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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts
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I often times wonder if an extraterrestrial threat would be a unifying factor or if people would still be selfish unless it affected them. The pandemic was the closest we've seen to a world level threat recently and it just increased selfishness IMO (at least in the US)
I thought Marvel's Secret Invasion had an interesting quote on this that I'll paraphrase: nothing makes humans stronger than uniting against a common enemy, but as soon as that enemy is gone, they always devolve into tribal bickering again. It'll be a miracle if we ever reach Star Trek levels of global unification and peace.
Don't forget that Star Trek universe went through an apocalyptic phase before reaching their post scarcity society. I'm quite optimistic that we'll reach Star Trek levels of peace, but reaching that state without having 90% of the population annihilated in some kind of a World War or some other catastrophe? That's what I'm kinda pessimistic about.
Never mind Star Trek, at the rate we're going we'll be lucky to get The Expanse.
I mean, we've already surpassed The Expanse in some ways (at least the first couple books).
Something that struck me was in Caliban's War they were relying heavily on mirrors to focus sunlight for growing crops out at Jupiter. I guess the authors just didn't foresee LED technology advancing as rapidly as it did.
Leviathan Wakes was published in June 2011. Caliban's War was published in June 2012.
The L-prize "60W" category winner was announced in August 2011 (it was Philips). It didn't become commercially-available until April 2012, but even then, it was like $50 -- far from affordable for most people. Now you can get equivalent or better bulbs for less than 1/10th of that.
The EU.
The aliens would just hack the internet and flood it with bots more advanced than ChatGPT faking support to surrender to the alien overlord, then sit their asses watching humanity fought among themselves.
If we're comparing to human history, the Aztecs weren't singlehandedly defeated by the Spanish. The conquistadors had plenty of assistance of other nations that wanted to see the Aztecs gone. We all know what happened afterwards, but even if you went back in time you wouldn't convince a single Tlaxcala warrior that their newfound awesome ally against their sworn enemy was actually the "bad guy" - until much later, that is.
So, if the aliens started an attack against whoever the superpower happens to be, they would have plenty of assistance as well. It's human nature.
Meh I would have sided with the Spainards as well. It can't be fun having to hand over hunks of your population each year to be given to the sun god.
IMO I don't think humanity would unite. Some people would force their families to surrender to the aliens because they fear for their own lives, others would try to bargain with them for technology. Others would help the aliens simply because they hate humanity. We really can't count on anything to unite us, and I don't even think uniting the species should be our common goal. People are too individualistic and diverse for that, and unity would take away what it means to be human.
If aliens can reach us, they aren't a threat. They either kill us without any issue or they don't want to. There is no fighting back against it.
I do think it'd be interesting to see what happens if we do discovery alien life, particularly of the intelligent variety. So many religions are based on the assumption humans are the only intelligent life, and that earth is that place that can support it. Do they mostly all collapse, or do they evolve? Do people finally recognize the stupidity? It'd be fun to see.
That's not necessarily true. If aliens do visit us, they might not be able to wipe us out at all. There's really no way to say that other races would be capable of wiping us out, because they might not understand the concept of war in the first place.
They're either capable of wiping us out or they aren't a threat. Either way, not a threat.
Which religion has the assumption that we are the only intelligent life? The ones I have studied didn't seem to believe that only human intelligence is around. They had demons and angles and gods.
It's at least heavily implied in many. It implies that he created everything and all living things on it only talks about creatures being created on earth. If the book is accurate (it's clearly not, but let's assume) and if it's divinely inspired, it should be aware of cresting life elsewhere also. It also calls stars/glalaxies/nebulas/whatever "lights in the dome of the sky" so not exactly a great start for it.
It being weird or wrong hasn't stopped it really before though, but it would probably create some kind of shift, especially if it's intelligent. In that case, are they deserving the same status as man? Are they children of God also? Why do they look different?
Christians don't even care what the Bible says let alone what it implies.
Depends on so many factors. Sometimes the external enemy doesn't unite people at all. Sometimes it becomes a race of who can suck up to them so when the war is over they can run things. Traitors and collaboration.
Also I am betting if there was a threat it would be over in hours. As they hit us with a million nukes while our governments spend the last few minutes wondering why we pointed out best gear at each other instead of up.
Or heck they could be creative and just block out our sun for a decade and use bunker busting bombs looking for infrared to kill off the stranglers. That way they have a nice non-nuclear wasteland to work with.
Nah, if that's the goal they'll just use Neutrino Bombs (look them up, they're crazy what they're designed to do)
I saw a discussion about this once and they argued that they didn't have the range leaving all the rural people still around. Plus the humans who are in nuclear proof bunkers/submarines have nukes to get revenge when you land.
Blocking the sun works better. You can't just hide from the earth freezing. Even if you survive somehow you are giving away your location via infared. Also, you could still have some functional ecosystem left with the plants and animals that can withstand a true hibernation and the deep sea life.
Ozymandias, is it you?