Debate: Should We Fear or Welcome Alien Contact?

TPTB want us to fear ET because then they can militarize space too.

Can't hide billions for black ops star wars projects if all we really need is a welcome mat.

Here in America we've been indoctrinated to fear everything. From the early days when our forebears were told to fear the red man, then the black. During WWII they were taught to fear the yellow man and round him up, so why not, going forward, fear the green or gray man too.

Looking back we see our leaders were wrong on all counts, so the question I have is how much history do we need to see before we stop believing the establishments directives and formulate our own opinions on such matters.

I am of the opinion that the only thing we have to fear, is those telling us what to fear!

If ET's want to come, let'em. We can't stop them anyway. If they're intentions are good, we're good. If their intentions are bad, we'll do what Earthlings do when things don't go our way...

React.

It's all we can do in the presence of a species that can do something we can't.

Originally posted by Risen
I also seriously doubt a nuclear missile could hit any aircraft capable of thousands of MPH in the first place.

It doesn't matter. If you can render someone's defenses completely irrelevant, it sends a pretty powerful message: this will happen our way and there's nothing you can do about it. Its an implied threat, because, lets face it, peaceful meetings are not one-sided.

This question is pointless. I'm not trying to be rude, just giving an answer here.

If Aliens decide our fate, we won't be able to stop them no matter how prepared or not we are.

"Should we fear or not fear" implies that taking a position would make a difference. It would not.

The question should be, "Would you fear or not fear...and why?" That question doesn't imply that doing so would make a difference in the outcome of alien contact. It just inquires whether or not people would fear or not fear.

THAT BEING SAID....

I would not fear alien invasion just like I don't fear an asteroid slamming into my house or slipping and falling in the shower: Fearing those things wouldn't prevent them from happening and so it would be a waste of emotions.

Originally posted by True-seer

Debate: Should We Fear or Welcome Alien Contact?

Not sure to what degree Hawking was speaking. But some caution must be exercised just as each country here on earth has quarantine laws for agricultural products and sick travelers. At the least there should be similar preventive contamination "protocols" for first contact with ETs. Allegedly, first contact has already occured; or allegedly there already are written "protocols" in place even for our police and firemen - we've even seen supposedly real fotocopies of such protocols on other threads at ATS and other sites. Other than these thoughts of simple caution, in the face of real visitation by superior technology interstellar entities, we don't really have much choice in the matter do we? We must rely on "good contact principles" they hopefully will have, as investigators-in-charge. Gives us reason to think hard how we treat animals in our "research" and how we, the surviving and dominant culture, have treated so many indigenous human cultures during the last 500 years of global military, economic and political conquest of humans by humans. Might just be our turn next, huh?

I have positive attitude towards alien contact. I have a feeling, that they are friendly or curious and an open contact would be fun.

Originally posted by Amandla
I have positive attitude towards alien contact. I have a feeling, that they are friendly or curious and an open contact would be fun.

It's all fun and games until "they" get a craving for human brains. The Earth might be one big delicatessen to "them" - we simply don't know.

Should we fear alien contact?

First of all, let it be common knowledge that they are real.

Let's just not fear the truth to begin with.

Then, when it comes to their benevolence or malevolence, that should be secondary or the least of our concern. With all the "evil" our so-called humanity is hell-bent on, I can't imagine there's worst out there.

All the fear is mostly self-projection.

There are many reports of UFO sightings and rumors of our governments already communicating with alien life. However, the reason they (aliens) probably haven't really come down and made themselves known to Our species is...well, let me present a few photos on why an intelligent species COULD be skeptical on meeting ours:


















Honestly, I'd be terrified to meet the species responsible for the acts in the photos above.

reply to post by GorehoundLarry

And this is just the tip of the hellish iceberg.

Good reminder!

I suspect that most civilizations that could reach Earth through interstellar travel are going to be benevolent or neutral. I say this because I think war-like civilizations will waste themselves off before they ever reach the point of any truly remarkable feat of science and engineering (interplanetary travel).

Of course, that's not to say there aren't some ultra-warlike races that go from planet to planet pillaging for resources (or maybe just to satiate their bloodthirst!). Maybe on some planet there was a war in the past, and one race or species became dominant, and the planet was thrown into global totalitarian rule. They then managed to reach the technological capability to travel between planets and solar systems, giving them the opportunity to conquer other planets for resources.

What a creative post I wrote.

[edit on 4-5-2010 by free_form]

Originally posted by Amandla
I have positive attitude towards alien contact. I have a feeling, that they are friendly or curious and an open contact would be fun.

i agree,they would at least give us a chance to show we can be a friendly planet in the nicest way they could.
i'm not afraid of contact,if the chance ever comes i'd take it

I would say odds are 99% that aliens wouldn't be hostile.

My reasoning: any species advanced enough to travel here, would have absolutely NO use for enslaving us or exterminating us. If they had the technology to travel here and conquer us into submission, they would already have much better technology in terms of mining or creating robotic work force for example.

also take into account the fact that intelligent life develops with great distances between them, and therefor have many planets to "mine" before travelling even further to our system.

No the only reason a extremely advanced society would exterminate us is if they are the bully/psychopath type. And usually those types trip when they're leaving their sandbox.

I also like to believe the universe has a built in safety mechanism where most if not all warlike societies destroy themselves before becoming space faring civilizations

I was waiting for someone to post this!!! I cannot tell you how much it bothered me that Hawking said that. Despite him being a genius I am going to have to disagree with him on this. To me this statement by him was basically propaganda that was perpetuated by every major media source. After the episode aired on which he said that all I saw the next day in the headlines was, "Hawking says fear alien contact."
I mean, what the hell!!! It was like a big fear campaign that tried to get people off the bandwagon of "Welcome the Aliens."
That being said, I think anything is possible. Yes we could be wiped out or colonized by an alien race. Or, maybe we couldn't. I happen to believe that it is not that simple and I highly doubt we will be blown off the face of our planet.
I also believe the forces that are already on our planet are probably more corrupt than "Aliens," and since I am already being ruled I would rather be ruled by more intelligent beings.
SO, I say, WELCOME ALIENS!

reply to post by True-seer


Our identity as Humans is so fractured right now that any Alien that contacts us would be doing us more harm then good. Every set of welcoming arms would be matched by a set of clenched fits, every Human calling them Angels would be matched by another calling them Devils. Our reaction would be total chaos.

IMHO contact would have to move at a snails pace. Before we do anything else we have to find some microbe and get people used to the idea that "Yes Virginia there is life outside of Earth." Just this confirmation alone will set many back on their heels. I can picture the threads on ATS already "TPTB plant alien life on Mars, heres the proof on Youtube!". This will go on and on with no amount of proof swaying the decision.

If we are ready to have knock down drag outs over microbes or fossils imagine whats gonna happen when we stumble across Civiilzation X.

You see Civilization X is on a world much like our own, the age of their solar system is much like our own. They have DNA and all that...Just a couple problems

Besides the fact that to Humans they smell like turds and look like a cross between a sun scorpion and an octopus and have a sensory suite more in common with a radio telescope then anything on Earth, they reached their industrial age when the Dinosaurs were wiped out. They have 65 million years on Humans. We have nothing to offer them-at all- and they are so far ahead of us that we might as try teaching rocket science to Ants.

You know whats worse then this? Civilization Y, has a 500 year jump on us and they are still close enough to us on the evolution/tech tree that they still "feel", they still "Covet" and they still have the drive to "exploit". Lets hope that the on the tech/maturity tree its nearly impossible to move between stars while in this stage.

Should we fear Contact? Well yah we should, We should fear it as much as we embrace it because it is the biggest crapshot you can imagine. One thing is practicaly certain though, we are the Noobs of the neighborhood.

[edit on 4-5-2010 by Helmkat]

No matter if they are hostile all we need is Jeff Goldbloom, a mac powerbook circa 1996 with 56k of Ram, Will Smith and the ships we have in Roswell, that would take care of them Ahhh heeelll naaaawwww

Originally posted by On the level
No matter if they are hostile all we need is Jeff Goldbloom, a mac powerbook circa 1996 with 56k of Ram, Will Smith and the ships we have in Roswell, that would take care of them

Ahhh heeelll naaaawwww

Ahem

Goldblum *

This picture pretty sums up how I feel about the issue and actually provides some good tips if indeed the time does come when we make contact on what to do!

Picture with info

-Kdial1

[edit on 4-5-2010 by kdial1]

Not even a debate: My reasoning.

______________________________________________________________

Unfortunately, there has been a lot of misconception regarding the recent documentary of aliens by Steven Hawking regarding a certain statement he made regarding advanced alien life forms. He addressed the issue stating that he believes, “Alien life forms will possibly be nomads and might try to use their technology to find new worlds to conqueror” This was paraphrased wrong, in regards to the way Steven Hawking intentionally stated this. His analogy I should say was presented wrong, especially when he used the Christopher Columbus example towards the new settles and Native Americans.

What Steven Hawking was trying to state was, there are three different types of characteristics that follow the physics of life. For my analogy, I will present the mental image of a Yin-Yang. The white area would be equivalent to a Peaceful species. The black side is the opposite, an evil species, and finally, the yin-yang whole representing a combination species of both good and evil. Our species—humans—would be a combination species of both good and evil. We hold both traits, and have shown a reflection of both humane acts, and inhumane acts, both in our past and current time. There are species out there that would follow under all three principle characteristics.

Classification 1: Good Alien Species 33.3%
A species that co-exists as one unity for a better intent, regardless of under laying principles, no-lack of cohesion, or the pursuit of knowledge, and would hold noble values of self-protection and worth among all life forms.

Classification 2: Evil Alien Species 33.3%
A species that only cares about the overall self-worth of their definitive collective; for example, anything would be considered possible, as long as it bettered the advancement of their own species. (Example: 1. Adolf Hitler’s campaign in Germany. 2. Sci-Fi fantasy: Independence Day movie.)

Classification 3: Combination Alien Species 33.3%
A species that holds characteristics of self worth and specific examples of noble traits and values, but would also hold traits of diminutive concern concerning overall life itself. (Example: Human’s hold noble traits: The Declaration of Independence to wild-life protection agencies, and also hold evil traits: World war 1 and 2. Enslavement)

So now let’s compare and use reasonable math to analyze what the probability of our first encounter would be, including, the risk to reward ratio of that encounter. Our first classification most would believe would be a high reward low risk scenario, but that isn’t necessary true. First, we must assume seeing how our own species is in a classification separate from species that exists in classification 1, that we would initially think on different wave lengths in itself, because we have experienced a different upbringing from one another. An example of this, imagine if you lived as both royalty in one life, and then as a poor slave in another. It is accurate to assume that both versions of you would have experienced a different culture upbringing, overall making you two entirely separate beings unable to accurately predict and understand one another. Now, going back to our main clarification, classification 1 would quite possibly not be a high reward scenario. Our hopes or best expectations would be that they would share their knowledge, reason, and overall technology with our species, helping in the overall advancement of our own species. However, there is a paradox that comes with this situation. If we—the human race—exist as a classification 3 species, then how would we be presented towards this alien race? Would a classification 1 species even be willing to address an omnivore’s species like ourselves?

cont:

Imagine if you would, a species throughout thousands of years have evolved as an herbivores species. The even thought of an alien life form out there that “devoured” other life forms would be considered a fantasy. However, through first contact you encounter a species that does just that, how would you initially react towards what you believe violates everything in your beliefs and customs. Logically, you would only assume that they would be very hesitant to even contact us in the first place. Even if they did contact, the possibility of them sharing their technology, with a species like ours, is extremely unlikely. If a species fell into classification 1, our most likely scenario would be that of a simple peaceful greeting, which would open up a low risk/low reward scenario.

Our next classification 2, most would assume would be a very violent and evil species, which would constantly be at war and violence would reign supreme. Although, this is still a possibility, this is an unlikely scenario because a species that would fall under this pattern of behavior would most likely fail to advance far enough to travel through stars and galaxies. This species would most likely either destroy itself once they discovered the root principle of E=MC^2, through war, or fail in advancing far enough in technology and advancements, due to violence and destruction and encounter a shortage of resources on their home worlds. Thus, a more likely scenario would be similar to most block buster movie thrillers like Independence Day or war of the worlds. We have examples of species like this on our world. The common ant, a small and frail insect that by looking at first glimpse one would initially assume harmless; by contract, this isn’t the case at all. The ant works as a commodity and rule the insect kingdom by destroying anything that it encounters in a blink of a second. An advanced evil alien species would be very similar to this, except with an unrivaled intelligence and military arsenal that our species can’t even comprehend. This is what Steven Hawking was discussing by a, “nomad species looking for resources.”

Our last classification, number 3, would hold the traits of both good and evil traits—thus being very similar to the human race itself.—however, if the species itself happened to follow the same principles and upbringing that our own species has, which isn’t impossible to imagine, seeing how the fundamental rule for a species 3 classification would be that of a crossbreed between humane and inhumane acts, then we could only assume that they would follow the same characteristics that we have displayed, or in better context terms, our own recorded history. All throughout known human recorded time, through the evolution of each culture, whenever a civilization has come into contact with another civilization that is far below a evolutionary advancement period in technology, it has always ended back for the lesser of the two civilizations. This is the example Steven Hawking described when he used the analogy of Christopher Columbus meeting the Native Americans. Now you could be saying to yourself, well that isn’t true, there have been multiple contacts between civilizations during the same era where one never conquered the other. A example of this is when Japan first made contact with western civilization, but there is a clear distinction between these examples. In our first example, the technology difference between the two races was quite huge; by contract, the technology difference for our second example wasn’t that far apart. This would mean that as long as the civilization felt that it wasn’t a –easy target—

cont.

then they wouldn’t attempt conqueror. This instinct is actually very common, even in our animal kingdom when your basic predators goes to “conqueror,” or in this case get its next meal, by natural instinct, it goes after the weakest, easiest target it can find. However, there is one clear big exception to this rule. The easiest way to describe it would be, “A gain of some importance”. An example of this would be seen in the recent popular Hollywood blockbuster Avatar when the humans were after a rare resource found on the alien home world. Naturally, they were not interested in the Navi’s world or resources, until they discovered the rare resource they were after which was located on the Navi’s home base. Even without diving into the science fiction realm, we can see clear examples of this even in our own history. An example of this is when Hermes Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors took over the Aztec Empire while in search of gold. It just so happens that while looking for this resource they came across a very less evolved civilization then their own, which ended the reign of the Aztec civilization.

In conclusion, as we can see in the three above examples, we hold a 33.3% chance of meeting first contact on good terms, with no reward in sight. We hold a 33.3% chance of our contact ending on bad terms. Finally, we hold a 33.3% chance of once again our first contact ending on bad terms. The reason for this last percentile ending on bad terms would be due to previous examples of encounters between civilizations on different technology scales and the end result. That makes 66.6% of contact ending on bad terms, and 33.3% ending on good terms. We can also argue the fact that a percentile from classification 3 might also not bother with our world due to there being no resources of worth to them, so let’s assume that 25% chance that no one wants our planet in the first place. That would leave an 8.3% chance that it would end on friendly terms. The final total would be 41.6 of first contact ending on good terms with a low risk/low reward scenario and 58.4% chance of it ending on bad terms with a high risk/low reward scenario again.

Math conclusion:

Chances of first contact ending good or bad:

Good Terms 41.6% < 58.4% Bad Terms

What were Gambling for this bet:

Good Terms: We gain nothing < Bad Terms: End of the human race.

It would be equal to risking your entire life savings on a gamble to win
nothing in a casino stacked in their favor.

Final thoughts: Hawking is right. As Hawking said himself, "let us try to avoid contacting other life forms, but if we do happen to meet them, let us hope they come in peace." He's not considered on of the worlds smartest for a reason, hope I cleared up some stuff for you guys.


[edit on 4-5-2010 by Johnathanrs]

[edit on 4-5-2010 by Johnathanrs]