I would be most afraid of an alien speices that had a "hive-mind" with one sentient being and a ton of mindless-sentinels....

cant interest you in a job microsoft then...
yours hopefully
bill gates




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There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who are good with words, and those who are... erm... thingy
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of Smart.
In The Beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

Now that this thread seems ended ...
I'm glad to realize that there is other people that faces the problem of alien contact in a different way. When I started this thread, I was wondering why so many people is only considering the positive aspects,
if any, and not considering other staggering possibilities.
I understand that a lot of people has a science-fiction approach, where our race encounters another advanced race and they share knowledge and together they proceed for a splendid future in the galaxy...
Of course, we're looking for some answers, but we are not going to solve any of them with an eventual alien contact.
In my personal opinion, in the best of cases, (that means an encounter with a civilization only lightly more advanced than ours), we could hope to trade some technical or scientific knowledge with some other thing.
In the other case, there will be simply no deal.
For the rest, I'm not convinced that ethics are bonded in some way to the grade of advancement of a society.
We normally eat cows, chikens, fishes and other animals and we all kill then in a really terrific way, and consider this truly ethic, giving ourselves some simple and "human" explanation.
Who knows what that less advanced society (animals) think of this.
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Per aspera ad astra.

I don't know if they wold even consider sharing thier technology with us... What would we give them in return? But then again... We have cultures here on earth that they may be able to benifit from in some way... Or even possably a resource such as iron.. I don't think they would want our energy resources as much..... Seeing as how they would need much more than all of our energy on earth combined just to get here.

One of the things that bothers me about all this alien contact stuff (despite some rather bizzare recurring assumptions that are repeated religiously with no basis) is the cynical and condescending view that we take of our own species in light of any alien contact or receptiuon of signals. How many countless times have we heard of the aliens coming to "save us from ourselves" or of us "blowing ourselves up" ect ect. If we trust that any alien civilizations can make it themselves to an interstellar-travel level of technology and society, then why don't we possess a healthy confidence that our own human race will find a way to do the same without some form of special assistance? Or how many times have we heard, from those who believe that aliens have already visited us, that our advanced technology could only come from them, as if our own intellectual endeavors and efforts simply couldn't accomplish the job of the transistor or saturn rocket. How about the one about earthly life being some sort of thing that only aliens could have started, or at least life already existant in some form or another on comets or space debris. May I ask, if life didn't generate here, with our aqueous environment and profuse supplies of energy and dynamics, then how could it have happened on a frozen, static comet? If life did not originate on earth, then how did the alien life originate? What is wrong with a nice, earth-originated, self-determined, manifest destiny view of life on earth and the human race? I find our lack of faith disturbing.

[Edited by ASEI on 11/23/02 at 17:49]

I thought I read a scientific american article once about a scientist who was developing some "gravity wave transducer" device based upon superconductors.
His theory is that accelerating mass causes gravitational waves, and that due to the fact that there is no resistance for electrons in a superconductor, their might be a way to transmit or recieve gravity waves by reflecting electromagneic waves off the superconductor. This doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with black holes or propulsion, for those of you who wonder. Gravity waves do have other properties which would make them useful, though.
Gravity waves would be ridiculously weak fluctuations if you try to consider them as a force. Their energy is incredibly small. All matter (except maybe the superconductors acting) would be transparent to gravity waves at all frequencies because electrons don't react with them unless they are in a resistanceless superconducting state. And therein lies the advantage. Communications with gravity waves could use all frequencies without interference. They could literally be broadcasted through a planet. There would be enourmous bandwidth available in the gravity spectrum. If any civilization could develop such a device, it's communications advantage would be clear.
And therefore, my suggestion is that maybe we are looking for the wrong kind of wave from an alien civilization.

quote:

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Originally posted by ASEI
One of the things that bothers me about all this alien contact stuff ... is the cynical and condescending view that we take of our own species... Or ... our advanced technology could only come from them, as if our own intellectual endeavors and efforts simply couldn't accomplish the job...What is wrong with a nice, earth-originated, self-determined, manifest destiny view of life on earth and the human race? I find our lack of faith disturbing.

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I agree wholeheartedly. It's easy to believe that our species will annihilate itself, simply because we have the capacity to do so. However, we haven't yet. I think this bodes well. And despite the apparent lack of progress, the fact that we still have an active space program shows that at some fundamental level, we recognize our future lies amongst the stars.

One point- astronomers point to comets as sources of organic molecules needed to support and start life, not necessarily as breeding grounds for life. And anyway, maybe microbes can grow in interplanetary space but I sincerely doubt life that can create art and music and spacecraft would.

BTW- nice touch with the Vader quote.
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"My sources inform me that you combine arrogance with trivia and try to pass it off as intelligence." - Dogbert

A BLACK VIEW
The one thing that frightens me about a "one world global
government" so beloved of science fictionists or any other form of totalitarian political system is that it takes it brightest, most advanced and intelligent people and murders them with great vehemence and efficiency.
Why? Because the people who ask questions, value human rights, (inalienable and otherwise) and demand answers
are viewed and treated as enemies of the state. The French Revolution, other European, Asian and African nations (Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Idi Amin's Uganda, Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe) and all absolutists down through
the centuries have comitted these barbaric atrocities time
and time again. Now, with your intelligentsia either dead,
making guilliotine blades or building NBC weapons of mass death YOU AIN'T GONNA HAVE A SPACE PROGRAM DUDE.
Greg Bear's 1987 novel "The Forge of God" saw advanced
extrasolar beings flinging large projectiles at a huge % of
C at earth and hunting down those who survived.
E.T. might only phone home for more ammunition or bio-war
agents.

Although a global society could be created out of dictatorship (i.e. if Hitler had overrun Europe, could we have stopped him from taking the world?) it doesn't have to be. I think that an effective global society could be created out of a new found importance in the UN. If such a thing happened, perhaps countries would become like states, serving a larger democratic society. Besides, perhaps governments follow certain laws of evolution - such as survival of the fittest. If democracy or restricted monarchy (i.e. Great Britain) are the best forms of government, then perhaps they will live longest (since, if they are the best governments, then by definition they will be the most durable) and surpass all over governmental forms. If the best form of government (whatever that may be) follows this pattern, then due to the natural enlargement of borders (it seems to me that borders keep expanding - during the stone age, borders were lines drawnon the ground that divided a cave amongst its inhabitants, whereas today some countries occupy entire continents - surely this trend will continue indefinately with the human urge to explore and take new lands from lesser developed societies) eventually it will occupy the entire planet. It is difficult for me to believe that a successful unification of all world governments can occur if people can't solve our many social problems (or atleast exchange them for more complicated social problems.) However, if such a unification would occur in that order on Earth, then I speculate that there's no reason why an extraterrestrial civilization would not do the same. Therefore, if an extraterestrial civilization ever made it to Earth (even from Alpha Centauri) although they still would not be socially perfect, we would be savage brutes in comparison. However, having survived their own planet, they would completely understand ecology and the place they have in their environment - pollution would not be nearly as much a problem, they would no longer have endangered species, and Green Peace groups would no longer exist - there is no need for activists when there is nothing to protest. They would have destroyed their own planet because if they did so they cannot move on to a new planet to terraform it - you can only terraform a place when you understand the complex (and not to mention chaotic) dynamics of a planet's atmosphere, which would further aid you in saving your own planet. Therefore, if a species had the capability to terraform a place, it would be easier to start by saving their own planet (after all, the deviation in atmospheric dynamics would not be nearly as drastic.) Furthermore, aliens visiting Earth would not want any resource - especially iron, which someone here erroneously stated earlier, and for one simple reason - asteroids are a far better source of mineral resources, especially iron, due to their composition and relative abundance. Then, we must ask if an alien species would want Earth for the land. The answer is a most obvious no - there is a nearly infinite supply of land elsewhere. The only two reasons that I can imagine an alien civilization visiting Earth are for pure scientific research and for a mission of peace (probably out of a sympathetic need to spread their more advanced technology and highly evolved philosophies and belief systems, not to mention for certain other cultural reasons. In other words, alien missionaries, although the visit need not be religious - but whatever the underlying motive, the macro-motive is based upon, as previously stated, sympathy for a lesser evolved civilization with poor moral taste [from their point of view, obviously - it's not that they're comming here to save us, it's because they would be making the choice based on Social Darwinism, which, because they are a totally different species, may or may not be a mistake - unlike, obviously, amongst people where is most definately is a mistake based on the ideas of the uneducated.])
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"Science is the most precious thing we have."
-Albert Einstein

The representativeness of democracy seems inversely proportional to the number of people involved, and the degree of control that such a government could have. (Tyrrany of the majority).
Besides which, the borders and governments of the various countries of the world seem more than merely invocations. For a society to exist as a cohesive unit, it has to have a degree of uniformity to it and it's goals. The world is made up of many different cultures, each bent on acheiving various ends, each functioning according to various patterns of organization. [Unfortunately, most still seem to be centralized authoritarian heirarchies ] You could almost say that all of these societies are different organisms. Though not having a world government seems to be a disadvantage at first (in comparison to, say, the tribal divisions of the native americans versus the europeans) it would be impossible to have a voluntary, or even successful world government without a world culture and world society to make it real.

A good example of this would be the north and south in the pre-civil-war united states. The two cultures were two completely different organisms. The industrialized north with a middle class and a broad distribition of power, and the south which still held to the feudal organization common in europe. In the end the superior "organism" conquered the inferior, and managed to consume the society of the south. This in turn lead to a unified united states.