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http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l"Casablanca" -
"This looks like the begining of a beautiful friendship!"
At least it wasn't "Round up the usual suspects"
Michael Brown mwsaber6@msn.com
From: John Brewer
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 7:38 AM
To: gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: [GZG] A number of scientists respond to Hawking's
concernsabout Aliens
When we came to your planet, you reguarded us with apprehension. This
is understandable. We are, after all, a previously unknown factor -
foreign - alien. And it's natural to reguard with apprehension that
which is unknown. But even when we reveled to you that we are beings not
unlike you, with motivations not dissimilar to yours, some apprehension
remains. This too is understandable.
We learned, from your history, that there were instances where a more
technologically advanced culture encounted a less technologically advanced
culture. Not all of these meetings ended happily or even peacefully.
There were instances where the more advanced culture dominated or even
enslaved the people of the less advanced culture, abrogating their destinies
to no more than subjects to a master.
There were instances where the more advanced culture stole or squandered the
physical resources belonging to the less advanced culture, selfishly
benefiting themselves while affording little to theie victims.
And there were instances where the less advanced culture was assimilated into
the body of the more advanced, leaving a rich and unique culture fragmented
and ruined.
And you reguarded the memories of these instances with shame and
mortification, and so you quietly resolved that if you were ever to journey
out into the stars, and encounter new and unique cultures, you would not make
the same mistakes.
In our history, we too have had instances not unlike these, that we too
reguarded with shame and mortification, and we quietly resolved that when we
journey out into the stars to encounter new and unique cultures, we don't make
the same mistakes. And for the most part, we have held to this resolve.
We have come to your planet not to dominate or enslave, but to offer the hand
of friendship and cooperation, to help you solve the problems the plague you
and in exchange gain insight into solving the problems that still plaque us.
We have come not steal or squander your resources, but to trade fairly for
them and in exchange offer our own resources to your benefit.
We have come not to assimilate your culture into ours, but to allow your
unique culture to enrich ours and in exchange we offer the best of our culture
to be used by you as you see fit.
In this first, of we hope many, diplomatic missions, we have exchanced
diplomatic niceties, trade goods, given and received gifts of music, art,
entertanment, and information, and we judqe the mission to be a success.
Our first image of your culture, received at a distance, was in the form
of a song - the opening song from the video program, "Baywatch". We end
this mission with an appropriate ending - the final line of dialogue
from the feature-length video, "Casablanca" - "This looks like the
begining of a beautiful friendship!"
- excerpt from "This Is Not Science Fiction!!" by Jack Colby - (rough
draft in progress) JBrewer@webtv.net
"Always strive to be a good person. If you can't do that, at least strive to
be someone other than an asshole."
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Of course there is every reason this could easily go something along the lines
of "....we have promised ourselves that we we would not make these same
mistakes, but we failed. We have since realized that this is folly. Prepare to
die!"
Another possibility is, "Oh....thisp lace is yours? Sorry, we really didn't
notice you there."
Still another, "I realize you are intelligent and that you have developed
culture, but we are starving and your planet represents the only supply of
fresh food in the sector"
Or perhaps, "...but you are so damned tastey"
How about, "We'd love to have peaceful coexistence bu the fact that you don't
eat your mates after breeding and selectively cull your young is an afront to
our way of life."
"Five fingers? Really? that's too weird."
In all seriousness I like the fact that Hawking was willing to accept the fact
that aliens, if encountered have just as much of a chance to be a foe as a
friend.
-Eli
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> .net wrote:
> these same mistakes, but we failed. We have since realized that this
"Of Men and Monsters" by William Tenn.
> Still another, "I realize you are intelligent and that you have
What was that story that had first contact being the local alien overlord
informing the human race that they'd just been given to the local overlord of
another species, and he was just a bit bigoted. "Don't
any of your species have grren skin? Or at least blue?" 8-)
> In all seriousness I like the fact that Hawking was willing to accept
> the fact that aliens, if encountered, have just as much of a chance to
> be a foe as a friend.
What intrigues me about the whole debate is that Hawking is saying the
same thing that Jack Kirby (the comic artist and all-around imaginative
genius) said when the Pioneer 10 plaque was designed and publicised. Why
tell aliens where we are? They might not be benevolent. Jack's words were
lost, or ignored, in all the controversy over other aspects of the
plaque -- the nudity of the human figures, the non-appearance of the
woman's vagina, the supposed submissive pose that she had (actually intended
to demonstrate the workings of the hip joint), etc., etc. Lots
of people had alternative ideas for the plaque -- one suggestion from,
IIRC, the Catholic Church, was to show a pair of hands folded in prayer
(nothing else, just the hands). Jack's was to show a pair of
super-powered humans leaping off the planet to convey the message "Hi
there! Look what we can do. Mess with us at your peril."
Yet again, the King was decades ahead of his time... ;-)
Phil
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http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOn 13/05/2010
> 2:25 AM, emu2020@comcast.net wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people
An alien civilisation would likely have as much interest in humanity as the we
have for the Sentinelli. Except the difference in technology would be wider.
> The Sentineli are the quintessential Andamanese: to this day they live
> their primitive but comfortable and unhurried lives in complete
> obscene gesture makes clear that the outsiders are no longer tolerated
> and had better leave in a hurry:
> of what was otherwise a devastating disaster. Whether the Sentineli
> Repeated gifts left for them have mellowed the Sentineli a little in
> an invisible red line must have been crossed. Warning arrow shots were
> fired while the hidden warriors stepped from their hiding places. In
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LOL,
I'll have to claim ignorance and say that any similarities between my comments
and the works of others are purely accidental. I'm nowhere as
well-read in the scifi realm as I'd like to be.
I think that people were hung up on the glory of space exploration that common
sense sort of went out the door. I know that for the longest time there were a
loto f folks who had this utopian idea that advanced races that could cross
the stars would have necesarily overcome all their petty issues and somehow
become enlightened simply through the process of getting there. Rubbish, I
say.
-Eli
[quoted original message omitted]
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If we assume a purely human frame of mind, which is really the best point of
view we have to work fro, then yes, aliens might have
anthropological,xonological interest in us. But this is assuming they care
about such things. An alien mindset might not even regard other species as
species, regardless of their accomplishments. This could be from purely
perceptual reasons or anything from religious, cultural or even blatent pre
judicial reasons.
Now, I'm not one of those "Watch the skies sorts" who thinks all aliens are
out to get us but I was growing a bit tired of the fluffy cloud
attitude toward aliens that I was reading/hearing among the thinking
folks out there:)
-Eli
> On 13/05/2010 2:25 AM, emu2020@comcast.net wrote:
Thanks for the informative link. But to take the analogy further, doesn't this
mean the alien civilization would worry about us after a disaster, and also
try to leave us gifts?
We don't even try to kill strangers outright, most of the time.
I realize it's because I'm not a biologist, but I really feel that the
assumptions that life, even with codicils of 'as we would recognize it', must
be so similar as to force us to want the same geography, whereas 'too tasty'
as opposed to 'hideously poisonous' even good biologists would find themselves
a bit leery, to not be so much a slam dunk.
While, outside of sci-fi, organic equals carbon, and pretty much
carbon-water-nitrogen based, and, therefore, a very limited range of
conditions, I suspect we're myopic, but it's only a hunch.
However, it's a rather strong one, and I quite imagine an armada of ships
claiming the system in the name of some distant empire, immediately driving on
to Venus, setting up colonies, and not being heard from again until someone
decides to explore the possibilities of trade. The next armada doesn't even
bother to announce itself to such insignificant barren locales as the inner
rocks, and starts to colonize the lush clouds of Jupiter.
We are all neighbors, perhaps jealous of certain trade imbalances, which are
immediately forgotten when a consortium of similar races come to town to claim
the system.
I've not seen the like in any fiction, but I'm sure it's out there. However,
as I got the idea relatively early on from the map in TSR's Star Probe, I've
had it a good long time.
Humans as cattle, not likely. As impediments towards promising
terraforming, more so. As objects of Dalek-esque xenophobia, probably as
high, though small, as any. I'm willing to accept 'foe as a friend'
I just think 'to be ignored' rates highest of all.
The_Beast
PS How unusual! That almost felt like sophistry from the Laumer/Heinlein
school. Does feel rather good, though hardly intellectually satisfying. Sorry
about that.
emu2020@comcast.net wrote on 05/12/2010 11:25:08 AM:
> In all seriousness I like the fact that Hawking was willing to