this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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I can’t remember where I read it but I like the idea of comparing humanity to ants.
Imagine an ant hill, next to a bridge. The ant can’t even comprehend the bridge, what its for. To the ant it might as well just be more ground.
If we are the ant, what are we missing?
That not about difference in intelligence it's about difference is size...
And Humans would 100% notice a spaceship with being 1,000s of times bigger than us, if only because it would block the sky and change gravity.
If aliens were the size of ants, they likely won't have the space for a brain big enough to get here.
Aliens might be real somewhere, but the universe is too huge to travel. Unless they're functionally immortal, there's no chance we see a live one.
If (and it's a big if) we see proof of extraterrestrial life, it's going to probes/drones/robots from a civilization that existed long before intelligent life on Earth started. Even if they are still around, they probably won't be by the time they get some kind of response.
The best chance is coming across some ancient version of the Voyager prove. Just enough that it proves we're not alone, but not enough to actually do anything about it
It’s foolish to think there is t any other form of life out there just considering the size of the universe.
Whether said life is intelligent, especially space-faring intelligent, is the big question.
That's not that much of a stretch, though. The way things are going, we'll probably have indefinite lifespans before we have major colonies on other planets.
I like the idea that intelligent extra terrestrial life knows we can’t be trusted, and has blocked our views of them.
Maybe that’s what dark matter is—or artificial red shift—to make us feel hopelessly far from the rest of the universe.
The asteroids and meteors in the article could be lobbed by pranksters and that was the only object they could get through the curtain.
I don’t really believe any of this but it’s fun to imagine.
What’s more likely is the Dark Forest phenomenon as laid out in the Three Body Problem. Basically, it’s an existential threat to be seen by extraterrestrial life, so it’s best to keep quiet.
More than likely a case of the best defense simply being to avoid offense, but to continue to contain or ahem farm us, almost like pets lol
That's as likely as saying Santa and the Easter Bunny are real, but magically make everyone forget once they stop being kids and implant false memories in the adults who think they bought the presents or hid the eggs themselves
But my mom doesn't remember any presents she didn't buy.
That would be the safest and easiest potential to imagine, but have you thought that all the Doomsday alien movies indicate to us and our ecosystems supporters so to speak, the greater likelihood and potential for armed conflict when or if we were to come into contact with another intelligent alien species?
One is preferable, however unlikely, the rest of the movies and imaginary scenarios tell us that we've a greater likelihood of it not being the case.
When I see people make comparisons like this, I often think of a paragraph from Mark Twain's, "The mysterious stranger". It's where Satan compares the intellect of an angel to that of humans.
“Well, it is true that they are nothing to me. It is not possible that they should be. The difference between them and me is abysmal, immeasurable. They have no intellect.”
“No intellect?”
“Nothing that resembles it. At a future time I will examine what man calls his mind and give you the details of that chaos, then you will see and understand. Men have nothing in common with me—there is no point of contact; they have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have no sense. Only the Moral Sense. I will show you what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big as a pin's head. Can you imagine an elephant being interested in him—caring whether he is happy or isn't, or whether he is wealthy or poor, or whether his sweetheart returns his love or not, or whether his mother is sick or well, or whether he is looked up to in society or not, or whether his enemies will smite him or his friends desert him, or whether his hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail, or whether he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and despised in a foreign land? These things can never be important to the elephant; they are nothing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to the microscopic size of them. Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant. The elephant has nothing against the spider—he cannot get down to that remote level; I have nothing against man. The elephant is indifferent; I am indifferent. The elephant would not take the trouble to do the spider an ill turn; if he took the notion he might do him a good turn, if it came in his way and cost nothing. I have done men good service, but no ill turns.
“The elephant lives a century, the red spider a day; in power, intellect, and dignity the one creature is separated from the other by a distance which is simply astronomical. Yet in these, as in all qualities, man is immeasurably further below me than is the wee spider below the elephant."
In a way his analogy breaks down since he, a human, is spending actually quite a bit of time thinking on the life of this spider. As we do many creatures