Minä pitäisin todennäköisimpänä sitä että nykyaikaiset, valoa hitaammat kommunikaatio- ja havainnointimuodot ovat liian primitiivisiä havaitsemaan mitään meitä merkittävästi kehittyneempää. Muistakaa että aikoinaan "marssilaisiin" aiottiin ottaa yhteyttä sytyttämällä bensalla täytettyjä ojia pythagoraan kolmion muodossa että alienit näkisivät että täällä on älyllistä elämää. Tuon artikkelin muurahaispesävertaus oli erittäin osuva:

Lets say we have an ant hill in the middle of the forest. And right next to the ant hill, they’re building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is “Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would the ants be able to understand the technology and the intentions of the beings building the highway next to them?

Kuvassa sattumalta crossoveri tunnistettavaksi.

To put it bluntly there are only a few reasons any intelligent species would want to go to another planet with another civilisation present;

Help!
Buy!
Work! / Serve!
Convert!
Discuss!
Vacate!

Before I get to those words, the question is; why? It's all related to the prisoner dilemma at the end of the day. If there are at least two alien races present, then the conundrum of survival is that;

Race A does nothing, lives in constant fear of being wiped out by Race B and vice versa
Race A commits genocide on Race B and lives happily ever after - and vice versa

If you do a game theory pay off matrix then;

Co-operate/Ignore ----------- 1/1 or 0/0
Attack/Ignore ----------------- 1/-1
Ignore/Attack ----------------- -1/1
Attack/Attack ------------------ -1/-1

Weight the values as you desire. The point is that 3 out of the 4 options result in somebody coming off badly. Furthermore, if you choose the 'ignore' strategy, then it gives the game away to the other race that you're not initiated an 'attack' strategy, which in the grand scheme of things means that;

"You could either shoot the stranger in the wilderness now, take his gun, food and water, or wait for him to get the same idea."

Also note, say you're Race A, if Race B ignores you, your best outcome is to attack, because your not having to spend resources on defences, intelligence etc. etc. Then even if B attacks, your best outcome is always going to be to reciprocate, otherwise it's extermination. Don't pass go, let the other race collect your Darwin Award.

This means that any 'rational alien civilisation' will come to the 'attack' strategy conclusion.

I also mentioned Darwin, and this is important, because if there is anything we know for certain about Mr. ET, it is that they have discovered the principles of evolution.

Mr. ET will note;

A) Their survival will always be more important than our survival if things come to a head. This is because species don't survive in nature by being self-sacrificing for other species.

B) Passive races don't rise to become the dominant species on their planet. Any intelligent alien civilisation will be highly intelligent, alert, aggressive and ruthless.

C) They will reason, that we shall reason the same about them.

Now there is a bit of a light in the tunnel, and that is another piece of game theory, in which in the world of the totally selfish, everyone is more efficient, than the world of the selfless. But now back to those words;

Help!
Well, if ET is asking for our help, then they are not really in a position to invade us, since you don't get cooperation by first punching the other guy in the face, and if they intended to use the notion of 'a threat' to get us to help, well that's more akin to 'Serve!'. Furthermore, for that threat to be credible, then they would be having to make a very serious threat, which means that they probably don't need our help in the first place as their capabilities will need to be quite beyond us (possibly) to do that.

Buy!
Remember that aliens might not have to invade with violence. They may instead be wanting to exploit humanity in exactly the same way the modern United States exploits the 3rd world. We do all the graft, sell the aliens what we might produce, and we 'loose' in the game because the aliens are adopting an 'unconventional attack strategy'.

However in this circumstance, the aliens are unlikely to be needing to use violence to 'invade us' hence we know that's not going to be the motive of an invading alien species.

Work! / Serve!
A loose amalgamation of the above two points, but here is where said aliens are directly looking for the product of our labour.

The plus side of this means that said aliens are not out to commit genocide. They want us alive, alive but broken. I.e.

"The stranger in the desert decides to steal the other persons gun, then force them to do their bidding. If there is a problem later on, you have the peace of mind of two guns."

The downside is that not only is ET going to have to come down here to get us, they are in effect looking for slaves, or at the very least indentured workers for the simple reasons of needing to adopt an attack strategy as highlighted above. In many respects this is a fate worse than simple extermination.

However that leads to a whole host of other known givens;

A1) If the aliens want the product of our labour, then our labour must be still 'valuable' to this alien civilisation. For instance, your average westerner is not looking to purchase arrowheads from some Amazonian tribe, but you might be willing to buy cheap Chinese crap.

This tells us that these aliens are not 'much more advanced than us', or at the very least 'non-cooperation' may hurt them (slightly). There is a small element of leverage.

A2) Continuing on, if they are not that advanced such that we are as ants to them, then that means that these aliens more than likely cannot bring considerable force to bear against humanity. In essence, what we are seeing is what happens when the first colonists arrived in America, a small vanguard force, and reinforcements will not be coming for some time. This gives us considerable military advantage, even if this is not actually the case and ET can actually mobilise at the drop of a hat. The reason being here is that we shall be more likely to actually try a resistive strategy and 'attack back' initially.

Now we may argue that this didn't work for the native Americans, Aborigines, nor the Chinese, on the other hand, we have Japan and India which embraced western methods and then have gone on to shine. Such outcomes only transpired after the initial course of events. Hence we would be pursuing both strategies, testing the first to assert self-sovereignty, and if that fails only then adopting the co-operate fully modus operandi.

B1) If A2, then ET will only be landing on earth with a small force, not knowing the land, not knowing the peoples, resolve, tricks and details. Furthermore ET is going to be vastly outnumbered, scared (them being a long way from home), going to have limited reserves or capacity for strategic warfare. In essence, we have all the home advantages, and they have all the away disadvantages.

B2) Hence we know that ET has to adopt a shock and awe type strategy to military operations. Much like the US attempted to use in Afghanistan and Iraq, or like Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany. ET, knows that they can't squander resource, and have to force early capitulation if they don't have the material power to just steam roll us.

Hence we should expect ET to use all their biggest and best weapons early, possibly overcommit to generate up initiative for themselves, and install defeatism in the local populace a.k.a. us.

This means we can play ET for this, go to ground, let them overcommit then come back swinging since ET will lack the staying power to prosecute 'total war' unlike humanity which will be able to. This means that victory, in the long or medium term will be almost guaranteed.

While ET can and will have counter strategies to this, and mankind could also use these in our turn, should we wish, to exercise limited 'clear and sweep' operations, or 'hostage situations', these might be counter productive to maintaining human servitude in the long term, and relaxation of such 'terror tactics' may also be counter-productive, thus leading to less overall utility gained. Thus the counter-positioning may strongly depend on ET's own wishes and desires, not on abductive rationale.

>>2751
jatkuu

Convert!
In many ways even worse than other methods. Again, conversion typically means that we are ourselves 'valued', but at the same time non-converting elements may be 'devalued', thus leading to a positive internal pressure in humanity to convert, an insidious internal enemy to face as well as the physical one.

Given we don't know ET's beliefs how they may prosecute a 'conversion campaign' might be comparatively unknown, but it would likely involve strong elements of propaganda and trying to turn humanity upon itself. In this move the idea is for ET to get humanity to 'fight itself'.

But here is the crunch, because at the end of everything humanity might just be 'neutrally valued'. If they want to convert us, it tells us very little as to our actual value to them. Hence we could not infer technological parity, if any, nor even an actual rationale!

Why? Because the belief system itself might be irrational, or a memotological 'virus' that exists only to self-perpetuate, an interesting 'parasite' that preys on intelligent civilisations to spread to one another. In this case, the aliens themselves may not even know this state of affairs.

Discuss!
If aliens just want to share thoughts, they hardly need to invade. Indeed they don't even have to visit us in principle. However unlike 'Convert!' aliens, we might assume that again ET is not likely to be too far in advance of us, because they are considering our thoughts 'valuable' and aren't just trying to force their notions upon us. Unfortunately, 'Discuss!' aliens may also be slow rolling the prisoner dilemma situation to mask any one of the other motives.

Thus it is the aliens that talk that we should be most wary of in many respects, even if everything sounds or appears OK.

We can also reason that aliens will reason this about us which should make us wary of appearing too interested in other alien civilisations.

Vacate!
If aliens want us to vacate the planet, they will be 'interstellar exterminators', they won't waste time invading us, they will aim for genocide on a planetary scale right from the beginning. In which case we really don't have any hope in hell, since even mankind today might be able to do that to ourselves, in which case a space-faring civilisation should have no problem doing the same, and there would be methods and techniques like biowarfare that could be non-destructive.

On the plus side, consider the galaxy where there may be more than 2 races. Let's assume 3 before extending to N races.

Race A exterminates Race B.
Race C witnesses this extermination.
Race C can now infer that Race A will (most probably) attempt to exterminate them. Either;
- Because Race A has an overarching principle to do so.
- Because Race A will reason what Race C reasons, and thus will, given the attack/ignore dilemma choose an attack option at some point.

Thus there is no rational position which will have Race C not reciprocate. Apart from...

Race C will also reason, that if it exterminates Race A, then a hypothetical Race N that witnesses it, will also follow the same trail as logic as Race C has just done, thus resulting in Race C being ultimately exterminated.

If there exists other Races D, E, F, G, …, etc. then there is an unknown number of potential 'witnesses' that will see an 'exterminator' race as a threat. Hence insuring attack plays against them by beginning the fight.

Yet, we also saw from the table, that all Races should choose the attack option. Hence we are left with a position whereby;


Co-operate/Ignore ----------- 1/1 or 0/0
Attack/Ignore ----------------- -1/-1
Ignore/Attack ----------------- -1/-1
Attack/Attack ------------------ -1/-1

which would suggest that we would come to a position whereby all rational aliens would choose to only ignore or co-operate.

Indeed, it would also suggest that all purely aliens would come to adopt an 'ignore', or more accurately a 'silent' stance, because if the other ETs don't know that you are their then there is no possibility for them to choose an 'attack' strategy – even though it would be potentially self defeating in the long run.

Thus the rational alien civilization would stay silent as a double security.

This would be all well and dandy, it would explain the Fermi Paradox just fine. All alien civilisations out there have done the logic, and come to the 'safest play' given that the stakes are astronomically high.

But then let's go a little be futher with this.

Firstly, this is a memotological virus in disguise. Let's assume that I am some great philosopher and my presentation here, leads humanities great strategists to adopt the 'silence' strategy given it is our 'safest play'.

Great! Apart from the facts that;

- We never identified any race B, or C, let alone any more to support the motion
- We never identified if races are actually going to reason this all out and 'play by the rules'

We can reason further...

Because this is a virus, some bright spark at some point is going to reason that if we 'throw this message-in-a-bottle out to the stars' then we can insure above points 1. and 2. This is because other aliens will then know that at least Race B exists, that Race B will get 'the logic' and hence have the evidence to actually play by the rules.

We can also argue, let's assume that we got the message, or have accepted the position. If we did so, or there are other races doing this, then they are going to stay 'silent' and not broadcast themselves and/or have allies.

Which means, if humanity was to go out and find some 'allies' then we would be in a 'plus position', or indeed we might be able to go on a conquering spree since these aliens aren't going to advertise for help.

Indeed if we were really insidious we would not only send the messages-in-the-bottles, but then follow them up a couple hundred/thousand years later with the actual invasion fleet. This is because sooner or later, said race will figure out its a memotological virus, and follow out the same thinking, if you're smart, then hopefully you arrive at the same time they work out that they could take advantage of the situation to gain allies.

Now, if Race A, and Race C are allies, then they can take down Race B and be fairly confident that they can play 'galactic exterminator' together.

However to do this efficiently, they need to determine that the number of 'friendly races' is greater than 'observer races' Note that 'observer' races may be also silent races, that the friendly races might not know about.

Which partially brings us back to the exterminator problem...

...Why only partial? Because here every 'message-in-a-bottle' arrives before you might wish to exterminate. Hence it is a case of 'convert or die'. It being possible that you could 'seed' most solar systems with the message, well in advance of being picked up naturally by an 'observer' race.

This is because of von Neumann probes, or the ability to act via proxy.

Say you meet some aliens, you befriend them. Then you get them, to start sending out the messages doing the same thing you are doing...do the math, exponential growth. Also note this is again a memotological virus, it's a rationale for action based on a self-propagating ideal. This is one option.

The second is to build some probes that go out and do your business for you. Sneaky this, because then that means you could 'play the exterminator' through your probes, hence;

Race A exterminates Race B.
Race C witnesses this extermination.
But Race A is actually a set of probes sent by Race D.

By now I've probably lost you in some of the plays and counter plays that make up the galactic arms race.

But what this boils down to, is that 'Vacate!' might still be a valid strategy for another alien race, despite threat of reprisal. What's more, there is a whole layer of how 'Discuss!' aliens might actually be pursuing other motives, such as 'vacate!'

>>2752
In concluding, humanity might be able to 'win' if presented with;

Work! / Serve!
Discuss!

Type aliens. Of these, Discuss! Types are far more likely given that Work! / Serve! Types may fall outside of the 'rational conclusions' scope. However Discuss! Types may actually belong to another category.

Humanity will probably loose to;

Buy!
Convert!
Vacate!

Type civilisations.

And

Help!

Type civilisations have nothing to gain.

Which is why if humanity goes to the stars, we should pretend to be Help! Types (maybe).