Gary Welsh

War... with whom? The gray men? They're just lackies. The godlike superintelligences? They're as far above humans as humans are above... I don't know, howler monkeys.

I've always found the idea of interstellar war between humans and other intelligent beings we might encounter to be a bit silly and unbelievable. The chances of us encountering a race that is technologically comparable enough for any conflict between us to be considered a "war" seem very small to me.

rainbow walking

War... with whom? The gray men? They're just lackies.


Whose lackies are they?

The godlike superintelligences? They're as far above humans as humans are above... I don't know, howler monkeys.

Perhaps but would humans wish to remain alien poker chips?

I've always found the idea of interstellar war between humans and other intelligent beings we might encounter to be a bit silly and unbelievable. The chances of us encountering a race that is technologically comparable enough for any conflict between us to be considered a "war" seem very small to me.

The stuff of scifi...yes.

Marduk

"First came the horrific wars, wars fought with unprecedented brutality, wars fought with technologies that made it possible to obliterate entire cities, to lay waste continents. Literally billions of human lives extinguished in an instant by weapons no larger than an automobile. They were the lucky ones. Then came the after-math. Millions starved, perished from new drug resistant diseases, ecological catastrophe on a planet wide scale…hell on earth. Unforeseeable atmospheric disturbances created by the wholesale destruction of wide areas of the globe, weather changes, earthquakes, volcanic activity, oceanic pollution, partial melting of the polar ice caps with the resultant flooding, tragedies too numerous to recount of unspeakable horrors and mutations"

I doubt if anyone would survive this, even your tucked away scientists, who would not have the infrastructure, manpower, energy or resources left to do much of anything. Homo Sapiens will no doubt be extinct long befor 2525.

Gary Welsh

Whose lackies are they?

The are just material forms that occasionally have intelligences broadcast into them. But typically they run on lower order, automatic intelligences.

Perhaps but would humans wish to remain alien poker chips?

What if cattle do not like being cattle? Anyway, in my scenario, the humans are only told they were cosmic poker chips after the bet is over. Once they are told, they no longer have that status. What would the motivation to go to war be? Disappointment? Indignation?

The stuff of scifi...yes.

I wasn't suggesting it was implausible because it is the stuff of scifi, but simply because I find it implausible. Not all scifi is necessarily that implausible. Scenarios in which we meet another interstellar race at roughly the same military level as us, and then duke it out in starfighter dogfights a la Flash Gordon is what seems very unlikely to me. That might make entertaining space opera, but what I think is much more likely is that an actual conflict between us and an alien intelligence would be a relatively easy smackdown, in one direction or the other. Just think of the military power of the modern U.S.A. compared with WWII technology. And that's only a sixty-year difference! I guess what I was saying was, what are the odds another intelligent, interstellar race would be within less than a sixty years' tech difference from us, at the time of encounter? That's a pretty narrow window, if you think about it.

Eudaimonist

I don't think it would be science and technology all by themselves. Let's call it wisdom.

tk

As scientists travelled through the black holes into other universes, they discovered strange alien populations, and exotic alien races.

The most amazing of them all was an amazingly advanced yet peaceful alien civilization. Though the aliens had a level of technology light years ahead of mankind's state-of-the-art, though they were completely capable of conquering the entire solar system if they wanted to, they never tried to do so. They had no tools of destruction, only tools of construction and self-defence. They cultivated crops by hand: even though they could have easily done so with machinery, they believed that the ills of machinization far outweighed the benefits. They led simple and contented lives.

Back on earth, news of this discovery enraged the fundamentalists of various beliefs -- for religion and pop philosophy had not been extinguished even after several thousand years -- and struck fear in the hearts of corrupt politicians. Their response was swift. Some of these people proclaimed to their followers that the advancement of the alien civilization was only "temporary", and man will ultimately win in the end (whatever "in the end" means); some asserted that the aliens' way of life was "backward", and called for the aliens to be conquered so that they could be brought to the wonders of human civilization; and others simply wrote the discovery off as a fake, a product of a grand conspiracy. The scientists behind the discovery were labelled as "tools of the devil", "unpatriotic", "immoral", and many other derogatory terms......

Marduk

Now, this is my challenge to theist and atheist alike. Pick up from that last sentence, (and man was not alone), and carry on with the story from your own worldview how you think that last sentence would unravel and why.


“The earth had become a veritable paradise. The universe, distant stars and planets, were explored, made user friendly and populated. Physical death had become an option rather than an inevitability. And man was not alone! “

and humans went to the stars to visit their cosmic neighbors. They came upon a lovely Planet with friendly yet slightly primitive inhabitants. “What a nice planet you have! Do you mind if we set up a colony?” “No, go right ahead, it’s a large Planet, lot’s of room for friendly visitors.
As time went by the natives became horrified as the humans started to kill the local fauna for food and change the landscape. The newcomers kept multiplying and wanting more room, until the original people were herded into small camps ‘for their protection’”
We must do something! they cried to their high priest. Yes we must! The high priest began a long journey to the Hall of the Ancients, where he boarded a concealed Death Glider, flew over the human settlements and burned them all to a crisp. He then tracked the location of the invaders home world and launched thousands of Tactical Nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction. blowing it all to bits.
And everyone lived happily ever after.