this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
282 points (98.3% liked)

science

14883 readers
38 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.

2024-11-11

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 75 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Great. We wanted aliens and we get more climate doom.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (8 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It’s an assumption that intelligent life unknown to us is space faring.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

That's like asking why would people go to safaris, I'm sure the concept of tourism will exist forever.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

why would any advanced race expend resources to come visit a type 0 "civilization" of malevolent primates torturing and manipulating one another

Idk ask Jane Goodall. People do it, why wouldn't "space people?"

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

chimps don't have nuclear weapons or VX.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

A synthetic neurotoxin

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

@ArcaneSlime @AllonzeeLV
Gorillas (and bonobos) are gentle, quite unlike humans. Baboons are a better analogue.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Fair but idk the name of the lady who studied baboons so Jane Goodall it is.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

@ArcaneSlime
Fair reply lol, nobody knows

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

All life would be precious to them.

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

@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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean, I avoid "reality" shows like the plague for being a celebration of duhhhhh.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So you think seeing the entire spectrum of earth lifeforms is equivalent to reality tv shows?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well, I don't, but some scientists are tasked with it so someone does whether "fun" is the reason or not.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They do it for pay so they don't starve. We are very much not in a post scarcity society.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Maybe you're right.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It died when I realized I was born into the species that kills all the other species.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You sound young. Keep up the hope.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Great, hope you're right 👍

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Great patronization, I hope you feel better now. I can't wait for the peaceful global transition away from capitalism lol.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I was hoping for whale farts.