Your advisement if we discovered a less advanced Alien Culture?

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phil

phil

Allen said:
I guess it depends on how less advanced we're talking. I've been watching the shit out of Stagate SG1 on hulu, so when I initially read the prompt I thought of human like creatures that are simply less advanced technologically, as if in the dark ages or even cavemen or something. If that were the case, I'd want to help them and perhaps bring them up to a level similar to our own. Certainly not all at once, and not in a way that could bite us in the ass, but we could educate them, introduce modern medicine and stuff in exchange for resources.


If it's an animal life I'd probably want to leave them alone, or at least like any other wild animal we would encounter on earth. I'd want to impede their evolution and habitat as little as possible.
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How would you be able to tell the difference?[/QUOTE]

Between advanced aliens or alien animals?

I'd think it would be somewhat obvious I guess. I mean if they use some kind of tools, or perhaps something that appears to be a language or some kind of social structure. I guess the major flaw though is just if these aliens are in that stage of their development where the line between just being a really smart animal and being something mostly different is somewhat blurred. Like when humans stopped being really kick ass monkeys and start being humans, you know? So long as we don't encounter the aliens at that stage in their evolution and or development or whatever, then I guess we would be able to differentiate them from animals.

Plus if there's one type of alien animal on this planet, there would probably be others as well, so we would have something to compare them too a little better.
 
strawman

strawman

What if they don't need tools? What if they simply choose to live life simply? You can't tell the difference - it's arbitrary.
 
C

Chronos[Ha-G]

How "less advanced" are we talking here? If they've at least gotten to television, I'd like to see what they've got for programming - if they've managed to stave off the demonic influence of reality-television, I say we make every effort to hide our own existence from them, and record and rebroadcast their shows with subtitles or something. See what they come up with. If they ever come up with it on their own, THEN we announce our presence to them - no point in holding it off any longer.

Hmm...so that's why the aliens visiting us are leaving us alone. There's obviously something much worse than reality television that they've come across, and hope not to spread to our culture...
 
S

Soliloquy

I'm just curious as to why WolfofOdin's class all seemed to agree on the "rob them and eat them" stance.

Seriously, saying it's okay because they're not human? I mean, that doesn't seem too terribly far beyond saying it's okay to oppress some other racial group because they're not part of your own.


And, on a related note:


 
D

Dusty668

WolfOfOdin said:
The school this took place in? My College, Stockton, a public liberal arts college
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Such hungry students that they are willing to eat another possibly sentient species. Or is this a meaning of liberal I had not been officially told of?

Perhaps my bacon cloning idea would catch on with them then, and bring a whole new meaning to Campbells soup...
 
@Li3n

@Li3n

BlackCrossCrusader said:
Didn't I just say unless their enviroment mirrored our own?
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I didn't think you where being as general as it being carbon based, especially since we don't know of any other way life would work (and the educated guesses say it's unlikely the non-carbon based aliens would be compatible with any of the options offered here).


stienman said:
What if they don't need tools? What if they simply choose to live life simply? You can't tell the difference - it's arbitrary.
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Then we're screwed:



unless they're tree hugging hippies.
 
C

Chazwozel

ElJuski said:
I say, we create forms of ourselves as that race--let's call em avatars--and send them out to assimilate the alien culture from the inside out.

BOOSH!
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Careful, I hear James Cameron lurks in bushes listening to people's ideas about just this sort of thing...

---------- Post added at 11:28 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:27 AM ----------
WolfOfOdin said:
We had this discussion some years back in one of my classes, and thought it'd be nice to see what my adopted Intarwebz home thinks of it.

So, what would you guys do if, after we've perfected spaceflight and the like, we come across a less advanced alien species?

The overwhelming consensus in my class was :They're not human, take the minerals and either turn them into food or dust particles"

I now turn this over to you
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Silly boy. This was already done. They were called Native Americans.
 
D

Deschain

If they were harboring a rare mineral that we needed to power our technology and save our dying planet and they resisted....kill them all.

I would not stand to see humanity perish so another race can survive. Mankind takes priority over Xenos scum.
 
Green_Lantern

Green_Lantern

Staff member
Deschain said:
If they were harboring a rare mineral that we needed to power our technology and save our dying planet and they resisted....kill them all.

I would not stand to see humanity perish so another race can survive. Mankind takes priority over Xenos scum.
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but, what if they look like tiny cute kittens?
 
T

Twitch

Well whatever world power finds them first should probably start shipping them back to our other colonies in order to use them as a labor force. We'll find allies among the first tribes we make contact with and then send expeditions planet side to gather more xenos. We have to worry about whatever savage beasts and people are on the planet so these expeditions will probably be majorly native. Soon enough some lib-jerks will complain and that will probably put a hamper on the shipments, along with any trouble the natives give us, we'll presumably move thousands and thousands to account for those who don't survive the journey... Eventually there will probably be one society so firmly rooted in the indentured servants that they can't do without them, probably a colony, while the rest of the main planets have moved on or illegalized it. On some of these colonies the xenos may rise up and we'll have to send people to put them down, on others strife may break out among the owners of the aliens and the non owners, this will probably be poor for the economy and population of these outlying planets.
 
G

Gill Kaiser

Soliloquy said:
I'm just curious as to why WolfofOdin's class all seemed to agree on the "rob them and eat them" stance.

Seriously, saying it's okay because they're not human? I mean, that doesn't seem too terribly far beyond saying it's okay to oppress some other racial group because they're not part of your own.
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Yes. Seriously, who are these people, a bunch of beer-swilling rednecks?
 
HCGLNS

HCGLNS

We present them with all of our greatest cultural achiements and judge them based on how they react to them.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Gill Kaiser;314691][quote=Soliloquy said:
I'm just curious as to why WolfofOdin's class all seemed to agree on the "rob them and eat them" stance.

Seriously, saying it's okay because they're not human? I mean, that doesn't seem too terribly far beyond saying it's okay to oppress some other racial group because they're not part of your own.
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Yes. Seriously, who are these people, a bunch of beer-swilling rednecks?[/QUOTE]

It's a disturbingly common frame of mine. "They're not us, so we're not subject to morality when dealing with them." I've seen people say that's okay simply because someone is from another nation. "Foreigners have no rights." Not on a subject of illegal immigration, but anyone who's from somewhere else.

This is where we get those little abandoned towns where the population is just one guy sitting on a roof with a shotgun. Eventually you build enough walls of "us" and "them" that you get down to "me" and "everyone else".
 
D

Deschain

Seriously, saying it's okay because they're not human? I mean, that doesn't seem too terribly far beyond saying it's okay to oppress some other racial group because they're not part of your own.
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It's not because they're not human. It's because they're not us. It applies to whether it's your family, your state, nation, world, or species. If it comes down to a choice between whether your species or theirs, then it would be a great crime to condemn theirs, but an even worse to condemn yours. If the Na'vi truly believed in their cause and were willingly to stand in between humanity and survival, then I am sure they can understand agree with our course of action.

Also:

"Ender, believe me, there's a century of discussion on this very subject. Nobody knows the answer. When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let's make damn sure we're the ones alive at the end. Our genes won't let us decide any other way. Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't a will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but a race as a whole can never decide to cease to exist. So if we can we'll kill every last one of the buggers, and if they can they'll kill every last one of us."
 
G

Gill Kaiser

Deschain said:
"Ender, believe me, there's a century of discussion on this very subject. Nobody knows the answer. When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let's make damn sure we're the ones alive at the end. Our genes won't let us decide any other way. Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't a will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but a race as a whole can never decide to cease to exist. So if we can we'll kill every last one of the buggers, and if they can they'll kill every last one of us."
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Aye, but look at the guy who wrote that. He's not exactly renowned for his tolerant beliefs.
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

Staff member
I think I might have to rephrase my MA Thesis end notes... All this talk about "killin' dem aliens" makes the postcolonial optimist in me go :(
 
I

Iaculus

If they're considerably less advanced than us, then why'd we have to annihilate them in order to grab the goodies? Even assuming they're not prepared to negotiate, we could just cripple 'em militarily and then politely ask them to reconsider. Just because you desperately need to take something from someone, there's no call for being unnecessarily sadistic about it.
 
T

Twitch

Iaculus said:
If they're considerably less advanced than us, then why'd we have to annihilate them in order to grab the goodies? Even assuming they're not prepared to negotiate, we could just cripple 'em militarily and then politely ask them to reconsider. Just because you desperately need to take something from someone, there's no call for being unnecessarily sadistic about it.
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We could always rape the materials out of them...
 
L

Le Quack

What we do is this:
A) Don't go down ourselves. Send a "Rosetta Stone" with three of our most prominent language that mixes with theirs.

B) Tell them what we are and who we are IE giant 2001 a space odyessy monolith.

c)Come back at incriments and monitor them remotely, but tell them we are monitoring them remotely.

D) Tell them that whenever they have managed world peace for 100 years on their planet that we'll come and offer technological advances.
 
D

Dusty668

That's what my idea does.


"hey someone's out there."
"they are messing with us."
"ok, that's it lets go see them and..."
 
R

RocketGirl

See, I'd like someone to re-work the end of Contact like that. Jodie Foster goes through the funky wormhole thingy, gets to the alien world, her stupid dad appears, looks right in the in the eyes and goes, "Ellie...

"...THE ARISTOCRATS!"

Heh.
 
@Li3n

@Li3n

Deschain said:
But he's right.
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Yes, if we don't kill the gays they will kill us... there's no other alternative.

The argument is retarded unless we're talking about a race that somehow still has the power to destroy us even if we reduce their numbers to the minimum required for a viable gene pool or there's some sort of convoluted reason why one can't live if the other does, both of which are very unlikely situations.

Allen said:
And I was all for getting my bone on.
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Oh, you know that there'll be plenty of alien sex in between the genocide...
 
Frank

Frank

Man, being half English and half Norwegian my instincts are to go with the conquering or pillage and raping and hope they're not as good at genocide and war as we are.
 
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