First contact: Is humanity ready?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > First contact: Is humanity ready?

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Who What Now posted:

Why does the question assume aliens coming to earth, and not humanity becoming a space-faring race?

Because then the question would be "Will humanity be ready?" Also not really relevant for anyone reading this thread, except the alien sociologists writing a ph.d. on primitive semi-cooperative civilizations.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2016 07:42

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 10:07

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

rudatron posted:

You can't cloak anything in space, anything warmer than background temperature (which it had to be to even be alive or active) will emit blackbody radiation. There's also the light from the sun that you have to either reflect or absorb (which raises the temperature).

So sorry, you can't hide in space. Now pretending to be an asteroid, that's something different. Of course, if you ever move enough, you'll get noticed as anomalous. Your Delta V change will get puzzled over. Though I dunno about this one, if the people doing the tracking aren't doing it with enough precision, you might get away with it.

All of this ignores that I'm fairly confident you're a little out of it. So just relax, aliens aren't here, or coming, or watching you. Find a new hobby, buddy.

How do you know the aliens aren't doing their monitoring from inside the Earth?

# ¿ Mar 19, 2016 08:35

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Anosmoman posted:

Somewhat over-complicated when they can base their sociological dissertations on the interwebs and TV.

They need to monitor tribesmen in the Amazon too you know.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2016 12:22

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

SedanChair posted:

So now you're comparing yourself to a pioneer of medicine, based on feelings in your shoulders when you were lying in bed. Grandiose delusions are another feature of schizophrenia.

I see right through you. Go back to where you came from, we don't want your kind here, Earth belongs to humanity.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2016 21:31

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

A big flaming stink posted:

that's silly.
Humans aren't going to go lemmings the moment aliens appear. gently caress, people didn't commit mass suicides in the loving london bombings, I think they can handle the existence of extraterrestrial life.

The London bombings weren't anything special, nothing about them would make people truly question our existence (other than the ones directly affected perhaps). The arrival of extraterrestrials on the other hand would mean humanity was no longer at the top of the food chain so to speak, overturning a tens of thousands of years old status quo. On top of that you of course have the fact that it would result in a major overturning of traditional religious thought in most of the world, which definitely opens up for all kinds of weird cults, including ones that encourage mass suicides. I mean, it's not like an alien worshiping cult ending in mass suicide is unheard of, imagine what could happen if you suddenly had actual aliens around.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2016 18:54

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

DrSunshine posted:

The main issue being uncertainty. Investors might want to pull out of most of their equity and pour money into valuables and commodities due to uncertainties over the stability of world governments and the business world due to the sudden and unprecedented appearance of alien powers. That sort of massive selloff alone could cause the global financial markets to spiral out of control in the wake of first contact.

Definitely agree. Aliens arriving would very much put the authority of states into question, as well as you say introduce a lot of uncertainty in terms of where the economy is going, both of which could lead to a global financial meltdown. And of course a financial meltdown on top of people questioning the idea of the state being the ultimate authority is not a recipe for stability, which leads to stuff like militias and cults.

My Imaginary GF posted:

what if they were a buncha really, really, really tasty spacecows?

could we eat them?

Well, if they told us they were really, really, really tasty; then they'd really be asking for it.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2016 19:57

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

SedanChair posted:

That's how they'll transplant their own sentience into our forms. "Eat of me."

That's what mad cow disease is.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2016 22:05

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Mofabio posted:

I do think aliens, by virtue of their visit, would be smarter than dolphins and dogs. However, our superior intelligence has not allowed us to communicate with either species at the level of a native speaker.

Similarly, wolves are smarter than prairie dogs. Yet, as far as we can tell, both species are mutually unintelligible. Prairie dogs, which have one of the most extensive vocabularies in the animal kingdom, are totally unintelligible to more intelligent species. Are horses smarter than cows? Is the smarter of the two able to communicate with the dumber? We're much smarter than ants, and we know that they have extensive communication capabilities, but we're far from fluent in ant.

My point is, intelligence hasn't seemed to helped much in inter-species communication. And this is considering species with similar evolutionary backgrounds and communication hardware. Maybe we'll be figured out, but I think you're overestimating the comprehensibility of communication between species.

I think the point is that we as a species are really willing to try to communicate with other species and see it as a worthwhile thing to do (people and their pets), and some people take it further and try to establish communication in a scientific manner. If we were to meet a species as or more intelligent than us which was keen on using the same sort of tools to establish communication, you'd have a major advantage relative to people trying to communicate with animals which aren't active participants in the attempt to establish communication. (As in, they try to figure out communication problems when not around people.) Obviously you still have the potential issue of their primary means of communication being very alien from human communication, like the chemical based communication of ants, but a visual/audial species could be "relatively" easy to communicate with.

fnox posted:

It's stupidly poetic but it's very likely they'd be able to communicate with us by the time they get here, I mean, unlike dogs or cetaceans we have almost a hundred years of radio communications bouncing off into space. Considering we're also very likely to be the dogs in this metaphor, it should be easier for them to learn how to communicate to us rather than the other way around.

IIRC, our radio communications become increasingly indistinct as they travel further away, so the aliens might have had to have been in a very close neighborhood to have picked all that poo poo up.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2016 08:04

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 10:07

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Potential BFF posted:

Sight and audio perception are huge evolutionary advantages so while aliens might not possess either, I'd wager that they'd possess at least one. Light is pretty ubiquitous in the universe and illumination is pretty helpful in performing complex tasks like building an interstellar vessel.

Or even knowing that there is something beyond the world you've evolved on.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2016 09:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > First contact: Is humanity ready?