and which instincts to keep and I’m not sure why removing agression, for instance, would be obviously a good idea. Without agresion, we would become defenceless, and would have to hope that every single intelligent race would have made the same choice. Not a good bet, I think. We might be better off becoming more agressive, but less able to turn our agression towards fellow humans, for instance.
If we gain the ability to actually change people’s behaviour and instincts, it will be an extremely dangerous phase of our evolution, and I’m not convinced at all that what will emerge will be a race of peaceful and benevolent beings. Specialized sub-races as in “Brave New World” seems a more likely outcome to me.
Actually, it can only cause your own extermination.
Every species you encounter will either not be a threat, or will be so much more advanced that you cannot hope to touch them.
Again, the universe has been around for billions of years. Whereas sentient species advance incredibly in mere centuries, if we’re anything to go by (and even if other races are slower than us, every species will advance quickly once they invent general AI).
Mutual threats are extremely unlikely.
That depends on what you call instincts.
e.g. Is the sensation of something tasting sweet an “instinct”?
If so, then I agree we need some instincts, though we can clearly diminish some.
(Heck a good start might be making all men as violent as women are, on average. Clearly we would not have to throw away our humanity to do that).
If not, then I think we can function just fine sans instincts.
Not really. You’re talking about the difference between putting a fence around your house to deter thieves, and running around the street assaulting people.
Given that two given species are unlikely to have comparable levels of tech, all the advanced species has to do is raise shields. Job done.
Looks to me like you and Wes have crafted a scenario in which advanced space aliens don’t act and react at all like we have in the past or would in the present, but curiously, will behave like you predict we will eventually evolve to function in the future … which doesn’t seen likely to me, since aliens from a different world, evolving under different circumstances, have had every opportunity to end up completely “alien” to us in both biologic and social terms. If they are truly "alien " life forms, how could you possibly analyze their motivations , inclinations, or requirements?
I think you’re projecting “progressive” propensities and human dispositions onto your hypothetical aliens. As long as you insist that evolution and technology must follow a path to “humanism” and “liberalism”, you have effectively squelched any debate regarding the OP. This resembles some of the religious threads presently ongoing, where a devote poster continually witnesses, oblivious to reasonable debate offered by other members.
The assumption by some here is that alien species won’t have any cultural taboos of their own against genetic engineering or AI, and that’s just wishful thinking. They may all be religious fanatics about racial purity, or may have physiologies that don’t allow for the type of tinkering that’s being proposed. They may be the survivors of an AI or Eugenics war (cf Berserkers, Butlerian Jihad, Terminator, Khaaaan!) We can’t rule any avenue out just because of the particular trajectory of human history (and even there I think the OP has a rosier view than the facts actually show)
Also, it’s wrong to assume they need society at all to achieve interstellar flight. What if they are super-genius hyper-Aspergerish near-immortal creatures, each individually capable of spending several thousand human generations tinkering on whatever little hobby projects take their fancy? Suppose one of these stumbles on FTL. Do you guys really think a super-Sheldon Cooper is going to be good for us?
That is certainly a better bet than saying aliens will behave like humans have in our past, but not our future.
I don’t expect that they will spend all their time making cave paintings and dancing around trying to make it rain either.
We’re talking about an interstellar species.
How can you?
Either we can talk about what is likely, or we cannot.
I’d rather stick to the points, than start second-guessing other people’s motivations.
We can’t rule anything out. All we can do is try to weigh up what is more likely.
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.
I’ve assumed no such thing.
But, in your scenario, if your lifeform is capable of developing thousands of individual inventions, which require scientific investigation in thousands of distinct areas, then it’s essentially equivalent to a society.
Some of those scientific threads going on are likely to bear fruit earlier than others e.g. AI.
The proposed aliens equate to an atheists “religion”. They will be benevolent and disinclined to harm us. They may even help us, no? Technology invariably results in positive, ethical, and logical behavior.
It may be that God is an alien, and next time he visits, rather than passing out loaves and fishes, he’ll rain alien fire and brimstone down on us for reasons only an alien mind could fathom.
Is every post going to include an implied ad hominem now?
There is no religion, just an attempt to take account of just how big a gulf in technology and understanding we’re talking about here.
One constant throughout human history has been the human mind (and body).
But, it stretches credulity to imagine that being true for the next few centuries, let alone millions of years (it may not take millions of years to develop interstellar craft, but that is the kind of gap likely between two random sentient species meeting).
Yeah, it’s basically a religious assertion, aliens = advanced = good.
You are asserting that ‘goodness’ comes from ‘advancement’, and really there’s no evidence of it.
The only sentient species we know of is us. Judging other races by what we know of our selves is nonsensical.
I’ve asserted nothing. I have said what I think is probable, and given clear reasons why.
If the ad hominems are necessary for your side of the argument, then you’ve lost already.
No, and in fact of haven’t mentioned any moral action.
I have simply stated why I think there will likely be an absence of aggressive behaviour. Because, as far as we can tell right now, such a behaviour would be a liability.
This point doesn’t even make sense. It is not nonsensical to consider your (only) sample, though it would be flawed to assume that they will be the same as us. Luckily I haven’t done that.
The first problem I see with the OP is the idea that a species capable of interstellar travel will be so old and advanced they’ll be godlike and super logical. Or that being that means you don’t commit genocide or build empires. But what if a civilization a couple hundred light years away is just learning the ropes and visits us and they’re a bunch of xenophobic religious warrior aliens? What if we start traveling around the galaxy in the next couple thousand years? Do you think we’ll be godlike and super logical pacifists by then? But let’s go with the godlike assumption.
We would be almost zero threat to these godlike aliens. No reason not to wipe us out. I forget the theory’s name, but iirc there’s a game theory that says you should wipe out less advanced species (and maybe all life supporting planets) so they can’t grow to challenge you in the future. Just to be safe.
Are animals in zoos slaves? At least we wouldn’t go extinct because we’re shy about screwing in front of strangers.
But it wouldn’t be a big deal to collect either. Just another system added to the empire.
If it’s so easy there’s no reason not to terraform ours. Just get rid of the pollution spewing pests before moving in. Maybe set up one of those bug bomb tents.
OK, I’ll bite … to what are you referring as an “ad hominem”? Is an analogy to religion a personal attack now? Or are you insulted by the word “liberal”? I’m as liberal as they come … I don’t mind the label … are you a staunch conservative and do you take liberal as an offensive term?
All of the above. No labels are relevant to the discussion.
The equivocation with religion is simply to imply I have taken a position based on faith, whereas I’m one of the few people in this thread supplying arguments in support of my position.
(missed edit window)
When I said “all of the above” I don’t mean I am a staunch conservative. I’d rather leave my political leanings out of this, and stick to the topic.
I don’t know how call what allow us to detect that something is sweet, but what makes us like sweet things is definitely an instinct. And when you come to that, all desires, pleasures and even fear or similar negative emotions are a result of an hard wired reaction (discharge of hormones in response to a stimuli, capture of chemicals by the brain that interpret it as a pleasurable sensation, for instance). A brain without instincts would be at best a data processing unit without any purpose of its own.
Well, one of the mistakes is to assume an alien species would be anything we might find familiar. I wouldn’t expect an “alien invasion” to consist of massive energy beam firing capital ships hovering over our cities, landing dropships unleashing hoards of exo-armored humanoid aliens and futuristic space fighters dogfighting F-18s. You know. Like they show in the movies where future warfare is like WWII warfare, but with cooler looking weapons. It would no more be a “war” than we make war with the rainforests. It would simply be aliens need to acquire or move or destroy the Earth for some unknown reason and their technology would be so much more advanced, it would be like rolling a bulldozer over an anthill.
Maybe it’s just me, but I assume aliens would be a lot more “alien” than a large battleship looking thing filled with human-sized humanoids with latex asses on their heads. They might not even think to try and communicate with some smallish rock covered with water and weird green and grey growth than we would try to communicate with a moss-covered rock.
Really, think how different and bizarre two human societies seem to each other, separated by a few hundred years of development and a few thousand miles. Now multiply that by several orders of magnitude.
In fact, you’ve been begging the question since the beginning, which is indeed very similar to what we read from some religious people.
There’s zero reason to assume that an hypothetical Alien civilization would be naturally cooperative with other species, and even less so if we assume that they can reengineer their brains, since then you can’t even rely on what might be necessary to reach a high level of technology. Once they reach this point and decide to implement this technology, even if their psychology is quite similar to ours, you can’t know what choices they will make. Since we were talking about religion, they might live in a theocracy and decide that the brain should be redone so that everybody would have an ushakable religious faith and an absolute belief that Alienity has been chosen by God to dominate the Universe, making other intelligent species irrelevant soulless creatures at best, demonic creations that should be eradicated ASAP at worst.
Besides your…indeed, faith…that this can’t happen, I see zero reason to assume that a choice is more likely than any other. “Cooperate with other intelligences” doesn’t seem more likely to me as a “prime directive” than, say “Ensure the long term survival of the (in)human race at any cost. Eliminate any kind of potential threat, present or future”.
Yes, assuming there are other intelligent, space-faring species, it is very likely that that there would be a very large development gap. It doesn’t mean that eliminating less advanced races isn’t a sound strategy. It reminds me of an explanation for the Fermi paradox : “There are many intelligent species. But they stay silent. And they have a sound reason to do so”. The assumption being that there might be something inherently extremely dangerous in space travel and communication with other intelligent races. For instance, one of the oldest and most advanced intelligent race in our galaxy has been busy eliminating all the others. They just didn’t detect us. Yet.
That’s a completely arbitrary scenario. But not anymore arbitrary that your own “Space faring aliens must have chosen to become benevolent” scenario.