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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

I don't personally give much thought to what ants think as I tromp around the lawn.

I tend to think a species advanced enough to get here may find us similarly unimportant.

But wouldn't an intelligent species capable of inter-galactic travel have some of the Federation style rules to obey? Don't interfere with a less intelligent civilization for fear of disruption or whatever?

I'm not sure they would consider "us" unimportant. There's clearly some sort of "intelligence" with all of the radio energy emanating from this rock. If they sat back and observed for quite a bit of time, they would at some point be curious and want to study. Hence the probing. What's this hole for, let's find out. Plus, you'd want to dissect a couple of specimens to study it. After that, you start messing with the subject to see how it behaves/reacts.

Just like Spain didn’t interfere in South America, or Britain in Africa. Why would there be non interference when even Star Trek doesn’t have it half the time (Borg, dominion, ferengi, etc)

>But wouldn't an intelligent species capable of inter-galactic travel have some of the Federation style rules to obey? Don't interfere with a less intelligent civilization for fear of disruption or whatever?

Even in the fictional universe of Star Trek, most intelligent civilizations couldn't care less about the prime directive, and even the Federation disregards it when it's convenient.

There's no reason to assume that aliens in real life should necessarily conform to a modern human moral ideal about "non-interference with primitive cultures" just because they're intelligent.

For all we know, they subscribe to the Rules of Acquisition rather than the Prime Directive.

1) "crash" a flying saucer in Roswell, New Mexico

2) secretly cultivate a pop cultural mythology around aliens and alien contact. Buzz around their aircraft and flash lights at them now and then just to keep them interested, but not too interested because you know how humans can get when they're too interested.

3) infiltrate human society with shapeshifting reptoids and own the rights to numerous sci-fi properties like Star Wars, Star Trek and Men in Black, to condition humans to be comfortable with the premise of alien contact and to build brand identity and loyalty.

4) build some Star Wars and Star Trek themed casinos out in deep space.

5) show up one day and offer to loan them a warp drive, but the warp drive just happens to always fail near a casino planet.

?) PROFIT.

That's a familiar argument, but I just realized that it mistakes scale for evolution. I imagine that if there are aliens, they are closer to the scale of a human than an ant.

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