Through trade!?

What in the world do you think we could possibly have that some civilization 1000+ years advanced from us would want?

And even if we had something they wanted, if they knew we were warlike, why in the world would they give us their weapons for something they wanted?

Why not give us 80-inch 3-D roll-up TVs instead?

Also, don’t you think it would be a relatively trivial matter for a civilization even 50-100 years advanced from us today to destroy that part of the human brain that allows humans to kill?

It was well illustrated when you said: “Once again, when two civilizations meet, the evidence on earth is overwhelming that the danger is almost exclusively to the civilization with the more primitive technology.”

which you did not integrate with your previous statement: “There would be no way of our acquiring their technology to fight them or anyone else”.

Which is exactly the point. Eventually, and well before our warlike ways are bred out of us, (or rather statistically eliminated) we *would* have their technology through trade, if they let us join their “club” now…

We have more purging to do.

No, you’re missing the point, Harry. You seem to think primitive savagery is exportable like some kind of viral or bacteriological disease.

That’s overwhelmingly contradicted by available evidence here on earth. Just look at the primitive savagery going on in Dafur right now. Or the primitive savagery in Rwanda in the 1990s. Was or is anyone on earth honestly worried that the mindless violence in those countries would somehow spread to the rest of the world…that somehow we’d all end up ethnically cleansing other people?

No, instead we watch films like “Hotel Rwanda,” or TV shows like “60 Minutes” and think, “Boy, what incredibly screwed up places. Thank goodness I don’t live there.” There’s no reason to think that if ETs came to earth it would be any different. In fact, the situation would be even more likely to be isolated. At least people in Rwanda and Dafur are humans…they know about cars and airplanes. How do you think humans could even get off of earth, to export our wars to the rest of the galaxy?

“Neandertals’ brains were bigger than outs. What makes you think they could not be taught to shoot a gun?”

I think they could be TAUGHT to shoot a gun. But I don’t think they’d be any substantial danger to homosapiens even 1 mile away–let alone a country or a continent away–if they were simply given guns. They’d be much more likely to kill one of themselves than any humans. Probably they’d take it back to their cave, fire it and kill or wound one of their family members, and decide that guns were very bad news.

“And, extrapolate on the fact we are still here. If E.T. wanted to “do us in” he would have done it a long time ago.”

Yes, that has been pretty much my point since the start. We haven’t ever had any contact with ET intelligence. Therefore, it seems like two strong possibilities (though there are of course many more) are that there are no ET intelligences, or they are deliberately hiding themselves.

“No, they don’t want to unleash us right now any more than we want baboons running wild in New York City.”

“Unleash us?” We’d be no more danger to intelligent beings on other planets than Hutus and Tutsis are to us here in the U.S. In fact, we’d be orders of magnitude less dangerous, because they could come to Earth, but we couldn’t go to their home planets (unless they took us there with their technology).

Once again, when two civilizations meet, the evidence on earth is overwhelming that the danger is almost exclusively to the civilization with the more primitive technology.

Violence and primitive technology are not communicable diseases. Let alone communicable diseases that could magically be communicated across light years.

2) The signals to space: I can’t remember when SETI covered Gliese 581, but it would’ve been a darn longhsot to reach our ‘new Earth’ at the first shot, especially since the planet is located far closer to its sun than we thought, AND at that time a dim red dwarf wasn’t considered a proper target for exploration… Anyway, assuming we hit jackpot a 10 years ago, it’d still take not less than 21 years for a signal to reach us. Yes, the ETs should reach the signal, interpret it, decide what send back to us -I believe that the consultations would take not less than one to two extra years…Oh, yes, and they would have to AIM at us.

3) the signals from space. The idea of intercepting their own broadcast signals is simply ludicrous After 20 lightyears, any domestic TV or radio signal would be totally lost. Furthermore, the close sun would make a powerful interference source.

4) Did they find us at all, in the past? If they’re aware of our existence as planet, it is possible that they’re waiting for us to tell something, just as we’re doing with them. From now on, we’ll have to wait not less than 40 years to learn if this is the case. I hope that, given a very specific target, this time SETI will send as much information as possible.

5) for now, I’ll wait to see if the spectrometric analyses will tell us if Gliese-581c will harbor a suitable atmosphere…

You’re still missing the point. Neandertals’ brains were bigger than outs. What makes you think they could not be taught to shoot a gun? (Speaking of Neandertal, Trinkaus is putting two and two together – http://www.imedinews.ge/en/news_read/35603)

And, extrapolate on the fact we are still here. If E.T. wanted to “do us in” he would have done it a long time ago.

No, they don’t want to unleash us right now any more than we want baboons running wild in New York City. We still have too much aggression. So, we fight wars and slowly weed that out, becoming more and more civilized all the time.

But, we still fight wars.

P.S. Star Trek??? Isn’t that kind of like getting one’s opinions on “global warming” from Alanis Morissette?

Yes, that’s part of the reason why most scientists who’ve thought about ET intelligence think it must be extremely rare. If any intelligence can colonize an entire galaxy in a few million years, why can’t we see entire galaxies that are obviously populated with intelligent life?

Further, if a species could colonize an entire galaxy (e.g., the Milky Way, 100,000 light years across), why would the distance between that galaxy and subsequent galaxies be unpassable?

So if there are ET intelligences, why aren’t they already here? Or at least very obvious from radio or visual telescope searches?

You write, “You’re being simplistic. It’s not our weapons in our hands, it’s the potential of us getting our hands on their weapons/technology that would be the concern.”

Well, I hate to be a geek and reference Star Trek, but I *am* a geek, so I guess it’s appropriate.

There’s an episode where the Shelliac want to take over a planet that has earth colonists on it. (Their ship had taken a wrong turn a couple hundred years before, and they’d settled on a different planet than expected.)

Data uses a phaser to disable most of the colonists’ aqueduct system. And when the colonists want to fight the Shelliac, Data points out, “There will be no ‘fight.’ They’ll wipe out every last one of you from orbit. You’ll never even see the beings who kill you.”

That would be the same thing will ET technology. There would be no way of our acquiring their technology to fight them or anyone else.

To give an example, suppose I gave you a Russian MiG fighter. Could you then use it against the Russians in Chechnya? Could you use it against anyone? Of course not. First of all, unless you have experience flying a plane, you’d probably never get it off the ground. In fact, since you probably don’t speak Russian, you probably couldn’t even start the engines. And even if by some miracle you could get it off the ground, an experienced pilot (with hundreds or thousands of hours of flight and simulated combat time) would drop you out of the sky like a rock.

And we’re not even talking about technology that would be thousands of years advanced beyond our own. Think of a neaderathal using an M16. First of all, they wouldn’t even have the concept of bullets…so when the magazine was empty, even with other magazines nearby, they probably would even understand that they had to reload.

Like I wrote before, the danger of any contact between any very advanced civilization and a primitive civilization is virtually all to the primitive civilization. Any civilization that could travel to Earth from outside our solar system (which is where they’d have to be coming from!) would be so advanced compared to us that they’d almost certainly have the capability to kill every single human without us ever firing a shot. And the odds that we could ever figure out and use an ET technology against anyone are very low.