Memes

lol if aliens ever showed up and offered to take me, I'm gone

This reminds me how somebody pointed out that aliens are typically portrayed as monsters in capitalist media, but were generally portrayed positively in Soviet sci-fi. It kind of stuck with me.

I do think the most absurd take on aliens is the one in movies where they want to dominate or destroy us and like others in this thread pointed out, it's a projection of colonialism to think they'd be like that.

The most materially grounded take is probably something like that aliens would have various material constraints to be concerned with and so they would probably want to open up communication, if possible (if they could figure out how to communicate with us in our language), in order to work out what kind of resources we have and how, if at all, those resources can be used by them. And the likelihood is it leaning mutual-benefit exchange of info and resources (sorta like how China operates) because for any humanoid species to get to the point where it can travel vast distances in space, it would need to have cooperation down to a tee. Space does not have the room for error for a bunch of selfish conquerors to be mucking about in it.

Surveillance doesn't seem out of the question, in order to figure out how to communicate with us and to study us from a scientific standpoint. But this angle seems like it'd lean more toward a species of alien that is not humanoid and is different enough from us, there may be no communicating between the two species, even if both wanted to. And at that point, it's sort of irrelevant if aliens are real, since we'd have no way to confirm it anyway. It's also just an angle that, much like religion can be, is potentially a bit egotistical, in thinking that we are more important in the universe than we probably are in reality; a species different enough from us may not even register us as existing in the first place.

I personally like the ant analogy here. Imagine an anthill next to a highway. Ants will never comprehend what is happening right next to their hill. They literally don't have the capacity to understand.

Now imagine aliens are already around us but in ways too complex for us to understand. And in the same way we don't bother trying to teach every ant hill we come across our ways, aliens might not be bothered to teach us stuff as we are seen as too primitive.

Humans and earth's biosphere are valuable simply by existing. Since complex life is very very very very rare. Alien xenobiologists and evolutionary scientists would have an great interest in studying and observing earth.

It is a fundamentally flawed approach to project human thought patterns onto aliens (human reality itself is limited by its own methods of observation), biological reality shapes ideology. BUT it can still be deducted that any alien species advanced enough for interstellar travel is curious and pro-science and so would find xeno-ecospheres valuable.

aliens prob like: "the export of revolution is nonsense, if the people of the earth wanted revolution, they would have it, in mars we wanted revolution so we had it"

also i could very well see aliens just observing earth as a way to prove materialist principles i guess.

So i don't totally disagree with this view. I do want to point out that the thought Aliens would definitely uplift us isn't exactly foolproof.

If you think of a species civilization as an extension of their own sociology, and psychology. Which it kind of is. Like humans organize in certain ways due to how we function and whatnot. Then it's likely all species have slightly different civilizational structures. Or radically different ones. It might also not be something that's immediately obvious. Like it'd be hard to look at an entirely unique species, and figure out what their ideal socioeconomic structure would be.

So it might be best practices to let each species just sort it out on their own via natural selection. You can look at systems as a type of organism. They are born, and they die. Just like nations rise, and fall. It might just be necessary for each species to go through and find one that works for them. A long-term, stable, sustainable, socioeconomic model. If Aliens came down, and handed us their model that works for them it doesn't mean it would work for us. And any disruption might risk disaster. Like us being unable to ever find said model.

Also there is the aspect of species natural selection itself. If humanity can't find a stable long term model, and we are uplifted to an interstellar stage we could end up being a threat to other species. So letting us do our own thing might not be so much about for our own benefit, but for the long term stability of the galaxy itself.

From a human perspective humanity going extinct seems like a great loss. From an Alien perspective though if humans cause our own extinction it might be what should happen. If we can't manage to sort out our shit on a single planet then why would they want us fucking up more than 1?

You can combine these into a long term species viability factor. You let the species sort it's shit out on its home planet, and see if it has long term viability or if it will just wipe itself out. If it wipes itself out, well, that's how nature works. Species go extinct all the time. To prevent that artificially would basically just make us pets of some other species. Entirely reliant on them to keep existing. For a species that thinks in terms of millenia, or epochs when planning that would be a really big commitment to take on.

So them not wanting to have anything to do with us makes a lot of sense to me. Until we sort our own shit out anyway.

Welcome to the Posadist Commune comrade!