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Debate over sending messages to ETs heats up

Dinwar said:
Nope. I am assuming that it's going to be isolated and in a hostile environment. The first is given, considering the fact that we're talking about some sort of vessel--for the purposes of replenishing supplies, ALL vessels are isolated. Even cars need to stop at gas stations. The second is given, considering the fac that space is dangerous. Look at what happens when a grain of sand traveling at a significant percentage of c hits something; NO ship can just laugh off a hit like that. xkcd did a neat "What If" on this topic using baseballs; the result was equivalent to a nuclear bomb. And that's just one hazard; any one of a billion different things can go wrong, necessitating repairs on a timescale from "when you get around to it" to "we're all dead if you don't fix it now".

ANYTHING that has those issues to contend with will NECESSARILY have to find some celestial body to harvest for resources to repair itself. If you wish to disagree with me, those are the points you need to disprove. Dismissing them, as has been your MO in thread, doesn't make them go away.

This will still require energy. Earthly cycles are driven by nuclear energy in the planet's interior and solar energy from the exterior. Without those, we'd have no cycles at all--there wouldn't be sufficient energy. What this means is that SOMETHING is being used up, and will eventually run out. Furthermore, even the largest ship cannot carry an infinite number of replacement parts; I've yet to hear of anything that can carry even sufficient replacement parts to duplicate itself. Which means that unless you are postulating as-yet unknown technology (ie, magical thinking), you've got to account for damage and repairs.
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We started with the presumption that beings could cross between stars, over hundreds if not thousands of years and you think the sizes and technologies are NASA 2015.

This is getting silly.
 
I guess it goes to prove the need for humans to believe in something.

Religion provides an outlet for the truly deluded, while skeptics embrace irrational ideas that are theoretically possible.

I don't see a big difference.
 
The Atheist said:
I guess it goes to prove the need for humans to believe in something.

Religion provides an outlet for the truly deluded, while skeptics embrace irrational ideas that are theoretically possible.

I don't see a big difference.
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I disagree, present rational reasons, based in sound physics and historic examples (also known as "the available data"), and I am the silly one taking a fundimentally magical approach to the question. :rolleyes:

Thank you for reminding me why this site is a waste of time.
 
The Atheist said:
I guess it goes to prove the need for humans to believe in something.

Religion provides an outlet for the truly deluded, while skeptics embrace irrational ideas that are theoretically possible.

I don't see a big difference.
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That makes no sense. In the 1700s William Herschel theorized about black holes. Theoretically he was right, but the concept was completely unprovable at the time.

Does that make him either deluded or irrational?
 
MG1962 said:
That makes no sense. In the 1700s William Herschel theorized about black holes. Theoretically he was right, but the concept was completely unprovable at the time.

Does that make him either deluded or irrational?
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Neither.

He wasn't proposing travelling into one.
 
Dinwar said:
I disagree, present rational reasons, based in sound physics and historic examples (also known as "the available data"), and I am the silly one taking a fundimentally magical approach to the question. :rolleyes:
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Again I must ask for these historical examples of which you type.

The only historical example of any comparison at all are the moon landings and we haven't followed them up 40 years later.

And yes, you are taking a fundamentally magical approach to the question, but that's perfectly ok, because it is theoretically possible!

Dinwar said:
Thank you for reminding me why this site is a waste of time.
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Quite right. A site where people didn't point out egregious errors would be much more conducive to intelligent discourse.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
The amazing thing would be that we would have equivalent technologies. To use a crude example, how many of you can read smoke signals?
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Yep.

I think the problem will be greater, because of our specific "earthly" metabolism. We evolved in competition with other earthly living creatures. We burn oxygen in same way as other animals because that's how we evolved on Earth. A different sort of life form, evolved for a very different environment, may take a week to count to one, which may be a perfect solution for a very low oxygen environment.

I understand that there are universal constants that, in theory, all lifeforms can observe. I just think there is zero chance, that aliens will have a metabolism anything near to that us earthlings evolved on earth. I'm not saying "slow" or "fast" aliens will be dumb, but will be just too different to communicate with.

I think it is more likely that humans will spread and keep evolving on different planets over the next million years or so, until the species dies out.

Last human to go wins!
:)
 
Wolfman said:
rjh, you seem to equate "living peacefully" with "treating everyone equally". The two are not in any way synonymous. I can easily envisage numerous different kinds of cultures that 'live peacefully', but do not treat everyone equally. Just within human cultures, Tibetan history had long periods of peace, yet a greatly stratified culture that placed significant value of some people's lives over the lives of others.

Now, expand that to a culture with entirely different evolutionary pressures, all of which have gone towards developing their own moral and ethical values. I think it is rather ludicrous to assume that those values would align with our own. Heck, we can't even agree as humans. Animal testing -- is it right or wrong? If wrong, is it always wrong, or only in some instances? Or eating animal flesh -- is it right or wrong? There are some who argue that vegetarianism is evidence of a 'higher' moral/ethical plane, while others think that is nonsense, since we evolved as omnivores to eat both meat and plants.

It is easy to envisage numerous scenarios where aliens would see us as having less value than them, being inferior to them (especially given that in order to get here, they would be definition be far more technologically advanced), etc. They could be a culture that had achieved complete harmony and peace on their own planet...and yet had no qualms about subjugating or eliminating us in order to maintain that peace in their settlement of our planet.
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Yet what would be the purpose of going over to this planet just because a message was sent? Especially to "maintain peace" -- nothing we have could ever pose a serious danger to an extremely advanced alien civilization, so there wouldn't be any reason for defense, so what would be the reason?

Also, how does a society without "equal treatment" necessarily equal one that would direct aggression or expansion outward? You mentioned Tibet was not equal, but did not aggress outward. In the first type of alien you mentioned, with the population control by culling their litter, such alien would probably not be very expansionist due to that very fact. With the second type of alien, perhaps they may have less qualms about killing us were we to end up on their planet, but what would make them decide to send an attack here? Since we're not discussing going to their planet (we don't have anywhere close to the technology for that), but rather sending them messages.
 
@Dinwar: I'm curious about this. Why would they have to go to Earth to fix their craft, when most likely some other planet would be much more accessible? And if Earth was the most accessible they wouldn't need a message to try it.

Also, what do you think could happen if we continue to blast out messages into space?
 
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All these discussions rely on aliens caring if anything is out there.

They could all be bathing naked in some rhinoceros like creatures milk not giving a monkeys
 
cullennz said:
All these discussions rely on aliens caring if anything is out there.

They could all be bathing naked in some rhinoceros like creatures milk not giving a monkeys
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I was just reading the first page, and skimmed over to the last page and read this. I was going to post something similar.

Human beings have very interesting qualities that virtually no other animal on this planet has, that has combined to allow us to create advanced technologies to begin with:

1. We are highly intelligent. (But so are dolphins and whales. Possibly about as intelligent as humans.)

2. We walk upright, on dry land, and have two extremely useful limbs that end in 5 highly dextrous fingers.

3A. We are curious. We are extremely curious about the world around us. We like to explore, and experiment.
3B. We are ambitious. Just sitting around in rhinoceros milk does not satisfy us. At all.

4. We are diverse. Human beings have an extremely wide range of specialized skills on an individual basis. This provides a lot of flexibility in our endeavors to advance and discover.

I propose that technologically, humans ARE the most advanced species, or at least in the top 1%, not of this galaxy, but of the universe. Why is it that everyone assumes that, should another highly intelligent alien species exist, they should be more technologically advanced than us? Of course, if they visited earth, that would be given. But we have never been visited, nor have we heard from anyone.

Aggressiveness: I would put humans about the middle, among all intelligent species in existence. I can see plausible arguments of other species not even caring about humans, and just steamrolling us. Others where they would be outright hostile because they view us as rivals. But yet, there could be civilizations that are extremely peaceful and docile. There is no reason to suppose that, like Earth, all life MUST struggle against all other life on a planet for superiority/domination. Indeed, perhaps there are even planets out there where all life helps all life in a "multi-biotic" relationship?
 
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