There seems to be several trains of thought about the motivations of any extra terrestrials that come to Earth. Stephen Hawking thinks they will be vicious, colonizing, warmongers, while Carl Sagan sees them as enlightened, peaceful explorers. Others have different ideas. I would like to think that Carl Sagan is right, that the effort it would take to travel through the cosmos would require a more cooperative attitude.
Carl Sagan smoked too much dope. In human history, the more violent and more belligerent the primitive tribe, the better outcome they had after the invasion of a more advanced group. No reason to think that wouldn't hold true. Basically speaking, any civilization capable of travel between solar systems would look at us as primitives. To presume benevolence is just optimistic, pie in the sky thinking.
that impossible to say, you're assuming they have a thought process and a sense of morality like as we understand it...i thinks a big leap of logic to assume they're anything like us, physical or mentally they may not even take notice of us and remove us like a pest, like a hive of bees or ants removes invaders, like hive insects they may have no morality no good or bad intentions we're just in the way and exterminate us...or simply ignore us and move on... if there are extraterrestrials and they arrive here it's for resources otherwise there's no point to space travel, for any intelligent civilization space travel will be horribly expensive there needs to be profit motive, are they going to care if we don't want to share? doubtful.... exploration for curiosity is a sentiment they may not even have, exploration can be done cheaply with long range sensors and automated probes...
Aliens don't belong to specific traits. That's racist. They are just animal people taking a safari ride around the neighborhood.
We'd be lucky to correctly guess whether alien arrivals are artificial. Even we are challenging the Turing test. And, they might not send us a diagram of their internal structure.
They'll treat us as primitives, to be 'enlightened'. They wont attack us militarily, but rather they'll manipulate from behind the scenes while trying to appear magnanimous and benevolent, possibly to get us to attack ourselves for their benefit. They're goal will be to keep us confined to this planet so we never compete with them for resources or territory elsewhere.
if they're looking for resources the galaxy is abundant in everything they could need, minerals and water are everywhere. the only resource I see them searching for that is not abundant will be protein, us...
They will inherently be intelligent and peaceful just by existing and having the ability to get here. That said they will avoid us after watching our history and mindset.
but we're also intelligent but that never stopped our ancestors from making life hell for others during the age of exploration and colonization...imperialist nations went looking for resources and just took them, stomping on any who resisted our superior technology
IF by chance their minds worked in such a way....we would already be enslaved or eaten or whatever. Guaranteed that if they can get here, they can do whatever they want to us.
agreed...our only hope is if they come from a planet with less gravity than earths, their terrestrial visits would need to be very short duration, if so not worth hanging around and they'll be off to the next solar system...
Why is that a "hope"? If they've mastered star travel, they've most likely mastered anti-gravity technology so gravity (more or less) would not be any kind of barrier. Why is that? It's been theorized that ETs have been visiting this planet for thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.
the laws of physics and biology don't care about technology...anti-gravity is sci-fi fantasy as is faster than light speed/warp drive some one having fantasies of alien visitation isn't reality...there isn't an iota of evidence of alien visitation to earth ever, because someone imagined it and others believed as true, doesn't make it so...
It is a complete unknown. Whether peaceful or vicious, there is no doubt any ET coming to earth would be hundreds of years technological wise ahead of us. In simple terms, the ET's could have their way with us. Even if ET's came here, they might decide we're not even worth bothering. They could look upon as as we today would look at stone age man. Whether as friend or conqueror, there would have little say in it.
But technology relies on the laws of physics and biology (as we understand it). What is your point? So is star travel (to our primitive technology). Any species that has conquered star travel has likely conquered both in ways we can't imagine. You have limited your world view to what YOU believe is fantasy and refuse to look beyond the tip of your nose. It isn't reality only IF it's fantasy. It isn't fantasy if it's reality. In your world. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence and eyewitness claims of alien visitation. That's correct but that has nothing to do with any of these points. Just because YOU believe it's all imagined and science fiction doesn't necessarily make it that.
you don't grasp the absoluteness of physics... my nose and the nose of every Physicist there is...those are some pretty smart people, Einstein for one I love that you're including me with them.... there is zero evidence for alien visitation, ZERO!...people also claim they've seen the Yeti, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, but there is ZERO evidence for any of them... just because you want to believe it's true doesn't make it so, blind faith is for religion...the onus isn't on me to prove a negative, until there is corroborated evidence of anything then it's not true, that's a hard and true rule of science.
I voted "other". I think they're genocidal xenophobes. It's awful quiet out there. SETI has found nothing. Nobody is broadcasting their position. Why is that? Imagine a universe with many friendly aliens and a handful of xenophobes. What happens? It's easy to wipe out a planet, it you're willing to take the time. Accelerate a comet or asteriod into the planet at some significant fraction of lightspeed. Boom. Takes centuries to deliver, but essentially unstoppable. The xenophobes are patient. They lay low and send out their planet killers. Eventually, all the friendlies are gone, and everyone remaining is laying low and staying silent. The good news for us is we're probably still undetected. Our radio noise isn't that strong.
But to presume malevolence is pessimistic, doom and gloom thinking. ha ha So when an intelligent life form shows up in the evolutionary process, does it also evolve away from the behavior needed early on in that evolution? That is, does it evolve away from malevolence into benevolence? Well, we simply don't know. If not, we might get invaded one day by beings and we would appear as primitive chimps and they would have no trouble exterminating us. I am hoping life evolves towards benevolence. ha ha
It's you who doesn't understand that physics has its limitations. For example, physics doesn't apply in a Black Hole. Physics is also a man invented science and man's science is at most 4,000 years old give or take (modern physics being less than 400 years old). The universe is estimated to be over 13.5 billion years old. Odds are pretty good that the technology of some intelligent life forms are tens of thousands, hundreds or millions of years old, far surpassing our own. No just yours. Based on your posts, I would only include you with the most close minded denying types. For YOU. "None are so blind as those who will not see" And people also claimed the Earth was flat, for centuries and there was ZERO evidence otherwise in their narrow minded world view. This discussion is about ETs, you're trying to lump every theory YOU deny into the same category. Just because you don't want to believe it might be true doesn't make it false. Agreed (as to religion) and no one is asking you to prove anything. And that's 100% false. If that were the case, all scientists would assume any unproven theory to be false and quit pursuing it because they're automatically false. In your world Black Holes would not be true. Theories are neither true or false unless and until proven otherwise, they're just theories, nor are they "faith". Just because someone proposes a theory does not mean that person believes it's true on faith. Having said that in the case of ETs, there are literally hundreds if not thousands of corroborated accounts from all sorts of people all over the planet, included some highly respected ones. Whether you or I believe these are true or not is irrelevant, their accounts are not going to go away. Only an ignorant type will automatically dismiss all these claims and circumstantial evidence because he/she doesn't want to believe the possibility exists. I personally have no idea if there are ETs, I've never seen a UFO much less encountered an ET. That doesn't mean I'm not open minded enough to believe they may exist and logically, the probability that they do exist and that some species are far more technologically advanced than us primitive (and some narrow minded) humans is quite high IMO.
Reading all the comments, I'm seeing that the idea of extra-terrestrials is less about them and more of how the commentor sees the world.
They would most likely be AI, not biological, due to the limits of biological creatures (life span, susceptibility to radiation, et al). Just like how we send out machines to do our deep space exploration. And the motivations and thought processes of that AI would almost certainly be on the other side of the technological singularity, and therefore impossible to determine.
lol physics predicted the black hole before one was ever detected, it absolutely obeys the laws of physics...you're completely naive .... physics was invented that's ludicrous, the laws of physics is what rules the motion of universe...wow man, just wow! , einstein, carl sagan, de Grasse tyson, Stephan Hawking...but yeah you know more ...LOL evidence based reality...I know it's a huge leap of logic to grasp for those who live in hollywood fantasy land...oh wait, you mean Thor is real too! for every legitimate scientist and anthropologist, zero evidence means zero verifcation...burden of proof is on those making baseless claims, what you propose is not how science works 'there's a sucker born every minute" crappy history knowledge too is based on historical ineptness.... many civilizations were quite aware the earth was round going all the way back to the Egyptians so about 2,400yrs... they're lumped together because your et imaginings are as ludicrous as the others, dummies see something they don't understand and jump to ridiculous conclusions based on their imaginations rather than hard evidence and fact based science...et visitations are no more real than bigfoot... so vampires and werewolves are real too, because people claim to have seen those too? belief in something without evidence is faith...science doesn't recognize faith as evidence ] ahh now we're seeing your lack of knowledge....no one "proposes a theory" but a hypothesis...if a hypothesis withstands repeated challenge and verification then it is accepted....definition of theory is accepted as TRUE ...you're yammering like you understand science but you don't even understand the rules of hypothesis and theory, that's pretty basic stuff... lot's of tinfoil hat people with vivid imaginations, I've never stated at anytime anywhere there is no possibility of life elsewhere, only that intelligent extraterrestrial life has never visited earth ....i'll happily group myself with Einstein, Sagan, de Grasse Tyson and Hawking pretty solid company...without evidence you got nothing, only fantasy
good point but why make enormous expensive journeys?...exploration is resource driven, even insects follow this rule, expansion in search of resources/food...water and minerals are in abundance everywhere in the galaxy, the only likely thing not to be in abundance is food...there is no point to space travel unless otherwise...
nor has it got very far humanity has only been sending out radio signals for about 100yrs here's the extent of our signal in 100 years and those were as you say very weak signals...our first intentional signals into space to make alien contact began in 1974
