Aliens Are Like Us

Originally posted by redoubt
reply to post by Astyanax

 

Aliens Are Like Us

There is a kind of irony possible here because... well, there may be no such thing as aliens at all.

It's an old concept where we have a universe that is whole. That means that every asteroid, every moon, every planet, every sun and solar system... every arm of every galaxy in every corner of an eternal universe, is connected.



But even before we get there, we know that the 'stuff' that makes up our universe is common if not constant. The blueprint of life follows the same trails using the same material in each setting.

Earth is neither unique or alone. The only thing that may make it stand out is a rather unusual satellite (moon) and a species that has risen from the dirt to aim itself back into the same via self-determined-extinction.

There are no aliens. There are no angels. They are one in the same and we... we are an experiment that we are about to fail of our own choosing.

Well for all we know there could be a distant race out there wondering" are humans real" ? or referring to us as extra terrestrials. Big fish in a little pond

reply to post by Irishwolfhound


Because a few year ago they had discovered a planet that was said to be twice the size of our planets, and it seemed to exactly resemble our somewhat.

www.sciencedaily.com...

And considering that earth is the only planet we live on, you can understand as to why it popular in some debates. It just an example, that all.

Based on some of the cases, some species of aliens seem to care about humans.
They seem to "pay visit" to specific persons from time to time. Some of them seems to try to interfere with the course of life of the people they visit. Not always directly but, for instance, approaching and talking with parents about their son´s life.

I prefer the term visitors to aliens. That´s because we don´t who they are, where do they come from and how many species are there.

reply to post by Spiramirabilis

Where is that imagination of yours Astyanax?

It's billing by the hour these days.

How do we compare and rate intelligence?

The way I thought about this while considering your argument was to try to think of questions a more-than-human intelligence might be able to answer, but which humans never could. The only ones I could think of, really, are the questions of what consciousness is and what the fundamental substance is, if such a thing exists at all. In other words, the age-old questions. But it seems to me the answers to those questions might change shape depending on the type of entity asking the question, and also that nature would interpose similar obstacles between any thinking entity and the ultimate ground of being—assuming (as I do) that such a thing exists.

If necessity is what drives us and also forms us, imagine an environment that required a special kind of intelligence to survive it.

I'd have to imagine a special kind of intelligence first. Can you help me there?

More is different, as the title of a famous scientific paper has it. Are we talking about qualitative or quantitative differences? I understand that the latter may imply the former, but surely not the other way round? Being adept at solving crossword puzzles isn't much good if you're training to be world sudoku champ.

better educated and experienced would (almost) amount to [smarter]

I beg to differ. The world is full of people educated beyond their intelligence.

Buddha? :-)

...

How is it we're here discussing morals at all then? :-)

The smartest thing the Buddha did was to reduce moral imperatives to a practical calculus of action and reaction.

I'll go this far. Long experience in diplomacy and foreign relations may teach the lesson that it is better to leave other intelligent races alone if at all possible, and to treat them well when it is not, simply because there's less trouble and distraction all round if you do that. This is not morality as such, merely practical politics.

Benevolence is a figment of our imagination?

Yes, in a very real sense, because we can never foresee the true outcome of our actions, and if we are to judge merely by intentions we shall soon be proclaiming that means justify ends.

Altruism towards conspecifics has selective value, which increases with degree of relatedness. Enlightened self-interest may suggest good reasons for being kind to other species as well as our own. But I do not see why how or why truly disinterested altruism could exist—except at the misdirected prompting of instinct. Which is praiseworthy, I agree, but I don't see how you could call it intelligent.

So - the humans are freaks. We are weird. We have needs and desires that feel real, that we value, that we treat as valuable. We name these things, examine and work to maintain them - but nature has no need for them. We do - but nature doesn't.

This is a misreading of the case. See my previous paragraph. The needs and desires we treat as valuable (I take it you are speaking of moral feelings and impulses) are entirely natural. They are necessary in some form to every intelligent social species, so they evolve. However, their proper application is within the species, and even then only to certain selected individuals within the species—how many and how closely related depends on how advanced and elaborate the society. This has nothing to do with intelligence, though; an intelligent alien species may see a moral advantage (that is, an advantage to its own species or even to a larger confederation of species to which it belongs) in wiping out other species rather than being nice to them. Again, human history can provide us with any number of examples to illustrate this.

How is cultural evolution separate from biological evolution?

That's a good, fair question. The second refers merely to the evolution of the physical phenotype, the first to what Richard Dawkins has called the 'extended phenotype'—the physical effects of the species on the world around it. At least, cultural evolution is what we call that in relation to our own species.

The course of evolution is always determined by the environment, even when the organism itself is an important factor in shaping that environment. What I meant by cultural evolution is that certain 'truths' could come to be held as self-evident even though they are false, and these might then become the basis of a morality or ethics that is disinterestedly and universally altruistic. I doubt, though, that such conditions could prevail for very long; idealism is always a snowball in the Sahara.

Yep its very weird i always thought they will look prety much like us
Now this makes me think other stuff like blue eyes blond ppl sientist say they can all be traced to 1 ancestor
Could these blue eyed humans trying to kill the brown eyed ppl and those other colours are the manipulation of blue eyes not turning well frm doing our earth woman

So aliens planted there dna they wait till it spreads and tell the blue eyed race on earth were created you bam they have earth without nuclear war

reply to post by Astyanax

But it seems to me the answers to those questions might change shape depending on the type of entity asking the question, and also that nature would interpose similar obstacles between any thinking entity and the ultimate ground of being—assuming (as I do) that such a thing exists.

This is the most interesting part of this whole conversation - for me

When I was a kid, I never wondered if there were aliens - I just assumed they were out there. I spent a lot of time trying to imagine what they might look like and I drew hundreds of pictures. I tried to imagine every possible kind of alien - hairy, hairless, one leg - a hundred...wings, claws, fins, huge and tiny. Of course - they came in every color, in all colors - or they were invisible (those were easy to draw). But even then, what I mostly wondered was - what did they think about? I'm completely preoccupied (if not obsessed) with what we think about here and now - how we thought in our past, what we'll think in our future

Alien philosophy. Alien intellectuals, scientists, artists...how do they see the universe, existence - do they know things we don't know? Or, as you suggest, are they just as stuck as we are. How sad am I that I'll (probably) never have any answers to those questions

I'd have to imagine a special kind of intelligence first. Can you help me there?

So, after having some time to think about this - no - I can't come up with a single thing. I realized that if we're talking about similar beginnings, then the outcomes would probably also be similar. I want to imagine something completely alien - but I can't if we're talking about planets similar to our own. I can't come up with anything even if we decide to think up scenarios completely different from ours - thinking is what it is for us. It could be something we have no way of understanding for something else - this is as close as I can get. I'll just say - here on our own planet there are examples of thinking that is different from our own - just starting with dolphins, whales - and octopuses. But - we don't get them either - and they're right here

Altruism towards conspecifics has selective value, which increases with degree of relatedness. Enlightened self-interest may suggest good reasons for being kind to other species as well as our own. But I do not see why how or why truly disinterested altruism could exist—except at the misdirected prompting of instinct. Which is praiseworthy, I agree, but I don't see how you could call it intelligent.

Why do you call it praiseworthy? :-)

This is the thing about morals - and moralizing - ethics. It's built in. Since we're talking about hypothetical aliens that might be like us - and that we very often don't do the right thing even when we can agree on what that is...OK - I give. Intelligence is separate. If they come we'll be lucky if they're both smart and empathetic - and enough like us that they care about us. I wish for some seriously misdirected prompting of instinct - in our favor - I guess :-)

I doubt, though, that such conditions could prevail for very long; idealism is always a snowball in the Sahara.

After reading that - it made me realize that maybe nothing defines humanity as well as comparing it to things that are not human. Idealism evolved with us. Our ideals aren't even necessarily attainable - but we still value them and protect them - even just as ideas. We analyze them, practice them, teach them. They help us survive, but we'll also obviously discard them to survive. It's like a death match between our baser and more noble selves

Idealists always finish last?

:-)

reply to post by Astyanax


Well, it just so happens that we have different variables and included with those variables are a percentage of lies.

I don't ask why things happen in this world as they do, I just look at them - I don't judge them.

But it just so happens the liars were caught being stupid. it just so happens that out of these variables and percentage of lies within these varied subjects, that all allegations of aliens being somewhat close in resemblance or makeup to humans is an absolute downright lie, kind of like my neighbor saying he loves me in this modern disrespectful ignorant age.

Let's examine the kind of aliens from people who don't tell lies.

*Amphibian aliens
*Giant aliens
*Grey aliens
*praying mantis aliens
*reptilian aliens
*short blue alien pets

reply to post by Spiramirabilis

Human understanding of the world is peculiar to human beings and almost totally shaped by our physical nature, in particular by the way we take in information through our senses. It seems obvious that many of our ideas in religion, philosophy and even science are so shaped, while art and the love of 'beauty' obviously are.

However, what we understand is different from how we understand it. Brains are information-processing devices: input here, output there. The processing to which information is subjected must be broadly similar in all such devices, at least in effect – otherwise the same input would produce different outputs in different devices. That doesn't seem to happen. An electronic computer and a human brain will both come up with the same 'correct' answer to a question in mathematics, though their interpretations of a Shakespeare sonnet might greatly differ.

Would aliens understand mathematics? It's hard to image how they could not understand it and still be intelligent. And I think this is true whether these aliens followed a similar evolutionary path from similar origins (whatever 'similar' means in this context) or whether their origins and development were nothing like our own.

Would aliens understand poetry? Probably not our poetry, but they might have poetry of their own that was equally incomprehensible to us. I suspect any sufficiently intelligent beings would develop something along the lines of artistic expression, but this is admittedly a bit of a speculative stretch.

By the way, we do get the intelligence of dolphins and whales, not to mention dogs, cats, chimps and the like. Octopi aren't really very intelligent – they're just intelligent for invertebrates – but the point is, I think, that we can distinguish signs of intelligence in just about any organism, even one as different from us as an octopus.

Why do you call (the misdirected prompting of instinct) praiseworthy?

Precisely because I have evolved to think it so. Which means that thinking so probably has selective advantage. That's a good enough reason in itself.

i think aliens would look like us if they came form a similar planet.

and why they always have to be bad? why not like in the twilight zone where they bring the cure for cancer.