What does any one of us know about potential aliens?
Nothing.

Stating anything else is pretentious beyond sanity.


And we certainly won't learn anything from a campy hollywood entertainment flick.

 

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It's hard to say really.

Interstellar travel would be difficult even for a very advanced species.

You'd have to travel with only stuff that you really really needed to have. Considering that intelligent life is pretty rare I'm not sure you'd waste so much space and energy transporting large amounts of weaponry.

Think of the stuff we've sent out. How heavily armed was it? We could have easily put some sort of weaponry on it, but we didn't.

And? A .45 bullet and its 400 foot pounds of energy condensed to a point less than a millimeter square is still 400 foot pounds of energy compressed to a point less than a millimeter square.



With what justification?


Do you think that just because they can travel across the universe that they are somehow magically immune to the laws of physics and energy?



Why? There is absolutely no logic behind your contempt here. The insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan equipped with the most rudimentary small arms and absolutely atrocious communications are still an effective combatant, so what justification do you have for believing that "cowboys" would fare worse?


Soldiers today use thousands of rounds, where-as "cowboys" use this brand new concept called "aiming" - and they hit what they aim at. It'd be like trying to go head-to-head with an entire battalion of snipers. NOT a good day for the grunts you ask to try that.



Do you think that all species follow a similar evolutionary path? How arrogant of you. How about this - what if their world lacked in explosive propellants and never went through a firearms phase? What if they went straight from contact weapons to energy weapons? What then would be their defense against firearms? They certainly would never have developed the armor we take for granted so just why do you think it would be such a mismatch?



No - what we are to aliens would be... aliens. We will be just as alien to them as they are to us.. and we'll be equipped with technology they themselves may never even have dreamed of, because we're aliens and by definition we don't think like they do.


You seem to believe that they will have thought of everything we've thought of - and that arrogant assumption is patently absurd.


If you're going to get into speculative theory like this be sure to check your preconceptions at the door.

 

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Why do people always assume aliens will be as violent as we are?
they may be militaristc but just not have the capability for violence in the level that we demonstrate against ourselves every day.

Superior technology does not always mean superior intelligence.

Perhaps aliens developped their tech millions of years ago and haven't improved on it or have even forgotten how ro completely use it properly. Like stonehenge or building the pyramids.
Sure they can galavant around the universe like its their backyard, but maybe they've lost the ability to think tacticly and strategically.

 

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Well, you have to remember who the target audience for these types of movies are, humans. Said aliens invading in those movies aren't exactly going to flock to theaters to watch it, so those movies have to be made catered to people.

And of course, most people won't like seeing a movie where humans more or less get wiped out with no chance of winning at all. In real life all of our culture, history, technology could merely be a small footnote a few pages in the alien's history book. But that wouldn't make for a very entertaining movie, despite how realistic it'd be.

That said, so long as the movies are entertaining and semi-plausible in the context of the movie, I'm usually willing to suspend my disbelief so long as they don't break their own rules they set up. Such as how aliens in Signs had FTL technology, but can't even open a wooden door, and if water is like an acid to them, how the heck did they walk around on Earth without a spacesuit, due to all the water in the atmosphere?

And in the War of the Worlds remake, I could accept the germs killing them (they were pretty stupid again, no spacesuit and touching a lot of stuff, so those aliens totally deserved it lol). But what really irks me is how the son manages not only to survive, but gets to his mom's place before his dad does (remember, the last time we saw the son, he was stupidly going over the hill to watch a battle where military vehicles were retreating and on fire).

And I wonder what's going to happen when Christopher comes back to Earth in District 9's sequel? In this case we sort of deserve it again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3TQmCTWFbg (How District 9 it should've ended)

Actually I would assume that any aliens we encounter are going to be far more violent than we are.


Natural selection does not tolerate pacifists.

 

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That's not even a good troll.
Natural selection doesn't favor the retarded either. What's your excuse?

 

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The only things that would stop aliens from destroying us is their own conscience, other aliens, or our distance from them.

 

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Any alien race millions of years ahead of us would have not only advanced in technology but be far more advanced spiritually. They would have no desire to annihilate us but would most likely defend themselves if they had to but would not go on an offensive. Not to say that a race could not be aggressive but imo if they have evolved to be aggressive they more than likely would have destroyed themselves thousands of years ago as we are most likely going to do if we keep up this way..

An advanced race would want to help us evolve but at the same time try not to interfere too much because part of our spiritual evolution is failure and making mistakes and learning from them. Without those mistakes we would be unable to evolve properly..

 

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I'm not trolling. In point-of-fact I'm dead serious.


Everyone seems convinced that a spare-faring race is automatically going to be highly-evolved "enlightened" goody-two-shoes who only have our best interests at heart (like Coriolus envisions) and would never ever be aggressive or warlike.


Frankly I find that view retarded in the extreme, as by definition one cannot become the dominant species of a planet by being pacifistic, and only the dominant species of a planet will survive long enough to evolve intelligence, technology and space travel.


The assumption that a star-faring race would completely set aside the very traits that allowed them to travel to the stars simply because they can travel to the stars is incredibly naive and the very definition of "wishful thinking".

 

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