Following On From Yesterday

[poliphilo]

Yes. I think it's very likely we have visitors. Planet Earth is at a crucial phase in its history: it's developing a global society, it has weapons of mass destruction, it has rudimentary space travel. We're no longer galactic peasants, we're becoming contenders. We're at an interesting age.  If I were an intelligent extraterrestrial I'd be motivated to drop by and take a peek- even perhaps violate the prime directive and give things a bit of a nudge.

We can no longer- plausibly- argue that we're alone in the universe. Our telescopes keep detecting planets in the orbit of neighbouring stars- and just the other day- for the first time-  we found one that replicates conditions on Earth. Actually there must be billions of them. 

Of course the visitors may not be coming from other planets. They may be sliding in from other dimensions. They may be hopping back from our own future. The old, mechanical universe our grandfathers had their heads in ruled such things out of court, but we're living in a quantum universe now. 

What would be really weird would be if everyone out there was ignoring us.

Comments

avatar/ district 9

[(Anonymous)]

Let`s just hope when they do come here they have a federation with rules like the prime directive- otherwise we`d most likely be at their mercy, dependent on their wishes and whims. The last thing we want is to be exploited like the Pandorans in Avatar or bundled up into internment camps like the bugs in District 9. But- if they`re anything like us, and since we have those things in our history- I`d say it`s a distinct possibility.

Though there is always the hope that evolution weeds out that sort of evil, and that the extreme levels of tech required to get over here would also necessitate a free-thinking and free society to birth it. In which case, they`ll be numerous rungs ahead of us in terms of social law and compassion. Let`s hope that`s the case. I`d be proud to join a Federation with precepts like that.

Re: avatar/ district 9

[michael john grist (from livejournal.com)]

that was me, Mike.

Re: avatar/ district 9

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm an optimist. I believe a society that has perfected interstellar travel will also have progressed beyond the ethics of Ghenghis Khan. After all, they can go anywhere they want, so what resources do we have that they're likely to covet?

I think it's far more likely that they're motivated by scientific/ethnological curiosity or pure benevolence.

They seem to have been watching us now for decades- and probably very much longer. If they were going to make an aggressive move on us, I reckon they'd have done it by now.