| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/13/2007 12:05:00 PM | Well, some of us like to be believe "aliens" have visited planet Earth for centuries but...
Lets reverse the roles and think what we do as a human race if we had the ability to travel to another planet which contained a vast diversity of resources beneficial to us AND inhabited by (humanoid) beings, who are either on an intellectual and technological level with prehistoric humans of the past or as we are today. It would challenge us with many "moral questions" as an intelligent race, maybe for example...
Should we interfere?
Should we expose ourselves to them as a race from another planet?
Should we pretend we are "god" and bedazzle them with technology?
Should we share our technology?
Should we experiment on them?
Should we just pillage the planet and destroy all intelligent indigenous life to make way for mass colonization of humans?
Or just observe them from a distance? | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/13/2007 12:55:31 PM | | While many Sci-fi shows and movies would suggest otherwise, we humans are notorious for ignoring our own ideals, for the short term personal gains to ourselves. So regardless of what we should do, I believe that we would do what we have ourselves termed as reprehensible, all the time trying to justify and morally/ethically reconcile our actions. | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/13/2007 1:10:10 PM | | I think that perhaps the questions are badly worded. I suspect that most would agree about what we SHOULD do. The real question is what WOULD we do, or what would a select few do. We'd arrive with lofty ideals, a la Picard, and depart after substantial interference, a la Kirk or the conquistadors. | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/13/2007 2:17:16 PM | | The likelihood of them being humanoid would, I believe, be really really low. But if life on their planet was based on similar chemistry to that of the Earth, slight contact could unleash devastating diseases upon both civilizations, so it'd definitely be advisable to hold off on physical contact until we had a really good understanding of what kind of life existed there, how it functioned and what it's strengths and weaknesses were. Could objects be sterilized by use of radiation, extreme temperature, etc.? We'd really want to know these things. I bet we'd do something approaching an acceptable job of this, but I very much doubt we'd build our knowledge up enough going the other way and would run more of a risk of causing biological catastrophe for them. | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/13/2007 6:18:16 PM | Even if the planet were exactly like Earth in every way, the chances that the life forms there would be anything like what we are used to would be astronomical. At any point in the last 2 or 3 billion years, for a multitude of reasons, life on Earth could have diverged to a completely different path than what it has. Yet, that doesn't rule out intelligence.
If they weren't capable of defending themselves, or weren't smart enough to know what's going on.
I'm sure we'd screw them out of whatever we wanted. | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/13/2007 9:52:53 PM | Hehe. I didn't quite make it through without naughty thoughts... what I read was:
Should we expose ourselves to them
then:
Should we pretend we are "god" and bedazzle them
And I'm thinking "wow, a planet of hot guys who think as well of me as I do of myself, this could really work!"
My mind is deeply in the gutter. I think I need sleep | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/13/2007 9:55:08 PM |
Even if the planet were exactly like Earth in every way, the chances that the life forms there would be anything like what we are used to would be astronomical. At any point in the last 2 or 3 billion years, for a multitude of reasons, life on Earth could have diverged to a completely different path than what it has. Yet, that doesn't rule out intelligence.
If they weren't capable of defending themselves, or weren't smart enough to know what's going on.
I'm sure we'd screw them out of whatever we wanted.
We'd view then the same way we view semi-intelligent animals, such as pigs. We wouldn't eat them of course, but we would find a rationalization to follow our instincts and put the life and needs of a person above those of their entire species. | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/13/2007 10:15:45 PM | ^
We wouldn't eat them of course,
.....how do you know that?....if by chance their flesh was shown to be deliciously addicting to our taste buds then these beings would be on the menu of every restaurant
......someone already mentioned 'colonialism'...with that said, you can already forsee what the typical human would eventually do in such a situation
you can never underestimate on what pple would be capable of doing when there is nothing to restrain us from doing it! | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/14/2007 7:16:05 AM |
.....how do you know that?....if by chance their flesh was shown to be deliciously addicting to our taste buds then these beings would be on the menu of every restaurant
I didn't mean that in a morality sense, rather that the odds are astronomically against our being able to eat them. We can eat earth animals precisely because everybody evolved alongside together.
I'm sure that if we could, we probably would. | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/14/2007 8:17:11 AM | Suppose the aliens looked like animals to us. We don't respect animals on our planet so why would we respect alien animals any more? I would not be surprised if the result of finding life on another planet was the global powers fighting over who "owned" the rights to this new planet followed by exploitation and the ultimate destruction of the planet. As individuals, humans can be wonderful, en masse we seem like very selfish, self-important children, always wanting more, careless of the suffering we cause.
In an ideal world, I would like to think that we could observe peacefully and if there seemed to be suffering on their planet, we could collaborate and hope that sharing understanding and ideas would lead to an improved quality of life for al concerned. However, we cannot yet do this between countries or even between individuals, most of the time, let alone between planets. Maybe they are watching us and waiting for us to evolve into something more intelligent. | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/15/2007 10:45:31 AM | Unless we learn how to better care for our own planet and the lifeforms on it, I hope we never manage to leave the earth to even go to Mars, much less planets in other solar systems.
As far as what would happen if we met another, less advanced culture. Same thing that has always happened when it has happened here. The more advanced one will dominate and eventually destroy the weaker one. | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/18/2007 8:14:01 AM | What's the obsession with aliens being humanoid? Do you realise how astronomically small the chances are for a life form on another planet to independently evolve into a humanoid? Combine that with the chances of humanoids making it as the dominant species on that planet (We don’t realise how lucky we are) and you have a very small number indeed.
No offence to the OP, but to me it seems so egotistical and arrogant of humans. | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/18/2007 12:38:28 PM | Should we interfere? No
Should we expose ourselves to them as a race from another planet? Not at first
Should we pretend we are "god" and bedazzle them with technology? No, unless we need to protect ourselves.
Should we share our technology? No
Should we experiment on them? No, unless we are to avail ourselves to dead bodies.
Should we just pillage the planet and destroy all intelligent indigenous life to make way for mass colonization of humans? No, but we probably would anyways.
Or just observe them from a distance? Yes
These are totally well responses from the "Prime Directive" off of Star Trek, but they are also the way we should act towards any previously unknown 'humans' or 'aliens'. Would we do this for real? I don't think we would. | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 7/18/2007 9:59:27 PM | If we had the ability to travel to another planet we could screw up that planet, too!
You should watch the movie, Mars, the Red Planet. It basically states that we are from another planet and forgot that. I don't find it that hard to disprove, actually. Seems possible and maybe even likely in terms of explaining some of the great mysteries like the pyramids. | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 8/20/2007 10:22:19 PM | | we would try to take advantage of the beings on another planet. Maybe enslave them, definitely kill them and bring everything bad about humanity to a new planet. Just check out the fact that the astronauts were drunk abord the shuttle. We are not ready to find another poulated planet. We are not even ready to find an isolated group of humans on this planet. | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 8/21/2007 4:59:27 AM | We would probably end up colonizing the planet, then we would end up fighting the locals, and then the media would become involved getting people to start fighting for the rights of the locals, then there would be a special committee and president Bush (or a facsimile since he is on the way out) would tell everyone that they were hiding weapons of mass destruction and we owe it to ourselves to fight this great evil.....
just a little humor to liven things up a bit  | |
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 8/21/2007 5:03:06 AM | oh i almost forgot to mention it would be ok though because a big corporation(we'll just call it Haliburton for arguments sake) would move in and rebuild the infrastructure of the planet.....
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| If humans had the ability to travel to another planet
Posted: 8/21/2007 7:12:27 AM |
We wouldn't eat them of course,
.....how do you know that?....if by chance their flesh was shown to be deliciously addicting to our taste buds then these beings would be on the menu of every restaurant
Just maybe suppose we taste good to them?
We could be on the menu in their restaurants.
Humans are so arrogant having this weird idea that there is nothing greater than us in the entire universe, that we are the be all to end all.
We can not live in peace within our own countries, let alone with other countries. How in double hockey sticks do we get the idea it would be different with another world?
We are so arrogant!
Star Treks prime directive would be beyond anything man has accomplished to date, as one example I will use, residential schools and native land claims. We tried to force native children to conform to our ways, convert to our religions and beliefs and land claims have been going on for what about 200 years now? We invade other countries to take their natural resources, so what would be different with another world ?
We just may have a wake up call, if they are out there, they just may be far more powerful than us.
They may also be like us and destroyed their own planet and come here to take ours, just something to think about eh? | |
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