What is Digg?Sponsored by newegg
Let the Egg show you the way - Shell Shocker Alert! view!
newegg.com - Exclusive Shell Shocker - Don't Bury! It's updated daily!
112 Comments
- novenator, on 07/14/2009, -1/+30There is no way we would not respond to a signal from an alien civilization. There is no organizational body in the world that could prevent it. The UN doesn't have any teeth and countries and regions of the world are far too divided to have a unified or coordinated response.
- BossKey, on 07/14/2009, -0/+23Relax, I'm sure they'll treat us as well as we've treated less advanced civilizations that we've encountered.
...
...holy *****, we're screwed - Hillsfar, on 07/14/2009, -0/+20"The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests."
- Ian M. Banks, science fiction author - twiztidsinz, on 07/14/2009, -0/+18If we do make contact and meet them...
DO NOT ACCEPT SPACE BLANKETS!!!!! - FitteMas, on 07/14/2009, -0/+17at this point i would welcome anything more real then youtube videos of idiots filming ufos in blurry and out of focus areas.
- sodoh, on 07/14/2009, -0/+12I can picture in my mind a world without war, a
world without hate. And I can picture us attacking
that world, because they'd never expect it.
- Jack Handy - AmnesiacJack, on 07/14/2009, -0/+12The way I see it what does it matter how we view the signal, the important thing would be the proof that we are not alone. Either they are not advanced enough for us to worry about (same level as us, more advanced but not spacefaring etc) or they are way more advanced than us and there wouldn't be any thing we could do if they did wish us harm.
- glebvr, on 07/14/2009, -0/+12I wonder if Stephen Hawking meant we should evolve a bit further politically and culturally rather than referring to scientific progress. What would happen if we were contacted by extraterrestrial beings, how and who would respond, each country would want to give a response. Until we can all agree on at least some things I do not think our contact would work out well.
My $0.02 - RandomGorilla, on 07/14/2009, -0/+11First message from space: "Hey, anyone seen our frat pledge? Dropped him here about a million years ago? Sealed up in a volcano with funny graffiti written on his drunken passed-out ass? Name of Xenu? No? Well if you see him and he's not drinking, make him drink."
- danconia, on 07/14/2009, -2/+12It's still worth answering back no matter what. Just think of how many orifices extraterrestrial females might have!
- Spire3660, on 07/14/2009, -0/+10LOL, you are cute. Do you have ANY concept how big the universe is, seriously? Throwing money at something doesnt mean you are going to find what you are looking for, it only means you have increased your odds.
- AbbasJin, on 07/14/2009, -0/+9^ ditto.
Right now all the governments in the world are like a bunch of unorganized monkeys in an African forest. Fighting over non-issues. They couldn't care less about controlling ore creating a single central body to deal with all kinds of such issues.
Really makes my blood boil that countries are still fighting for teritories/ oil / religions and stuff. I wonder at times about the possibility of the whole mankind going extinct with a huge asteroid hit, may be a gamma burst from a distant blazzar (active quasar) if we keep spending 99% of our time on our regular social issues and ignoring what we need to do to spread and make it possible for some of us to go out there and expand the human kind through out this and other galaxies. - crunchyeyeball, on 07/14/2009, -0/+9I wouldn't say that's the worst case scenario. Maybe human testicles are considered a delicacy where they come from.
- SirBruce, on 07/14/2009, -1/+10Maynard: It reads, "Should Detection by an Exo Civilization Be Viewed as a Thre?"
Arthur: What?
Maynard: "as a Thre?".
Bedevere: What is that?
Maynard: He must have died while digging it.
Launcelot: Oh, come on!
Maynard: Well, that's what it says.
Arthur: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to write "Thre?". He'd just say it!
Maynard: Well, that's the title of the submission!
Galahad: Perhaps he was dictating.
Arthur: Oh, shut up. Well, does it say anything else?
Maynard: No. Just, "Thre?". - wierdaaron, on 07/14/2009, -0/+8I perfectly understand the "we're not ready to meet aliens" argument, though it has one probable flaw. Since we're using radio waves for all this, the amount of time it would take for an alien civilization to receive and reply to a transmission would be measured in centuries or millennia, if not eons. So if we sent a message today that said, "Hi, we're at Earth. We breathe oxygen, perceive three dimensions, and very often try to kill each other. Come hang out with us," nobody's going to show up for at least a hundred thousand years (casual estimate).
Not to speak out of turn, but I'd expect that in a hundred thousand years we'll be somewhat more advanced as a species, and at least more ready to meet aliens than we are today. That is, if we still exist after that much time.
If there were ever a concrete moment where someone decided, "Alright, we're perfectly equipped to handle meeting alien life. Lets get started," that 100,000 year lag would be kind of an inconvenience. It'd be like informing a hospital that you're having a heart attack via bulk-rate postage mail.
I say why not gamble on the fact that if we aren't ready now (and who's to say we aren't, really?), we probably will be by the time our "Hello, Universe!" messages reach or future overlords.
Note: The 100,000 year estimate comes from the fact that our galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years wide. A message pointed at the far side of the galaxy right now will get there 100,000 years from now. We're fairly certain there's no life in any neighboring solar systems, but considering there's 200 billion stars (most with orbiting systems) in our galaxy, it's a decent bet there's life somewhere within Milky Way. Assuming the receiving alien race can travel at the speed of light (something we're nowhere near achieving), it'd take that same 100,000 years for -them- to cross the galaxy back to -us-, for a total delay between transmission and alien arrival of 200,000 years. Even if aliens could bend space/time to get to us instantly, they can't speed up our radio waves, so it'll still take just as long for them to get our message. - eviscerator, on 07/14/2009, -0/+8Bring me some human horn!
- covertbadger, on 07/14/2009, -0/+7Interesting. The trousers conceal a tiny secondary horn. Guards! Seize him! Prepare to harvest the lower horn!
- JoeHague, on 07/14/2009, -0/+7Perhaps a civilization capable of interstellar travel would have evolved past the point of violence. Maybe they will be so medically advanced that they have cured all disease, and conquered needless death. Perhaps they will be so many thousand of generations beyond warfare that they have forgotten it. Perhaps all interstellar civilizations have evolved in the same way. Maybe one of them will contact us and we can catch them in our wheel house of violence. We could kill them all and hi-jack their interstellar technologies. Then we could pillage the rest of the universe.
- YawehsDead, on 07/14/2009, -0/+6Diseases need to be compatible to the victim. That doesn't happen overnight.
- PeppermintPig, on 07/14/2009, -5/+11The worst case scenario: They're alot like the kind of governments we live under now, possibly worse.
- B1665r, on 07/14/2009, -0/+6No matter what they offer, they can not have manhattan...
- bieber, on 07/14/2009, -0/+6Yep. And just imagine what a united, potentially hostile alien civilization would think if they found a planet populated with hundreds of separate governments absorbed by infighting...
- GorfTron, on 07/14/2009, -1/+7The Bajorans were humans with rumpled noses. Grats to Star Trek for blowing my mind with another amazing alien creation. I think there was a point where they just threw silly putty at a guys head for the alien of the week.
- Tyshpix, on 07/14/2009, -0/+5the ***** is a thre?
- ell0bo, on 07/14/2009, -0/+5or how many of yours they might explore...
perhaps not? - Barackalypse, on 07/14/2009, -2/+7Any civilization capable of finding us is probably capable of killing us, so we best hold off making contact until we have something to conceal, contain, kill, or deter them before we put ourselves at their mercy.
- Daniel16399, on 07/14/2009, -0/+5To serve man...
- eviscerator, on 07/14/2009, -0/+4I can find several reasons why that would be a bad idea...
- cfuse, on 07/14/2009, -1/+5I thought evolve meant "get bigger guns" in this context.
- warriorscot, on 07/14/2009, -0/+4And billions is a little much. More like millions as we have very little dedicated hardware for it its just borrowed time on other hardware.
- AbbasJin, on 07/14/2009, -0/+4well when they see us , their admirals will say with an evil grin .. "Divide and conquer ! baby !!"
.. erm .. wait
... we're already divided into nations, casts, sects, religions .. they'll say ..
"wow, already dividided .. JUST conquer!!" - bromac, on 07/14/2009, -0/+4Do not run. We are your friends!
*ZAP* - eviscerator, on 07/14/2009, -0/+4I saw a documentary on Google video yesterday, and if i remember correctly it said the same thing.
Basically, why should genetic evolution be considered the only form of evolution? Why not consider cultural progress evolution as well? And I have to agree. Humans today might not genetically be much different from humans 2000 years ago, but we're way ahead when it comes to accumulated knowledge etc. - irreverend, on 07/14/2009, -0/+4I agree wholeheartedly. My only qualm: I think scientific evolution IS cultural evolution, no?
- UrineEngineer, on 07/14/2009, -0/+4Dugg for priorities.
- GorfTron, on 07/14/2009, -0/+4They may have to blow us up for the way Three's Company ended. I mean, Jack totally should have married Janet. So weak, man.
- fragMasterFlash, on 07/14/2009, -0/+4I am waiting for the day that a little kid named Elliot puts Stephen Hawking in his bicycle basket and rides off into the woods to rendezvous with the mothership.
- Benno, on 07/14/2009, -0/+3after tw but before fou?
- Rapax, on 07/14/2009, -0/+3And in parallel, we need to set up a transmitter on Mars, that constantly beams out "I'm with stupid ->"
- cfuse, on 07/14/2009, -0/+3Are you volunteering for a starring role in ET:Anal Invader from Alpha Centauri?
- AlienHairball, on 07/14/2009, -0/+3Very much dugg as I'm reading the Culture novels by Ian M. Banks right now. :)
- wassamatta, on 07/14/2009, -0/+3Which again makes me believe this submission came via a script. I would shorten the title if I had manually submitted a story.
- dragossh, on 07/14/2009, -0/+3What if they HELP us? Imagine that! Enslaving is so human.
- Hillsfar, on 07/14/2009, -1/+4Too late. We sent out probes with information about ourselves.
- askantik, on 07/14/2009, -0/+3Scientific evolution is part of cultural evolution, but not the entirety of it.
- inactive, on 07/14/2009, -1/+4You think civilizations advanced enough to travel the distance wouldn't be violent?
Tell that to the Bajorans... - InfiniteNothing, on 07/14/2009, -0/+2More people control nukes than radio transmitters capable of superseding the background noise of space at an appreciable distance and we don't all go around nuking eachother (yet).
- Junkyarddawg, on 07/14/2009, -0/+2Of course any alien civilization is a potential threat, and should be treated that way.
Listen and investigate FIRST, if they check out THEN send signals to them. - Hillsfar, on 07/15/2009, -0/+2Ever read Battlefield Earth? (I am definitely NOT a Scientologist but that book was actually interesting and fun to read.) That probe was exactly how Earth was found and invaded.
- B1665r, on 07/14/2009, -0/+2Yeah... I don't think you have fully thought out the odds. I disagree with Drakes equation. I think there is only one factor that matters. Is life a random event, or is the universe brimming with life every where it is possible?
If life is a random event, then inteligent life is exceedingly rare. Inteligent life even less so. Inteligent life capable of communicating at the same time as us? Even in the entire observable universe, there could be just us... Y
I'd say if primitive life is not found elsewhere in our solar system... say in your lifetime then the conclusion will tend towards... life is a random event. In other words, we are all alone in the universe from a statistical point of view...
We will either find life every where it is possible, or we will find no life anywhere. -
Show 51 - 100 of 116 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is