Question

Suppose one day humanity encounters intelligent alien life,

friends or enemies?

Answer 1

Hmm good question (though not really sure if study..)

Anyway I think friends because I suppose that any species able to have ftl technology would have had to have learnt how to work together, right?

Answer 2

why is technology developed,/

Answer 3

Hmm I see where you're leading here, war seems to feul technology development, yes?

However I wonder if any race also able to develop ftl but did it via war probably would have also destroyed themselves before they got anywhere?

But on that same token maybe more warfare based races would be able to create better tech :/

Answer 4

Friends, definitely. I agree that any civilization sophisticated enough to reach us will have come up with a more efficient social structure than our individualistic and self destructive one - likely they will look at us and be appalled.

Or perhaps that's wishful thinking - else it will be a case of Bambi meets Godzilla.

Answer 5

Stephen Hawking has come out and said that humans should fear aliens. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/25/stephen-hawking-aliens_n_551035.html

Answer 6

Hmmm that is another option - that the might just want to steal our resources :/

Answer 7

It's very hard to say, and it's different for every situation. It depends on many factors, such as who contacted who first. If aliens find us first, it would depend on their motive. Is it just for the sake of discovery, or is it because they are missing something they need to survive, or is it because they want to take control of every intelligent race in the universe? If it is just for discovery, they would probably come in peace. If it is any of the other two reasons, they would probably be violent (unless they choose to work out an equal agreement to obtain the thing they need to survive).

If we are the first to contact the aliens, then it depends on our motives, too. Most likely, given the current situation and attitude, it would be in peace, at least at first (like Columbian explorers and the New World).

It also depends on the alien's level of advancement. If they are relatively primitive, they will more likely than not fear us and try to destroy us. If they are advanced, it may go either way.

Answer 8

Whether they're friendly or not, they might just make us sick... or we might kill them with our diseases (like in War of the Worlds).

Answer 9

Oh that's a good point Calliope, it would be really bad if they rocked up, turned out to be peaceful but killed us all with a horrible virus or something. I suppose it would also depend on their physiology and/or weather they have DNA like ours.

Answer 10

I am of the opinion that any civilization capable of traveling to us, has such command over the universe, that if we were to actually meet, it would be in friendly capacity. If said civilization were not friendly, then we would never even come in contact; I suppose, at best, we would just blink out of existence.

Answer 11

I would have to agree with you badreferences. Though the not friendly version is a little depressing. Why do you think that if a civilization were not friendly we would not come into contact (and eek, what if we contacted them)?

Answer 12

Here comes another discussion — What if the aliens are not totally like us?
What if they don't exist in space? What if they are not masses?
All these questions are still unanswered. :S

Answer 13

The universe is infinitely endless, so maybe we can consider that there is life in many other forms. Life may look like wind, water, or sand. Limitless things must have something like this.

Answer 14

I have sometimes wondered that - if our two lines of evolution were so different that it wasn't even possible to communicate or understand each others way of thinking (ie. the alien race would seem utterly mad).

Answer 15

I also (sometimes) think whether the alien life lives on the Earth, but they can't see us, neither can we see them.

But, I was once told that we mustn't think about all this stuff. If we just keep in the search for the answer, we wouldn't find it.

I am really really confused, and I guess this ambiguous lingo makes you too :S

Answer 16

Well, we mostly "expect" starfaring civilizations to be type II on Kardashev's scale, which implies: Dyson swarms, black hole generation, star lifting, anti-matter use, gamma-ray capture, and potentially white hole generation.

With all of this technology, it's virtually guaranteed that any sort of interstellar travel would be undetectable on account of non-standard propulsion. And I'd expect their detection methods to be better than ours, i.e., they detected us before they had the means to travel to us.

Also, math is generally a safe solution to communication issues. Drawing a right triangle and showing command over Pythagoras' theorem should demonstrate to the aliens that we aren't idiots. If they can't see, make a series of beeps at every few intervals corresponding to pi's digits. Etc.

Honestly, if the civilization were actually advanced, one would expect them to find some method of "sight", even if they only naturally sense through smell. The same way we invent thermal goggles.

Answer 17

Yep its just one pot of confusion - that's a good point, if there is likely to be an alien race that we can't detect its possible that they could already be here - or perhaps even started off here (would they tecnically be aliens then? :P). I figure though the universe is a pretty big place so its pretty unlikely that we would just happen to coincide by chance.

On the communication front I mean if we simply had no way of comprehending how they communicate. For example maybe a species (goodness knows how) was made up of only one organism therefore it would have no need to communicate and hence no concept of communication.

Answer 18

At this rate, we'll never meet aliens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6RbEOlqRo

Answer 19

Actually, here's an extremely relevant comic.

http://i.imgur.com/lHViZ.jpg

Answer 20

Oh, I love Portal 2. Thanks for posting! :D

But back to the subject at hand: If the communication barrier is virtually unbreakable, then the aliens would have to show us what they want by their actions, not words. If they are a higher (type II or type III) civilization, they might not even try to reason with us. They would likely treat us as we treat animals at first, but be stalled a little when they see that we have military-grade weapons and nukes. Just my thoughts though - most of it depends on the situation.