Is it normal i have this opinion on aliens visiting our planet?

I was speaking to my boyfriend who is a mechatronic engineering student about alien life visiting our planet. My boyfriend wants to work on moving us closer to space exploration. His eyes are very much geared towards the stars.

It brought up a conversation about aliens. He has a very excited view of aliens visiting us, even though it's unlikely. I'm terrified, however. Just thinking about it for a few moments, I see it going in a similar fashion as Columbus when he landed in the islands. Even if they are benevolent, there is disease.

Specifically, what they could spread to us. We are completely different life forms and a disease not even on this planet will be quite a monster to treat.

There's also the other fears that come with colonialism and someone invading. We would be the weaker group if we came across a species that managed to understand and harness intergalactic travel. We wouldn't stand a chance.

I said, "If aliens came here, we should beg them to leave, and ask if they come across any other lifeform in this universe, please tell them there is nothing over here. It's barren."

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Based on 5 votes (4 yes)
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Comments ( 11 )
  • S0UNDS_WEIRD

    I can address each of your concerns.

    Extraterrestrial microbes are exceedingly unlikely to have a devastating, if tangible at all, effect on terrestrial life; terrestrial biology is essentially manifested upon chemistry acting as a reproducing, perpetually evolving coding language and extraterrestrial microbes will almost certainly be "programmed" in a somewhat, if not entirely, different coding language.

    This limits potential interactions and essentially renders the two systems incompatible with one another. A decent analogy to this incompatibility can be seen with computer viruses and varying operating systems. Linux OSs are often seen as virtually immune to viruses (not _entirely_ true) and, while it's true that they are inherently more secure than Windows OSs, this essential immunity is primarily because the majority of computer viruses are designed to infect the more popularly used OS; their instructions are meaningless on a Linux OS.

    We don't know that extraterrestrial life will be based on DNA or RNA. We don't even know that it will be based on carbon; silicon-based life seems viable for example. It's almost certain that, at the very least, alternative-chirality biomolecules would suffice. On Earth amino acids are generally of the L form and sugars are of the D form. Even such a similar biochemistry as one simply substituting amino acids of the D form and sugars of the L form would be incompatible with known life despite simply being an alternative stereochemistry.

    There are also possibilities such as arsenic acting as an alternative to phosphorus or ammonia acting as an alternative to water for a solvent. The point is that it's very likely that extraterrestrial microbes will be incompatible but for good measure let's imagine these hypothetical microbes just _do_ happen to be carbon-based, typical chirality, water-using, DNA-coded, etc.

    Even if they "speak" the same language and are technically compatible, they're still shaped by a completely different ecosystem and game of natural selection. On Earth microbes target particular proteins. The proteins are arbitrary in every way aside from being human-specific, etc. They evolved alongside us. Even life of the same base coding would be very poorly optimized to affect us due to its variant evolutionary history.

    Because of these things many scientists believe the chance of an issue is outright zero. I wouldn't go that far though; while it's _exceedingly_ unlikely, such microbes could hypothetically create an issue by sheer chance rather than traditional evolution's will. Still I feel you can safely put this concern to rest.

    This leaves your other concerns about the intentions of the actual extraterrestrial intelligence in question. As you alluded to, meetings between two intelligences with a vast technological disparity has historically rarely ended well for the more primitive intelligence. But not all trends are perpetual and luckily for us, an extraterrestrial intelligence capable of having traversed an interstellar distance has without a doubt already developed _much_ simpler (even if still somewhat alien to us) technologies along the way.

    This is technology that negates essentially any motive for harming us whatsoever. Contrary to what was once believed, Earth isn't particularly special; it has nothing that can't be found in greater abundance elsewhere, including water. There are also almost certainly countless other habitable planets and an intelligence this advanced could also simply terraform uninhabited planets with ease if they hadn't already opted to live in a mobile space habitat.

    Resources and real estate aren't an issue. Earth has nothing particularly unique to it aside from the existing life itself. So slavery as a motive? Not a chance; they would long have been a mostly automated, post-scarcity civilization for which organic slavery would be an enormous step down in terms of productivity. If they even went out of their way to meet us, they almost certainly at worst only care about logging our planet and various species thereof into some galactic Wikipedia and at best are being friendly to their neighbor along the way.

    Even if you weren't particularly empathetic or peaceful, there's simply no motivation to go out of your way to wreck what in the grand scheme of things amounts to insignificant, little Earth unless you're an ancient species with a phobic policy of terminating budding civilizations before they're spacefaring out of fear of their future actions. This, however, seems unlikely. As far as extraterrestrials go, I think the bigger threat is a superior intelligence that doesn't even notice us and just happens to have some galactic rearrangement ideas, similar to humans paving roads over anthills.

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    • LloydAsher

      I prescribe to the idea that while life itself isnt particularly rare in the universe having inteligence to bring you to a space faring capacity is.

      Humanity is a fluke of evolution. As every type of animal ultimately is. Inteligence isnt a game changer people prescribe it to be. In humans it takes 20% of our caloric intake. That inteligence has to pull its weight otherwise its weeded out in the population. In prehistory humanity was almost wiped out completely 3 times just by natural calamities. Theres also nothing stopping a society just sticking to the stone age if the conditions of their geography is mineral poor. Such as the pacific islanders or native Americans.

      The pacific islanders didnt have metal to work with. Such staying as a sea faring people. Or the native americans dispite being relaticely advanced not being able get enough man power to make scientific advancements beyond observable data. That was due mainly to lack of beasts of burden, resorting to mass slavery as a literal manpower source.

      This is on top of assuming any potential aliens would have the adaptions necessary for reading. Which is in humanities case was the most important advancement in retention of knowledge.

      If they were just space dolphins than evolution is capped there. Since they would have no access to combustion to create rockets that could leave the atmosphere.

      Life is relatively common the question is that are we the most advanced in the universe thus far. With us being sentient and perceiving our own history, time has slowed down for us. Thus our perception of the universe around us is caught in a snapshot. We could be surrounded by other life we just dont know it yet because they are so god damn far away.

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      • I think another reason for lack of advancement was lack of domesticated animals and thus, large scale use of the wheel. It *did* exist in the Americas before European contact, but never used on a large scale, especially for travel.

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        • LloydAsher

          No reason in mexico. It was hilly (understatement for peru), a boat was more practical for moving stuff, but that's general for everyone.

          Roads require vast amount of work to establish and maintain. The tribes of north america couldn't pull that off. The aztecs had roads, but cargo transportation was best for water ways. If not either? Slaves.

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  • idkyourmom27

    but dis alien chik was kinda hot doe dawg :3

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  • JellyBeanBandit

    I don't think the idea that we would ever be a threat to them, and so that they should wipe us out just in case, would be laughable to them. So I don't think they'd kill us.

    I doubt they'd try to communicate with us either though, since we'd be just too stupid for them. It'd be like us trying to communicate with insects, we wouldn't even think of the idea because it's just ridiculous. We'd either pass them by because they wouldn't interest us, or we might stop and study them out of curiosity.

    So I think that's the most any aliens would ever do with us. And just like how the insects are unaware of us and how they couldn't comprehend our intelligence, that's what it'd be like with us and the aliens watching over us.

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  • LloydAsher

    Best case scenario is that we are the first species to make it this far.

    Statistically we could be so rare that we are the first. It's not hard to find life. What's difficult is finding inteligent life that doesnt get wiped by an asteroid, or solar flare.

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  • Iambillythemenacetosociety

    If aliens were to come to earth, you seriously think they're going to say "alright, I'll just head out then" because people beg them to leave? Lol.

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    • No, but there's not really anything else we could do.

      Like I said before, disease and colonialism if not outright genocide are the likely outcomes if alien life visited here.

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      • Iambillythemenacetosociety

        Exactly my point. Begging would be pointless.

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  • RoseIsabella

    Maybe the aliens will find that they cannot fight the common cold? You never know. 🤔👽

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