Is ET more advanced?

I know a lot of people would agree that if aliens are out there then they are more advanced then us. For them to travel space to earth it would take a more advanced species right?

I believe that If their species or race cooperates better than us humans they might only be more advanced in their space exploration. If as a whole humans didn't have war and violence and greed and we all worked towards a common goal don't you think we could be way more advanced in space? That is if we we're to set out to do so. Without all these wars and countries doing what they want, If we all set out to go to mars 20 years ago(throwing a number out there) I think it could have been done.

I hope ET doesn't have all the internal conflicts that we humans face. Pity.

Any thoughts?

i think one of the universal requirements for space travel is exactly that. and the abolishment of money.

money is a finite resource, that has to be allocated. and war and defense are one of the major benefactors of this resource.

with these things eliminated, money wouldn't limit what we can do, and war wouldn't exhaust resources.

space travel would be much easier.

People always assume that ETs are way more advanced than us, but there is no way of telling as of right now. They could be, dont get me wrong, but its the assumptions that makes fools of all of us. Who's to say that one scientific breakthru on a planet only a few light years away, could take them here, even though they may be as techinlogically advanced as us, or even less in some areas. Its all speculation until disclosure.

Yeah, if we got a common goal to accomplish something, I really think we could do something great. Kennedy wanted us to go to the moon first, and we did. All this "my god is better than your god", and bickering over land, etc is getting us nowhere.

reply to post by Authenticated


Well since I can only draw from experinces on earth I have to assume that all living things strugle and fight.
Another thing we will have to keep war as we venture out into space because we ar humans and are afraid of the uknown and why would aliens be peaceful?

reply to post by randomname


But who knows if they ever even used money or use it. We have a completely different life style then they might have.

i'm sure there are more advanced and lesser advances ET's. big universe. were still babies.

Originally posted by OUNjahhryn
i'm sure there are more advanced and lesser advances ET's. big universe. were still babies.

I totally agree with you on this! With how big the universe is there has to be everything from the extremely advanced to even possibly less advanced than us!

I truly believe we are the babies of the universe though. Hopefully, someday in our lifetime, we will all learn more.

They don't necessarily need to be more intelligent, just less violent and prone to corruption.

Humanity will never populate another planet because of our own self destructive nature.

Even on a website like this, created for creative thought and discussion of ideas, it's flooded by anger.

ET doesn't need to be more advanced, it just needs to lack our flaws.

Originally posted by Tephra
ET doesn't need to be more advanced, it just needs to lack our flaws.

Being more advanced pretty much means not having our flaws. If we didn't have our flaws we would be more advanced.

Is the question technologically advanced rather than emotionally advanced?

We are an emotionally retarded race probably based on our historical religous beliefs which continue to proven incorrect so if you take away religion for a few thousand years and see how emotional someone is after that time you would see a big difference I am sure, that is of course assuming ET doesnt have a religion (although Whales seem to have some emotion and no religion I would assume)

I dont beleive you can assume about technology at all, just because we cant do interstellar travel, perhaps they have an abundance of different materials and a biological make up that make space travel really easy but have no concept of farming (for example) hence they mutilate our animals and take crop circles to try and replicate it back home?

I never like Michu Kukoo when he said it like its obvious they must be tens or thousands times more smart than us, well kukoo, your assuming that based on humans and how narrow minded is that his knowitalldness.

reply to post by Authenticated


I think it's fallacious to frame the question in terms of "us" and "them", as though there were only two species of intelligent life in the universe: human beings and extraterrestrials. There are probably billions of different species out there, all at different stages of evolution. Maybe we are only in the 5th percentile in advancement and 95 percent of the intelligent species out there are ahead of us. Perhaps we are closer to the top. It might be most likely that we are somewhere in the middle. However, I don't see any reason to consider it unlikely that there are some beings in the universe that are as advanced in comparison with us as we are in relation to insects, or even single-celled organisms.

I knew it, damn those single celled organisms making us look smart.

Hey whilst we are at it if you took into consideration the vast swing in intelligence in our own civilisation from the actual brains behind technology (top 0.0001% of society??) to the Darin Awardians, LA Blondes, chinese peasants and tribes still living without any modern technology just on our earth we have one hell of a swing in intelligene.

Go and ask an Aboriginal if they can explain the combustion engine and yet they are the oldest race of people on earth apparently and never once invented electricity, radio, oil lamps, nuclear power, rockets, they made a stick come back though which was an early step into Aerodynamics I suppose but they never took it any further!

I have posted a thread discussing this topic before... actually, two. The first was simply a monologue of me saying that aliens didn't necessarily have to be god-like to be able to travel through space in a practical manner (or, perhaps their anatomy allows them to live or hibernate for fractions of eternity - so a million-year trip across the cosmos is like a drive to the corner store). The other was what our species will likely look like in another 100-200 years - which will be nearly god-like by comparison to our current status - and how that may impact our concepts of society and how any species with similar grasps of science and mastery of it would likely be at or beyond that level if they were capable of practical space travel.

I'm generally of the opinion that aliens are not necessarily god-like in their abilities.

I'm also not of the opinion that peace = progress. From the standpoint of physics, a system considered more 'peaceful' than another system is the one that is closer to the ground energy state. Compare bose-einstein condensates to quasi-neutral plasmas. Particles pairing up as bosons means they can both occupy the same energy state - and encounter much less resistance, but at the consequence of energy.

Plasmas, on the other hand - are very energetic and each individual particle can occupy multiple unique energy states - thus a small number of molecules expand to encompass much more space.

I believe this principle holds true for people - or sentience, as well. Concepts like communism/socialism/etc represent the Bose-Einstein condensate - individual characteristics are eliminated and the whole behaves as a single entity. Free society concepts represent plasmas - cumulative cohesion is sacrificed for individual freedom and presence.

Similarly - we will likely see two things happen in our society. Those who wish to expand and see space will. Their drive to seek and grow as individuals will push them beyond the desire to simply exist in a care-free life. On the other hand, the 'collectivists' will remain mostly planet-side and eventually evolve, socially, into a hive-mind.

The more 'free' people will occasionally have wars and conflict - but the vastness of space makes territorial wars and the fact that practical space-flight exists will likely mean any scarcity is also a thing of the past.

I think it would be silly to presume "peace leads to technological advance" - cooperation certainly does - but ambition is a much larger factor.

The ones who could reach Earth and do experiment on us.....of course no doubt that they are more advcanced than we are. BUT there are infinite galaxy and universe out there.....I bet that there are quite a lot of them still in jurassic era, stone age, or medieval period.

There are so many ways that could be branched on the technology tree. So some intelligent species out there may have figured out something that we overlooked and vice-versa. There could also be some societies on other planets that are more culturally advanced than us, but are more than happy to be in tune with nature, thus enjoying whatever it is that medicinal plants give them and advancing no more than banging rocks together and knapping flints in regards to technology. Somebody else out there could have found some loophole to hyperspace tech, but be scared ****-less by what we've managed to do so far with the atom and atom-smashing technology. In some cases, different technologies may have been avoided or not developed because they were deemed dangerous by their respective (alien) societies that have discovered them. (So many dangers in pursuit of science when you don't understand it well enough: poisoning, electrocution, radiation sickness, etc.) Others may have done what they can to collect all technology trees, those would probably be among the most advanced species - and having that nature, if they are space-faring, they would still observe "less advanced" species because of the likelihood of something or other that may still have been overlooked.

I reject the notion that if something is "different" then it must be more "advanced".
It is simply that, just different. They may be no more or less technologically or physiologically advanced than us but simply discovered a different set of physics than us that perhaps allows them interstellar travel and such. It's akin to what if we as a species postulated say, quantum physics or relativistic physics BEFORE we discovered newtonian physics. Think of how different we and our technology would be.
But still, as different as things would have turned out that doesn't make us more "advanced" just developed differently.

reply to post by Authenticated


You answered your own question, but if you aren't quite sure which one, its not the one we are more advanced if aliens ever got here, that's basically a contradiction.

If they discovered light speed travel or FTL travel the tech that makes that possible could be put to use on many other things that would significantly advance their race. You would need more than just the ability to create the drives but also sensors, some type of sheilding or advanced armour, massive power source and some type of gravity system. If we had the ability to do those things we would be much more advanced. If you could do those things you could do anything we have done already on earth.

I have no doubt they would be more technologically advanced but as for what makes us human that is another issue. They could come to destroy use, eat us or make us their slaves. All of which would make them less philosophically advanced.

I also posted a similar thread not too long ago. www.abovetopsecret.com... . I think I saw some original thinking there, too. I wholeheartedly agree, BTW. There are many, many directions in an infinite universe for a specific civilization to evolve, and I've even wondered if they could come fully armed with rocks and sticks for weapons. No wonder they haven't atacked.

Good thread, and thanks for keeping the thought out there.