Do You Want The Aliens To Show Up?

Good.

JohnM would've loved this thread.

If you haven't already, ou should check out Sundiver by David Brin (wrote The Postman).

It's basically a mystery novel, but the universe it and the other books in the series are set in is pretty interesting.

Basically every intelligent species in the universe (hundreds, thousands maybe of them) share a common lineage to some ancient ancient civilization. Once upon a time this forgotten civ found creatures that had the potential for for sentience and 'uplifted' them, through manipulating their genes and culture. This process went on for billions of year, with this new race being a 'Client Race' having to serve their 'Patrons' for hundreds of thousands of years to millions, until it was determined they were capable of uplifting a new species themselves. Which is no easy thing, as your post points out introducing tech before a species is ready could be very very bad. Only when it was determined that a race had progressed to the point where they could uplift another would they no longer be a Client Race.

Anyway, the entire intergalactic social circle is based on this process, with it basically being a giant pyramid scheme. The older your species is, the more Clients you have, the more former Clients who are now Patrons themselves, etc. etc. down the line, the more respected your race is.

Except for the humans. We somehow developed space flight all on our own. Even worse by the time we caught the attention of the rest of the universe we has started rudimentary work 'uplifting' chimps and dolphins so not only do we have no known Patrons, but under the law we already have our own Clients so no one can make us a Client.

Anyway, it's a neat setup. Your post reminded me of it.

I hope they nuke us from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Sundiver is the first of that series, but not the best. The Uplift Wars and Startide Rising both won the Hugo. Then after that there's another trilogy set in the same universe after that. Good stuff, one of the most imaginative works out there in SciFi these days (I'd put him up there with Dan Simmons and Vernor Vinge as the best space scifi writers of the modern era).

Not sure how that's relevant to the discussion. There's lots of civilizations that might have pushed us farther technologically than they did (the best example would have been China).

I certainly hope this is true, but I find the thought inherently dangerous. We have absolutely no idea how a different life form might evolve - even if they were socially cooperative, that doesn't make them 'moral.' Look at S.M. Stirling's Draka series where he postulates a massively racist and xenophobic empire conquering Earth and expanding into the stars.

Even postulate our own society out a million years. There's no guarantee what arises from that would even be something we recognize as human. Our writers have already speculated what that might look like, and it isn't always pretty.

And of course that's just an example based on humanocentric social morales. There's absolutely no way of knowing what would pass for morality for a different species. Hell, the first aliens we encounter might not even be carbon based life forms.

The 'the aliens have to be moral' conceit is just as flawed as the 'they'll try to destroy us' conceit. We have no way of making any informed concept, considering how narrow our world view of the universe truly is.

Heck, Probe might be right. They might wipe us out accidentally - or do so because they've seen how we treat the other life forms here. Their conception of morality might mean they have to destroy us.

We. Just. Don't. Know.

Which is why the whole 'lets send out messages into space, the ETs have to be nice guys' concept bothers me a tad. Maybe. Maybe not.

I've asked my alien friends to show up at your house to prove to you they exist, but they think you're a sniveling douchebag and not worth the effort.

evenflow agrees: So, start with Sundiver?

Yep. I'm sure everyone has their own lists, but the 'masters' of modern space epics to me are Brin, Simmons and Vinge. All three are Hugo winners, so I'm not the only one who thinks so.

The best 'lost' scifi writer IMO is C.J. Cherryh. You don't hear much about her, but she's got some great hard space scifi. The Alliance-Union universe is a good one, with some great aliens and one of the first great takes on transhumanity.

So, essentially what you're saying is 'I don't want to hear what you got cause I think it's all bullshit anyway' ....

Fair enough.

I've never seen a UFO, but I've interviewed many credible eyewitnesses who have (including law enforcement and ex-military). I've also talked to and spent time with alleged alien abductees who are normal in every way and who have presented some compelling evidence of their own. One in paticular, Stan Romanek, is a hell of a nice guy who's written a couple of books on his experiences. He has his critics and skeptics try to debunk his claims. But the one piece of evidence of this that fascinates me are the equations that he supposedly received and drew while he was in a trance, and again while under hypnosis. These equations are incredibly advanced and have been studied by some scientists who've found that they indicate some type of advanced propulsion, but so far they haven't been able to figure out the entire equation. Stan is dyslexic and only has an 8th grade math level. It was impossible for him to make these equations up. This isn't concrete proof of anything, but I find it fascinating as hell.

Personally I hope that there aren't any aliens, because some of the stories I've been seeing about alleged alien encounters are rather disturbing, and not just in the "probed" sense, either. Heard of cattle mutilations? I've seen stuff about human corpses being found the same way. Not exactly something that makes me anxious to meet E.T. if you know what I mean.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/ufo/4266921

http://www.fxsupply.com/features/romanek.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Romanek

"In May of 2008 during an interview of Romanek on Coast To Coast AM radio, host George Noory suggested that Romanek take a lie detector test over the authenticity of the Boo Video.[5] Romanek agreed to this test. When it was conducted later that year, Romanek failed on the question "Is the Boo tape a hoax?" Romanek then claimed he has medical conditions that prevent a lie detector test from working on him.[6]

Later, at the 2009 Mysteries of the Universe conference in Kansas City, Romanek claimed he was set up by Noory to fail.[7]"

All you need is a Google search and it becomes obvious that Romanek is another fraud in a long line of frauds.

But he does thank you Black Dove for buying his books.

Sounds great how do we vote?

Awesome! I'm voting right now!




Seriously though, if telepathic voting were a reality, marijuana would've long ago been legalized. And we'd have an entirely different political landscape in the US.