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> When weighing the risks involved in interactions with less-developed cultures such as ours, these advanced civilizations may choose to refrain from contact.
by duopixel 6y ago
> When weighing the risks involved in interactions with less-developed cultures such as ours, these advanced civilizations may choose to refrain from contact.
I think establishing communication with a more advanced civilization would be deeply disrupting to our culture. We would ascribe their cultural practices to their advancement, and get a bunch of people doing "alien cargo culting". Imagine they were strict vegetarians, or peaceful and kind meat eaters for that matter. It would completely disrupt our own evolution by injecting foreign memes into our culture.
You can also reverse the situation and suppose we are able to visit an alien planet where we find a rudimentary civilization which has customs that appear exotic to us. What would the experts recommend? The cynic would say we would go at war with them to take over their planet, but being realistic it is much more advantageous to study them without interfering. I think the evolution of conscious life in different conditions than our own planet must be of tremendous interest to other conscious life.
- zionic 6y agoThe aliens could also have morals we find repulsive, for example how would society react to aliens that said hitler was right etc etc?
- whatshisface 6y agoWe can feel pretty safe that they would not say that, because if they liked Hitler, they would be invading, not chatting about history.
- drummer 6y agoRead the book "Hitler's Table Talk" by Trevor Roper.
- ardy42 6y ago> Imagine they were strict vegetarians, or peaceful and kind meat eaters for that matter. It would completely disrupt our own evolution by injecting foreign memes into our culture. Or imagine they were psychopathic sadists, like the Affront in that Ian Banks novel.
- coding123 6y ago> "alien cargo culting" As it is right now we're doing human cargo culting, most of which is indoctrinating people into believing things that are not true - sooo YMMV?
- MajorBee 6y agoI have full faith (some pun intended) that as soon as an alien civilization shows up (however slightly more advanced they might apparently be), there will be entire religions based around them as the gods. Hell, I'm sure there will be a few existing ones that will claim these are the gods that they were talking about all this while, the Great Reckoning is here, etc.