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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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science
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Great. We wanted aliens and we get more climate doom.
I'm sure the universe is brimming with life.
That said, why would any advanced race expend resources to come visit a type 0 "civilization" of malevolent primates torturing and manipulating one another while they work towards planetary scale mass suicide eyes wide open? I mean sure, Einstein might have enjoyed 16 and pregnant, or the ironically unironic Squid Game reality show, but I doubt it.
Our culture sucks, we're still basically fresh out of the cave technologically, and if they're the conquering habitable worlds type, we're turning our habitat into fucking Mordor with what little technology we've recklessly implemented without caring to fully understand.
I honestly hope space faring civilizations, whether benevolent(explorers), neutral(silent observers), or malevolent(we've come for your raw materials), have better shit to do.
It’s an assumption that intelligent life unknown to us is space faring.
A completely fair and excellent point.
Look at us desperately trying to grow/metastasize on other worlds, that we will struggle to exist on, as we continue to actively choke the one that birthed us and that we evolved to thrive on specifically.
It's a nice thought that any enlightened intelligent species would find technological harmony/homeostasis/equilibrium with their homeworld before setting out to explore or expand on worlds far less hospitable to their physiology.
We, on the other hand, seem to be pushing to expand at this point because we A) want to keep burning this world for short term profit and unsustainable growth/metastasis, and B) want to survive as a species for some reason after we've thoroughly accomplished that mission.
How are we as a species not a Macro-cancer of Earth? No interest in homeostasis, growth or die, indifferent to the reality that it's literally killing our host. That's malignant cancer. Hi.
That's like asking why would people go to safaris, I'm sure the concept of tourism will exist forever.
Idk ask Jane Goodall. People do it, why wouldn't "space people?"
chimps don't have nuclear weapons or VX.
Neither do I.
What's VX, precious?
A synthetic neurotoxin
@ArcaneSlime @AllonzeeLV
Gorillas (and bonobos) are gentle, quite unlike humans. Baboons are a better analogue.
Fair but idk the name of the lady who studied baboons so Jane Goodall it is.
@ArcaneSlime
Fair reply lol, nobody knows
There's a good probability, of other civilizations exist in our galaxy alone, they faced similar challenges we are facing and may even be facing challenges we have to endure.
The idea that somewhere there are old aliens complaining on how the young ones keep recklessly racing their flying saucers, bothering those still under developed home planets sounds so... banal.
Its the Great Filter theory, aliens would be historians potentially documenting the Great filter in action tbh. If they exist with the resources and interest to do so. Yet could humans even comprehend their existence, it could be just so incomprehensible we wouldnt even know what we couldnt even know. Hope that makes sense.
Are you saying that if you were that super intelligent life traveling through space that you'd pass up a planet if you thought its inhabitants were too stupid?
I mean, I avoid "reality" shows like the plague for being a celebration of duhhhhh.
So you think seeing the entire spectrum of earth lifeforms is equivalent to reality tv shows?
In a post scarcity society capable of folding dimensions for space travel, or can survive for thousands of years in regular space flight, yeah absolutely, do you watch cells divide for entertainment?
Well, I don't, but some scientists are tasked with it so someone does whether "fun" is the reason or not.
They do it for pay so they don't starve. We are very much not in a post scarcity society.
You have such a void of interest and wonder that Im beginning to think you are the aliens we are talking about.
You think scientists study for pay? We find ways to get paid so we dont starve from the studying. The study is the point, it always has been
Maybe you're right.
Yes, 100% every time, yes, for the same reason people crouch and watch in fascination as the ants and the springtails go about their unfathomable business.
How do you not have this curiosity of the endless wonder beneath your feet
It died when I realized I was born into the species that kills all the other species.
Thats just more reasons to be studying those species before they die out so we can properly prevent the dying.
Thats, like, 40% of my job
We are still competing when we should have been cooperating 50 years ago as a global society. There is no preventing the coming catastrophe Imo.
Oh, well in that case youre flat faced wrong. We can absolutely avert a large amount of the damage coming, easy.
It will require a lot of legislation to reign in corporation pollution and ecological destruction, but we arent even close to the event horizon. Quit reading doom and gloom fluff pieces.
You sound young. Keep up the hope.
Ive already told you I work in the field of ecology.
Its not hope, its the conclusions derived from the work I do.
The conclusions which get cut in half, summarized, misread, reworded, and then dramatized by doom and gloom fluff pieces to get clicks.
Do me a favor? Pull your head out of your ass before it gets stuck around your jawline. We arent fucked yet, but your shitbrained attitude is doing its best to make sure we get fucked.
Great, hope you're right 👍
Do you? Cause it sounds like you dont think Im wrong, rather that you want me to be.
Its not a normal response to have someone who works with the thing your concerned about telling you its not as bad as youve heard and you call them naive and young.
Honestly no, I hope humans destroy themselves before we can spread to other planets.
People a lot smarter than you or I have been arguing about this for decades. Have you read the Limits to Growth? Do you think we will magically become a sustainable circular economy before crop failure starts to happen? We're gonna capitalism our way right off the cliff baby.
Ill be honest, people a lot smarter than you and I have mathematically proven we can easily maintain crop production for the demonstrated planetary carrying capacity of the human species. They teach you this when you study macrobio.
Its not going to happen under capitalistic economies, obviously, but capitalism is a fucking young and fragile system. It will break centuries before the planet even comes close to breaking.
Seriously, you need to stop reading doom and gloom popsci bullshit. Its filling your head with nihilistic statistical manipulations and flat lies.
We are in trouble in the same way your grades were in trouble in high school the night before a midterm you didnt study for. You need to cram to pass this test, but failing the test doesnt mean you will be expelled and then shot out back like a lame horse. It doesnt even mean youre going to fail the class yet.
Im not kidding, stressing about this is literally what I do for a living. When the person who spends both professional and personal hours actively studying this mess is telling you its not as bad as youre freaking out over, maybe listen to them.
Great patronization, I hope you feel better now. I can't wait for the peaceful global transition away from capitalism lol.
Stay mad, weirdo👍
Keep spreadin lies, doomer. Your bunker will pay off any day now
The benevolent explorers might be able to help us, assuming they could convince our leaders, and the conquering type would at least unite us. Although I'm sure there would be a fair amount of people who side with the alien invaders and actively work to hurt any resistance.
We keep certain aboriginal tribes secluded so we can properly research how societies arise, I don't see why they wouldn't.
Any space faring civ also has the tech to make human bodies to control from a distance and would have some of their members chilling with us down here. Likewise, I think a lot of people here would enjoy spending a bit of free time in different eras in our past, even though they are much more barbaric by todays standards.
I can't even imagine them just not caring.
That's a really bold claim. As the only sapient species we can draw for comparison, we largely don't respect life even when it comes to our own species, let alone the graveyard of entire biomes of species we found inconvenient to the placement of our strip malls. If our space faring age is led by people like Musk and Bezos, expect generational labor camp colonies and being born into company stores you can't escape.
I hope the majority of space faring civilizations out there have more respect for life than us, but that's not a high bar. Our most advanced technologies are born out of a desire to kill one another. Power generation is a bonus we half assed upon harnessing the power of the atom explicitly to murder one another in greater numbers at once.
@AllonzeeLV I think the basic logic is that if they're as bad as us, they don't make it past their own global environmental catastrophes.
Ah yes, I love the Great Filter concept.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter#:~:text=The%20Great%20Filter%20is%20the,detectable%20extraterrestrial%20life%20exceedingly%20rare.
https://youtu.be/UjtOGPJ0URM?si=BiiRqQqnHXqkUfsB
Yeah I actually edited that out right after submitting the comment, it does assume a lot.
I do think empathy in general grows in step with technological progress, if lagging behind a bit, and the chances of alien civ being benevolent are higher.
I was hoping for whale farts.