Aliens

[Big Les]

The standard issue USCM 10mm caseless explosive ammunition does the job pretty well, given a cool head and absence of cowardly corporate shills...

 

[fuelair]

The standard issue USCM 10mm caseless explosive ammunition does the job pretty well, given a cool head and absence of cowardly corporate shills...

I'm also a big fan of the early Alien comics - and the first Alien semi-graphic novel. A scene I would loved to see in one of the films is a close up of an Alien's head. In it's mouth, pin pulled is a canister grenade marked Colonial Marines. Wonder how it was placed there !!

(well, actually it was drawn there by the artist, but.....)

 

[slipknot0129]

It could be argued that game theory suggests any highly evolved intelligent races we encounter will exhibit a respect for autonomy of others, if not empathy.

However, that argument hinges on the supposition that such a race will have evolved as rational agents and therefore that game theory actually applies to them like it does to us. This may not be the case, although admittedly it is hard for me to imagine an evolved intelligence being anything else.

What do you all think? What are the chances that intelligent alien races we encounter will or will not fit this "mold?"

It could also be argued that given the size of the known universe, there is a very high probability of intelligent life evolving elsewhere. If so, one would expect at least a few of those species to have come about earlier than we did, possibly by millions of years.

Supposing we look at where we are now, and extrapolate a few million years in the future, I would expect a godlike level of technology that has tamed everything in the natural world that can be tamed. Yet, we have not encountered any evidence of another race doing so.

Does this suggest there will never be a way to traverse the universe faster than light? Or does it suggest civilizations usually destroy themselves before they learn such techniques?

there are aliens on earth as you speak.

 

[Cuddles]

Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe eventually a stability point is reached and the population no longer grows.
This item assumes a human-like, pioneer/expansionist behavior. We just don't know if this is a rule, if this will continue and for how long.

The bigger problem is what exactly does "clogged" mean? We know life is possible, and that it is therefore unlikely that we are the only example of life, but we know next to nothing about how probable it is. What if it's so improbable that there is only, on average, one per galaxy, or per galactic cluster? In the words or Douglas Adams, the population of the universe is zero, since any finite number divided by an infinite number is zero. The universe may not actually be inifinite, but it is close enough. The population of the universe may be huge, but the population density could be so small that we are unlikely to ever see any other life, no matter how fast it is possible to travel.

There's also the problem of assuming that because intelligent life is probable, civilisation, and, more importantly, technology, must be probable. In most sci-fi, and most speculation I've seen about the real world, intelligence and civilisation are often equated, but this is just not true. The problem isn't just the probability of one leading to the other, it is also that in many cases civilisation and technology may simply not be possible.

 

[Correa Neto]

"Clogged" would mean the maximum number of specimens (or specimens/volume unit of your choice) the environment can support. Since we don't know this number and the exact variables and functions that determinate it... Who knows? Maybe its already clogged, after all.

And yes, civilization or culture, is one thing. Technology level or type another thing. Once can conceive a race of philosophers; much talk but no rockets.