IMO it would be nice to have some parity when meeting someone else.
IF life on Earth like planets develops like here
- Thread starter HG_B
- Start date
IMO it would be nice to have some parity when meeting someone else.
Where would be the fun it that?
Heck yeah! I saw Battle Los Angeles!
They are stealing our water!
They will have the same computer interfaces as well.
Windows 8 should be able to hook up just fine to bring down their battleship shields!
Without a BSOD even!
They always do - which kind of proves the superiority of the Windows PC platform over Apple when you think about it.
On another planet. Just Like we humans are on our planet.
Rigel Stardin
SOC-13
Just remember that you posted this when the apple users show up on your doorstep carrying tar and feathers...
Could be worse. Could be Battle of Los Angeles instead.
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Just remember that you posted this when the apple users show up on your doorstep carrying tar and feathers...
Let them come! Bunch of hipsters and aging groovies waving their iPads and ikons of Jobs at me, will they? I'll invoke the mighty spell of the Blue Screen Of Death and send them scampering, crying for their Macs to save them!
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
This seems to have wander a bit from the original question. I posed the question of Fermi's Paradox more as a challenge to the assumption that a potentially Earth-like planet would necessary develop the way that the Earth has.
A skunk has a very effective chemical defense, an alien equivalent might be lethal to humans. The cassava root has to be de-toxified before it can be eaten as manioc. It is not hard to think of an entire Earth-link planet that while having life, is not habitable by humans.
Or think about an intelligent pure carnivore, like Niven's Kzinti or the Aslan, how large a population would you get on a planet like Earth? Perhaps somewhere between 10 million and a 100 million? How high an industrial level could that size of population achieve? Could they even achieve a single planetary government?
Or we discover a planet that humans could live on immediately, but there is an intelligent species that is about the Stone Age level, with a very low population per square mile? Leave the planet alone or do we take it over?
A skunk has a very effective chemical defense, an alien equivalent might be lethal to humans. The cassava root has to be de-toxified before it can be eaten as manioc. It is not hard to think of an entire Earth-link planet that while having life, is not habitable by humans.
Or think about an intelligent pure carnivore, like Niven's Kzinti or the Aslan, how large a population would you get on a planet like Earth? Perhaps somewhere between 10 million and a 100 million? How high an industrial level could that size of population achieve? Could they even achieve a single planetary government?
Or we discover a planet that humans could live on immediately, but there is an intelligent species that is about the Stone Age level, with a very low population per square mile? Leave the planet alone or do we take it over?
How was the planet discovered?
Why so few and why so limited in their capabilities to advance towards complex societies? Just because they are carnivores? You're assuming their evolutionary adaptation is on our world, not theirs. All things being equal the evolution of the world they developed from could support any number of carnivore apex predators depending on a lot of factors, not merely on the fact that they eat meat. They don't have to hunt to live - they can develop agrarian societies and herd prey items as we do, and sustain larger populations thereby. This would allow for all the same benefits omnivores gain in animal domestication.
The majority of corn and grains grown by humans for domesticated livestock exceeds what we eat ourselves. So again, all things being equal the pure carnivore type should be able to do the same.
Besides, why do they have to have a single planetary government? What does that have to do with anything? Even Traveller allows for balkanized governments. They don't have any effect on tech level determination, and they wouldn't in real life either. If anything, the competition might stimulate some technological developments. Kind works that way now doesn't it?
How about a third option: we land there and try to cooperate with the indigenous species?
Yeah, yeah, American Indians....Aborigines....OK, OK, mea culpa we did BAD THINGS here on Earth in the past. No reason we would do the same if we encountered life on other worlds. Doesn't anyone watch Star Trek, for Pete's sake?
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
That (an old favorite, thanks
) and "...cause there's bugger all down here on Earth."Which is from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" movie, The Galaxy Song of course. Clip below in case you've not seen it (not strictly safe for work
):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk&feature=plcp
Once technology becomes high enough, it can compensate. So perhaps one can't point to any one Aslan world and say "That's impossible"[*]. But it's not about adapting to another world than Earth. It's about how much energy a world gets from its sun and how much of that gets turned into herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores. And timeover is quite right about the average number of pure carnivores a world can support being smaller than the average number of omnivores which in turn is smaller than the average number of herbivores.
[*] Though ISTR something about Aslans eshewing carniculture meat in favor of meat from live animals, which would tend to reduce the effects of technology quite a bit.
That the canonical world generation system doesn't take that factor into account is IMO a flaw. But it's not a flaw I expect to be able to convince Marc Miller about, and I don't have a simple fix for it either. Divide all populations by 3 for Aslans and Vargr and multiply by 3 for K'Kree? Seems rather messy.
Hans
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Well, considering evolution as a natural result of environment guiding form, the case would have to be made for the opposite 1st...
That (an old favorite, thanks
Which is from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" movie, The Galaxy Song of course. Clip below in case you've not seen it (not strictly safe for work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk&feature=plcp
You're welcome, Far-trader.
My first thoughts as to the evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence was that Calvin & Hobbes strip and then my own opinion that they are avoiding us, if they exist. The only way to know is to get out there and look! Ad Astra!
Heh.
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It is the earthman's burden to bring civilization to the aliens.:devil::rofl:
