Here's a crazy scenario.

Reply to post by eeks4

Do they really? Would this be like a sun dial...or? Actually since you've obviously seen one.....you wouldnt happen to have a picture, would you?


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Originally posted by Nicorette

Originally posted by Gazrok
Book some time on CNN?

Problem solved...and a lot easier than some kind of slow invasion of the Internet. If you found out that an alien ambassador was going to be on CNN tonight at 8pm, would you be anywhere else? Didn't think so. You'd be tuning in (likely while on the Internet chatting about it)...

CNN is an outlet of the American capitalist state. Why give it precedence? Why legitimize that particular form of imperial aggression? If they wanted to do that, they could've hijacked the radio airwaves ages ago.

Also like I said TV is non-interactive. I would be suspicious of any alien power that would use such naked propagandistic means to just blare messages at us through TV. A one way street where they just announce things, like any old Goldman Sachs lackey in your government who just lies and covers up the brazen theft going on.

No, they should use the Internet. Speak to everyone directly. Or not at all.

Whoa...easy :-) You'd probably prefer the Ministry of Truth of the formidable chinese government to make such announcement.. of course the chinese would just steal their technology and make cheap knockoffs...

How would an announcement on the internet be any more interactive? You think they'd take questions over IM?

Another question, from where (I mean from their own planet, a space ship in orbit or....) exactly are they penetrating / manipulating / using the internet? How do they disseminate their information and since you think they wouldn't (or shouldn't) use the language of the evil Satan USA... what language would they use?.(.don't say "french" now :-)

As other posters alluded to, "their" technology would be so advanced, it is highly improbable it could interface with ours. Try connecting your iPhone to ENIAC IV or a 1970s Cray Supercomputer and let me know how that works out...

Originally posted by Alkolyk
reply to post by Gazrok

 

To stay informed on the human news?

A super computer could translate all the major news in our world to their languages and easily filter out whats important for them and whats not.

To study us, A super computer could know a ton about our sociology, understand how to manipulate people and society.

That's all by being legit.. Now provided the scenario that they could have somekind of super computer with AI and hacking abilities, things could be much more interesting.

No matter how super the computer, without the proper software it's not translating anything. For your scenario to work, the Aliens need first to understand all languages spoken on Earth, including all dialects, accents and phonetic differences. This includes living and "dead" languages. They may be pretty surprised that there is no single language spoken here.... They also need to understand the concepts of Irony, Sarkasm, Comedy, Drama, deliberate misinformation, Errors, etc to correctly interpret whatever they pull off the internet. They may have extreme difficulty to weigh the importance of the data as they may not understand why some headlines i.e. "Cubs win World Series!" would trump "Famine in Timbuktu" in current interest and why the level of human interest in a given news item would be different depending on location. They probably only understand singular, homogenous societal structures and are baffled by the complexity of ours.

So... just plugging in and have a "Supercomputer" do its thing to learn everything there is to know about Earth isn't really going to happen... no matter where you're from (pun intended).

Originally posted by eeks4
I believe very much that this is so possible..There technology is so very real....They use things called dials and can interfere with almost anything electrical...

They still use dial-up? Do they use AOL?
BTW, I can interfere with almost anything electrical too.... all I need is a magnet...

Whoa...easy :-) You'd probably prefer the Ministry of Truth of the formidable chinese government to make such announcement.. of course the chinese would just steal their technology and make cheap knockoffs... How would an announcement on the internet be any more interactive? You think they'd take questions over IM?

Bah cmon.. politics, here? Since you got started on the chinese, want to get started on the US? Or on pretty mcuh anybody. Humans are not perfect, we get this. Let's move on.

Who says they would announce on the internet? Just the data gathering would be worth it. It's actually mind bongling to think of what you could do with that and a millions year old advanced super computer.

Another question, from where (I mean from their own planet, a space ship in orbit or....) exactly are they penetrating / manipulating / using the internet? How do they disseminate their information and since you think they wouldn't (or shouldn't) use the language of the evil Satan USA... what language would they use?.(.don't say "french" now :-)

Astonauts can tweet from space.. Cmon...

As other posters alluded to, "their" technology would be so advanced, it is highly improbable it could interface with ours. Try connecting your iPhone to ENIAC IV or a 1970s Cray Supercomputer and let me know how that works out...

This argument doesn't hold, because it is probably easily possible for us humans to connect an iphone to an ENIAC IV or w/e. It's just theres no incentive to do so. Plus it doesn't have to be "connected". You just need to intercept the frequencies or to put it simply, the data.

Holding a big part of the information of a planet in your computer.. Could be quite a good incentive don't you think?


The truth is, it's all speculation and it's all based on how advanced they would be.

This scenario is plausible and possible for slightly more advanced aliens, let's say.. a million years old civilization.

While against a billion years old civilization, the risk is that they might consider us humans as simply insignifiant. Therefore would have no interest in doing this.

If I were an alien spy, I'd sure find it handy to access the human internet to find out stuff. And if I could travel such huge distances, one could speculate that I have quite a lot of computing power. The kind like something the size of an iphone would be thousands of times more powerful in terms of processing power than the super computers of earth.

Turning your little trip to planet earth, a real breeze...

Steve Jobs might be praised by aliens too! =D

Bah cmon.. politics, here? Since you got started on the chinese, want to get started on the US? Or on pretty mcuh anybody. Humans are not perfect, we get this. Let's move on.

Yes, sorry.. I stupidly took the bait and let myself go... won't happen again.

Who says they would announce on the internet? Just the data gathering would be worth it. It's actually mind bongling to think of what you could do with that and a millions year old advanced super computer.

That was just in reference to Nicorette's post... in her answer to "Why wouldn't they just go on CNN?" of another poster.

Astonauts can tweet from space.. Cmon...

Hence my question... from where would the data collection be done. It's not really that important, was just curious what the ideas about that are.... To intercept internet data, you'd need to "plugin" to the satellites and then you'd miss all data that's at rest or is transmitted via "landlines". If the data is transported over fiber optics, than they do not emit electromagnetic waves that can be eavesdropped on, you would actually need to physically tap into the line, so there is a need to be "local" (at least to install the wiretap)

This argument doesn't hold, because it is probably easily possible for us humans to connect an iphone to an ENIAC IV or w/e. It's just theres no incentive to do so. Plus it doesn't have to be "connected". You just need to intercept the frequencies or to put it simply, the data.

Yes, I'm sure "There's an App for That" :-)... I guess I didn't make my argument clear.. We can certainly make that work, if we wanted to.... but that is because it is "our" technology, and besides the hardware... both ends need the corresponding software.. if you want another computer to spill its guts, you need the machine your interfacing with to run a program that will retrieve the information you are trying to syphon off.

Holding a big part of the information of a planet in your computer.. Could be quite a good incentive don't you think?

Fully agree

The truth is, it's all speculation and it's all based on how advanced they would be.

This scenario is plausible and possible for slightly more advanced aliens, let's say.. a million years old civilization.

While against a billion years old civilization, the risk is that they might consider us humans as simply insignifiant. Therefore would have no interest in doing this.

If I were an alien spy, I'd sure find it handy to access the human internet to find out stuff. And if I could travel such huge distances, one could speculate that I have quite a lot of computing power. The kind like something the size of an iphone would be thousands of times more powerful in terms of processing power than the super computers of earth.

Turning your little trip to planet earth, a real breeze...

I'm certain I would have a Quantum Multi Phase Plasma Shifting Super Duper Computer.... Only problem is that helps me nada without the proper software (even if that software is some wild self learning AI), it won't speak english, or any other human language for that matter...

BTW, I think one big assumption all of us usually make, and which might be completely wrong is that any advanced civilization will continuously advance and i.e. have a million years of societal and technological advancement under its belt. Carl Sagan was talking about this in what he called the "Radio Astronomy" civilizations and the chance of them self destructing...

Steve Jobs might be praised by aliens too! =D

Well, he probably met them now ;-)...

Originally posted by nv4711

Hence my question... from where would the data collection be done. It's not really that important, was just curious what the ideas about that are.... To intercept internet data, you'd need to "plugin" to the satellites and then you'd miss all data that's at rest or is transmitted via "landlines". If the data is transported over fiber optics, than they do not emit electromagnetic waves that can be eavesdropped on, you would actually need to physically tap into the line, so there is a need to be "local" (at least to install the wiretap)

Yes, I'm sure "There's an App for That" :-)... I guess I didn't make my argument clear.. We can certainly make that work, if we wanted to.... but that is because it is "our" technology, and besides the hardware... both ends need the corresponding software.. if you want another computer to spill its guts, you need the machine your interfacing with to run a program that will retrieve the information you are trying to syphon off.

Holding a big part of the information of a planet in your computer.. Could be quite a good incentive don't you think?

Fully agree

The truth is, it's all speculation and it's all based on how advanced they would be.

This scenario is plausible and possible for slightly more advanced aliens, let's say.. a million years old civilization.

While against a billion years old civilization, the risk is that they might consider us humans as simply insignifiant. Therefore would have no interest in doing this.

If I were an alien spy, I'd sure find it handy to access the human internet to find out stuff. And if I could travel such huge distances, one could speculate that I have quite a lot of computing power. The kind like something the size of an iphone would be thousands of times more powerful in terms of processing power than the super computers of earth.

Turning your little trip to planet earth, a real breeze...

I'm certain I would have a Quantum Multi Phase Plasma Shifting Super Duper Computer.... Only problem is that helps me nada without the proper software (even if that software is some wild self learning AI), it won't speak english, or any other human language for that matter...

BTW, I think one big assumption all of us usually make, and which might be completely wrong is that any advanced civilization will continuously advance and i.e. have a million years of societal and technological advancement under its belt. Carl Sagan was talking about this in what he called the "Radio Astronomy" civilizations and the chance of them self destructing...

Steve Jobs might be praised by aliens too! =D

Well, he probably met them now ;-)...

Good points,

I agree on the assumption about continuous advancement. But the thing going against it is that, we make GIANT steps right now, we went from agriculture to landing on the moon (some would argue, haha) in just a couple thousands years. The kind of steps that change the whole game. It's just logical that a civilization who's had millions of years to go at it wouldn't have made theses kind of steps.

When im looking at videos on TED about how they take a virus we all have in our brain and then modify it in a very clever way for them to allow that said virus to "shut down" some specific "groups" of neurons in your brain so that they can study brain diseases by plugging it to a computer because what they just created are 1s and 0s.

It makes you wonder... What the hell why would have with millions of years of going at that. They must be pretty freaking awesome.

Good points,

I agree on the assumption about continuous advancement. But the thing going against it is that, we make GIANT steps right now, we went from agriculture to landing on the moon (some would argue, haha) in just a couple thousands years. The kind of steps that change the whole game. It's just logical that a civilization who's had millions of years to go at it wouldn't have made theses kind of steps.

When im looking at videos on TED about how they take a virus we all have in our brain and then modify it in a very clever way for them to allow that said virus to "shut down" some specific "groups" of neurons in your brain so that they can study brain diseases by plugging it to a computer because what they just created are 1s and 0s.

It makes you wonder... What the hell why would have with millions of years of going at that. They must be pretty freaking awesome.

Hmmm.. you got me here now... I made my assumption using another assumption... that is that advancement is always linear... as you're hinting at, we went from throwing stones at Mammoths to going to the Moon (yes, we did ;-)) in a very short time, because at some point technology advanced much more rapidly. If it doubles, quadruples etc every few decades, it might not take a million years but maybe only a mere.. I don't know.. 10,000 years to reach unthinkable technological heights....

Uh..And there I thought I had all the answers ;-))

I've always wondered this: Let's say in our galaxy, there are a couple dozen alien species with technological advances that can easily space travel. If any of these species knows of Earth, it might be logical to assume that they won't make contact with us for a while. They might want to let us progress on our own, because think about it:

Let's say aliens revealed themselves in the year 2020. The earth in 2100 would then look MUCH different than say, an Earth where aliens didn't reveal themselves until say, 2100.

I don't think they will reveal themselves until we are more technologically advances, and capable of farther space travel. Just my theory though

reply to post by sk8erbg207


You're talking about the Prime Directive.
However some species might not follow it.

Originally posted by sk8erbg207
I've always wondered this: Let's say in our galaxy, there are a couple dozen alien species with technological advances that can easily space travel. If any of these species knows of Earth, it might be logical to assume that they won't make contact with us for a while. They might want to let us progress on our own, because think about it:

Let's say aliens revealed themselves in the year 2020. The earth in 2100 would then look MUCH different than say, an Earth where aliens didn't reveal themselves until say, 2100.

I don't think they will reveal themselves until we are more technologically advances, and capable of farther space travel. Just my theory though

I don't think I can follow your logic, but if I understand you correctly, then you think they look ut us, consider us to not be developed enough yet and wait until we reached a certain stage of development..?

I don't think that makes much sense. Provided that they had interest to make contact, they run the risk that we will not develop to the extent they deem worthy and/or we blow ourselves up before we can reach that stage. Hence, all the waiting was for nothing.

I'm also sure they understand Quantum physics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Rule (or whatever the dude's name is who came up with it on their planet). So they understand that by merely observing us ("measuring") they influence the result of the observation, therefore our future development would be unpredictible (you can only either observe a particle's momentum or its locality in space-time according to Heisenberg).
Now of course, as much as I wish, I'm not a quantum physicist and just spitballing...

I'm also sure they understand Quantum physics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Rule (or whatever the dude's name is who came up with it on their planet). So they understand that by merely observing us ("measuring") they influence the result of the observation, therefore our future development would be unpredictible (you can only either observe a particle's momentum or its locality in space-time according to Heisenberg). Now of course, as much as I wish, I'm not a quantum physicist and just spitballing...

Hmm... Never considered this, good one. I'll have to think about that.

Could one make the logical conclusion that by simply plugging into our internet they could observe us without modifying the result because they are not observing the particle directly? (yeah yeah.. I'm going pretty far)

About the prime directive, I call bull crap, no such things exists. The chances for life to evolve to where we currently are is so minimal it's crazy. I just have a hard time understanding why they would pass on a chance to learn from us. Because they are probably not as stupid as we are to simply block our mind to the learning of others based on differences, it's not really our fault, we evolved that way.

It seems as if at one point in any history of any civilizations in the history of the universe, one could say that they had to pass a phase where ressources were scarses and transition to a society where ressources are unlimited. Well that the problem, evolution doesn't occur over night, it's as if our whole beings were still used to violence, conflict and lack of ressources.

After millions of years in a unlimited ressource system, I'm pretty sure our brain would be completely different from the ones we currently have.

There is no shortage of energy in the universe. In contrary to what MSM tends to say, it's only the technology that is lacking.

For some weird reason people who have "encounters" with said "aliens" come back with messages about compassion and acceptance, non-violence, brotherhood and all that. Well it totally makes sense when combined with the notion that a society who lives in infinite abundance would have.

Enough yapping for me, back to work.

reply to post by Alkolyk


You're assuming that intelligent life in the universe is very scarce.
The whole point of the prime directive is to avoid altering a relatively primitive alien society in case it would lead to its own destruction. Since the consequences are impossible to fathom.
Can you imagine the economic and social turbolence if not outright collapse the introduction of much more advanced alien tech could cause in our day and age?
Another assumption you make it's that contact is necessary in order to learn from another species.
That is simply not true, they could observe, collect specimens, culture, informations just about anything.
They could even through abduction-mind wiping- have a dialogue with a number of human individuals.
The third assumption you make is that technological advancement causes biological evolution.
That is simply not true. Violence is rooted in our instinct, without altering our dna that wouldn't change.
Cultural evolution and biological one are very different.
If you take some some children and let em grow up in the wild they would be as violent or aggressive as humans 40.000k ago.
Also, just because violence is sometimes necessary it does not make it evil.
The whole idea of technologically advance aliens being non violent per se is baseless.

reply to post by AurelioMaghe

You're assuming that intelligent life in the universe is very scarce.

No, I'm assuming that intelligent life that evolved up to the point of being able to travel across the galaxy is scarce in relation to the number if "intelligent life" (aka space monkeys) out there.

The questions should be asked the other way around, "How many other advanced intelligent alien lifeforms would be interested in us?"
I believe there's intelligent life all over the universe, but like the doc said it so often: "they might not be interested in tooling with ants".

And in order for an alien lifeform to be interested in us, it needs to be on a technological scale close enough to us. Or like I was saying earlier, they evolved to be compassionate about everyone and are actually interested in us. I doubt that if they were they would simply watch us crash and burn to death when they knew it was coming or was imminent.

The whole point of the prime directive is to avoid altering a relatively primitive alien society in case it would lead to its own destruction. Since the consequences are impossible to fathom. Can you imagine the economic and social turbolence if not outright collapse the introduction of much more advanced alien tech could cause in our day and age?

I just don't get that one. If ETs would land here and hand up, say... free energy out of the grid type of technology, your talking as if it everyone on earth would kill fight each other for no reasons at all and wipe the human race in the process. I find it pretty far fetched of a view, plus it's kinda primitive.. Who says the Aliens would give the technology AND reveal themselves at the same time? They could just give out the tech by a third party, by a human maybe.

Another assumption you make it's that contact is necessary in order to learn from another species.
That is simply not true, they could observe, collect specimens, culture, informations just about anything.
They could even through abduction-mind wiping- have a dialogue with a number of human individuals.

Not at all, I didn't mean to seem like that, I agree on that. It's actually what the thread started about, aliens using the internet to monitor us in a stealthy way and all that data being plugged into a super computer.

The third assumption you make is that technological advancement causes biological evolution. That is simply not true. Violence is rooted in our instinct, without altering our dna that wouldn't change. Cultural evolution and biological one are very different. If you take some some children and let em grow up in the wild they would be as violent or aggressive as humans 40.000k ago. Also, just because violence is sometimes necessary it does not make it evil. The whole idea of technologically advance aliens being non violent per se is baseless.

Oh so you think technological advancement doesn't cause biological evolution? Well I got news for you, both go hand in hand.

Go read about genome sequencing and what this will mean for our health. It changes the game. Making us that more healthy. I could dive in the meat; genetic engineering being enhanced (and only possible) by technology but it will be useless, you get the point.

The brain HAS several very real physiological areas that develop as we evolve while others slack off.

I agree about the nessecity of evil and the idea that technologically advanced aliens might be violent. It's true that violence and the dark side has it's place in the universe.

The good gets better and so does the dark, so they evolved together.

reply to post by Alkolyk


1) You may be right, we just don't have any data on that, there may be millions, there may be none.
Also, it is just not true as an absolute that a immensely more advanced civiliziation wouldn't take interests in us.
For many reasons. But just think that we DO study ants.

2)Even just a free energy tech may lead to the collapse of capitalism, for instance. Or lead to a new tech revolution giving a primitive disunited planet the means of harming other alien civs.
In ST upon the Warp Engine tech landmark the Fed makes First Contact, it's just a matter of civilization maturity in this instance.
Secondly, as you seem to be an example of, very few people on earth would understand and approve of they revealing themselves and at the same time not giving us free tech while millions of people on earth die of starvation/disease every year. They would be the baddies.
3)Agreed.
4)That is assuming dna is manipulated i.e. genetic engineering, just as i stated myself in 'without altering our dna'. Also, genetic manipulation is not evolution.

Originally posted by Alkolyk


Hmm... Never considered this, good one. I'll have to think about that.

Could one make the logical conclusion that by simply plugging into our internet they could observe us without modifying the result because they are not observing the particle directly? (yeah yeah.. I'm going pretty far)

Let's assume they've got quantum physics all figured out, then a pretty exciting thing could happen. If they were able to use quantum entanglement, then, according to the entanglement theory, they could "entangle" our information. The theory even makes the transmission instant, no matter how far apart "sender" and "receiver" are, (this is where Einstein threw his hands up because it violates the speed of light speed limit... famously ridiculing it as "spooky action in the distance"). However, Einstein died before it could be experimentally proven. A big challenge (for us lowly humans, at least) is so far the transmission of "classic information" but who knows what another civilization can do..., either way, transmitting the state of entangled qubits has been demonstrated in a number of experiments now and is not science fiction anymore. Check out what's currently done in the field of "quantum teleportation"..but careful, your head might start spinning....mine does when I read it ;-)). Ah..and this wouldn't collide with the Uncertainty rule, because you're transmitting a measured state of a qubit (or an electron) at a given time and the Uncertainty consequences of this measurement are irrelevant to the transmission of this bit of information. Don't worry if this doesn't make sense... was it Schroedinger? (yes, the cat guy) who said "anyone who claims that Quantum theory makes sense, doesn't understand it" ;-))

About the prime directive, I call bull crap, no such things exists. The chances for life to evolve to where we currently are is so minimal it's crazy. I just have a hard time understanding why they would pass on a chance to learn from us. Because they are probably not as stupid as we are to simply block our mind to the learning of others based on differences, it's not really our fault, we evolved that way.

I would agree with you here, scientific inquiry, or call it "curiosity" is the basis for scientific advancement, so if a civilization is advanced, they will be interested in what's going on out there, just as much as we are. And you're also right, even though I believe that there is "someone" out there, all the stuff that has to come together for a planet to allow intelligent lifeforms to develop - I think it will still be a rare and precious thing to have happened, despite of the vastness of the universe.