Canada's ex-Defense Minister who ultimately shaped Canada's armed forces during the Cold War: Aliens
240 replies, posted
[QUOTE=alexguydude;43442382]Again, that's the stuff we know about.
We know the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this type of physics.
My point is when do we stop discrediting people and actually listen to them? Obviously there have been many officials come out and say similar things to this, but we ignore them because they're "retired" or "old". They're not going to say it publicly when they find out unless they want to vanish the next day.[/QUOTE]
It's foolishness to base your opinion on a lack of knowledge.
The US also did a shitload of studies on UFO phenomena. Guess who was the primary cause of it?
The US.
[QUOTE=Kyle902;43442425]It's foolishness to base your opinion on a lack of knowledge.
The US also did a shitload of studies on UFO phenomena. Guess who was the primary cause of it?
The US.[/QUOTE]
I think it's more foolish to base your opinion on the lack of knowledge that we have when it comes to any type of advanced physics like this. It's pretty much the exact same thing. We have little to no knowledge of this kind of stuff.
[QUOTE=alexguydude;43442448]I think it's more foolish to base your opinion on the lack of knowledge that we have when it comes to any type of advanced physics like this. It's pretty much the exact same thing. We have little to no knowledge of this kind of stuff.[/QUOTE]
No I am not basing my opinions on a lack of knowledge. You are.
I am basing my opinions on the numerous observations and studies that HAVE been conducted in many countries by many independent laboratories for the past 200 or so years.
My opinion is grounded in knowledge, however, yours is grounded in the lack of.
[QUOTE=Kyle902;43442479]No I am not basing my opinions on a lack of knowledge. You are.
I am basing my opinions on the numerous observations and studies that HAVE been conducted in many countries by many independent laboratories for the past 200 or so years.
My opinion is grounded in knowledge, however, yours is grounded in the lack of.[/QUOTE]
Yes but you're talking in absolutes. You act as if we know everything there is to quantum physics and there's no possible way for anything like this to be possible.
Truth is we have no idea what we're even touching on with advanced physics and to say otherwise is a joke.
[QUOTE=Kyle902;43442049]I didn't deny that the base instinctual motivation for survival would be universal for a dominant species.
I just said that, like humans, an alien civilization in all likelihood would be prone to motivations beyond simple survival.[/QUOTE]
Right, but I'm saying that a species that doesn't put its own survival first and foremost simply will not exist. So a violent confrontation is more or less inevitable, 'cause in this game it's you or me and it ain't gonna be me.
[QUOTE=alexguydude;43442160]I don't know why people discount someone who had this high of a position so quickly. I feel that anyone really high up could come out and make these claims but be discredited instantly because of this idea, which I think is stupid.
Personally I believe there are aliens here. For the argument saying "[B]They would have to travel millions of light years to get here[/B]", I think is a dumb argument. If they were truly as smart as we think they are, I would think they could bend space or open up some kind of wormhole instead of traveling in a STRAIGHT LINE across space.
To think so linearly and discredit all of the high up military or political figures who come out saying things like this is pretty stupid in my opinion.[/QUOTE]
'Let's not discount this rambling old guy, because we can instead discount all of science that says that what he is doing is impossible'
Yeah that 'bending space' or 'open up some kind of wormhole' stuff is fine for inventing a justification for a sci-fi story but it has little basis in reality and contradicts scientific principles that have been shown to be pretty much airtight. Einstein and Heisenberg don't go away just because you wish hard enough for FTL.
This is also, again, ignoring that the idea of an alien civilization existing at the same time as us, let alone in the same neighborhood, is winning-the-lottery unlikely.
[QUOTE=alexguydude;43442511]Yes but you're talking in absolutes. You act as if we know everything there is to quantum physics and there's no possible way for anything like this to be possible.
Truth is we have no idea what we're even touching on with advanced physics and to say otherwise is a joke.[/QUOTE]
lol talking in absolutes.
No I am talking in observations. Our current model of physics contradicts what you are trying to say. I am not saying its impossible.
The scientific community is saying it's impossible and I think they're quite a bit more credible in such matters then you.
And I disagree with your "we have no idea what we're touching on" statement because I daresay we know quite a bit about "advanced physics".
[QUOTE=NoDachi;43437500]
The point of the case study of relativistic civilizations is that they're all hiding in their respective solar systems and then they suddenly annihilate any other detective civilizations within range of them before the same thing happens to them.[/QUOTE]
The trouble with this logic is:
Anything that is worth (threatening enough) using a R-bomb on is going to be advanced enough to not be easily killed with one, because (A) They're going to have habitats that are (1) able to jink enough to be a fiddly target and (2) numerous enough that you'd need an insane amount of resources to build enough missiles to take the buggers out, and (b) are going to be able to see the light from your kill-vehicles accelerating to speed* and take counter-measures - such as crapping a few hundred thousand tonnes of gravel into the vector of the missile, causing its kinetic energy to be harmlessly expended when it slams into a one milligram weight rock.
Building on that last point, do you know what reveals your position to everyone in a relativistic milleu? Launching a KKill-vee, that's what! And more importantly, do you know what that also says to anyone within range to see you?
"HURRRRR, I'M A XENOCIDAL, IDIOTIC ASSHOLE, KILL ME BEFORE I KILL YOU!1!1!"
So, to prevent an an possible threat from aliens launching RKKVs at you... You've announced your position and your intent to engage in unprovoked xenocide - thus revealing yourself as a eminent and proven threat. This is what's known in technical terms as an 'Epic Fail.'
*Guns big enough to launch one of those things are as impossible as solid Dyson spheres or ringworlds.
I'm sorry but I got a serious nostalgia boner because I saw your avatar Jeep-Eep and you said Milleu.
[editline]6th January 2014[/editline]
You don't even need a Dyson sphere to make your civilization extremely hard to kill. Balloon a couple of large nickel iron asteroids and make some habitats with a low emission signatures.
A lot of people in power believes what he believes. We even have ex-astronauts coming forward about what they've seen and what they're privy to. We're not alone folks.
[QUOTE=Kyle902;43442564]
And I disagree with your "we have no idea what we're touching on" statement because I daresay we know quite a bit about "advanced physics".[/QUOTE]
"Advanced physics" is a pretty relative term. Our advanced physics could be the equivalent of a baby shaking a rattle compared to a civilization hundreds of thousands or millions of years older.
[QUOTE=Kyle902;43442626]
You don't even need a Dyson sphere to make your civilization extremely hard to kill. Balloon a couple of large nickel iron asteroids and make some habitats with a low emission signatures.[/QUOTE]
Them things is too bloody fragile to be worth the effort. You'd be better off making steel of those 'roids and building O'Neil cylinders.
[QUOTE=Jeep-Eep;43442672]Them things is too bloody fragile to be worth the effort. You'd be better off making steel of those 'roids and building O'Neil cylinders.[/QUOTE]
But those are hard to build.
All you need to balloon an asteroid is 3 things.
A nickel iron asteroid with few volatiles
An ice comet
A fuckhuge heatsource.
[QUOTE=Robber;43435969]I disagree, we have over 17 thousand nukes and only used two and that was when they were still new and humanity was stupid(er).[/QUOTE]
Only used 2? HA UHUHU UHHAHA No we've used more nukes on earth than you can EVER imagine.
Try about 2053 documented explosions.
[url]www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY[/url]
[QUOTE=deathstarboot;43442656]
"Advanced physics" is a pretty relative term. Our advanced physics could be the equivalent of a baby shaking a rattle compared to a civilization hundreds of thousands or millions of years older.[/QUOTE]
The operative word being "could be"
It's no use speculating until we actually have something to speculate on.
[editline]6th January 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=FLIPPY;43442695]Only used 2? HA UHUHU UHHAHA No we've used more nukes on earth than you can EVER imagine.
Try about 2053 documented explosions.
[url]www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY[/url][/QUOTE]
you're so late that I could've sworn I went FTL and this is now the past.
[QUOTE=Kyle902;43442564]lol talking in absolutes.
No I am talking in observations. Our current model of physics contradicts what you are trying to say. I am not saying its impossible.
The scientific community is saying it's impossible and I think they're quite a bit more credible in such matters then you.
And I disagree with your "we have no idea what we're touching on" statement because I daresay we know quite a bit about "advanced physics".[/QUOTE]
If we knew quite a lot about advanced physics leaving our atmosphere and getting to mars would be the most simplistic thing we could do.
We don't know shit. And we barely know anything about dark matter or anything of the sort. We don't know "quite a bit" of anything. If you asked an astrophysicist or quantum physicists if we have almost mastered their fields they would laugh in your face.
To a species that may exist like this, they would see us as primitive creatures who still think the world is flat in terms of our current advancements.
[QUOTE=Kyle902;43442689]But those are hard to build.
All you need to balloon an asteroid is 3 things.
A nickel iron asteroid with few volatiles
An ice comet
A fuckhuge heatsource.[/QUOTE]
And you get something that's too damn fragile for your costs. It's penny wise and pound (And megadeath) foolish.
[QUOTE=Jeep-Eep;43442607]The trouble with this logic is:
Anything that is worth (threatening enough) using a R-bomb on is going to be advanced enough to not be easily killed with one, because (A) They're going to have habitats that are (1) able to jink enough to be a fiddly target and (2) numerous enough that you'd need an insane amount of resources to build enough missiles to take the buggers out, and (b) are going to be able to see the light from your kill-vehicles accelerating to speed* and take counter-measures - such as crapping a few hundred thousand tonnes of gravel into the vector of the missile, causing its kinetic energy to be harmlessly expended when it slams into a one milligram weight rock.[/QUOTE]
1. Having a small percentage of your population away from your homeworld does not make losing your homeworld anything other than a cataclysmic event. Hell, we could be on Mars and losing Earth and most of the population could be a game-ender right there. Any species is going to be specifically adapted for its own homeworld and unlikely to survive easily anywhere else, so if you take out their homeworld then you've at the very least destroyed their main base of operations and rendered even just living far more difficult than previously.
So sure, supposing we had people on Mars and out in the asteroids or wherever, humanity might survive. The question is for how long, and whether we'd be a threat in the foreseeable future from that point. You're forgetting that the basic game theory perspective is that conflict is basically inevitable, so if you strike first and strike harder then you've still won even if you have to mop up later.
2. Sorry, interception does not work that way. At a high enough impact velocity all you've done is marginally reduce the speed of the projectile or turned it into a plasma spray (fun!), and now all those rocks that were in its path are now going to hit you as well. You just described the cosmic equivalent of trying to stop someone from punching you by throwing cottonballs at their fist.
This is also assuming you ever see it coming (more on that in a second) and have time to get such a countermeasure in place.
[QUOTE=Jeep-Eep;43442607]Building on that last point, do you know what reveals your position to everyone in a relativistic milleu? Launching a KKill-vee, that's what! And more importantly, do you know what that also says to anyone within range to see you?
"HURRRRR, I'M A XENOCIDAL, IDIOTIC ASSHOLE, KILL ME BEFORE I KILL YOU!1!1!"
So, to prevent an an possible threat from aliens launching RKKVs at you... You've announced your position and your intent to engage in unprovoked xenocide - thus revealing yourself as a eminent and proven threat. This is what's known in technical terms as an 'Epic Fail.'[/QUOTE]
That makes absolutely no sense.
You could take a spaceship, point it at another star system, accelerate at 1G and in less than a year and a half you'd be at 0.8C (reaction mass permitting). Just under four years and you'd be at 0.97C. That right there is a relativistic weapon, and unless you're saying that all our galactic neighbors have telescopes good enough to see every single spaceship launch (in which case we're [I]already[/I] fucked since the Earth already emits more infrared radiation every day than a hypothetical perfect-conversion antimatter drive could even come close to, and I don't think you're suggesting we give up on space exploration either), it's not going to be visible until near-impact. Maybe not even then, if the ship's been coasting for years against a very distant target.
[QUOTE=Jeep-Eep;43442607]*Guns big enough to launch one of those things are as impossible as solid Dyson spheres or ringworlds.[/QUOTE]
Good thing literally nobody has suggested using a gun to launch a vehicle perfectly suited to slow, constant, undetectable propulsion over a long period of time.
[QUOTE=Asmaedus;43436356]God I haven't read this for about 5 years, thank you.
Now through reading this again I see a pretty big plot hole :(
[sp]The infallible predictor wrongly predicted that we would spill out and destroy the writers planet. Yet the next post says that we become cool dudes all about art.[/sp][/QUOTE]
[sp]But at the very end, we do spill out from our destroyed planet with the intent to come after the writer's planet, since they did destroy earth.[/sp]
only now do I notice I'm 5 pages late. Let it rain clocks.
I don't really understand where the idea that "We are the worst species because we fight each other" comes from. Do people honestly think that any other species able to develop their own society would be any better and not potentially worse?
Can you please stop tooting the horn of game theory and of mathematical logic if you're not even going to bother actually APPLYING it yourself.
Your argument seems to be, in essence, the same as doomsday preppers, people who believed the 2012 hype, people who prepare for zombie apocalypses. They also suffer from the same, shitty, rationale. It's better to be prepared for it and it doesn't happen than not be prepared for it and it does happen.
But what are the ODDS it'll happen? What are the odds our hypothetical alien residents of the galaxy are ACTUALLY going to want to kill us? What are the odds that we'll want to kill them? If you're going to sit there and be an armchair mathematician at least ATTEMPT to come up with some risk assessments rather than spouting words like 'game theory' and 'mathematical logic'. I'd wager the odds of any of those outcomes occurring are staggeringly fucking low for several reasons. Let's look at the reasons that animals on Earth (humans included) kill one another, or other species:
Between species there's the obvious - food... or if you're the little guy, killing predators to prevent yourself from becoming food. Now if you're an interstellar species I very much doubt that you have any massive food shortages, because if you did you sure as hell wouldn't be flying around the galaxy as there'd be more pressing concerns going on and you probably wouldn't be able to stock up on enough food to leave home anyway. Even if you presume these aliens had some food shortage they wouldn't be venturing out into the galaxy to eat us because, one, it'd be much easier to solve the problem at home than to fly out and find some massive food source, and two the odds of us being compatible with their biology in the first place and not killing them when they consume us is staggeringly low. Half of the stuff on Earth that we try to eat will make us sick or kill us, so the odds of anything they consume here killing them is much higher (at best anything they find will probably be completely nutritionally useless, at worst completely incompatible biologies will result in sickness or death). The same applies to us; we're not going to be able to eat them, so they need not kill us out of preemptive fear of becoming food.
That's probably where things should end as killing between other species usually is limited to finding food, or not becoming food yourself, but that's an argument from non-sentient animals so let's take it one step further and look at why sentient beings be hostile towards one another (such as that within our own species).
Why do animals within a species treat each other with hostility some time? Competition for resources would be the main reason. This might go back to food, somebody of another tribe found food that you need, so you fight them over it. In more recent times we don't need to compete over food sources as much because we can just walk down to the shops and buy it, so we compete over mineral and ore deposits. Now competing over raw resources is probably a fairly likely problem that could crop up, but space is big. REALLY freaking big. The resources of an entire solar system would keep us going for the foreseeable future, so if we bump into some other species somewhere we can easily venture elsewhere to find resources and not need to start an armed conflict over the matter. Not to mention starting a conflict would simply waste the very resources we're most likely fighting over because we'd have expend resources in constructing our RKV to slaughter our enemies with which makes the entire point moot anyway. It's not beneficial to fight over resources.
Of course there are other reasons infighting happens between members of a species, but these are even more specific to us and would be of no concern to aliens. Sure, that guy at the bar the other night was a cunt to you even though you two weren't competing over forms of sustenance, mineral or ore deposits, or any other tangible object so you could take the 'they might just be cunts' approach. But nothing happens without a reason. That guy was a cunt because he's under the impression it improves his social standing, and it probably does in a way. The big, cocky, outgoing guy is probably going to more easily find a sexual partner so he treats people the way he does for that reason. It's not nice, but it's true. Aliens aren't going to want to sleep with anyone from our species because for a start it's just going to be straight up biologically impossible. Their standing in human social groups will be of little to no importance to them. They need not impress us. They need not make certain individuals within our population submit to them so that they have an easier time pursuing sexual partners because it doesn't fucking matter to them.
Slaves. Be it us worrying about them wanting to enslave us, or them worrying about us wanting to enslave them. I don't know what you'd use slaves for in space, but I don't think it'd be very efficient. You have to feed slaves because like it or not a dead slave is a bad slave, and if they're not of your own species that means going out of your way to grow their food for them which takes up valuable space you could be using for your own agriculture. Not to mention anywhere you'd want to put slaves to keep your own people from dying is probably going to be so hostile to them that they'll be dropping dead quicker than we can pop new ones out. Robots would do a much better job than we humans at mining or whatever they'd have in mind for potential slaves. This one I'd say is one of the most reasonable threats, but even then I don't see it as being particularly likely.
Now we probably get to the one problem that I do see as being the most realistic. Differing religions and ideologies. Here's where we may not see eye-to-eye and where conflict may arise. However this assumes that we can even communicate with them in the first place, and even if we can there's no guarantee they'd even be fanatical about their beliefs. Hell, the proportion of nonreligious individuals is slowly increasing worldwide and with the advancement of science and reason I see no reason for it to not keep doing so. I also see no reason the same wouldn't apply to aliens (the more you learn, the less need for a 'god of the gaps' you have).
Aliens have almost NO conceivable logical reason to kill us at first sight, and, no, "they'll want to kill us before we kill them!" is NOT an acceptable response because they'll be just as aware of these facts as we are. They know that we know that we can't use them as a food source. They know that we know that they can't use US as a food source. They know that we know that we can simply go mine an asteroid elsewhere and leave them to their business because space is freaking enormous and it's probably not worth getting in a fight over. They know that we know that there's no competition for mates among our respective species so we don't need to be dicks to each other needless. They know that we know that they're reasonably no threat to us, because short of being a species of complete sociopaths who enjoy killing just for the thrill of it, there's no conceivable reason they'd have to harm us; and they know the same about us.
So once again, if you're going to argue your armchair mathematics (and even then you're not really; I've seen no numbers get chucked around by either side - we're all just speculating, nobody is crunching numbers) at least put forth a few risk assessments to play around with before making your huge claims about how murdering the other aliens in the galaxy is obviously the only logical choice of action at first contact.
[QUOTE=sltungle;43445240]Can you please stop tooting the horn of game theory and of mathematical logic if you're not even going to bother actually APPLYING it yourself.
Your argument seems to be, in essence, the same as doomsday preppers, people who believed the 2012 hype, people who prepare for zombie apocalypses. They also suffer from the same, shitty, rationale. It's better to be prepared for it and it doesn't happen than not be prepared for it and it does happen.
But what are the ODDS it'll happen? What are the odds our hypothetical alien residents of the galaxy are ACTUALLY going to want to kill us? What are the odds that we'll want to kill them? If you're going to sit there and be an armchair mathematician at least ATTEMPT to come up with some risk assessments rather than spouting words like 'game theory' and 'mathematical logic'. I'd wager the odds of any of those outcomes occurring are staggeringly fucking low for several reasons. Let's look at the reasons that animals on Earth (humans included) kill one another, or other species:
Between species there's the obvious - food... or if you're the little guy, killing predators to prevent yourself from becoming food. Now if you're an interstellar species I very much doubt that you have any massive food shortages, because if you did you sure as hell wouldn't be flying around the galaxy as there'd be more pressing concerns going on and you probably wouldn't be able to stock up on enough food to leave home anyway. Even if you presume these aliens had some food shortage they wouldn't be venturing out into the galaxy to eat us because, one, it'd be much easier to solve the problem at home than to fly out and find some massive food source, and two the odds of us being compatible with their biology in the first place and not killing them when they consume us is staggeringly low. Half of the stuff on Earth that we try to eat will make us sick or kill us, so the odds of anything they consume here killing them is much higher (at best anything they find will probably be completely nutritionally useless, at worst completely incompatible biologies will result in sickness or death). The same applies to us; we're not going to be able to eat them, so they need not kill us out of preemptive fear of becoming food.
That's probably where things should end as killing between other species usually is limited to finding food, or not becoming food yourself, but that's an argument from non-sentient animals so let's take it one step further and look at why sentient beings be hostile towards one another (such as that within our own species).
Why do animals within a species treat each other with hostility some time? Competition for resources would be the main reason. This might go back to food, somebody of another tribe found food that you need, so you fight them over it. In more recent times we don't need to compete over food sources as much because we can just walk down to the shops and buy it, so we compete over mineral and ore deposits. Now competing over raw resources is probably a fairly likely problem that could crop up, but space is big. REALLY freaking big. The resources of an entire solar system would keep us going for the foreseeable future, so if we bump into some other species somewhere we can easily venture elsewhere to find resources and not need to start an armed conflict over the matter. Not to mention starting a conflict would simply waste the very resources we're most likely fighting over because we'd have expend resources in constructing our RKV to slaughter our enemies with which makes the entire point moot anyway. It's not beneficial to fight over resources.
Of course there are other reasons infighting happens between members of a species, but these are even more specific to us and would be of no concern to aliens. Sure, that guy at the bar the other night was a cunt to you even though you two weren't competing over forms of sustenance, mineral or ore deposits, or any other tangible object so you could take the 'they might just be cunts' approach. But nothing happens without a reason. That guy was a cunt because he's under the impression it improves his social standing, and it probably does in a way. The big, cocky, outgoing guy is probably going to more easily find a sexual partner so he treats people the way he does for that reason. It's not nice, but it's true. Aliens aren't going to want to sleep with anyone from our species because for a start it's just going to be straight up biologically impossible. Their standing in human social groups will be of little to no importance to them. They need not impress us. They need not make certain individuals within our population submit to them so that they have an easier time pursuing sexual partners because it doesn't fucking matter to them.
Slaves. Be it us worrying about them wanting to enslave us, or them worrying about us wanting to enslave them. I don't know what you'd use slaves for in space, but I don't think it'd be very efficient. You have to feed slaves because like it or not a dead slave is a bad slave, and if they're not of your own species that means going out of your way to grow their food for them which takes up valuable space you could be using for your own agriculture. Not to mention anywhere you'd want to put slaves to keep your own people from dying is probably going to be so hostile to them that they'll be dropping dead quicker than we can pop new ones out. Robots would do a much better job than we humans at mining or whatever they'd have in mind for potential slaves. This one I'd say is one of the most reasonable threats, but even then I don't see it as being particularly likely.
Now we probably get to the one problem that I do see as being the most realistic. Differing religions and ideologies. Here's where we may not see eye-to-eye and where conflict may arise. However this assumes that we can even communicate with them in the first place, and even if we can there's no guarantee they'd even be fanatical about their beliefs. Hell, the proportion of nonreligious individuals is slowly increasing worldwide and with the advancement of science and reason I see no reason for it to not keep doing so. I also see no reason the same wouldn't apply to aliens (the more you learn, the less need for a 'god of the gaps' you have).
Aliens have almost NO conceivable logical reason to kill us at first sight, and, no, "they'll want to kill us before we kill them!" is NOT an acceptable response because they'll be just as aware of these facts as we are. They know that we know that we can't use them as a food source. They know that we know that they can't use US as a food source. They know that we know that we can simply go mine an asteroid elsewhere and leave them to their business because space is freaking enormous and it's probably not worth getting in a fight over. They know that we know that there's no competition for mates among our respective species so we don't need to be dicks to each other needless. They know that we know that they're reasonably no threat to us, because short of being a species of complete sociopaths who enjoy killing just for the thrill of it, there's no conceivable reason they'd have to harm us; and they know the same about us.
So once again, if you're going to argue your armchair mathematics (and even then you're not really; I've seen no numbers get chucked around by either side - we're all just speculating, nobody is crunching numbers) at least put forth a few risk assessments to play around with before making your huge claims about how murdering the other aliens in the galaxy is obviously the only logical choice of action at first contact.[/QUOTE]
lmao
[QUOTE=NoDachi;43445248]lmao[/QUOTE]
Because you read all of that in about 30 seconds. Good job. You're a fucking idiot if you can't even respond to legitimate points with anything other than 'lmao' and don't even bother to read them in the first place.
Do I need to go through this novel and point out every single ignorance driven non sequitur?
[QUOTE=sltungle;43445266]Because you read all of that in about 30 seconds. Good job. You're a fucking idiot if you can't even respond to legitimate points with anything other than 'lmao' and don't even bother to read them in the first place.[/QUOTE]
its okay i already laughed and shared it with a couple of friends
[QUOTE=Mbbird;43445272]Do I need to go through this novel and point out every single ignorance driven non sequitur?[/QUOTE]
Yes actually, please do. Please provide to me some insight as to why aliens would need to kill us, or why we'd need to kill aliens or why either side would logically come to the conclusion that the other side had come to the conclusion that the other was going to kill them thus prompting a preemptive strike. You don't avoid conflict by starting conflict.
[QUOTE=sltungle;43445307]Yes actually, please do. Please provide to me some insight as to why aliens would need to kill us, or why we'd need to kill aliens or why either side would logically come to the conclusion that the other side had come to the conclusion that the other was going to kill them thus prompting a preemptive strike. You don't avoid conflict by starting conflict.[/QUOTE]
No because I have better things to do with my time. Please don't spit "it's because you can't mbbird!" at me, because a) it's a joke and I'm looking forward to seeing its own personal boxfort grow, and b) there are few text walls on FP that I've seen larger than that and fewer still worth responding to. If this is your synopsis however, I'll respond as follows:
[QUOTE=sltungle;43445307][B]You don't avoid conflict by starting conflict.[/B][/QUOTE]
Yes you do. Yes, there's the accepted risk involved: pissing off a budding or evolved species that you [I]might[/I] not be able to wipe out in one fell swoop, but both acting and not acting can account for "The Great Silence". Regardless, it's perfectly fine to assume that you [I]can[/I].
There's that cliche piece of shit "The best defense is a good offense" if you can't see my own logic behind that.
[QUOTE=sltungle;43445307]Yes actually, please do. Please provide to me some insight as to why aliens would need to kill us, or why we'd need to kill aliens or why either side would logically come to the conclusion that the other side had come to the conclusion that the other was going to kill them thus prompting a preemptive strike. You don't avoid conflict by starting conflict.[/QUOTE]
You should read up on what Game theory is dude, it'd do you a world of good
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[QUOTE=sltungle;43445240]Can you please stop tooting the horn of game theory and of mathematical logic if you're not even going to bother actually APPLYING it yourself.
Your argument seems to be, in essence, the same as doomsday preppers, people who believed the 2012 hype, people who prepare for zombie apocalypses. They also suffer from the same, shitty, rationale. It's better to be prepared for it and it doesn't happen than not be prepared for it and it does happen.
But what are the ODDS it'll happen? What are the odds our hypothetical alien residents of the galaxy are ACTUALLY going to want to kill us? What are the odds that we'll want to kill them? If you're going to sit there and be an armchair mathematician at least ATTEMPT to come up with some risk assessments rather than spouting words like 'game theory' and 'mathematical logic'. I'd wager the odds of any of those outcomes occurring are staggeringly fucking low for several reasons. Let's look at the reasons that animals on Earth (humans included) kill one another, or other species:
Between species there's the obvious - food... or if you're the little guy, killing predators to prevent yourself from becoming food. Now if you're an interstellar species I very much doubt that you have any massive food shortages, because if you did you sure as hell wouldn't be flying around the galaxy as there'd be more pressing concerns going on and you probably wouldn't be able to stock up on enough food to leave home anyway. Even if you presume these aliens had some food shortage they wouldn't be venturing out into the galaxy to eat us because, one, it'd be much easier to solve the problem at home than to fly out and find some massive food source, and two the odds of us being compatible with their biology in the first place and not killing them when they consume us is staggeringly low. Half of the stuff on Earth that we try to eat will make us sick or kill us, so the odds of anything they consume here killing them is much higher (at best anything they find will probably be completely nutritionally useless, at worst completely incompatible biologies will result in sickness or death). The same applies to us; we're not going to be able to eat them, so they need not kill us out of preemptive fear of becoming food.
That's probably where things should end as killing between other species usually is limited to finding food, or not becoming food yourself, but that's an argument from non-sentient animals so let's take it one step further and look at why sentient beings be hostile towards one another (such as that within our own species).
Why do animals within a species treat each other with hostility some time? Competition for resources would be the main reason. This might go back to food, somebody of another tribe found food that you need, so you fight them over it. In more recent times we don't need to compete over food sources as much because we can just walk down to the shops and buy it, so we compete over mineral and ore deposits. Now competing over raw resources is probably a fairly likely problem that could crop up, but space is big. REALLY freaking big. The resources of an entire solar system would keep us going for the foreseeable future, so if we bump into some other species somewhere we can easily venture elsewhere to find resources and not need to start an armed conflict over the matter. Not to mention starting a conflict would simply waste the very resources we're most likely fighting over because we'd have expend resources in constructing our RKV to slaughter our enemies with which makes the entire point moot anyway. It's not beneficial to fight over resources.
Of course there are other reasons infighting happens between members of a species, but these are even more specific to us and would be of no concern to aliens. Sure, that guy at the bar the other night was a cunt to you even though you two weren't competing over forms of sustenance, mineral or ore deposits, or any other tangible object so you could take the 'they might just be cunts' approach. But nothing happens without a reason. That guy was a cunt because he's under the impression it improves his social standing, and it probably does in a way. The big, cocky, outgoing guy is probably going to more easily find a sexual partner so he treats people the way he does for that reason. It's not nice, but it's true. Aliens aren't going to want to sleep with anyone from our species because for a start it's just going to be straight up biologically impossible. Their standing in human social groups will be of little to no importance to them. They need not impress us. They need not make certain individuals within our population submit to them so that they have an easier time pursuing sexual partners because it doesn't fucking matter to them.
Slaves. Be it us worrying about them wanting to enslave us, or them worrying about us wanting to enslave them. I don't know what you'd use slaves for in space, but I don't think it'd be very efficient. You have to feed slaves because like it or not a dead slave is a bad slave, and if they're not of your own species that means going out of your way to grow their food for them which takes up valuable space you could be using for your own agriculture. Not to mention anywhere you'd want to put slaves to keep your own people from dying is probably going to be so hostile to them that they'll be dropping dead quicker than we can pop new ones out. Robots would do a much better job than we humans at mining or whatever they'd have in mind for potential slaves. This one I'd say is one of the most reasonable threats, but even then I don't see it as being particularly likely.
Now we probably get to the one problem that I do see as being the most realistic. Differing religions and ideologies. Here's where we may not see eye-to-eye and where conflict may arise. However this assumes that we can even communicate with them in the first place, and even if we can there's no guarantee they'd even be fanatical about their beliefs. Hell, the proportion of nonreligious individuals is slowly increasing worldwide and with the advancement of science and reason I see no reason for it to not keep doing so. I also see no reason the same wouldn't apply to aliens (the more you learn, the less need for a 'god of the gaps' you have).
Aliens have almost NO conceivable logical reason to kill us at first sight, and, no, "they'll want to kill us before we kill them!" is NOT an acceptable response because they'll be just as aware of these facts as we are. They know that we know that we can't use them as a food source. They know that we know that they can't use US as a food source. They know that we know that we can simply go mine an asteroid elsewhere and leave them to their business because space is freaking enormous and it's probably not worth getting in a fight over. They know that we know that there's no competition for mates among our respective species so we don't need to be dicks to each other needless. They know that we know that they're reasonably no threat to us, because short of being a species of complete sociopaths who enjoy killing just for the thrill of it, there's no conceivable reason they'd have to harm us; and they know the same about us.
So once again, if you're going to argue your armchair mathematics (and even then you're not really; I've seen no numbers get chucked around by either side - we're all just speculating, nobody is crunching numbers) at least put forth a few risk assessments to play around with before making your huge claims about how murdering the other aliens in the galaxy is obviously the only logical choice of action at first contact.[/QUOTE]
I don't know how you wrote all of this and ended up with the conclusion "They have no reason to just kill us" when you outline exactly why they wouldn't come here to say hello and enslave us. How you don't see a communication problem being a thing is beyond me too.
[editline]6th January 2014[/editline]
oh for fucks sakes spam breaks the auto merge
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;43445393]You should read up on what Game theory is dude, it'd do you a world of good[/QUOTE]
Given that game theory works on the premise that all agents make perfectly rational decisions all of the time, and nobody is putting forth any rational reasons for us wanting to murder them or them wanting to murder us (except for fear of the other side doing the same first, which is NOT a [I]rational[/I] fear because it needs some justification to be rational... which I'm yet to see provided) I'm going to say that either everyone here is applying game theory wrong or these AREN'T the supremely logical aliens I thought we were discussing originally.
If this were true, I'd gamble on giving us the tech and uniting the world, and if we're still too dumb to then just nuke the planet with your super special alien rays
I'm amazed someone like this was in such a seat of power
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