Some thoughts on what might motivate ET to attack us.
18 thoughts on “What’s So Great About Earth?”
I’m thinking they’ll invade because of cuts to Social Security benefits.
Cleaning houses and picking fruit.
Answer 1: They might be interested in us for the same reason we should protect the rain forests: Earth’s specific biodiversity. Even if there are plenty of other living planets, even if all other extraterrestrial life is due to panspermia AND is based on DNA, life’s evolution on Earth may have led to unique and interesting solutions that would be easier to collect than to synthesize. Interstellar travel might take a long time, but sifting through the sheer number of possibilities afforded by DNA would take longer.
Answer 2: Brains. Intelligent life might be scarce even if life is plentiful.
Answer 3: Tourism to look at our three phase circuits. I can’t remember who said it, but someone famous suggested that intelligent aliens might never come up with Tesla’s setup. I can’t decide if I agree, but I thought it was a funny observation.
Maybe they’re a race of radio astronomers who’re pissed at all the EM radiation we’re radiating out into space, spoiling their observations. Destroying humanity would be a way to shut us up.
Okay, that was weak but it makes abou as much sense as any of the other reasons why they’d invade the Earth.
Most alien invasion movies are really just trying to set up a good “under dog wins in the end” story. Mean high tech aliens come to kick us off our little rock… never mind the reason they want us died… a scrappy group of average Joe’s sets out and defeats these monsters by blowing up the mother ship/death star/main communication hub… never mind that our primitive earthly military goes to great length to find and eliminate these sorts of single point failure modes. I figure if some alien knows how to cross the interstellar gap they also probably know that their are much easier and faster ways to take control of a primitive “civilized” planet than the use of straight 18th century imperial military tactics.
1: Buy what they want.
2: Subvert the Political Class (sell advanced weapons to North Korea see what happens)
2a: Subvert the Social Class with cheap Gold, Beaded Necklaces, or Medical advances
3: Bio warfare
4: Solar warfare (release “soot” in a lower solar obit temporarily blocking out the sun, do that for one or two years and we are done.)
5: Asteroid bombardment
I would worry more about the Alien that shows up with “Gifts”
You’ve hit the nail on the head!
“The Earth has a lot of things other folks might want – like the whole planet”, as W.S. Burroughs said.
That said, probably not.
If they can get here in quantity, they can presumably find less troublesome planets with comparative ease (especially if they want to settle one – they could trivially kill us all with rocks from orbit, but if they wanted the Earth as it is, the resulting issues with massive bombardment just get in the way).
Bob: Those are reasons to visit Earth, not to attack it/us.
(And I’ve never bought the biodiversity argument, even terrestrially, let alone cosmically.
Why aliens would care about biodiversity per se has never been clear when anyone’s proposed it – and Bob’s attempt, while far more sensible than some arguments, is likewise not very convincing.
Cataloging and investigating an entire planet’s adaptations in hopes that it solves some problem you have from another biosphere entirely seems very, very unlikely to be more efficient than just rolling your own…)
I always liked Arthur C. Clarke’s idea that UFO’s are just alien grad students doing field research on primitive culture for their Master’s Thesis 🙂
Wasn’t that Jerry Pournelle’s idea? Or was it a case of GMTA?
I recall it from Arthur C. Clarke’s “Report on Planet Three”, but he may have gotten it from elsewhere.
I’m surprised that the obvious (especially given the ecological nihilism that pervades Western thought these days) was missed. Self-reproducing systems are inherently very dangerous. It’s possible that humans or something we make or grow can become a galaxy level plague. A natural-appearing disaster such as the occasional, unannounced extinction level event, would keep Earth life in line.
Conversely, we have a transhumanist-style reason to avoid contact with Earth. A “singularity” event might be far more interesting and cooler, if it’s not messed with by external forces.
Not including the singularity, Karl beat me to it. We have no resource they would like to steal. It’s certainly not about woman or real estate. It’s totally about competition. They would want to eliminate it. At best, keep a few of us around without any power. Politicians set an example.
Ken,
That is the theme of the Robert A. Heinlein, Spider Robinson novel “Variable Star”. But I will leave at that to avoid the plot for those who haven’t read it.
We have no resource they would like to steal.
Actually we do. We have life forms that don’t exist anywhere else, making Earth a strategic source of what space aliens would regard as rare luxury goods. Invading us woudl probably be too cost-prohibitive. I’m guessing they’ll offer us secondhand hovercars in exchange for saffron, cane sugar, and angora cat pelts.
And eventually they’ll try to transplant production to their homeworlds, just like the French who brought back silkworms from China to “grow” silk domestically.
Harry Turtledove offered the one indisputably genuine reason for invasion in “The Road Not Taken”. Of course, it posutlated LESS advanced, not MORE advanced aliens….
“Bob: Those are reasons to visit Earth, not to attack it/us.”
You are right, I got carried away. On the other hand: we might not be able to distinguish between an attack and a visit, regardless of the aliens’ motivations.
About biodiversity: Just prior to reading Rand’s post, I was looking at cellular automata as a possible way to solve a problem, and I was thinking about how helpful it was look up a known rule (or type of rule) instead of having to come up with one myself out of the infinite possibilities.
For an ET advanced enough to have interstellar travel there probably little on Earth they would want. It would be a case of either studying us, like a naturalist would study ants, or eliminate us as possible competition. Or both, since if they decided to eliminate us no invasion is needed, just a genetically engineered bug to get rid of humans without impacting the rest of the ecosystem will work fine. Then just study the artifacts we leave.
I’m thinking they’ll invade because of cuts to Social Security benefits.
Cleaning houses and picking fruit.
Answer 1: They might be interested in us for the same reason we should protect the rain forests: Earth’s specific biodiversity. Even if there are plenty of other living planets, even if all other extraterrestrial life is due to panspermia AND is based on DNA, life’s evolution on Earth may have led to unique and interesting solutions that would be easier to collect than to synthesize. Interstellar travel might take a long time, but sifting through the sheer number of possibilities afforded by DNA would take longer.
Answer 2: Brains. Intelligent life might be scarce even if life is plentiful.
Answer 3: Tourism to look at our three phase circuits. I can’t remember who said it, but someone famous suggested that intelligent aliens might never come up with Tesla’s setup. I can’t decide if I agree, but I thought it was a funny observation.
Maybe they’re a race of radio astronomers who’re pissed at all the EM radiation we’re radiating out into space, spoiling their observations. Destroying humanity would be a way to shut us up.
Okay, that was weak but it makes abou as much sense as any of the other reasons why they’d invade the Earth.
Most alien invasion movies are really just trying to set up a good “under dog wins in the end” story. Mean high tech aliens come to kick us off our little rock… never mind the reason they want us died… a scrappy group of average Joe’s sets out and defeats these monsters by blowing up the mother ship/death star/main communication hub… never mind that our primitive earthly military goes to great length to find and eliminate these sorts of single point failure modes. I figure if some alien knows how to cross the interstellar gap they also probably know that their are much easier and faster ways to take control of a primitive “civilized” planet than the use of straight 18th century imperial military tactics.
1: Buy what they want.
2: Subvert the Political Class (sell advanced weapons to North Korea see what happens)
2a: Subvert the Social Class with cheap Gold, Beaded Necklaces, or Medical advances
3: Bio warfare
4: Solar warfare (release “soot” in a lower solar obit temporarily blocking out the sun, do that for one or two years and we are done.)
5: Asteroid bombardment
I would worry more about the Alien that shows up with “Gifts”
You’ve hit the nail on the head!
“The Earth has a lot of things other folks might want – like the whole planet”, as W.S. Burroughs said.
That said, probably not.
If they can get here in quantity, they can presumably find less troublesome planets with comparative ease (especially if they want to settle one – they could trivially kill us all with rocks from orbit, but if they wanted the Earth as it is, the resulting issues with massive bombardment just get in the way).
Bob: Those are reasons to visit Earth, not to attack it/us.
(And I’ve never bought the biodiversity argument, even terrestrially, let alone cosmically.
Why aliens would care about biodiversity per se has never been clear when anyone’s proposed it – and Bob’s attempt, while far more sensible than some arguments, is likewise not very convincing.
Cataloging and investigating an entire planet’s adaptations in hopes that it solves some problem you have from another biosphere entirely seems very, very unlikely to be more efficient than just rolling your own…)
I always liked Arthur C. Clarke’s idea that UFO’s are just alien grad students doing field research on primitive culture for their Master’s Thesis 🙂
Wasn’t that Jerry Pournelle’s idea? Or was it a case of GMTA?
I recall it from Arthur C. Clarke’s “Report on Planet Three”, but he may have gotten it from elsewhere.
I’m surprised that the obvious (especially given the ecological nihilism that pervades Western thought these days) was missed. Self-reproducing systems are inherently very dangerous. It’s possible that humans or something we make or grow can become a galaxy level plague. A natural-appearing disaster such as the occasional, unannounced extinction level event, would keep Earth life in line.
Conversely, we have a transhumanist-style reason to avoid contact with Earth. A “singularity” event might be far more interesting and cooler, if it’s not messed with by external forces.
Not including the singularity, Karl beat me to it. We have no resource they would like to steal. It’s certainly not about woman or real estate. It’s totally about competition. They would want to eliminate it. At best, keep a few of us around without any power. Politicians set an example.
Ken,
That is the theme of the Robert A. Heinlein, Spider Robinson novel “Variable Star”. But I will leave at that to avoid the plot for those who haven’t read it.
We have no resource they would like to steal.
Actually we do. We have life forms that don’t exist anywhere else, making Earth a strategic source of what space aliens would regard as rare luxury goods. Invading us woudl probably be too cost-prohibitive. I’m guessing they’ll offer us secondhand hovercars in exchange for saffron, cane sugar, and angora cat pelts.
And eventually they’ll try to transplant production to their homeworlds, just like the French who brought back silkworms from China to “grow” silk domestically.
Harry Turtledove offered the one indisputably genuine reason for invasion in “The Road Not Taken”. Of course, it posutlated LESS advanced, not MORE advanced aliens….
“Bob: Those are reasons to visit Earth, not to attack it/us.”
You are right, I got carried away. On the other hand: we might not be able to distinguish between an attack and a visit, regardless of the aliens’ motivations.
About biodiversity: Just prior to reading Rand’s post, I was looking at cellular automata as a possible way to solve a problem, and I was thinking about how helpful it was look up a known rule (or type of rule) instead of having to come up with one myself out of the infinite possibilities.
For an ET advanced enough to have interstellar travel there probably little on Earth they would want. It would be a case of either studying us, like a naturalist would study ants, or eliminate us as possible competition. Or both, since if they decided to eliminate us no invasion is needed, just a genetically engineered bug to get rid of humans without impacting the rest of the ecosystem will work fine. Then just study the artifacts we leave.