Hacker News Reader

Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

I ask this in every UFO thread.

An alien civilization that has achieved FTL or let's say even a generational ship:

WTF would they give a damn about earth and be "buzzing" it in little ships like we would do with fighter planes? Imagine how advanced sensors would have to be to travel FTL and avoid destruction.

Why would they even be occupied by living creatures when we ourselves already use automated drones and interplanetary probes?

All our projections are from the limitations of our own technology and how we would deal with something. They aren't going to be that backwards/limited. And I think they would be very bored with earth, at best observe us like we observe primates and move on.

View on HN

You don't have to assume FTL. They could be extremely long lived, or not alive at all (AI). They might be from within our solar system.

It's also not valid to reason "because I can't guess their motive they can't have one.". Using humans as an analog people travel to go to the zoo, for religious reasons, or dispatch probes and rovers. UFOs might be any of these or others for aliens.

And yet, humans keep traveling to remote areas to film wildlife documentaries or go on safaris. Why? Because it’s fun and interesting.

Well the odds of finding a civilization like ours would be astronomically low. So it probably would be interesting. Everything you find is likely to be either primitive or much more advanced. Ours is a very brief sweet spot of rapid tech acceleration

Thank you! Arthur C Clarke raised a similar point in Childhood's End. When confronted with some alien silver viewscreen, which everyone thought was some advanced thing, one character asked what if is a simple two way mirror? Point is, a visitor will use the most convenient and convert thing to observe us, not some clunky contraption. Unless they are doing it on purpose.

> WTF would they give a damn about earth

Possibly for similar reasons we give a dam about ants and have professions dedicated to their study. It may also be in their best interest to keep tabs on any ant colonies just in case they run a muck.

I always tend to ask “why does everyone assume we are not the first civilization to achieve enough intelligence to even conceptualize that there could be others?”

Someone had to be first…why not us?

I'd think a home planet would have to be devoid of life to not even project the idea there might be life elsewhere. And then that void begs the question where did that lifeform come from?

Even before aliens humans saw "the other" via made up deities living beyond their grasp in every civilization. Then they'd look up to the moon and imagine it was alive or some kind of people there. All projections of "life is everywhere".

Sure we can conceive of it, and have since we have been able to took up and wonder, but the question is really more about the assumption that why do we humans always seem to assume that alien life is more advanced than us? It’s sort of my answer to the Fermi paradox. We haven’t detected alien civilizations because they may not exist…yet.

UFO nuts at least rely on a faith that they exist and they have made it here and are slicing up cow genitals and sticking various probes up our backsides. If they can do that, sure, they are more advanced. However, why are the pragmatic Drake equation applying scientists out there always seems to be this under this assumption that extraterrestrials are more advanced?

If there is no evidence they are here or even exist. There is certainly no evidence that they are more advanced than us. Until we see evidence to the contrary, we rule the roost.

Rare or medium rare?

You could argue they're so advanced they no longer have war, death, or drama. So they come to watch us unfold. Maybe they watch closely to get odds on what will happen next on an interstellar Las Vegas board.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com