Will Detection by Extraterrestrial Life be a Threat to Earth?

Interesting, concise, (and entertaining) article on how some people feel contact should be established. While being well written it provides points that are often left out of the conversation.

link

I think that if Advanced Intelligent Life found us, they would leave us alone and only observe and study us.

Just the way we observe Meerkat Manor.

Giving us or trading technology with us has huge implications which can alter our development completely and change us from our natural habitat.

We do not teach apes how to make traps, hunt and start fires. Why should they teach us how to fly between planets efficiently?

That is one possibility. It depends though, on factors such as intelligence gap and their motives. Meerkats don't really have the ability to talk to humans, but maybe aliens could learn our language or we could learn their language. Also, If we discovered an alien race, then wouldn't we want to make contact somehow? So it's not quite the same.

I believe evolution to be a universal truth. We evolved and any potential aliens will have evolved as well. I also believe that there are probably some universal truths to our evolution in a non biological sense.

Religion for example will probably have arisen in all sentient beings, and with time will have been discarded by races more advanced then us, as we'll discard at some point ourselves.

It makes sense to me that eventually we will either destroy ourselves or get past that hurdle of war and violence which is inherent with nationalism. Imagine where we could be if all the worlds defense budgets were applied to science or medicine. Imagine if religous considerations didn't hold us back from learning and studying and growing.

With that in mind, any civilization which is advanced enough to detect us will have already advanced beyond us. Should they wish to travel the fantastic distances involved via some yet undiscovered technology they will have evolved thousands of years beyond us. That leap in technology cannot come about in a war like society.

I personally do not believe there is any danger from any potential ETs. The danger is with us and wether or not we will evolve beyond our own rush towards extinction. If "they" are watching, it's only to see if we make that leap. If we do, perhaps then they will come and welcome us into the fold. If we don't maybe some alien researcher will write a research paper on our very brief exsistance.

At the moment I don't think we are important enough in the larger scheme of things to really make much of a dent in the universe.

So I say let's keep sending the signals -For Science, for knowledge for the future!

We do not teach apes how to make traps, hunt and start fires. Why should they teach us how to fly between planets efficiently?

Yeah i agree.. i cant help but think there's some other reason behind coming here and making an effort to observe us and abduct us etc. If the soul catcher thing is true , maybe a mass extinction would produce a crap-load of souls. With the population constantly rising i assume its a good idea to wait a few thousand years before harvesting .

If we were truly meant to interact with the aliens in the long run , and they liked us , why would they hide from us our entire existence? Anyway that's just some food for thought, something to think about.

I could imagine other races being selfish and bias , but who knows maybe i am wrong and there are good intentions and there really is a galactic code of conduct. I sure hope so anyway! peace

Originally posted by Merigold
That leap in technology cannot come about in a war like society.

Well at least on earth it does, most technology breakthroughs have come from countries developing war tech, which later is used by the masses in some form or another, but yeah, our current and past advances on the tech area come and came mostly from a war like society.

So there's a pretty good chance there is some other civilization out there which has weapons we can't even imaging right now.

[edit on 10-3-2009 by Kaifan]

We do not teach apes how to make traps, hunt and start fires. Why should they teach us how to fly between planets efficiently?

No, but we do expose aboriginies to cd players, etc. The Brookings Report addresses some of the points about historic interactions between civilizations of higher technologies (remember the Spanish and the Aztecs for example)....

Well at least on earth it does, most technology breakthroughs have come from countries developing war tech

Yes, agreed. However that will only take us so far before the new technology destroys us. If we have advanced technologically through the building/inventing of newer, better weapons, eventually we will use them.

Or, we don't and we come to realize the waste of using our limited resources to build super bombs and use the resources to cure cancer and extend life and clean up our waste efficently.

cant help but think there's some other reason behind coming here and making an effort to observe us and abduct us

I believe that the universe is probably teeming with life. However I also believe that a vast majority of our experiences with "ufos" have earthly explanations. Why would they need to abduct us? Why would they fly their craft here across qazillions of light years to crash land here?? Why would they be wobbling all over the place if they have the tech to get here? I'm not convinced that we've ever been visited. Much less abducted.

I am kind of in the mood to say that "we" used to communicate more openly to aliens...as indicated in historical places, pics, hieroglyphics, etc. After "something" happened, "we" stopped openly trying to communicate anymore, and went to the observed status.

How often do "we" make things like the Nazca Lines, or the Moai on Easter Island, or Stonehenge, etc. I honestly think that at some point in our history, the widely accepted interactions between "us" and "them" changed. I think it probable that our government, as well as the governments of the world have/had dealings with this sect or that, but "we" are not meeting the qualifications/stipulations for open involvement.

JMO

First of all, we don't know them, and don't even have proof that they do exist (believing hard, it's not good enough, although I would love to think that), only some little windows that time to time appear to our eyes, like shadows of their possible existance...

BUT... We do know ourselfs, and we do know the path that we walked untill today.

I find it hard to believe that a type 2 or type 3 civilization lives so barbaric as sometimes they are imagined...

I mean, today we have vegans and all that sort of points of view and ways of life. We can live in a hospital for years just receiving the elements from a tube!

It's that unreal to imagine that a alien civilization doesn't need to "eat" us...? They wouldn't see us like intelligent cows or some exotic intergalatict barbeque sauce, in my opinion.

Although we still have people that are "monsters" in their minds, concerned with killing and exploitation, we also have guys like Dalai Lama. We have people that fight for human rights, for the care of other people, we try to build a better world...

...And taking the point that you all agree on, since we are such a child in the Universe, wouldn't an alien civilization millions years ahead of us, have come to better conclusions?

Personally, I don't fear them.

If they can travel through space:

Sometime in their history they looked up to the skies in wonder like we did, and learned how to fly. Like we did!

Sometime in their history, that wasn't enough, and space made them wonder if they were also alone, searching EXACTLY for the same thing we are debating here. Like we still do!

My point is...

...I'm and intelligent being (at least I like to think so ), you all are intelligent beings... We all share the same type of thoughts and desire to meet them in PEACE.

...wouldn't a alien race, far more intelligent than us, think ,at the very least, like us?

I think they would look down on us like childrens of Universe life, and if we feel the duty to protect endangered species here on Earth, they probably are keeping an eye on us.

EDIT:

Yes, we also observe in silence wild life and respect them, not making any contact.

But we also have people like that guy of the National Geographic (can't remember the name) that lives, behaves and understands wolfs in their wild state of life, and actually lives in peace with them.

[edit on 10/3/09 by Tifozi]

The article is a bit of a joke. Its a little late in the game to be talking like that, and no, they did not simply observe this planet from lofty positions. They've always been a part of its history, and they are doing work with government and corporations and tagging, abducting even contacting citizens.

Thats a huge question!Detection by an alien species could pose a threat ,but that depends largely on the average luck of our race as a whole. I mean its a hell of a big space out there, and although our science predicts only limited numbers of places for life to originate, there are endless possibilities. Would we even recognise an alien lifeform? Would aliens naturaly be invisible? Only part of the universe on a sub quantum level? Could they be made of acid? Based on elements that dont even exist on our periodic table even?
And even if all those environmental variables where to be known to us, would they be effective in coming up with a good prediction as to the threat level posed by an alien race knowing of us? Surely there would have to be knowlege of the culture we are dealing with , before we could asses thier current behaviour and predict thier future attitudes and actions?
Judging by the actions of ufo, they would SEEM not to want to harm our people overly. In times past, there may have been injuries and abductions, but lets face it, towns have not been wiped off the map by saucers, so that in itself may hold some wieght as a basis for a theoretical assumption ... but as far as an accurate answer goes, its an impossible question. There are too many leaps of faith involved, even for a believer like myself, to come up with a definitive answer.

It is reasonable to say that the history of contact between advanced and primitive civilisations has never been kind to the primitive.

It is likely we will be the primitive.

reply to post by TheWorldReallyIsThatBorin


But that is human history , and of course , all we have to go on really. But that means that our assumptions will all be based on a history which may have so little in common with that of any alien race, that all our best theories may collapse. Even if we share commonalities of growth with our alien counterparts, it may be that thier race has evolved past the sort of motivations that we are familiar with on earth. It really is a speculative minefield as a discussion topic.

great posts guys!

but I'm more partial to the meerkat manor theory. It seems that's what most of beings flying around are doing at least; simply observing.

there must be a reason for not contacting us en masse, I'm thinking because they just don't care about us lesser beings lol. Like with the meerkats it seems that they keep tabs on us (hence putting a transmitter on the meerkat leader) and will probably have some use of us later down the line.

[edit on 11-3-2009 by zetamafia911]