Will extra-terrestrial life be benefital for humanity?

Talk about anything under the sun or stars - but keep it civil. This is where we really get to know each other. Everyone is welcome, and invited!
User avatar
Olhado_
Soldier
Soldier
Posts: 199
Joined: Wed Sep 27, 2006 4:16 pm
Title: Just Another Chris
Location: Titusville, FL
Contact:

Will extra-terrestrial life be benefital for humanity?

Postby Olhado_ » Fri Dec 19, 2008 5:58 pm

So, I am part of an International organization, Toastmasters, which is used to practice public speaking. Anyways, there is one exercise we do every week where someone asked a question and that person has a minute to answer it, on the fly.

Well we do not have to follow the above rule; but this question, thorough not asked to me intrigued me and I want to put it to the members here.

This really is a difficult question because it is so easy to think of extra-terrestrial (henceforth aliens) can only bring good that they will come here and be eager to share their technology with us (i.e. Star Trek)

But looking at just the history of humans one side or the other usually are not friendly and eager to help a society that is different from the other and this is between two groups that are biological equals.

I know this idea is not new to all of us here because it is also the scenario that OSC brought up in Ender's Game; but what do you think?
Not
Even
Remotely
Dorky

Professor Frink
-The Simpsions

jotabe
Toon Leader
Toon Leader
Posts: 2105
Joined: Tue Oct 31, 2006 11:59 am
Title: Leekmaster Kirbyfu

Postby jotabe » Fri Dec 19, 2008 7:50 pm

Looking at human history, we would become a satellite to their culture, if it is minimally intelligible to us. We would be a colony, conquered land, etc... but in exchange, we would receive a push in technology and living standards worth centuries.
Image

User avatar
Jebus
Toon Leader
Toon Leader
Posts: 1300
Joined: Tue Sep 26, 2006 5:53 pm
Title: Lord and Saviour
First Joined: 07 Nov 2001

Postby Jebus » Thu Dec 25, 2008 2:53 pm

Olhado, if I saw a glass of water would I drink it? What about if the tv was on, would I watch it? Given the chice between going left and right, which would I choose?

User avatar
Kazoo
Launchie
Launchie
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2009 5:07 pm

Postby Kazoo » Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:01 pm

Would extraterrestrial life benefit us? I don't know if that's a meaningful question.

First we would need to universally agree on a standard definition of what life is. Since we don't have any idea whether our biosphere represents an average or extraordinary development of life, one common conjecture is that we might not recognize life if we encountered it elsewhere.

Once we have an understanding of life, we have to then define what benefit constitutes, and whether we're looking at benefit from the perspective of the life form or humanity. For example, if, through direct contact, the life form (intentionally or unintentionally) introduces a change in our physiology or society, is this beneficial? Or does it interfere with what we would consider to be the natural course of humanity? How about a change that is introduced to humanity by choice through our willing observation or interaction with the life form?

Even something that we see as being infinitely beneficial to the human race could have cataclysmic ramifications; take the fictional "molecular destabilization" technology as a perfect illustration.

Let's use a real life scenario. You're walking in the woods and come across a honey comb attached to the bark of a tree. It looks delicious. You pick it up and suck on the honey, inadvertently angering a swarm of killer bees. They land on you en masse, embedding their barbed stingers into your face, injecting a puerile venom into your muscle tissue. You reel over backwards, fall to your knees, face and throat swelling from the toxins. Eventually you die from asphyxiation... simply because you wanted a tasty snack!

Tyme_Brintain
Launchie
Launchie
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Apr 06, 2009 2:15 am

Postby Tyme_Brintain » Mon Apr 06, 2009 8:11 pm

its not just something like that although you raise a good point. all throughout human history, we as a species always want to have the upper hand.

if we encounter a race of extra-terrestrials that are much more advanced than we are, there would be two possibilities.

the first is that we are nice with them only because they are much more advanced than us and we see that they could destroy us so we want to comply with them to gain their trust and eventually their technology through trade, our culture possibly for their technology.

the second is that we become afraid and try to strike against them and possibly win a first fight but would loose the rest and eventually be destroyed because of our own stupidity.

BUT if we were to encounter a race of lower developed creatures, say somewhere around our middle ages, then we would probably conquer them to show our superiority over the race.

DISCLAIMER: everything that i have said has to do with certain circumstances and it would really depend on the leaders of the nations at the time of the meeting. really it could be beneficial but it could also be our downfall...and again it really depends on the mindset of the national leaders.
In the end, when the day is through, you return home to begin the journey anew tomorrow.

What's past is past and what's present is funnier.

User avatar
Janus%TheDoorman
Toon Leader
Toon Leader
Posts: 563
Joined: Wed May 30, 2007 8:05 am
Title: The Original Two-Face
Location: New Jersey

Postby Janus%TheDoorman » Wed Jul 08, 2009 12:09 am

Am I looking at a different history than the rest of you?

We started out as barely differentiable from every other predator out there, only vastly more effective because of our intelligence. Have there been periods of lawlessness and blind aggression in our history? To be sure, but on the whole, we're ...

Ah, who am I kidding?

Meeting up with another race of similar advances would likely induce a species-wide us-and-them mentality. I'm not saying we'd go marching on their shores to blow them away before they shot at us first, but just as Europe is unifying to compete with the US economically, just as the emergence of communism led to a new sense of national identity in the US, First Contact will probably speed up, if it hasn't happened by then, the conglomeration of humans into one political/economic entity.

If their psychology is at all like ours, the cycle would then propagate on through. First Contact, I'd hazard a guess, will not be as hugely transformative an event as some might believe. Ender's Game and Mass Effect do a good job of portraying the likely outcome, Star Trek does not, though the differences between ST society and ours seem more to have been brought about by other advances in technology not terribly related to warp travel and alien contact.
"But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is."
-Alan Watts

User avatar
LiQingJao
Launchie
Launchie
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Jun 30, 2010 11:34 am

Postby LiQingJao » Wed Jun 30, 2010 6:51 pm

I think OSC got this one right. If circumstances went the way that he imagined, i think his portrayal of human action would be pretty close to reality. However, if we were NOT attacked first, if we were the ones who discovered the alien race...

The benefits of it could be great, but i think that what must be considered, more than human intelligence or action, is the way that the alien life reacts to humanity. If we can communicate with them, they might be so primitive that they worship us. If they have less than us, whether in technology, emotion, intelligence, then they could become jealous and wage war. They might be what we would consider reasonable, attempting negotiations and trade with us. They might live their lives in perpetual war, and attack because that's how they go on (sort of like how the descolada affected the life cycle of the pequeninos; they had to kill each other in order to reproduce). They might be peace loving, and be so horrified by our race that they cut off all communication with us, or they might be similar to us, and so horrified by us that they kill us all. They might be so scared that they kill themselves. Maybe we can NOT communicate with them, and we must either kill them or be killed. Maybe we find that communication is impossible, but we are in no danger, so we study them, or even *gasp* leave them alone!

I think that whatever benefits could result from alien life forms would be determined more by their reaction to us than anything else. In that equation, they are an unknown quantity, and we cannot begin to guess at the benefits or detriments until that quantity is established.
“For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all”
--Aristotle

Paul
Soldier
Soldier
Posts: 204
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2006 5:27 am
Title: sparkie_adams
Location: Kansas

Postby Paul » Thu Oct 28, 2010 6:45 pm

Interesting that everyone is only talking about the discovery of intelligent life. Personally, I think the odds of humans ever contacting another intelligent life form is VERY close to zero. I'm not saying that it doesn't exist, its just that stars are very far apart, and the energy requirements to travel between them is so great.

That being said, I would be surprised if humans never find alien life. Heck, I think its pretty likely that we will find it in our own neighborhood. Either on Mars, or a moon around Saturn or Jupiter. Its been all but confirmed that Mars had liquid water at one time, seems likely that a couple small hold-outs might still exist there. Or on a moon, several moons are (thought?) known to have liquid water below their icy crust. Seems like the perfect place for alien micro organisms to thrive.

What would it mean for humanity to find these little aliens? It could mean A LOT! Just knowing that life can exist in other places would answer many important questions. If found, most likely the micro organisms evolved one of two ways. Either it evolved there naturally, with no relationship to us, or early in the solar system's life, it was transplanted from earth.

Either possibility would get us MUCH closer to understanding the origins of life. If it evolved there naturally, meaning in isolation from earth, it means that any place where the environmental conditions are good, living organisms will evolve. If it happened twice in our solar system, then it likely did around other stars.

There is also a good chance that if we study these newly discovered (hypothetical) alien micro organism we will discover a common ancestor. What would that mean for us? At some point early in our history, a rock with some bacteria or something on it was objected from earth during a fairly large impact. After floating around the solar system for some amount of time it landed where we later found our little aliens.

Either way a major piece of of the puzzle would be put into place and get us that much closer to answering a question that has bugged us since the beginning of history. Where did we come from?


Return to “Milagre Town Square”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Ahrefs [Bot], Amazon [Bot] and 58 guests