uhk.
Petersko: you mean what am I assuming you're assuming? I'm assuming that's what your intending on throwing back at me. Haven't we had this conversation before?
To the topic at hand, then, I focus my assuming:
When you get down to it, of course we can't know how an alien race would interpret our civilization. They would've developed in a different environment -- perhaps extremely different than our own. They might also perceive reality through entirely different senses. So on the most fundamental ground we could be drastically different.
We could also be very similar to these creatures in some respects, which I don't find as `out there' as it seems many others do.
If we're not alone in the universe as an intelligent species -- if we're not `very unlikely' -- I would also find it hard to swallow that we were the first. In fact, I find it possible that there are many species out there of high intelligence, and if so, they would've started colonizing this galaxy far before we were scampering around on all fours.
From `Where Are They?’, by Ian Crawford in July, 2000, issue of Scientific American:
Any civilization with advanced rocket technology would be able to colonize the entire galaxy on a cosmically short timescale. For example, consider a civilization that sends colonists to a few of the planetary systems closest to it. After those colonies have established themselves, they send out secondary colonies of their own, and so on. The number of colonies grows exponentially. A colonization wave front will move outward with a speed determined by the speed of the starships and by the time required by each colony to establish itself. New settlements will quickly fill in the volume of space behind this wave front.
Assuming a typical colony spacing of 10 light-years, a ship speed of 10 percent that of light, and a period of 400 years between the foundation of a colony and its sending out colonies of its own, the colonization wave front will expand at an average speed of 0.02 light-year a year. As the galaxy is 100,000 light-years across, it takes no more than about five million years to colonize it completely. Though a long time in human terms, this is only 0.05 percent of the age of the galaxy. Compared with the other relevant astronomical and biological timescales, it is essentially instantaneous. The greatest uncertainty is the time required for a colony to establish itself and spawn new settlements. A reasonable upper limit might be 5,000 years, the time it has taken human civilization to develop from the earliest cities to spaceflight. In that case, full galactic colonization would take about 50 million years.
The implication is clear: the first technological civilization with the ability and the inclination to colonize the galaxy could have done so before any competitors even had a chance to evolve. In principle, this could have happened billions of years ago, when Earth was inhabited solely by microorganisms and was wide open to interference from outside.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0009CDEA-33FC-1C74-9B81809EC588EF21&pageNumber=3&catID=2
Which is typically where one brings up Fermi's Paradox. If they are out there, there's got to be a reason they aren't here. Do we simply not recognize them? Could UFOs be the answer to Fermi’s Paradox? Then why the fuck don't they land on the goddamn Whitehouse lawn and schedule an interview with Barbara Walters? They obviously don't want open contact, at least not immediately. And if UFOs are the answer to Fermi's Paradox, we should keep in mind that UFO sightings have occurred as far back as human history has been recorded, right back to Sumeria. If UFOs are evidence of ETs -- or if UFOs are not evidence of ET, and yet we are still not alone in the universe, and keeping in mind Fermi's paradox -- they obviously aren't landing for a reason. They would have to know we are here. So they have a reason for not establishing open contact.
Saying that extraterrestrials would be disgusted was more of the result of a consistent and ever-growing bad mood of mine, and a general pessimistic outlook on this civilization. It doesn't take reading too much of anything I write to come to the conclusion that I don't exactly have high hopes for humanity. But I don't think that an extraterrestrial civilization with a more empathic attitude towards us would want to contact us at this point, because it would not be beneficial to them or to humanity. As for why it wouldn't be beneficial to humanity: read into the Brookings Institutes report on contacting extraterrestrial life; look at what happened during the War of the World radio broadcast in 1938, and the re-broadcasts that followed -- regardless as to whether it may have had a lot to do with the tension and paranoia building between separate factions of humanity.
It seems plainly evident to me that with our rising technology we have an ever-increasing ability to benefit or obliterate ourselves in a global manner in all new and interesting sorts of ways. The more that technology grows, the darker the dark, the lighter the light in regards to one hand of the human super-organism stabbing the other or both interlocking fingers and dancing happy into the sunset. In short, we are growing forever more unstable. We haven’t successfully been able to live with ourselves as a species yet, and I don't think it's a leap to suppose that a more advanced species from another planet with a generally benevolent stance towards us would recognize that if we can't get along with ourselves and our environment, open, otherworldly contact with members of the galactic adulthood would be a premature graduation ultimately ending in catastrophe.
Trying to divorce myself from earth and it's people for a moment and peering down in this world with alien eyes, I am of the opinion that I would be disgusted we have not pulled our heads just a bit further out of our asses, peeking just a bit more beyond our measly human cheeks -- perhaps that is a less extreme version of what I was attempting to say in previous posts. Ultimately, anything said on this matter is opinion or assumption. That is presently mine.
If there are menacing civilizations out there, as it would seem logical to believe there would be if the galaxy is teeming with intelligent life, and all they wanted to do was kill us all and drain our natural resources, they would have done so -- as many of them would have probably evolved far passed our present state before we were scratching our pits and checking each other's heads for lice in-between biting chunks out of bannanas as we sat high atop the trees. This would imply such civilizations didn't make it as colonists, perhaps not even off their own planet, due to their destructive tendencies -- unless there was some long-lasting opposing faction hell-bent on developing advancing civilizations; some `galactic club', that served as protector of planets such as earth or at least a difficult obstacle for such menacing civilizations.
I don't find the idea that `they're all about but they just haven't found us yet' as credible. Either we're alone in the universe, or there's good reason our galactic neighbors haven't exposed themselves.
If ET life isn't rare, there are undoubtedly controlling, power-hungry, expansionist aliens. And they would have gotten to us already -- unless something/someone was blocking their path.
I'd say ones more benevolent towards us would look at us as adolescents. And I think we all occasionally look at children with a degree of envy and disgust, and for reasons that should be obvious.
