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I'm betting on some sort of probe.

Not like what bored aliens allegedly do to isolated farmer type folks. More like an alien Voyager sort of thing.

Pretty sure it’s the one where a non-mental species just takes us out before we spread our insanity to the stars.

Yes, I have a low opinion of us as a species.

No, that does not mean I don’t like individual people.

I'm voting microbes, and I'm voting that the predominance of the scientific community will dismiss any evidence out of hand.

@ MadDoc Grotsnik

Pretty sure it’s the one where a non-mental species just takes us out before we spread our insanity to the stars.

Yes, I have a low opinion of us as a species.

No, that does not mean I don’t like individual people.

Since I played Mass Effect and got to know the Krogan I have the dumb and strange idea in the back of my head that out there might be some space traveling alien civilisations that are aware of us and keep us in a folder of "last resorts for species uplifting if the sh** really hits the fan.". So well aware of our destructive tendencies but under the impression that we are less terrible than some other stuff out there and maybe able to fight those off it comes to it. Or in a more optimistic view hoping that we as a species evolve to the better before we develop insterstellar travel... and thus not snuffing us out because regardless of our behaviour we are no threat... yet.

The first scenario is pretty common Sci-fi trope.

Characterizing humanity as a 'violent species' is completely arbitrary; there is no objective standard to compare to. We could be the biggest dam hippies of a galaxy where genocidal warfare is seen as the default means of conflict resolution.

If you've read the "Three Body Problem" it kind of presents humanity as that... a clueless, somewhat harmless species surrounded by predatory ones.

I think that's unlikely, because with how awesome Earth is if someone wanted its resources / etc you'd think they'd have come and gotten them a long time ago. But it's certainly interesting to theorize about (it's called the "dark forest theory" in the book, that no technologically advanced species wants to reveal itself lest another predatory one attack).

Maybe the other species have their own hippies who campaigned and got Earth designated as a nature preserve. But really, what does Earth have that is so rare they cannot find it on a closer planet? For starters it would have to be material that is sufficiently valuable to make the expense of travel, harvest, and transport to be economically viable. From another solar system no less. If FTL is indeed impossible I find it very plausible that there is no such material; that any material must be utilized in the same system it is harvested for it to ever be worth harvesting in the first place.

 RiTides wrote:
If you've read the "Three Body Problem" it kind of presents humanity as that... a clueless, somewhat harmless species surrounded by predatory ones.

I think that's unlikely, because with how awesome Earth is if someone wanted its resources / etc you'd think they'd have come and gotten them a long time ago.

The thing is the more we learn about the universe the less awesome our Earth seems. Habitable zone planets seem fairly common, once you're in space finding any minerals becomes easy. Earth doesn't have much to offer unless you want to try to herd cats enslaving people to labor for you.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Maybe the other species have their own hippies who campaigned and got Earth designated as a nature preserve. But really, what does Earth have that is so rare they cannot find it on a closer planet? For starters it would have to be material that is sufficiently valuable to make the expense of travel, harvest, and transport to be economically viable. From another solar system no less. If FTL is indeed impossible I find it very plausible that there is no such material; that any material must be utilized in the same system it is harvested for it to ever be worth harvesting in the first place.

Maybe things like gaseus oxygen/nitrogen and liquid h20 due to atmosphere?
I read somewhere a long time ago that the most likely life form apart from us is going to be silicone based as its the most common element. Apparently.

The fact that on earth we have carbon based lifeforms could well just be down to circumstances rather than the only way life can form. Osmosis/respiration can happen with other gasses surely.
For all we know there are life forms within gas giants but we just have no way of knowing.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Maybe the other species have their own hippies who campaigned and got Earth designated as a nature preserve. But really, what does Earth have that is so rare they cannot find it on a closer planet? For starters it would have to be material that is sufficiently valuable to make the expense of travel, harvest, and transport to be economically viable. From another solar system no less. If FTL is indeed impossible I find it very plausible that there is no such material; that any material must be utilized in the same system it is harvested for it to ever be worth harvesting in the first place.

Biological material is the only sensible answer. Aliens would not be interested in Earth if they are interested in Earth life...for some reason.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Maybe the other species have their own hippies who campaigned and got Earth designated as a nature preserve. But really, what does Earth have that is so rare they cannot find it on a closer planet? For starters it would have to be material that is sufficiently valuable to make the expense of travel, harvest, and transport to be economically viable. From another solar system no less. If FTL is indeed impossible I find it very plausible that there is no such material; that any material must be utilized in the same system it is harvested for it to ever be worth harvesting in the first place.

Biological material is the only sensible answer. Aliens would not be interested in Earth if they are interested in Earth life...for some reason.

It would be far easier to collect samples, bring those back, and grow more than actually harvest it and haul the cargo through who knows how much distance. Hell it could even be easier to terraform a planet in their system rather than trying to pick up what they wanted from here. Even assuming a relatively nearby solar system the distances are truly immense; the time and energy expenditure to cross that without FTL would make doing so for anything as basic as resource-gathering unlikely to be worthwhile. Samples, study, or exploration? Absolutely. But looting Earth for its resources? Not the most plausible of predictions.

Who said anything about looting? Getting samples or even simp,e recordings might be reason enough to send a probe or limited mission.

Of course we don't know how arduous space travel might be for them. Maybe for a civilization one million years past a "singularity", sending out some ships for a few centuries' time at the cost of a couple hours' stellar output in energy might be quite cheap relative to the return in information a big score of bio-samples might bring.

I can’t remember where I read it, but with any civilisation that’s even vaguely similar to humanity, any specific instance of technology (e.g. travelling across interstellar space) would only represent a tiny fraction of their actual technological and industrial capabilities. Fundamentally you can’t focus your entire civilisation on a single task (unless you’re the Borg?); for example a quick Google says that the cost of the Apollo program was $25bn between 1962-73, whereas the GDP of the USA was $604bn in 1962 alone.

 RiTides wrote:
If you've read the "Three Body Problem" it kind of presents humanity as that... a clueless, somewhat harmless species surrounded by predatory ones.

I think that's unlikely, because with how awesome Earth is if someone wanted its resources / etc you'd think they'd have come and gotten them a long time ago. But it's certainly interesting to theorize about (it's called the "dark forest theory" in the book, that no technologically advanced species wants to reveal itself lest another predatory one attack).

Seeing it takes loooooooong time to travel at least from POV of people not traveling to there(for travellers you can travel rather quickly to other side of the galaxy if you can go sufficient fast...) there wouldn't be "get it and come back". Rather somebody would come to colonize but unless they can determine exact resources from 1000's of light years away they wouldn't know to come here specifically so it would be more of random chance do they come here or not.

There won't be multi planet empires trading between planets.


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Maybe the other species have their own hippies who campaigned and got Earth designated as a nature preserve. But really, what does Earth have that is so rare they cannot find it on a closer planet? For starters it would have to be material that is sufficiently valuable to make the expense of travel, harvest, and transport to be economically viable. From another solar system no less. If FTL is indeed impossible I find it very plausible that there is no such material; that any material must be utilized in the same system it is harvested for it to ever be worth harvesting in the first place.

Same reason why humans should be eventually looking to seed other planets. Spread humanity 'least we get all wiped here eventually. And of course eventually resources here run out.

But it wouldn't be "go there, harvest, come back" since that requires so long time ago. It would be "go there, set up colony, live there, goodbye from us". While for their original home planet it would take say over 1000 years if they are 1000 LY time away for the colony in question it could be lot less depending on how close to c they can get. Even just months. So go there and colonize is viable(assuming you can find way to accelerate to 99.xxxxx% of a c). Just not really to interaction with original planet in reasonable time(for the people in the planet(s))

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Who said anything about looting?

Not in this thread, but in a general sense the concept of 'alienz come fer our resources!!' Is pretty common.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Who said anything about looting?

Not in this thread, but in a general sense the concept of 'alienz come fer our resources!!' Is pretty common.

Honestly, i doubt any inteligent species will shoot first and ask questions later unless it is seriously idologically indoctrinated.

The most likely thing will probably be attempts to communicate with each other.
Granted, i do wonder how a species would communicate with us what with the hundreds of languages spoken

They probably have hundreds of languages of their own as well.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
They probably have hundreds of languages of their own as well.

And what if not?
Also what do when we meet an hivemind?
Insectoid species?

the ammount of shenanigans and pitfalls we could have.

But see, their hivemind could easily be evaluating the problem 'what if I meet a non-hive mind?' As we as we are coming at the problem from the other end. Once we stop assuming the other party is braindead with no desire to communicate the situation doesn't seem so difficult. If anything, it's more likely that they have the same stupid problems we struggle with!

'Do you guys have ancient aliens conspiracy theorists on your planet?'

'Ug TONS of them! They've taken over whole video channels.'

'Yeah ours suck pretty hard too. And don't get me started on the flat-planeters!'

They could even be having this exact discussion on their own wargaming forum right now.

To me a plausible scenario is that fleets from several different alien species come and build a sphere around earth to block out any transmission from it because they're sick and tired of our advertising constantly.

I'm just at a point where I'm really starting to hate the net because of ads, Ads, ADS!!!!!

Most places when you want to see something, AD! Then most of the screen around the sliver of what you want to see is filled with ADS! And of course what interrupts the tiny part of the screen the stuff you want to see is on? ADS!

Honestly, a guy in 1961 wrote a very short story about a SF horror future in which ads are utterly inescapable, even when you sleep. See it here:

http://lfvhenglish.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/5/6/8256468/the_room_text.pdf

Another writer write a story in the 50's about a world where earplugs were declared illegal because advertisers didn't want you shutting them out and a man went to prison to escape ads. It was called "Captive audience."

It occurred to me our transmissions must be mostly ads by now, and if someone is near enough to be hit by them they may get as sick of them as I am.


I'm happy with this place as ads are a truly minimal part of it. Unlike most other sites on te net today.

I'm at a point where I may have to quit using youtube because i am just so absolutely sick of ads. Now they're trying to ram two ads down your throat. No, I absolutely will not watch two ads. If I have to miss a video i want because of it., so be it. 2 ads today, 3 tomorrow, 4 on wednesday, ad infiniotum.

Huh. Maybe its because of my age, but I grew up with TV and radio as pretty much the only form of 'entertainment.' 15-20 minutes of advertising per hour was pretty much the standard.

Modern ads (especially via internet) are markedly less. And skippable. I get hit with maybe 30-40 seconds of advertising at worst. Usually 5 or 10 seconds (on the very rare occasion I see double ads)

Voss wrote:
Huh. Maybe its because of my age, but I grew up with TV and radio as pretty much the only form of 'entertainment.' 15-20 minutes of advertising per hour was pretty much the standard.

Modern ads (especially via internet) are markedly less. And skippable. I get hit with maybe 30-40 seconds of advertising at worst. Usually 5 or 10 seconds (on the very rare occasion I see double ads)

Well youtube is moving to mandatory dpouble ads, and i'm moving away from youtube.

Also, you analogy is flawed. When you had nothing but tv and radio they were usually free, broadcast over the air. Ok, fine.

Now, we PAY for cable tv, we PAY for radio and we PAY for internet. Today everything's pay pay pay! So now we're paying for media and still being bombarded and harassed by endless ads everywhere. Also in the old days we didn't have advertises stalking and targeting us personally. I mean, I look up one thing once on the net and for weeks I see ads for that everywhere, constantly. It's like the creepy stalker type who leaves you messages saying he knows what you like and want.

And no, a lot of ads are not skippable.I have literally just stopped trying to see some things because I refuse to sit thru the ads in front of them. In other cases my tabglet has literally overloaded and dropped back to the desktop because it couldn;t handle all the ads being crammed into it.

 Matt Swain wrote:

Voss wrote:
Huh. Maybe its because of my age, but I grew up with TV and radio as pretty much the only form of 'entertainment.' 15-20 minutes of advertising per hour was pretty much the standard.

Modern ads (especially via internet) are markedly less. And skippable. I get hit with maybe 30-40 seconds of advertising at worst. Usually 5 or 10 seconds (on the very rare occasion I see double ads)

Well youtube is moving to mandatory dpouble ads, and i'm moving away from youtube.

Also, you analogy is flawed. When you had nothing but tv and radio they were usually free, broadcast over the air. Ok, fine.

Now, we PAY for cable tv, we PAY for radio and we PAY for internet. Today everything's pay pay pay! So now we're paying for media and still being bombarded and harassed by endless ads everywhere. Also in the old days we didn't have advertises stalking and targeting us personally. I mean, I look up one thing once on the net and for weeks I see ads for that everywhere, constantly. It's like the creepy stalker type who leaves you messages saying he knows what you like and want.

And no, a lot of ads are not skippable.I have literally just stopped trying to see some things because I refuse to sit thru the ads in front of them. In other cases my tabglet has literally overloaded and dropped back to the desktop because it couldn;t handle all the ads being crammed into it.

Your analogy is also flawed. Paying for your internet connection is not paying for YouTube. That's like arguing your cinema ticket should be free because you already paid for your car to drive there.

Also here tv has never been free. Doesn't mean no ads.

Wonder what sites he use that not only prevent adblock as well as can't skip.

tneva82 wrote:
Also here tv has never been free. Doesn't mean no ads.

Wonder what sites he use that not only prevent adblock as well as can't skip.

YOUTUBE! It's moving to unskippable ads.

But, by the logic you just presented, youtube should have ads because its free.

But... yeah. I don't know what to tell you. Your experience sounds very abnormal to me. I don't get stalkerish advertising, I don't get long unskippable ads, I don't get extra ads that crash my programs (not sure how that would work, to be honest, or why an advertiser would _want_ it to work).

Are you sure this doesn't belong in the conspiracy theory thread? Because its starting to sound like one.

Voss wrote:
But, by the logic you just presented, youtube should have ads because its free.

But... yeah. I don't know what to tell you. Your experience sounds very abnormal to me. I don't get stalkerish advertising, I don't get long unskippable ads, I don't get extra ads that crash my programs (not sure how that would work, to be honest, or why an advertiser would _want_ it to work).

Are you sure this doesn't belong in the conspiracy theory thread? Because its starting to sound like one.

Yes, I am absolutely sure this doesn't belong in conspiracy theories.

I wish I lived in the parallel universe most of you do, because in mine youtube is putting in more and more unskippable ads, either 15 second ones or back to back 6-10 second ones. Likewise if I look up something, like an angled foamcore cutter, I'm followed around the net with ads for it on FB and some other sites for weeks.

It does seem to happen more on portable devices than on my desktop I do admit, so maybe most of you don't use tablets as much.

So to me the idea of aliens coming to wall off earth because they're sick of our ads is actually kind of funny. I could totally sympathize with them.