I think smokebailey has it right concerning people in power. Human beings in power want to remain in power. They will happily send other people half a world away to die if it will keep them in power. There are people like that all over the world. They play whack-a-mole with each other and only get antsy about exerting power when confronted by someone of comparable power. They usually motivate people to protect their quality of life by extolling the differences of people they want dead.
Our world leaders would sell one another's people into space meat processing factories to get a leg up on one another. Aliens could arrive on earth with the noblest intentions and we would blow it all on inability to deal fairly with one another without taking their foibles into account. Not to worry. Without your knowledge I acted on our behalf as the ambassador of humanity years ago. I asked nothing of humanity for my services as a negotiator. Carry on as you please. I told them to save themselves the hassle and come back in a century or less after we solved the problem of first contact with humans ourselves.
Maybe, or maybe not. It's all a matter of what they see as the best way to power. They could see the aliens as a threat to their power and want them gone or subjugated. Why? Well, it all depends on what the aliens do when meeting people. If the aliens act benevolent, it might erode the powerbase by causing the people to listen to the aliens and not the leaders. Or conversely, if the aliens are overtly aggressive, the aliens might be attacking their power base directly.
I say either way is gonna be good, it's not like our current world is any good....all ruled by greed for material and political gain by a few elite, powermad conspirators....Rockefeller and Rothschild being a few of the more well known ones.
Either way, things MUST change is man, and the planet is to get any better.
Ok.... but.... if the alien leaders are anything like Tyr'ahnee.... it will simply be a change in management and not "better". Actually.... I find it hard to believe that an alien leader would be any less self-serving than a human one.
I find it hard to believe that an alien leader would be any less self-serving than a human one.
What you're talking about is a comic book Martian - as in - from Mars? An inter-stellar and inter-solar species are two completely different monsters. I've already explained why there's very few reasons an interstellar alien species would have much exceptional interest in Earth for any self-serving purpose because there's nothing special about Earth (except as a curiosity specimen for "interstellar biologists") if you can freely move between stars in any meaningful distance.
Star Trek is fantastical technologically, but philosophically it's core, in the past (as not-Abrams), has been relatively sound sci-fi in the philosophical sense - understanding that an interstellar existence is generally a post-scarcity existence for any species (assuming we are observing the galaxy correctly and there's not some sort of invisible overpopulation problem that just makes the galaxy look mostly like a bunch of dead matter floating around).
Post edited by penemue#7777 on
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
I find it hard to believe that an alien leader would be any less self-serving than a human one.
What you're talking about is a comic book Martian - as in - from Mars? An inter-stellar and inter-solar species are two completely different monsters. I've already explained why there's very few reasons an interstellar alien species would have much exceptional interest in Earth for any self-serving purpose because there's nothing special about Earth (except as a curiosity specimen for "interstellar biologists") if you can freely move between stars in any meaningful distance.
Star Trek is fantastical, but philosophically it's core, in the past (as not-Abrams), has been relatively sound sci-fi in the philosophical sense - understanding that an interstellar existence is generally a post-scarcity existence for any species.
Tyr'ahnee was simply a humorous example. I don't think that "post scarcity" is actually a realistic expectation. It requires them to have more resources than they CAN use(or artificially limit resource use for conservation). either seems unlikely for a civilization that uses enough resources to build interstellar ships.
Also, remember, it's not humanity that's the problem, humanity's leaders ARE the problem. And we need a contact asap, we'll be able to finally get access to technology we SHOULD have had 70+ years ago (Tesla's a prime example, if he was not right, why did JP Morgan pull the plug on the project, not to mention that other prat, Thomas Edison trying to make Tesla look bad by using his electrical current to torture animals, trying to make it look dangerous?)
Not sure which project you're referring to about JP Morgan. If you mean the wireless-electricity thing in Colorado, the accepted version I heard (IIRC) was just that Morgan got impatient about when he was ever going to see a return on his money. (Answer: probably never, even if Tesla did get it to work, because going by the rest of Tesla's track record he'd probably not been considering how he was going to meter it at all.) But as for Edison, that's simple enough to explain: Tesla was his main rival in the electricity-supply business and Edison wanted him out of the market whatever it took!
(Sorry for off-topic, I'm a Tesla fan.)
However, if the government were covering up aliens. NASA's budget would be much much larger than it is as the government would consider "catching up" with the aliens to be of paramount importance.
No, that'd rather miss the point of a cover-up. If they're trying to catch up with the aliens, they'd have some other, secret agency doing it, n
It requires them to have more resources than they CAN use(or artificially limit resource use for conservation). either seems unlikely for a civilization that uses enough resources to build interstellar ships.
If there's a roving band of nomads out there - a vast fleet of alien ships moving as a "flotilla" which is sub-light speed capable (one of the most skeptical things about Trek is the idea that it is possible to exceed light speed). Under only such circumstances would Earth really present an attractive prospect to an alien species.
If light speed is possible, then Earth presents no real resource interest. If light speed really isn't possible by any means then first contact scenarios may actually be very risky because you might be dealing with a rogue alien species without a homeworld or with an overpopulated one that has become technologically advanced enough to drift through space.
Still - I failed to also mention that pro-social behavior is also necessary for interstellar travel - having listed "reason" and "curiosity" being other inherent characteristics necessary for an alien species to achieve space flight. Biological organisms need ways to organize themselves in positive fashions that promote mutual survival - otherwise civilization is impossible.
Because an advanced space-faring civilization must possessed of reason and logic, pro-social behavior, and curiosity - I find mass-genocidal species roaming the stars looking for tiny goldilocks planets with life on them to exterminate to be somewhat unlikely. I somehow doubt the vast majority of "goldilocks" planets would develop life in the first place and there'd be uninhabited planets just as good as Earth and probably many more even better.
The risk comes from sub-light speed capable nomadic civilization that is absolutely desperate for a place to stay. Even the most predatory and fierce lion only kills when he's hungry or in danger.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
Okay, going to completely ignore the claims that aliens are already visiting Earth, as better minds than mine have already pointed up the absurdities. (Read the story linked in my sig for an example.)
It is interesting to note, however, that all the worlds we've seen within a few hundred lightyears that are anything like Earth in size, and in their star's Goldilocks zone, also tend to be larger than Earth, orbiting red giant stars, and almost certainly tidally locked to their primaries (such that they would always present the same face to their sun, much as the Moon is tidally locked to Earth). Creatures from such worlds might overlook Earth entirely at first, not thinking that such a small whirligig of a world around such a hot star could possibly support life. (Imagine how long it must have taken the chirpsithtra, in Niven's Draco's Tavern stories, to realize the existence of smithpeople and roseyfins, not to mention humans - especially with their slower-than-light drive meaning most of their initial trips would be among red dwarf stars like their own.)
You know, militaries are not manned exclusively by xenophobes. They tend to be on the alert against one another because we're already familiar with humans, and know what we're likely to do. But if the first reaction to something strange to us were always "kill it", there wouldn't have been so many "war brides" during WWII, Korea, or Vietnam, would there? (One of my favorite aunts is Korean; when my uncle Fred first brought her to this country, she was looking forward to the advanced technology of the washboard so she could stop washing clothes by slapping them against the rocks down by the river. Didn't take her long to catch on to washing machines, though... )
Let's be honest, if aliens were to land anywhere in the Western world at least, an army would be needed - to keep reporters, paparazzi, and the merely insanely curious at bay until the visitors could get their bearings. Y'all have the rifles pointed in the wrong direction.
Considering Eisenhower's "Beware the military industrial complex" speech in 1961, neither military nor government, I feel is worthy of doing that. It will HAVE to be common people.....not authority figures who have failed us, and have caused us so much misery in the form of war, killing, and so on, just for the benefit of an elite few for the past 70+ years. Let's face it, with government approval at an all time LOW, government has shown us they are unworthy to be the ones regarding an ET contact.
I'm all for common people doing it, I've have some nice results doing the CE5, Close Encounters of the 5th kind (where we initiate contact and invite them here), as I said, I'll be happy to explain it to anyone who's interested in it. Only equipment you'll requite is an open mind.
If you think "the common people" will handle such an encounter better, you must not be aware of what the "common people" do to each other on a daily basis.
Personally I have to imagine that there would be several categories of interstellar civilizations.
1: those that can barely get to other stars at all and it takes years.
3: those that can quickly visit nearby stars at low cost.
But between those would be category 2, the ones that would be most... interesting to meet: those that can get to other systems relatively quickly but can't do so cheaply and must refuel their ships every trip.
Also, remember, it's not humanity that's the problem, humanity's leaders ARE the problem. And we need a contact asap, we'll be able to finally get access to technology we SHOULD have had 70+ years ago (Tesla's a prime example, if he was not right, why did JP Morgan pull the plug on the project, not to mention that other prat, Thomas Edison trying to make Tesla look bad by using his electrical current to torture animals, trying to make it look dangerous?)
Not sure which project you're referring to about JP Morgan. If you mean the wireless-electricity thing in Colorado, the accepted version I heard (IIRC) was just that Morgan got impatient about when he was ever going to see a return on his money. (Answer: probably never, even if Tesla did get it to work, because going by the rest of Tesla's track record he'd probably not been considering how he was going to meter it at all.) But as for Edison, that's simple enough to explain: Tesla was his main rival in the electricity-supply business and Edison wanted him out of the market whatever it took!
(Sorry for off-topic, I'm a Tesla fan.)
Well, to be fair, Tesla was not as good at making products as Edison. He was more of the mad-scientist type who did experiments for the sake of learning. I don't think broadcast power was ever a practical notion. Not on the sale that would be required to power entire cities. The broadcasting unit would fry any and all life within a 1/4 mile of it. Also the amount of energy received by receivers would vary greatly based on distance. It would also be inefficient since much of the power lost would be absorbed by the environment and not used.
It requires them to have more resources than they CAN use(or artificially limit resource use for conservation). either seems unlikely for a civilization that uses enough resources to build interstellar ships.
If there's a roving band of nomads out there - a vast fleet of alien ships moving as a "flotilla" which is sub-light speed capable (one of the most skeptical things about Trek is the idea that it is possible to exceed light speed). Under only such circumstances would Earth really present an attractive prospect to an alien species.
If light speed is possible, then Earth presents no real resource interest. If light speed really isn't possible by any means then first contact scenarios may actually be very risky because you might be dealing with a rogue alien species without a homeworld or with an overpopulated one that has become technologically advanced enough to drift through space.
Still - I failed to also mention that pro-social behavior is also necessary for interstellar travel - having listed "reason" and "curiosity" being other inherent characteristics necessary for an alien species to achieve space flight. Biological organisms need ways to organize themselves in positive fashions that promote mutual survival - otherwise civilization is impossible.
Because an advanced space-faring civilization must possessed of reason and logic, pro-social behavior, and curiosity - I find mass-genocidal species roaming the stars looking for tiny goldilocks planets with life on them to exterminate to be somewhat unlikely. I somehow doubt the vast majority of "goldilocks" planets would develop life in the first place and there'd be uninhabited planets just as good as Earth and probably many more even better.
The risk comes from sub-light speed capable nomadic civilization that is absolutely desperate for a place to stay. Even the most predatory and fierce lion only kills when he's hungry or in danger.
Nice rose tinted googles (with a golden frame) you have there.
I find that the "Curse of the TRIBBLE" is so prevalent here, that it allows for the possibility that it's a universal constant.
I also find it amusing that people seem to equate high technological levels with "enlightenment". Which, in my opinion, is a VERY naive view.
All this stuff about "advanced civilizations" makes me think of this:
And we all know how that movie ends.
Personally I have to imagine that there would be several categories of interstellar civilizations.
1: those that can barely get to other stars at all and it takes years.
3: those that can quickly visit nearby stars at low cost.
But between those would be category 2, the ones that would be most... interesting to meet: those that can get to other systems relatively quickly but can't do so cheaply and must refuel their ships every trip.
Not a particularly realistic movie - actually intended to parody old sci-fi movies.
Any interstellar ships don't run on Iron or Petrol. Any fuel they use for such a ship isn't going to be the mass of the entire solar system such that they have to loot entire planets every stop off - even if that were the case, there's likely going to be better candidates for a fuel source than Earth anyway.
There's no resistance in space - you burn once and then drift. Going from here to Aldeberan (via conventional sub-light travel) isn't really any more expensive fuel wise than going from here to Sirius other than keeping the ship lit and warm between stars which will almost certainly be done with fusion, fission, or some unknown process that generates energy even more efficiently. Either way the destruction of entire planets on a star to star expedition would likely be regarded as an unmanageable cost. I can't think of any technology that would support this kind of economic cost simply for moving from star to star. At this point you're talking about a mobile planet anyway - because the ship you're on is huge because it requires so much fuel. Might as well just stop off by any suitable star and stay there in orbit with your big TRIBBLE planet sized starship.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
I find that the "Curse of the TRIBBLE" is so prevalent here, that it allows for the possibility that it's a universal constant.
I also find it amusing that people seem to equate high technological levels with "enlightenment". Which, in my opinion, is a VERY naive view.
Agreed. A civilization that went to the work of developing interstellar travel had to have a reason for it and intelligence.... those are really the only constants though. The idea of an interstellar equivalent of mineral prospectors has merit.
All known sentient species are motivated by personal greed, thus it seems likely that any unknown sentient species would be too.
All this stuff about "advanced civilizations" makes me think of this:
And we all know how that movie ends.
Personally I have to imagine that there would be several categories of interstellar civilizations.
1: those that can barely get to other stars at all and it takes years.
3: those that can quickly visit nearby stars at low cost.
But between those would be category 2, the ones that would be most... interesting to meet: those that can get to other systems relatively quickly but can't do so cheaply and must refuel their ships every trip.
Not a particularly realistic movie - actually intended to parody old sci-fi movies.
Any interstellar ships don't run on Iron or Petrol. Any fuel they use for such a ship isn't going to be the mass of the entire solar system such that they have to loot entire planets every stop off - even if that were the case, there's likely going to be better candidates for a fuel source than Earth anyway.
There's no resistance in space - you burn once and then drift. Going from here to Aldeberan (via conventional sub-light travel) isn't really any more expensive fuel wise than going from here to Sirius other than keeping the ship lit and warm between stars which will almost certainly be done with fusion, fission, or some unknown process that generates energy even more efficiently. Either way the destruction of entire planets on a star to star expedition would likely be regarded as an unmanageable cost. I can't think of any technology that would support this kind of economic cost simply for moving from star to star. At this point you're talking about a mobile planet anyway - because the ship you're on is huge because it requires so much fuel. Might as well just stop off by any suitable star and stay there in orbit with your big TRIBBLE planet sized starship.
Well, that's a giant stack of assumptions.... especially given that we're talking about something we don't know exists, and thus we don't know what it uses for fuel....
I also find it amusing that people seem to equate high technological levels with "enlightenment". Which, in my opinion, is a VERY naive view.
I said nothing about "enlightenment." I'm only talking economics (Even the Feringi remove people from command for engaging in "unprofitable" ventures). I said Earth is a sub-par resource if you're capable of interstellar flight. Assuming any interstellar alien species is going to give a single TRIBBLE about Earth excepting being curious to meet a new evolved intelligent species is a naive view - it's the economic equivalent of geocentrism
If you're capable of interstellar flight you're at the very least logical and objective - and you're almost definitely curious and pro-social as these are fundamental constituents for the production of civilization and technology.
Size of Earth: tiny little rock... Only thing really interesting about it is that it happens to have intelligent life. The life is interesting and not the planet itself except under rare circumstances that we have some very desperate close neighbors.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
You're citing works of fiction as if they are precedents for first contact, but they're not. They're works of the imagination, created by people who want to tell an interesting story. The good ones draw from sitting down with other people and reasoning out possibilities, but in the end the authors individually choose how they want their first contacts to play out, and it reflects their own imagination and self-perceptions. The reason you have so many first contacts in which human ignorance and greed leads to disaster is because the authors feel like you do, that humanity is chiefly characterized by its ignorance, violence and greed. The prevalence of this type of fictional scenario is because of the prevalence of humanity's self-loathing, and does not make it more likely for actual first contact to follow the pattern.
Actually I'd go so far as to say that the fact that we've absorbed this type of story into our collective consciousness means that it's less likely that we'll see a violent first contact. We've seen the failed first contact so many times in fiction that we all know the basic pitfalls, like capture for dissection or a simple misunderstanding leading to violence. I'm certain that, barring a few anomalies like isolated natives in the rainforest or terrorists a la ISIS, whoever the aliens make contact with will do everything they can to ensure peaceful contact.
Even if human leadership is as corrupt as some people believe, they still have a strong motivation to manage first contact carefully and ethically: the eyes of the world will be upon them. We live in an age where people in positions of power are held to a nearly ridiculous level of hyper-responsibility. A politician who merely utters a thoughtless phrase that can be vaguely construed as offensive is likely to have short career. Imagine the fury our leaders will face if they TRIBBLE up first contact, arguably the biggest moment in human history!
We as a species want to make friend with aliens. We want it very badly. Our space programs are built in such a way as to try to fulfill that goal. If the aliens we meet are open to friendship, we will try to make friends, no matter how different they might be to ourselves.
The Tesla experiment that was funded by Morgan was an attempt to basically turn Earth into a titanic storage battery, so that if you needed electricity you'd just sink an iron rod into the soil. Morgan pulled the funding when Tesla admitted that he couldn't conceive of any way to meter and charge for the power.
His broadcast-power experiment was on his Colorado farm; it reportedly worked after a fashion, although only at very short range. It's possible the Wardenclyffe towers were an attempt at a larger-scale version; they also may have been related to his last experiment, when he claimed he could build a ray that "could score the surface of Mars". He hoped that such a terror weapon would make war impossible to contemplate. (Sadly, Einstein and Oppenheimer proved that concept to be incorrect, when they actually did come up with a terror weapon, and we just incorporated it into war plans and figured out how to make it bigger and better...) As Tesla never did demonstrate any such device, it's possible that he was just experiencing the onset of senile dementia; then again, maybe it just didn't work. (The FBI reportedly seized all of Tesla's notes upon his death; however, he was notoriously bad at notes, generally not writing anything down until after he had it working. He generally conceived the working prototype in his head first, as happened with his A/C generator, first sketched in the sand as he was walking one day.)
You wanted cynicism? I thought I was being quite forgiving assuming that an alien would be able to communicate with us at all let alone recognize us as what they would classify as intelligent life. What would you say to the most intelligent ant? They build and commit genocide.
Life might not be as we think we know it. There is quite a lot of optimism in aliens having record players or enjoy listening to the radio. If we wanted to make friends we would want to do it because we were in a position of weakness. Humans colonizing places with indigenous humans don't make much of a case for our own benevolence. On the topic of benevolence it doesn't move civilizations forward. Killing other people does. Even without reaching the population destroying potential our technologies have realized in the last 100 years the perfection of ending humanity has given you "noble" spaceflight and exploration. Humanitarians and Disney friends like Werner Von Braun. The act of spaceflight was turned into a TRIBBLE measuring contest between the two preeminent powers of the 20th century. It was less hurtful than open warfare but wouldn't have been a means for posturing in the first place had it not been for it's origins in military applications. It's unlikely we would be having this online discussion on personal computers either.
We look with frightened and submissive eyes into unknown. Not an unknown enemy but the possibility of an infinite blackness that would swallow the sum of everything we are (as a species; not individually) like the nothing it is. I suppose it makes people conciliatory because they need a hug. It doesn't last. It's like people feeling charitable at Christmas or the promise of living in Paradise after a wretched life if you apologize on your deathbed.
That is cynicism based on history but a culture's fiction shouldn't be dismissed as a basis for formulating opinions. I enjoy Star Trek because idealism and nobility are as practical as warp drives. At this time I would argue that the people funding space exploration don't care about alien life unless it would allow them to pinpoint a replacement for earth because we have pretty much wrecked the place. Desperation drives space exploration in the 21st century not the greater principles you suggest. The "exploration" phase of the space program of the 70's and 80's seemed to be a relabeling of the jingoism that, "put fuel in the tank" during the previous decades; But even before the Challenger tragedy the nails were already in fiscal coffin. There were wars on drugs and all comers that needed fighting but mostly money. That isn't to say I wish it weren't as you said; We look for so many reasons for other humans to be different than us who except a fantasist would welcome aliens? I'd guess some TRIBBLE who would want to get rich on their own alien reality show.
I think the biggest issue with the space shuttle program is that NASA never bothered to redesign it to be practical. It WORKED, but it had to be rebuilt after every flight and it needed TWO external boosters to get to orbit. It wasn't a truely reusable space vehicle. That increased the cost to use it greatly. I think it was inevitable that the space shuttle was canceled. It was simply a matter of whether NASA would keep using it until they built a replacement.
I also find it amusing that people seem to equate high technological levels with "enlightenment". Which, in my opinion, is a VERY naive view.
I said nothing about "enlightenment." I'm only talking economics (Even the Feringi remove people from command for engaging in "unprofitable" ventures). I said Earth is a sub-par resource if you're capable of interstellar flight. Assuming any interstellar alien species is going to give a single TRIBBLE about Earth excepting being curious to meet a new evolved intelligent species is a naive view - it's the economic equivalent of geocentrism
If you're capable of interstellar flight you're at the very least logical and objective - and you're almost definitely curious and pro-social as these are fundamental constituents for the production of civilization and technology.
Size of Earth: tiny little rock... Only thing really interesting about it is that it happens to have intelligent life. The life is interesting and not the planet itself except under rare circumstances that we have some very desperate close neighbors.
Regardless, you are coming across as taking assumptions and opinions as hard facts. You're also painting with a broad brush.
If you are a newly expanding species with a way around the light barrier(for example), you sure as hell ain't star hopping for your health (figure of speech, by the way). You are looking for life sustaining/resource rich worlds to either: a:colonize or b: annex or c: exploit for resources.
Earth is a planet teeming with life and the necessary elements to maintain a viable ecosystem. Earth still has plenty of resources for exploitation, contrary to what the doomsayers are "predicting". Water, minerals, elements, air, agri-friendly land, etc. We have a shitload of it. The fact that it may be one of many is irrelevant. The fact that we have it is all that matters.
There is no "geocentrism" about it. It simple economics and one of the rules of empire building. You invest in costly technologies, you have to have a return on your investment. One of those returns is every world discovered (like Earth) that could yield some benefit to the race in question.
The fact that Earth already has a native, technological civilization might not be an obstacle to a race that is aggressively expansionist, or see themselves as "enlightened imperialists".
If we were talking exclusively about a civilization that has long established a presence in the galaxy, then I would agree 100% that it could go down like you say. However, a race that far up the ladder might not even give a damn, even for the sake of curiosity or socialization, for a species they may see as not that far above our apes, and not worth talking to for another few hundred thousand years.
Or course, this is all speculation. Since we haven't (as far as we can definitely confirm) made contact, it's all an exercise in mental mastrubation.
Oh, sure, Earth is pretty rich in resources - but if you have the technology for starflight, you have the technology to harvest resources from asteroids, smaller moons, etc, without dealing with pesky gravity wells or native lifeforms fighting back. Crossing interstellar space to invade Earth would be a ludicrous waste of "man"power and ships. "Alien" may translate as "strange motivations", but it doesn't translate as "stupid" - idiots don't go to the stars, Pakled aside.
One of the more amusing things about Chtulu was that his race more or less thought of humans as nothing more than bugs and unworthy of any attention. Of course this meant that they'd not care if a few million humans died. Or maybe even all the humans... Which is the sort of approach that a ridiculously advanced race might have. "Oh that planet? We could move in, but we'd have to fumigate first."
The issue with the Cthulhu mythos, though, is that its creator was a man of extreme xenophobia, who thought men could be driven mad simply by seeing something so outre as a giant man with a squid for a head. (He was also more than a little racist, as many of his tales reveal.) His Great Old Ones were supposed to be the embodiment of a universe that terrified Lovecraft because it didn't seem to care about him. We're not all so mentally fragile as all that - and if the Great Old Ones care so little about life, why would they have invaded Earth in the first place?
Of course, Lovecraft was writing horror, not SF, so expecting things to be logical and reasonable in his stories might be looking in the wrong direction...
The point still stands though. If a race WAS that powerful compared to humans, what, other than their merciful nature, would compel them to not simply exterminate us to get us out of their way?
The simple fact that we wouldn't be in their way. I mean, why don't we send expeditions from North America to destroy the termite towers in Africa? Answer: Because there's nothing there that we want. And anything so advanced as to regard humans as mere pests is going to have as much use for our planet as I have for a random stretch of savannah. Possibly less, as I could at least build a vacation resort in the savannah, while such beings would be unlikely to regard staying planetside anywhere as a relaxing time.
To quote David Brin (again), in a story about coping with first contact with such beings: "We saw that worrying about the Lentili swooping down upon our planet was as silly as being concerned that a university professor might steal a small boy's ball."
The Tesla experiment that was funded by Morgan was an attempt to basically turn Earth into a titanic storage battery, so that if you needed electricity you'd just sink an iron rod into the soil. Morgan pulled the funding when Tesla admitted that he couldn't conceive of any way to meter and charge for the power.
It was also completely insane if not an outright con for money on Tesla's part.
The simple fact that we wouldn't be in their way. I mean, why don't we send expeditions from North America to destroy the termite towers in Africa? Answer: Because there's nothing there that we want. And anything so advanced as to regard humans as mere pests is going to have as much use for our planet as I have for a random stretch of savannah. Possibly less, as I could at least build a vacation resort in the savannah, while such beings would be unlikely to regard staying planetside anywhere as a relaxing time.
To quote David Brin (again), in a story about coping with first contact with such beings: "We saw that worrying about the Lentili swooping down upon our planet was as silly as being concerned that a university professor might steal a small boy's ball."
At least someone gets how insignificant Earth is...
But, like I said, if the light speed barrier can't be crossed - the odds of Earth maybe being an attractive prospect to, for example, any life from the nearest couple dozen stars can't be ruled out.
However, the odds of there being life on the nearest dozen stars is so astronomically unlikely as to be a completely discountable prospect.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
The simple fact that we wouldn't be in their way. I mean, why don't we send expeditions from North America to destroy the termite towers in Africa? Answer: Because there's nothing there that we want. And anything so advanced as to regard humans as mere pests is going to have as much use for our planet as I have for a random stretch of savannah. Possibly less, as I could at least build a vacation resort in the savannah, while such beings would be unlikely to regard staying planetside anywhere as a relaxing time.
To quote David Brin (again), in a story about coping with first contact with such beings: "We saw that worrying about the Lentili swooping down upon our planet was as silly as being concerned that a university professor might steal a small boy's ball."
Except that the example has a different set of moral principles. You have reason to expect the professor to not do so because he considers it wrong to do so. In this scenario that does not apply.
You have reason to expect the professor to not do so because he considers it wrong to do so. In this scenario that does not apply.
No, you missed his point... you expect the professor not to steal the ball for the same reason you don't steal the flies the spiders on your porch have caught even though they would render you some nutrition - because he doesn't want it - it's far more trouble than it could possibly be worth.
Ever used Celestia? Download it... get a sense of how insanely small Earth is and how many completely better prospects for resource extraction there are out there.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
No, I consider it unlikely because the professor has absolutely no need or desire for the ball. His hand is not stayed by guilt, or fear, but rather by the fact that the very idea is absurd.
Similarly, something so advanced as to totally disregard us also has no need of planets. Gravity wells are only useful up until a certain level of development - after that, they're as much a hindrance as anything.
To stretch the analogy, to an ant everything in its hill is needful and desirable, and were it capable of thought it could not conceive of life without them. To us, everything in an anthill is useless refuse, and the only reason we bear them any mind at all is when the ants try to move into our houses. Certainly no one is running around this neck of the woods, seeking to stamp out anthills merely because they're there! We disregard them instead, unless the ants force the issue. (And even then, the preferred solution is not genocide, but deterrence - we spray chemicals around our houses intended to make crossing into the house unpleasant and/or lethal, but we don't hunt the hill down and destroy it.)
Meanwhile, anything planetbound from within a dozen lightyears or so is going to regard Earth as being too small, too wet, and orbiting far too energetic a star to be habitable. (Remember, we've gotten a pretty good look at a lot of those stars - and none of them appear to host Earthlike worlds within the Goldilocks zone. A few have super-Earths, or even rocky sub-Neptunes, huddled up close to red dwarf stars, but nothing any life from this world would consider homey, or even livable.)
All known sentient species are motivated by personal greed,
That's just wrong. After "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" is met - all bets are off to what a species might evolve towards. It could evolve to be extremely pro-social unlike anything we've ever seen - almost borg-like in conformity. Or it could evolve heightened senses of empathy because ultimately, once all your physical needs are met, the only selecting force is how well you integrate into society.
Ants and bees don't do what they do because they think they're getting rewarded for it (there's no bee firing squad for lazy or incompetent bees), they do it because they evolved to exist as symbiotic individuals in a colony.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
The Tesla experiment that was funded by Morgan was an attempt to basically turn Earth into a titanic storage battery, so that if you needed electricity you'd just sink an iron rod into the soil. Morgan pulled the funding when Tesla admitted that he couldn't conceive of any way to meter and charge for the power.
It was also completely insane if not an outright con for money on Tesla's part.
The simple fact that we wouldn't be in their way. I mean, why don't we send expeditions from North America to destroy the termite towers in Africa? Answer: Because there's nothing there that we want. And anything so advanced as to regard humans as mere pests is going to have as much use for our planet as I have for a random stretch of savannah. Possibly less, as I could at least build a vacation resort in the savannah, while such beings would be unlikely to regard staying planetside anywhere as a relaxing time.
To quote David Brin (again), in a story about coping with first contact with such beings: "We saw that worrying about the Lentili swooping down upon our planet was as silly as being concerned that a university professor might steal a small boy's ball."
At least someone gets how insignificant Earth is...
But, like I said, if the light speed barrier can't be crossed - the odds of Earth maybe being an attractive prospect to, for example, any life from the nearest couple dozen stars can't be ruled out.
However, the odds of there being life on the nearest dozen stars is so astronomically unlikely as to be a completely discountable prospect.
If you can't break the light barrier, you are facing the need to travel for decades or centuries in a space ship. If you can build something that can actually survive such a long travel without breaking apart and without becoming inhospitable, do you still need another planet to colonize? You can apparently build working ecospheres that can travel through space. Just pick a nice spot in your own star system (or any other) and live there. It's likely to be much more convenient - if you position yourself reasonbly close to asteroids you could mine, even if something breaks down, you can still find raw materials to replace it eventually. But if you fly to a different star system, there is no guarantee you'll have access to the materials when you need them.
Maybe you leave your system because the sun is going nova soon, and make it to our star system - you can still locate a convenient spot near some asteroids to replenish your resources without dealing with planetary gravity wells and potentially dangerous organisms*.
*) An interesting side aspect of colonization: It's anyone's guess if alien life could bring harmful organism on Earth or could be harmed by Earth organism (other than predators like tigers and humans), but it's also anyone's guess whether or what the aliens could digest. Same thing of course when we contemplate the possibilites of colonizing a world with existing life.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
There are several things one needs to understand about aliens:
1. They will be aggressive: You don't develop technology to force the universe into unnatural shapes if you believe the universe is benign and poses no threat to you. The constant race to bigger and better technologies is driven by conflict. Any natural obstacle is eventually overcome. The most advanced species are the ones for whom life is a constant struggle against an intelligent foe.
2. Their survival is more important than our survival: A species does not evolve and climb to the top of the heap by being self-sacrificing.
This is why we have heard nothing. A universe with intelligent life in it works a lot like Central Park after dark. Imagine you are stuck in Central Park after dark. Nasty things lurk in the darkness. What do you do? Do try to find a way out? Do you call for help? Hunker down and wait for morning? Try to find a policeman? The universe is like this, only with several key differences: There is no way out. There is no policeman. And the night never ends.
Quit trying to think human when discussing aliens, all this posted above is, in my book, human related.
Comments
My character Tsin'xing
What you're talking about is a comic book Martian - as in - from Mars? An inter-stellar and inter-solar species are two completely different monsters. I've already explained why there's very few reasons an interstellar alien species would have much exceptional interest in Earth for any self-serving purpose because there's nothing special about Earth (except as a curiosity specimen for "interstellar biologists") if you can freely move between stars in any meaningful distance.
Star Trek is fantastical technologically, but philosophically it's core, in the past (as not-Abrams), has been relatively sound sci-fi in the philosophical sense - understanding that an interstellar existence is generally a post-scarcity existence for any species (assuming we are observing the galaxy correctly and there's not some sort of invisible overpopulation problem that just makes the galaxy look mostly like a bunch of dead matter floating around).
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
My character Tsin'xing
Not sure which project you're referring to about JP Morgan. If you mean the wireless-electricity thing in Colorado, the accepted version I heard (IIRC) was just that Morgan got impatient about when he was ever going to see a return on his money. (Answer: probably never, even if Tesla did get it to work, because going by the rest of Tesla's track record he'd probably not been considering how he was going to meter it at all.) But as for Edison, that's simple enough to explain: Tesla was his main rival in the electricity-supply business and Edison wanted him out of the market whatever it took!
(Sorry for off-topic, I'm a Tesla fan.)
No, that'd rather miss the point of a cover-up. If they're trying to catch up with the aliens, they'd have some other, secret agency doing it, n
If there's a roving band of nomads out there - a vast fleet of alien ships moving as a "flotilla" which is sub-light speed capable (one of the most skeptical things about Trek is the idea that it is possible to exceed light speed). Under only such circumstances would Earth really present an attractive prospect to an alien species.
If light speed is possible, then Earth presents no real resource interest. If light speed really isn't possible by any means then first contact scenarios may actually be very risky because you might be dealing with a rogue alien species without a homeworld or with an overpopulated one that has become technologically advanced enough to drift through space.
Still - I failed to also mention that pro-social behavior is also necessary for interstellar travel - having listed "reason" and "curiosity" being other inherent characteristics necessary for an alien species to achieve space flight. Biological organisms need ways to organize themselves in positive fashions that promote mutual survival - otherwise civilization is impossible.
Because an advanced space-faring civilization must possessed of reason and logic, pro-social behavior, and curiosity - I find mass-genocidal species roaming the stars looking for tiny goldilocks planets with life on them to exterminate to be somewhat unlikely. I somehow doubt the vast majority of "goldilocks" planets would develop life in the first place and there'd be uninhabited planets just as good as Earth and probably many more even better.
The risk comes from sub-light speed capable nomadic civilization that is absolutely desperate for a place to stay. Even the most predatory and fierce lion only kills when he's hungry or in danger.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
It is interesting to note, however, that all the worlds we've seen within a few hundred lightyears that are anything like Earth in size, and in their star's Goldilocks zone, also tend to be larger than Earth, orbiting red giant stars, and almost certainly tidally locked to their primaries (such that they would always present the same face to their sun, much as the Moon is tidally locked to Earth). Creatures from such worlds might overlook Earth entirely at first, not thinking that such a small whirligig of a world around such a hot star could possibly support life. (Imagine how long it must have taken the chirpsithtra, in Niven's Draco's Tavern stories, to realize the existence of smithpeople and roseyfins, not to mention humans - especially with their slower-than-light drive meaning most of their initial trips would be among red dwarf stars like their own.)
If you think "the common people" will handle such an encounter better, you must not be aware of what the "common people" do to each other on a daily basis.
And we all know how that movie ends.
Personally I have to imagine that there would be several categories of interstellar civilizations.
1: those that can barely get to other stars at all and it takes years.
3: those that can quickly visit nearby stars at low cost.
But between those would be category 2, the ones that would be most... interesting to meet: those that can get to other systems relatively quickly but can't do so cheaply and must refuel their ships every trip. Well, to be fair, Tesla was not as good at making products as Edison. He was more of the mad-scientist type who did experiments for the sake of learning. I don't think broadcast power was ever a practical notion. Not on the sale that would be required to power entire cities. The broadcasting unit would fry any and all life within a 1/4 mile of it. Also the amount of energy received by receivers would vary greatly based on distance. It would also be inefficient since much of the power lost would be absorbed by the environment and not used.
My character Tsin'xing
Nice rose tinted googles (with a golden frame) you have there.
I find that the "Curse of the TRIBBLE" is so prevalent here, that it allows for the possibility that it's a universal constant.
I also find it amusing that people seem to equate high technological levels with "enlightenment". Which, in my opinion, is a VERY naive view.
Not a particularly realistic movie - actually intended to parody old sci-fi movies.
Any interstellar ships don't run on Iron or Petrol. Any fuel they use for such a ship isn't going to be the mass of the entire solar system such that they have to loot entire planets every stop off - even if that were the case, there's likely going to be better candidates for a fuel source than Earth anyway.
There's no resistance in space - you burn once and then drift. Going from here to Aldeberan (via conventional sub-light travel) isn't really any more expensive fuel wise than going from here to Sirius other than keeping the ship lit and warm between stars which will almost certainly be done with fusion, fission, or some unknown process that generates energy even more efficiently. Either way the destruction of entire planets on a star to star expedition would likely be regarded as an unmanageable cost. I can't think of any technology that would support this kind of economic cost simply for moving from star to star. At this point you're talking about a mobile planet anyway - because the ship you're on is huge because it requires so much fuel. Might as well just stop off by any suitable star and stay there in orbit with your big TRIBBLE planet sized starship.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
All known sentient species are motivated by personal greed, thus it seems likely that any unknown sentient species would be too.
My character Tsin'xing
I said nothing about "enlightenment." I'm only talking economics (Even the Feringi remove people from command for engaging in "unprofitable" ventures). I said Earth is a sub-par resource if you're capable of interstellar flight. Assuming any interstellar alien species is going to give a single TRIBBLE about Earth excepting being curious to meet a new evolved intelligent species is a naive view - it's the economic equivalent of geocentrism
If you're capable of interstellar flight you're at the very least logical and objective - and you're almost definitely curious and pro-social as these are fundamental constituents for the production of civilization and technology.
Size of Earth: tiny little rock... Only thing really interesting about it is that it happens to have intelligent life. The life is interesting and not the planet itself except under rare circumstances that we have some very desperate close neighbors.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
You're citing works of fiction as if they are precedents for first contact, but they're not. They're works of the imagination, created by people who want to tell an interesting story. The good ones draw from sitting down with other people and reasoning out possibilities, but in the end the authors individually choose how they want their first contacts to play out, and it reflects their own imagination and self-perceptions. The reason you have so many first contacts in which human ignorance and greed leads to disaster is because the authors feel like you do, that humanity is chiefly characterized by its ignorance, violence and greed. The prevalence of this type of fictional scenario is because of the prevalence of humanity's self-loathing, and does not make it more likely for actual first contact to follow the pattern.
Actually I'd go so far as to say that the fact that we've absorbed this type of story into our collective consciousness means that it's less likely that we'll see a violent first contact. We've seen the failed first contact so many times in fiction that we all know the basic pitfalls, like capture for dissection or a simple misunderstanding leading to violence. I'm certain that, barring a few anomalies like isolated natives in the rainforest or terrorists a la ISIS, whoever the aliens make contact with will do everything they can to ensure peaceful contact.
Even if human leadership is as corrupt as some people believe, they still have a strong motivation to manage first contact carefully and ethically: the eyes of the world will be upon them. We live in an age where people in positions of power are held to a nearly ridiculous level of hyper-responsibility. A politician who merely utters a thoughtless phrase that can be vaguely construed as offensive is likely to have short career. Imagine the fury our leaders will face if they TRIBBLE up first contact, arguably the biggest moment in human history!
We as a species want to make friend with aliens. We want it very badly. Our space programs are built in such a way as to try to fulfill that goal. If the aliens we meet are open to friendship, we will try to make friends, no matter how different they might be to ourselves.
His broadcast-power experiment was on his Colorado farm; it reportedly worked after a fashion, although only at very short range. It's possible the Wardenclyffe towers were an attempt at a larger-scale version; they also may have been related to his last experiment, when he claimed he could build a ray that "could score the surface of Mars". He hoped that such a terror weapon would make war impossible to contemplate. (Sadly, Einstein and Oppenheimer proved that concept to be incorrect, when they actually did come up with a terror weapon, and we just incorporated it into war plans and figured out how to make it bigger and better...) As Tesla never did demonstrate any such device, it's possible that he was just experiencing the onset of senile dementia; then again, maybe it just didn't work. (The FBI reportedly seized all of Tesla's notes upon his death; however, he was notoriously bad at notes, generally not writing anything down until after he had it working. He generally conceived the working prototype in his head first, as happened with his A/C generator, first sketched in the sand as he was walking one day.)
You wanted cynicism? I thought I was being quite forgiving assuming that an alien would be able to communicate with us at all let alone recognize us as what they would classify as intelligent life. What would you say to the most intelligent ant? They build and commit genocide.
Life might not be as we think we know it. There is quite a lot of optimism in aliens having record players or enjoy listening to the radio. If we wanted to make friends we would want to do it because we were in a position of weakness. Humans colonizing places with indigenous humans don't make much of a case for our own benevolence. On the topic of benevolence it doesn't move civilizations forward. Killing other people does. Even without reaching the population destroying potential our technologies have realized in the last 100 years the perfection of ending humanity has given you "noble" spaceflight and exploration. Humanitarians and Disney friends like Werner Von Braun. The act of spaceflight was turned into a TRIBBLE measuring contest between the two preeminent powers of the 20th century. It was less hurtful than open warfare but wouldn't have been a means for posturing in the first place had it not been for it's origins in military applications. It's unlikely we would be having this online discussion on personal computers either.
We look with frightened and submissive eyes into unknown. Not an unknown enemy but the possibility of an infinite blackness that would swallow the sum of everything we are (as a species; not individually) like the nothing it is. I suppose it makes people conciliatory because they need a hug. It doesn't last. It's like people feeling charitable at Christmas or the promise of living in Paradise after a wretched life if you apologize on your deathbed.
That is cynicism based on history but a culture's fiction shouldn't be dismissed as a basis for formulating opinions. I enjoy Star Trek because idealism and nobility are as practical as warp drives. At this time I would argue that the people funding space exploration don't care about alien life unless it would allow them to pinpoint a replacement for earth because we have pretty much wrecked the place. Desperation drives space exploration in the 21st century not the greater principles you suggest. The "exploration" phase of the space program of the 70's and 80's seemed to be a relabeling of the jingoism that, "put fuel in the tank" during the previous decades; But even before the Challenger tragedy the nails were already in fiscal coffin. There were wars on drugs and all comers that needed fighting but mostly money. That isn't to say I wish it weren't as you said; We look for so many reasons for other humans to be different than us who except a fantasist would welcome aliens? I'd guess some TRIBBLE who would want to get rich on their own alien reality show.
My character Tsin'xing
Regardless, you are coming across as taking assumptions and opinions as hard facts. You're also painting with a broad brush.
If you are a newly expanding species with a way around the light barrier(for example), you sure as hell ain't star hopping for your health (figure of speech, by the way). You are looking for life sustaining/resource rich worlds to either: a:colonize or b: annex or c: exploit for resources.
Earth is a planet teeming with life and the necessary elements to maintain a viable ecosystem. Earth still has plenty of resources for exploitation, contrary to what the doomsayers are "predicting". Water, minerals, elements, air, agri-friendly land, etc. We have a shitload of it. The fact that it may be one of many is irrelevant. The fact that we have it is all that matters.
There is no "geocentrism" about it. It simple economics and one of the rules of empire building. You invest in costly technologies, you have to have a return on your investment. One of those returns is every world discovered (like Earth) that could yield some benefit to the race in question.
The fact that Earth already has a native, technological civilization might not be an obstacle to a race that is aggressively expansionist, or see themselves as "enlightened imperialists".
If we were talking exclusively about a civilization that has long established a presence in the galaxy, then I would agree 100% that it could go down like you say. However, a race that far up the ladder might not even give a damn, even for the sake of curiosity or socialization, for a species they may see as not that far above our apes, and not worth talking to for another few hundred thousand years.
Or course, this is all speculation. Since we haven't (as far as we can definitely confirm) made contact, it's all an exercise in mental mastrubation.
One of the more amusing things about Chtulu was that his race more or less thought of humans as nothing more than bugs and unworthy of any attention. Of course this meant that they'd not care if a few million humans died. Or maybe even all the humans... Which is the sort of approach that a ridiculously advanced race might have. "Oh that planet? We could move in, but we'd have to fumigate first."
My character Tsin'xing
Of course, Lovecraft was writing horror, not SF, so expecting things to be logical and reasonable in his stories might be looking in the wrong direction...
My character Tsin'xing
To quote David Brin (again), in a story about coping with first contact with such beings: "We saw that worrying about the Lentili swooping down upon our planet was as silly as being concerned that a university professor might steal a small boy's ball."
It was also completely insane if not an outright con for money on Tesla's part.
At least someone gets how insignificant Earth is...
But, like I said, if the light speed barrier can't be crossed - the odds of Earth maybe being an attractive prospect to, for example, any life from the nearest couple dozen stars can't be ruled out.
However, the odds of there being life on the nearest dozen stars is so astronomically unlikely as to be a completely discountable prospect.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
My character Tsin'xing
No, you missed his point... you expect the professor not to steal the ball for the same reason you don't steal the flies the spiders on your porch have caught even though they would render you some nutrition - because he doesn't want it - it's far more trouble than it could possibly be worth.
Ever used Celestia? Download it... get a sense of how insanely small Earth is and how many completely better prospects for resource extraction there are out there.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
Similarly, something so advanced as to totally disregard us also has no need of planets. Gravity wells are only useful up until a certain level of development - after that, they're as much a hindrance as anything.
To stretch the analogy, to an ant everything in its hill is needful and desirable, and were it capable of thought it could not conceive of life without them. To us, everything in an anthill is useless refuse, and the only reason we bear them any mind at all is when the ants try to move into our houses. Certainly no one is running around this neck of the woods, seeking to stamp out anthills merely because they're there! We disregard them instead, unless the ants force the issue. (And even then, the preferred solution is not genocide, but deterrence - we spray chemicals around our houses intended to make crossing into the house unpleasant and/or lethal, but we don't hunt the hill down and destroy it.)
Meanwhile, anything planetbound from within a dozen lightyears or so is going to regard Earth as being too small, too wet, and orbiting far too energetic a star to be habitable. (Remember, we've gotten a pretty good look at a lot of those stars - and none of them appear to host Earthlike worlds within the Goldilocks zone. A few have super-Earths, or even rocky sub-Neptunes, huddled up close to red dwarf stars, but nothing any life from this world would consider homey, or even livable.)
That's just wrong. After "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" is met - all bets are off to what a species might evolve towards. It could evolve to be extremely pro-social unlike anything we've ever seen - almost borg-like in conformity. Or it could evolve heightened senses of empathy because ultimately, once all your physical needs are met, the only selecting force is how well you integrate into society.
Ants and bees don't do what they do because they think they're getting rewarded for it (there's no bee firing squad for lazy or incompetent bees), they do it because they evolved to exist as symbiotic individuals in a colony.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
Maybe you leave your system because the sun is going nova soon, and make it to our star system - you can still locate a convenient spot near some asteroids to replenish your resources without dealing with planetary gravity wells and potentially dangerous organisms*.
*) An interesting side aspect of colonization: It's anyone's guess if alien life could bring harmful organism on Earth or could be harmed by Earth organism (other than predators like tigers and humans), but it's also anyone's guess whether or what the aliens could digest. Same thing of course when we contemplate the possibilites of colonizing a world with existing life.
Quit trying to think human when discussing aliens, all this posted above is, in my book, human related.