Was just watching Jack Ryan Season 3 and seeing the display of force and their movements causes some interesting dissonance given what we know now.
Was just watching Jack Ryan Season 3 and seeing the display of force and their movements causes some interesting dissonance given what we know now.
Rewatching Stargate and international cooperation feels so strange and bereft somehow. A kinder path.
I often times wonder if an extraterrestrial threat would be a unifying factor or if people would still be selfish unless it affected them. The pandemic was the closest we’ve seen to a world level threat recently and it just increased selfishness IMO (at least in the US)
I thought Marvel’s Secret Invasion had an interesting quote on this that I’ll paraphrase: nothing makes humans stronger than uniting against a common enemy, but as soon as that enemy is gone, they always devolve into tribal bickering again. It’ll be a miracle if we ever reach Star Trek levels of global unification and peace.
Don’t forget that Star Trek universe went through an apocalyptic phase before reaching their post scarcity society. I’m quite optimistic that we’ll reach Star Trek levels of peace, but reaching that state without having 90% of the population annihilated in some kind of a World War or some other catastrophe? That’s what I’m kinda pessimistic about.
Never mind Star Trek, at the rate we’re going we’ll be lucky to get The Expanse.
I mean, we’ve already surpassed The Expanse in some ways (at least the first couple books).
Something that struck me was in Caliban’s War they were relying heavily on mirrors to focus sunlight for growing crops out at Jupiter. I guess the authors just didn’t foresee LED technology advancing as rapidly as it did.
Leviathan Wakes was published in June 2011. Caliban’s War was published in June 2012.
The L-prize “60W” category winner was announced in August 2011 (it was Philips). It didn’t become commercially-available until April 2012, but even then, it was like $50 – far from affordable for most people. Now you can get equivalent or better bulbs for less than 1/10th of that.
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The aliens would just hack the internet and flood it with bots more advanced than ChatGPT faking support to surrender to the alien overlord, then sit their asses watching humanity fought among themselves.
IMO I don’t think humanity would unite. Some people would force their families to surrender to the aliens because they fear for their own lives, others would try to bargain with them for technology. Others would help the aliens simply because they hate humanity. We really can’t count on anything to unite us, and I don’t even think uniting the species should be our common goal. People are too individualistic and diverse for that, and unity would take away what it means to be human.
If we’re comparing to human history, the Aztecs weren’t singlehandedly defeated by the Spanish. The conquistadors had plenty of assistance of other nations that wanted to see the Aztecs gone. We all know what happened afterwards, but even if you went back in time you wouldn’t convince a single Tlaxcala warrior that their newfound awesome ally against their sworn enemy was actually the “bad guy” - until much later, that is.
So, if the aliens started an attack against whoever the superpower happens to be, they would have plenty of assistance as well. It’s human nature.
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If aliens can reach us, they aren’t a threat. They either kill us without any issue or they don’t want to. There is no fighting back against it.
I do think it’d be interesting to see what happens if we do discovery alien life, particularly of the intelligent variety. So many religions are based on the assumption humans are the only intelligent life, and that earth is that place that can support it. Do they mostly all collapse, or do they evolve? Do people finally recognize the stupidity? It’d be fun to see.
That’s not necessarily true. If aliens do visit us, they might not be able to wipe us out at all. There’s really no way to say that other races would be capable of wiping us out, because they might not understand the concept of war in the first place.
They’re either capable of wiping us out or they aren’t a threat. Either way, not a threat.
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It’s at least heavily implied in many. It implies that he created everything and all living things on it only talks about creatures being created on earth. If the book is accurate (it’s clearly not, but let’s assume) and if it’s divinely inspired, it should be aware of cresting life elsewhere also. It also calls stars/glalaxies/nebulas/whatever “lights in the dome of the sky” so not exactly a great start for it.
It being weird or wrong hasn’t stopped it really before though, but it would probably create some kind of shift, especially if it’s intelligent. In that case, are they deserving the same status as man? Are they children of God also? Why do they look different?
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Nah, if that’s the goal they’ll just use Neutrino Bombs (look them up, they’re crazy what they’re designed to do)
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Ozymandias, is it you?