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Author Topic:   Avoiding Aliens
Vacate
Member (Idle past 4600 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 10-01-2006


Message 31 of 62 (557598)
04-27-2010 3:33 AM
Reply to: Message 26 by Hyroglyphx
04-26-2010 8:49 PM


it's a huge waste of money, effort, and time.
This a bit harsh don't you think? I mean, in the history of mans wasting money, effort, or time; SETI wouldn't rate high on my list. I was going to provide you with a couple of examples but then I remembered I am typing this on a work computer, while drinking imported coffee. I should get back to watching news about the war.

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Jumped Up Chimpanzee
Member (Idle past 4942 days)
Posts: 572
From: UK
Joined: 10-22-2009


Message 32 of 62 (557605)
04-27-2010 4:53 AM
Reply to: Message 28 by Taz
04-26-2010 10:15 PM


And in the same way, Hawking's quote presented a higher meaning than what is literally there. He didn't literally mean that there will be nomadic alien races out to take over our planet. He only used that as one possible example of how contact with a more advance civilization might be a bad idea just like I used rapists as one possible example of how releasing all prisoners in one day is a bad idea.
I accept you have a point in that respect, and maybe I was unfair to criticise Hawking, especially as it was one quote lifted from a whole series.
Yes, there may be other dangers from aliens apart from just the prospect of war.
But I still hold the opinion, as others clearly do, that it just seems staggeringly unlikely that any aliens would need to come to the Earth for selfish reasons, when they could almost certainly find whatever they need much closer to wherever they come from.
I would like to think that if we found life today on one of the planets or moons in our own solar system, we already have the awareness to treat it with the utmost care and respect. I may be naive in that but I really do think that given a "fresh" planet with life we would make our best effort to look after it.
I'm also hopeful that we will develop the technology and social attitudes necessary to clean up our own planet long before we have the technology to travel to distant stars. If we don't, we'll almost certainly destroy ourselves long before we have inter-stella technology. I think it is likely the same scenario would apply to any alien species.

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greyseal
Member (Idle past 3861 days)
Posts: 464
Joined: 08-11-2009


Message 33 of 62 (557606)
04-27-2010 4:55 AM
Reply to: Message 29 by Taz
04-26-2010 10:23 PM


Rahvin writes:
1) They're not likely to be able to get here easily. So far as we know, you can;t go faster than light, meaning even relatively "close" civilizations will take thousands of years or more to travel interstellar distances.
I actually had a long conversation with Rrhain about this. Again, let me remind you people that the native americans couldn't by any stretch of imagination understand how other civilizations could exist on the other side of the vast ocean and those civilizations actually got the means to get to the americas.
What you just pointed out is pretty much the same narrow-mindedness that brought the native americans to their doom.
To be fair, I don't think it was the native american's narrow-mindedness that brought them to their doom, I think it was the superior technology in terms of guns and armor, and the superior (at least in terms of taking advantage of the natural world) methods of the immigrants.
I think, even if the native americans had known, they could not have done much but delayed the inevitable given that the ethics and morals of the immigrants were such that might meant right, in the face of their disadvantages.
However, I also think Hawkings in this respect is talking bullshit. Why would you want to live at the bottom of a gravity well as deep as the Earths? Why would you want to saddle yourself with something less than 1% of the resources of the solar system? especially when it's full of pesky natives that have nuclear bombs and who can seriously give you a bad hair day when you try to subjugate them?
They wouldn't. If they can travel between the stars, they'll find more water, more air, more metals and more raw materials just floating billions of miles out in space in the oort cloud than they could ever hope to dig up on Earth.
Not for nothing do I say that the first person or company to exploit space harvesting will be the ruling force for the solar system for the forseeable future, and that's discounting the ability to throw rocks.

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 Message 29 by Taz, posted 04-26-2010 10:23 PM Taz has replied

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Taz
Member (Idle past 3291 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 34 of 62 (557624)
04-27-2010 10:37 AM
Reply to: Message 32 by Jumped Up Chimpanzee
04-27-2010 4:53 AM


JUC writes:
But I still hold the opinion, as others clearly do, that it just seems staggeringly unlikely that any aliens would need to come to the Earth for selfish reasons, when they could almost certainly find whatever they need much closer to wherever they come from.
Again, there were plenty of places for the Europeans to exploit that were a lot closer, like the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. And they did for a while.
Spending months on the high seas to reach new lands like Australia and Americas? Sending whole armies to Indo-China to conquer Vietnam? It took years and much resources to do all these. And yet, the Europeans did all of this despite the hardships, the same sort of inconvienience that you use to think why aliens wouldn't come to earth to exploit it.
I would like to think that if we found life today on one of the planets or moons in our own solar system, we already have the awareness to treat it with the utmost care and respect. I may be naive in that but I really do think that given a "fresh" planet with life we would make our best effort to look after it.
Perhaps we'd treat it with care at the beginning. But as we found out that life is plenty thoughout the galaxy, we'd probably exploit it the same way we did with our own life on earth.
quote:
I'm also hopeful that we will develop the technology and social attitudes necessary to clean up our own planet long before we have the technology to travel to distant stars. If we don't, we'll almost certainly destroy ourselves long before we have inter-stella technology. I think it is likely the same scenario would apply to any alien species.
Just like what single ladies say to single guys at social occasions, I'd say to you to dream on.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by Jumped Up Chimpanzee, posted 04-27-2010 4:53 AM Jumped Up Chimpanzee has not replied

  
Taz
Member (Idle past 3291 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 35 of 62 (557627)
04-27-2010 10:49 AM
Reply to: Message 33 by greyseal
04-27-2010 4:55 AM


greyseal writes:
To be fair, I don't think it was the native american's narrow-mindedness that brought them to their doom, I think it was the superior technology in terms of guns and armor, and the superior (at least in terms of taking advantage of the natural world) methods of the immigrants.
I didn't say it was the only reason that doomed them. It was a combination, but the first step towards sealing their own extinction was the fact that they couldn't possibly forsee how more advance civilizations from all the way on the other side of the world could come and subjugate them.
However, I also think Hawkings in this respect is talking bullshit. Why would you want to live at the bottom of a gravity well as deep as the Earths? Why would you want to saddle yourself with something less than 1% of the resources of the solar system? especially when it's full of pesky natives that have nuclear bombs and who can seriously give you a bad hair day when you try to subjugate them?
At the time when the Europeans started going around the world and colonized the already occupied areas, there were still plenty of places that were not occupied by anyone.
And right here you've stumbled upon the same BS argument that the other guy made.
The Europeans could have conquered the bulk of the Americas and left the natives alone well enough. But it was inevitable that they subjugated these peoples.
What I have in mind about space conquest is more in the line of them exploiting the resources of our solar system first. And then as time went by, they had more and more war fleets in the area. Earth was just right there. It would eventually be inevitable that they come and bombard the hell out of our cities.
Again, that's just one scenario how we could be destroyed. But what most of us fear are the billions of scenarios we haven't thought of, just like how the native Americans couldn't by any stretch of imagination have thought about being conquered by far more civilizations from the other side of the world.
By the way, recently researchers of extra-solar planetary systems came to the conclusion that the rocky nature of our solar system is the exception rather than the norm in the galaxy. It seems like everywhere they looked everything is gaseous instead of rocky.
If an advance alien wanted to exploit the resources of space, they'd probably stumble into our backyard sooner or later.

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Aware Wolf
Member (Idle past 1420 days)
Posts: 156
From: New Hampshire, USA
Joined: 02-13-2009


Message 36 of 62 (557649)
04-27-2010 12:39 PM
Reply to: Message 18 by Rahvin
04-26-2010 2:28 PM


How about an attack by nanobots, or maybe a designer virus type thing? They get them here in probes launched from way out beyond our nuke's reach, let the little guys do the dirty work, turn them off, and walk in uncontested.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 18 by Rahvin, posted 04-26-2010 2:28 PM Rahvin has replied

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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 37 of 62 (557655)
04-27-2010 1:26 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by Aware Wolf
04-27-2010 12:39 PM


How about an attack by nanobots, or maybe a designer virus type thing? They get them here in probes launched from way out beyond our nuke's reach, let the little guys do the dirty work, turn them off, and walk in uncontested.
1) "Nanobots" don't work in reality like they do in movies. They can still be pretty cool, but you're not going to see the "gray goo" nano-disassembler stuff you see in fiction. On the nanoscale, things work slowly. You can't make a few million nanobots disassemble a human-sized organism quickly - molecule-by-molecule action is not fast. You also need to be able to somehow provide the bots with energy, while still keeping them small enough to do their jobs. If you want to be able to inhabit the area after they're done, you need to make them intelligent enough ti distinguish you from their targets - all at the nanoscale. This approaches what is commonly referred to as "wank," taking a technology and exaggerating its capabilities while ignoring its drawbacks until you completely depart from reality. You can kill things much quicker and easier.
2) Biological warfare doesn't work as well as you might like. We have some pretty nasty stuff already (smallpox, anthrax, etc), but the fact is, even airborne pathogens are unlikely to be of significant use in a war of extinction. It should be relatively simple for an alien species to "design" a virus or other pathogen that works on us but not on them (they could probably just use something from Earth in weaponized form assuming their biology is significantly different from ours), but once again you run into the fact that you can get better results quicker and easier elsewhere. Biological weapons don;t spread efficiently. The few times they've been used, we've observed that they disperse very quickly and don't have nearly the impact hoped for. They make excellent terror weapons and can easily sneak by security, but they don;t work well for killing off large populations.
If you want to assault a planetary population like ours (one with at least a token capacity to fight back), there are much easier ways, even if you want to preserve the biosphere.
The best solution? Targeted, not widespread, use of kinetic kill impacts followed by fortification of cleared ground. We wouldn't even see it coming. As the attacker, you'll know the mass and speed of your kinetic kill projectiles (likely just asteroids), and can target them at population centers for a simultaneous impact while leaving the less developed areas (ie, the ones with the least capacity to fight back and the most functional parts of the ecosystem) relatively unscathed. Ecological impact will primarily be in the form of dust clouds, but effectively limiting the size of the impact projectiles will reduce the recovery time. Destroy any and all artificial satellites immediately after the initial attack. Use space-based mining to create a logistics train. Wait for the ecological damage from the asteroids to clear while keeping a token military presence in orbit to use tactical-level kinetic-kill objects to eliminate any sort of recovery effort from the survivors (small ones shouldn't cause long-term ecological damage) with the goal of preventing the retention or recovery of meaningful resistance against a space-borne enemy (ballistic missiles, airplanes, power generation, significant groups of survivors). After all of the dust has settled and life is beginning to recover, land beginning with your military to fortify and set up infrastructure. Don;t worry about the remaining humans, so long as you continue to quickly respond to any attempt to gather in significant numbers. Begin to send out military units to scout out and destroy remaining stockpiles of human weapons. Once the potential for resistance is effectively destroyed and necessary planet-side infrastructure has been established, begin landing the civilian population.
That would be my suggestion. And, of course, there's not really any way for us to defend against it at the moment. The best chance would be to detect the thermal signature of the invasion fleet when they approach the solar system. At that point we may have up to a few years before the asteroids are ready to be redirected to their targets with which to re-tool existing weapons like ballistic missiles to be used against enemies beyond low-Earth-orbit. But if they are able to launch several dozen asteroids targeted at different population centers simultaneously, I don't see a way for us to survive.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 36 by Aware Wolf, posted 04-27-2010 12:39 PM Aware Wolf has replied

Replies to this message:
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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 38 of 62 (557659)
04-27-2010 1:51 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by Taz
04-26-2010 10:23 PM


I actually had a long conversation with Rrhain about this. Again, let me remind you people that the native americans couldn't by any stretch of imagination understand how other civilizations could exist on the other side of the vast ocean and those civilizations actually got the means to get to the americas.
What you just pointed out is pretty much the same narrow-mindedness that brought the native americans to their doom.
The analogy doesn't follow, Taz. We (and I, specifically) have imagined, in this cery thread, that alien civilizations could exist, and that they could have the capacity to reach us.
Since when was the last time a big war was fought strictly over resources? Again, this is narrow-minded thinking, the same kind that brought the native americans to their doom.
Since when was the last war fought because "Hey, there are some guys on the other side of the world who don't even know we exist and who aren;t sitting on any resources we can't find elsewhere and who are not affecting our lives in any way whatsoever, let's go smash em!"
Wars are usually fought for reasons, Taz, even when the reasons are bad. Most of our wars are over resources (most of our involvement in the middle East is done to retain some semblance of stability for the oil market) or ideological nonsense (the remainder of the reason we concern ourselves with the Middle East, of course, being Israel). The Cold War was "fought" over different ideologies that posed an assumed threat towards each other (that one side would attempt to forcibly take over the territory and thus resources of their competitor, or would attack to preempt such a strike).
Resources on Earth are concentrated in specific areas and are already controlled by existing nations, and it's been this way since we discovered we could use the resources in question. Neighbors have been close enough to pose a tangible threat to each other and to directly compete for resources.
Space is different. It's huge. Resources are not concentrated in controlled areas. If the Vulkans need more radioisotopes, they can simply get some from the nearest asteroid, with absolutely no reason to come and take ours. If the Trandoshans have completely exhausted their solar system's resources, they can still get more from the nearest asteroid in a neighboring star system far easier than they could by coming all the way over here to take ours by force. If Emperor Xenu holds a vastly different political ideology from ours, we still don't pose any sort of threat to his rule on the other side of the galaxy. Slave labor is easier to accomplish through cloning or (far better) robotics.
The only reason I can think of for an alien race to come and try to kick our collective ass is some sort of religious crusade. Certainly a possibility and the subject of many stories in fiction, but as we can't really defend against a war of extermination executed from space, I don't see any reason to worry about it.
And you think spending months on a floating wooden box and getting scurvy was any better for the spaniards? Personally, I wouldn't have signed up for such an expedition. And yet, history proved that there were such men who were willing to go through all those ordeals for power.
Since when was the last time a big war was fought strictly over resources? Again, this is narrow-minded thinking, the same kind that brought the native americans to their doom.
And you think spending months on a floating wooden box and getting scurvy was any better for the spaniards? Personally, I wouldn't have signed up for such an expedition. And yet, history proved that there were such men who were willing to go through all those ordeals for power.
The Spaniards under Columbus were traveling to India, a place they knew had resources that were unattainable elsewhere.
Our solar system doesn't have any resource that wouldn;t be present in any other solar system in abundance, except for an intelligent species that might be able to fight back.
The Spaniards arrived in the Americas by accident, and still did not set out immediately to conquer and exterminate.
The destruction of native culture was a long process, and was mostly the result of small colonies that later decided to either a) get rid of the natives so they could have more resources, or b) convert the natives for Jeebus.
a) is not an issue in space. There is no reason to colonize Earth. Their biologies are almost certainly to be completely incompatible with the conditions on Earth. They don't need to steal our gold or spices or land or water or radioisotopes or metals because it's easier to get all of those things elsewhere.
b) is a potential issue. Religious crusades override any bounds og logic or reasonable expenditures of resources. Religious zealots from spaaaaace are the only threat I would consider truly plausible.
Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 29 by Taz, posted 04-26-2010 10:23 PM Taz has replied

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onifre
Member (Idle past 2951 days)
Posts: 4854
From: Dark Side of the Moon
Joined: 02-20-2008


Message 39 of 62 (557663)
04-27-2010 2:20 PM


super advanced in humor
I've always speculated that before an advanced alien civilization would enter our atmosphere (or land on our planet) - aside from an accidental crash landing type scenario - they would find a way to communicate with us from a safe distance, both for their own safety and ours.
They would be stupid not to try to start a dialogue to guage our personalities. To see if we're hostile toward them or to see if they in fact could enter our atmosphere safely. It could very well be that we could cough on them and kill them, or vice versa.
It doesn't seem very logical to me that we get surprised by an alien craft. If they have managed interstellar travel, are advanced and intelligent, they would know that dialogue from a safe distance is the best way to proceed.
Maybe they simply travelled all this way to entertain us; maybe they're super hilarious and are part of an interstellar vaudeville-type comedy troup. Lord knows we could use it, SNL blows these days.
- Oni

  
Aware Wolf
Member (Idle past 1420 days)
Posts: 156
From: New Hampshire, USA
Joined: 02-13-2009


Message 40 of 62 (557674)
04-27-2010 3:54 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by Rahvin
04-27-2010 1:26 PM


Well, I'm not sure I buy it. I don't doubt you're accurately portraying the limitations of these technologies as they exist today here on Earth, but we're talking about a super-advanced species and all that.
Having said that, however, we may as well argue who would win in a race, Superman or Flash. Plus I agree with the general point of view your expressing on this thread, so I'll drop it.

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Taz
Member (Idle past 3291 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 41 of 62 (557719)
04-27-2010 5:43 PM
Reply to: Message 38 by Rahvin
04-27-2010 1:51 PM


Rahvin writes:
Since when was the last war fought because "Hey, there are some guys on the other side of the world who don't even know we exist and who aren;t sitting on any resources we can't find elsewhere and who are not affecting our lives in any way whatsoever, let's go smash em!"
Nazis. Most people don't know this. And the only reason I know this is because I'm a history freak. Very early on, Hitler was already ordering the planning of an invasion of North America.
And these were humans. Imagine what could potentially happen if a technologically advance civilization is taken over by a hand full of mad aliens.
Space is different. It's huge. Resources are not concentrated in controlled areas. If the Vulkans need more radioisotopes, they can simply get some from the nearest asteroid, with absolutely no reason to come and take ours. If the Trandoshans have completely exhausted their solar system's resources, they can still get more from the nearest asteroid in a neighboring star system far easier than they could by coming all the way over here to take ours by force. If Emperor Xenu holds a vastly different political ideology from ours, we still don't pose any sort of threat to his rule on the other side of the galaxy. Slave labor is easier to accomplish through cloning or (far better) robotics.
And since I'm a history freak, there is one thing I need to point out to you that mad rulers in history seldom had logical and legitimate reasons to conquer, enslave, and exterminate their enemies.
Khan even thought to depopulate China before his advisors told him the dead don't pay any tax.
You're using logical reasons why an alien race wouldn't come and smash us. And I commend you for that. What I fear aren't the logical ones, though. What I fear are the ones that have no other reason to smash us beside the fact that we're here.
Since when was the last time a big war was fought strictly over resources? Again, this is narrow-minded thinking, the same kind that brought the native americans to their doom.
Way to go in turning my words against me. The thing is you're still thinking linearly.
The native americans never imagined they were sitting on top of resources that the Europeans wanted. To them, these weren't resources at all.
If you're going to go this route, at least consider the possibility that there are resources in our solar system or even right underneath us that we haven't the capacity to consider them as resources at all.
The point that I have been making of which you people keep missing by nitpicking the examples I give is there are unforeseen factors that will ultimately play into the unlikely scenario of an alien invasion. You have the benefit of being able to look back at history and see all the obvious reasons why the Europeans would conquer the Americas and effectively exterminated entire cultures. But try to think outside your little box for once.
As far as the native Americans were concern, gold was not a resource they'd fight over. As far as the native Americans were concern, nothing by any stretch of their imagination could have exterminated their culture in less than a hundred years.
If we ever face an alien threat, it will probably be something we have never even imagined.
The native Americans understood bow and arrow. They never even saw a horse. Try to draw a parallel. You're discussing possible weapons of how an alien race could smash us to bits using your limited understanding of what weapons are.
Would you like to make the argument that the natives imagined guns and canons? Would you like to make the argument that the natives imagined horses?
The destruction of native culture was a long process, and was mostly the result of small colonies that later decided to either a) get rid of the natives so they could have more resources, or b) convert the natives for Jeebus.
a) is not an issue in space. There is no reason to colonize Earth. Their biologies are almost certainly to be completely incompatible with the conditions on Earth. They don't need to steal our gold or spices or land or water or radioisotopes or metals because it's easier to get all of those things elsewhere.
b) is a potential issue. Religious crusades override any bounds og logic or reasonable expenditures of resources. Religious zealots from spaaaaace are the only threat I would consider truly plausible.
Haha, you sound exactly like a little child. And here is why. Little kids tend to only learn from the literal part of what happened to them. They tend not to be able to apply a deeper interpretation of what happened.
Were you seriously thinking I was thinking that the aliens would come in a wooden ship like the spaniards?
I haven't claimed anything at all. I haven't speculated anything at all, unlike you. The only thing that I have been arguing for is for us to caution for things that are unexpected.
Like I said from the beginning, what drove the native American cultures to extinction were things wildly outside of their imagination. And what's probably lurking around the corner for us are things wildly outside our own imagination.
But continue on if you think we have it all figured out. I always love to see this attitude when some creationist comes in here and proclaims he knows all.
Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 38 by Rahvin, posted 04-27-2010 1:51 PM Rahvin has not replied

  
Taz
Member (Idle past 3291 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 42 of 62 (557723)
04-27-2010 5:54 PM
Reply to: Message 40 by Aware Wolf
04-27-2010 3:54 PM


Aware Wolf writes:
Well, I'm not sure I buy it. I don't doubt you're accurately portraying the limitations of these technologies as they exist today here on Earth, but we're talking about a super-advanced species and all that.
Right now as it stands, he is describing these technologies based on our limited understanding of what could be. I would bet that if we were back in the 50s he'd be describing future technology with vacuum tubes. He'd be imagining alien races coming to ships operated by vacuum tubes based computers.
You know, the I-know-all attitude.

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 Message 44 by Rahvin, posted 04-27-2010 6:58 PM Taz has replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 43 of 62 (557726)
04-27-2010 5:58 PM


You guys will argue about anything
Who would win in a fight between a werewolf and a vampire?
and not these lame Twilight vampires...

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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 44 of 62 (557741)
04-27-2010 6:58 PM
Reply to: Message 42 by Taz
04-27-2010 5:54 PM


Right now as it stands, he is describing these technologies based on our limited understanding of what could be. I would bet that if we were back in the 50s he'd be describing future technology with vacuum tubes. He'd be imagining alien races coming to ships operated by vacuum tubes based computers.
You know, the I-know-all attitude.
We know the limits of these technologies to a reasonable degree, Taz. Biological warfare that attacks only a specific species while leaving the rest of the ecosystem and the invaders untouched is a pipe dream. Nanotech disassembler robots that magically kill off a population are magic-tech wank.
I already described very easy methods to take over a planet. It's not like I'm ignoring the possibility and dismissing everything - I'm just dismissing the "lol, I saw this once in a movie" nonsense, because get this - fiction writers don't know jack about what they write about 9/10 of the time, and that's where most of these ideas are coming from.
Dropping asteroids on a planet targeted at population centers is an incredibly resource-lite and technologically simple first-strike attack that also happens to be wildly effective and doesn't require breaking our understanding of the laws of physics (like, say, nano-dissasemblers that turn people into goo in a reasonable timeframe).
I'd also be dismissive if someone said I should start worrying bout the fucking Death Star showing up and blowing up the planet. Lasers can't make planets go boom, regardless of power output, full stop. Lasers don;t behave the way the Death Star superlaser did on film (being visible, joining multiple smaller beams into one large beam going a different direction...). I'm dismissive of "lol virus attack!" and "Nanotech, LIKE TEH BORG!" for similar reasons.
I'm also dismissive for the most part of the motivation an alien species would have to come here. So far as we understand, FTL is not possible. That means that there is no reasonable threat posed by cheap, easy, FTL travel like what we see in movies. The reasonable methods by which an alien race would come here involve extremely long travel times with a significant investment in resources, and an STL approach that we very well may see years in advance because of the thermal (and possibly other) emissions of the ship(s). That means a machine race, or cryonic storage, or massive generation ships. Like I;ve suggested previously.
The extreme cost of traveling such distances precludes rational beings from making the trip just to kill us; we are no threat to them, and we aren't in competition for resources.
That leaves, as I said, the crazies on a crusade. Religious mandates to exterminate life, or just a pathological need to kill "them," either way the only plausible motivation to come kill us involves the aliens being nuts that are willing to make unreasonable expenditures of resources and take enormous risks with their personnel to pick a fight with somebody on the other side of the galaxy in a conflict that will take eons of set up because it will take multiple lifetimes lust for the combatants to reach the fucking battlefield.
Do you have anything substantial to say, or are you simply going to continue with your wonderfully vague "lol, expect the unexpected" platitudes? Outside-context problems are certainly a threat, and I don;t pretend for a moment that we know all there is to know about the Unvierse and ways to kill, but a) by definition I won;t be able to consider the possibility of a true outside-context threat until after I see it (only Batman can lay down contingency plans like that, and last I looked I wasn;t a fictional character) so there's no practical reason to concern myself, and b) you're essentially telling me I should throw out what we do know, because "they'll be smarter than us lol." That's retarded.
It's perfectly rational to consider the fact that resources cannot be the driving motivation being an invasion of Earth, and that Earth's biosphere will almost certainly be at least somewhat hostile to a species that evolved on a different world which crosses "habitable planet" off of the resources list as well. It's perfectly rational to point out that technology has limitations - suggesting "maybe they just know more about nanotech and viruses than we do" is just like George Lucas using a really big laser to blow up a planet: it just doesn't work that way, and pretending it might is still just wank.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 42 by Taz, posted 04-27-2010 5:54 PM Taz has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 46 by Taz, posted 04-27-2010 7:07 PM Rahvin has not replied
 Message 47 by Species8472, posted 04-30-2010 10:45 AM Rahvin has not replied

  
Taz
Member (Idle past 3291 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 45 of 62 (557745)
04-27-2010 7:04 PM
Reply to: Message 43 by New Cat's Eye
04-27-2010 5:58 PM


CS writes:
Who would win in a fight between a werewolf and a vampire?
Depends. If you put one of each in a room together, of course the werewolf would win. But if you let them fight it out in the real world, my money is on the vampires.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 43 by New Cat's Eye, posted 04-27-2010 5:58 PM New Cat's Eye has seen this message but not replied

  
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