The idea of what is "alien" hinges on the boundaries of our knowledge and experience. What is "alien" today could easily be "familiar" tomorrow, transforming the term's meaning through exposure and understanding. Alien is a word that describes the unknown. Once something unknown becomes known, it ceases to be alien, as it is now understood and no longer lies outside of our grasp.
The antonym of the word alien .... decoded sounds become familiar ... :)
@CSKA_Moscou said in #29:
> again, these are only IFs:
>
I mean, not find them here. us finding them out there. we do not have the technology to detect them yet, why would another earth somewhere, as the Occam razor minimal imagination prior I could muster to make my question clearer, be able to find or detect us. I agree with the cases you did develop, but I might be asking a different question.
The ability or need to find us even if technology advanced. I am not measuring the technological advance as ability to explore outer space, perhaps. So they could be very advanced and never had the urge to conquer more land or space. Perhaps there are content with observing, even. Not actually acting or making any iota of presence. We might be projecting our tendency to expand as if they were no other way to live. The most recent tiny slice in human evolution time scale where we assume war being inextricable part of our biology. Not a new cultural consequence of some run away population expansion at some point not far in the past (at evolution times scales. even cutlural evolution i would claim).
war technology is not the only measure of civilization progress. And resource pillaging getting diminishing returns eventually driving our assumption that we need to expand in outspace by actually physical annexation or implementation of population and that would be what defines techonolgoy advance, is also not the only possihliltiy.
I had another version of this. but now. I just leave this to that. I think we could revise our alien assumptions, and put less of our own lack of imagination about progress into it. It would not bode well for my universe view to generalize with such bias of manifest crappy consequences. sorry. but we might be not ever getting to actually expand our horizons in that narrow mind corset of progress. The hold of that expansion as not even possible variable or as given of how we view our own evolution has a real crappy outlook right now. I talked about the correlations in our culures global and local. I think a lot of progress there might be also about advancing all our cultures. and perhaps then we could have more gamut in the cases about lifde "out" there.
@dboing said in #23:
> we, no not me, can't be me, we like superhero freaks.. don't we. It is like shoving our own sense of being too tiny in face of the huge universe, into the hope there is at least someone who knows their shit so they can save us from our insecurity now that we realize there is an external world, and we are not 2 years old anymore. The light turns on not by our will, but because some superhero turned the light switch on.... we want more of those guys. The world of people is huge. A lot bigger than we might have thought. Scary. Scary.. someone please know what to do.. please please.. oh, I can vote...
It's not "stupidity". It's because in politics, nice guys finish last. The ruthless rise to the top.
The victimized voter is more often than not faced with attempting to choose the lesser of 2 evils using insufficient or unaccurate information.
The answer is term limits on every position on government. WHY? Because using term limits, the ruthless CANNOT ruthlessly insure that they stay in office for 40 years
Having said the above. ^^^....
It's why Trump is such a phenom. He's NOT a ruthless career politician. The people recognized it, as did the establishment.
It's FAR past time we had a leader that will be ruthless on behalf of the citizens rather than the establishment.
@what_game_is_this said in #10:
> The universe is large. Somewhere there might be intelligent beings. I can't imagine why they would want to contact us though.
They have been in contact with Earth for half a million years or so. According to the Sumerians. They CREATED us.
Read the Book of Enoch, The Book of Giants and the Book of Enki This makes WAY more sense than some Abrahamic sky dwelling unbeing thinking us into existence 7 thousand years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiens
The term "alien" frequently implies a stark division between "us" (the familiar, human) and "them" (the foreign, non-human). This binary framework tends to oversimplify the rich and diverse nature of our relationships with other beings—whether they are extraterrestrial life, animals, or individuals from different cultures.
Shifting away from such terminology could encourage a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of difference and similarity, fostering greater empathy and respect for the complex ways in which we relate to one another. By embracing a broader perspective, we can appreciate the intricacies of our connections across various forms of existence.
#35
> They CREATED us.
I'd say they botched the job and we should request a refund...
@dboing nevertheless we can wonder if it is really a necessity or a useful thing to seek to discover a form of extraterrestrial life:
we must also weigh the potential negative consequences, we do not know what to expect, it could be a form of microbial life or parasitic fungi which would destroy our ecosystem, it could be a warlike civilization which would misinterpret our intentions, or of a civilization which would like to colonize the solar system and reduce humanity to slavery. it could also be forms of life radically different from anything we know or can imagine
This topic has been archived and can no longer be replied to.