Danger: Humans

[Lucius]

 

Poking around I find that Smithsonian Magazine at least credits Homo Erectus, not Homo Sapiens, with first use of fire as a tool.

 

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-earliest-example-of-hominid-fire-171693652/?no-ist

 

I guess that confirms Billy Joel was right.... We (Homo Sapiens) DIDN'T start the fire!

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says, but you sure picked it up and ran with it

[Lawnmower Boy]

Poking around I find that Smithsonian Magazine at least credits Homo Erectus, not Homo Sapiens, with first use of fire as a tool.

 

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-earliest-example-of-hominid-fire-171693652/?no-ist

 

I guess that confirms Billy Joel was right.... We (Homo Sapiens) DIDN'T start the fire!

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says, but you sure picked it up and ran with it

[bigdamnhero]

They explained they only kill something so big for parties and the like.

Exactly. Having read into it a bit, it sounds like anthropologists are very much divided over how much that was an actual hunting technique as opposed to a party trick used to impress the ladies and/or gullible Westerners. [shrug] Put me in the latter camp.

[Cancer]

There was a Nature show about one of the few wolf packs left that hunt and feed on bison. They do as the described Kalahari people do. It's a chain of wolves running in turn; no one wolf runs the entire pursuit. Predators and generalists (in terms of diet) have smaller, less energetically intensive digestive tracts than the grazers and browsers, and not having to support so much gut apparatus means there are gains recaptured in body mass, thermoregulation efficiency, and fraction of body mass available for functions besides digestion.

[Christopher]

I doubt it. "Endurance hunting" is only possible if you're able to carry food and water with you, so by definition it must follow the development of tool use, rather than preceding it. Personally I'm still skeptical that endurance hunting has ever been anything more than a sport or the occasional one-off; the cost of calories expended relative to the calories captured is still far too low to make it an effective survival strategy. And in evolutionary terms it's all about calorie efficiency.

Birds do have a uniquely powersaving mode of locomotion - gliding. But you are right: They are not endurance hunting, but endurance prowling/searching (after all the goal/need is to not have the target be aware you are comming).

 

However the example with the Kalahari people or Wolfes shows just how little "carry food and water" actually maters here.

 

The viabiltiy of hunting large prey in general depends on your ability to actually use or conserve it all - or at least have the leftovers lie far away.

While they do not pay Garbage Collection fees, having something like that close to your camp invites carrior eaters, predators and disease. Not to mention the smell.

[薔薇語]

I think there are few things that need to be understood outside of human's marathoning skill to really capture why this is a valuable skill.

 

I believed it was mentioned up thread how many calories are burned from running. I think it is of note that sustained running for two hours burns between 1600 and 1800 calories depending on the exact size of the male hunter. Most assuredly that is a lot of calories but it is not an unbelievable number. A single animal will have quite a bit of available meat. A single pound of beef has something like 1000 calories. Two pounds of flesh per person in a hunting pack is hardly a big expense. Even doubling the amount of time one was at a sustained run, a hunting party of half a dozen or so would hardly be at a total loss.

 

There will be days when hunts don't go well. But what this actually means may vary wildly. It is unlikely that a zero catch day requires the same energy expenditure as a day with a catch. Hunting parties that expended the same amount of energy successfully taking down an animal as they did simply looking for or chasing one would likely be evolutionary dead ends.

 

Not all calories are the same. This is actually a point that needs to be understood in general and not just in the context of this thread. High protein foods, especially those found in meat are very useful for human development. Our push for more complex brains also required that we have large amounts of meat proteins in our diet. So, even if hunting only broke even on the caloric intake as compared to gathering up vegetables, it makes up for it in the TYPE of calorie it brings to the table.

 

Humans, unlike any other animal, has the ability to cook. We needn't eat food raw. This frees up calories in a lot of otherwise undigestible sources. Of course this easily means various plants are now edible. But it also means near spoiled meat, too. A single hunt can be cooked and re-cooked to extend its viability even in a pre-chemical (salt) or refrigerant community.

 

Humans are Omnivores. This opens up a lot of issues for us. There are obviously lots of omnivores in the world, too. But unlike most other omnivores, we are not niche consumers. Koala's are perhaps the ultimate popular niche consumer in the animal kingdom. Even wolves, for the ability to have variety, are not well suited to move onto other sources outside of their basic set (small prey like mice and chickens, or medium sized prey like sheep). Hunting down snakes, alligators, bears, panthers, etc., poses a real problem for even them. But there is realistically no animal beyond human consumption - even primitive human consumption. We know this by analyzing large fauna extinction events. Where humans go, large animals of all sorts die off. But humans remain. We remain because we can easily switch niches and go after medium sized or small fauna as needed.

 

A single hunt can have varied levels of success. The big goal of getting a gazelle may be elusive but snatching up a few rabbits, a turtle, maybe a boar, are far from unreasonable in the course of a hunt.

 

Humans are of course pack hunters who coordinate - which actually separates us from our ape cousins who are individualistic pack hunters (the pack is by coincidence, not design). As was just mentioned by another, we can arrange strategies and communicate over mediocre distance to execute those strategies.

 

Lastly, not all prized prey are gazelles who can jump over houses and sprint faster than cars. So, they aren't the most representitive example. Perhaps it is the case that most human groups could not survive trying to make them a principle prey. But they also weren't options for most humans and not the best option even for those that could. A marathoning ability mixed with intelligence used against more reasonable prey like boars, bulls, goats, Bison, deer, chickens, rabbits, dogs, etc is very useful.

 

Soar.

[Christopher]

On a related topic, clothing, shame and small families:

I always asumed shame was a cultural development that just got out of hand. But I read something that sugests otherwise:

As child mortality drops it is more beneficial to spend a lot time/child raising a few children, then little time/child on a big family. Those extra children were only there for Redundancy purposes. Shame and the wearing of clothing is a "turn off" to makng more children when you already got a few*.

I finally found that source again. It was VSauce after all:

[freakboy6117]

just finished a book based on this

 

Vicks Vultures

 

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31019075-vick-s-vultures

 

in a universe where other species have been in space longer than humans have had written language the privateer fleet travels the unjverse scavenging the battle sites of more advanced alien empires stealing any tech they can and rescuing any survivors to sell back to their cultres. humanity is weak and a small culture but has a couple of advantages we are the stealthiest mofos around because unlike most civilisations stop fighting wars before they get advanced tech. we are also bad at math which is a surprisingly good thing most species do their ftl navigation in their heads so humanity's computers are way more advanced than the great empires. finally the most powerful empires have been in space so long they have literally forgotten how to do ground combat in fact the idea of walking in space is terrifying and the very idea of walking in space is a deep rooted cultural taboo/horror story.

[Kesedrith]

I'm going to bring up an unpopular, but quite likely, answer to the Fermi Paradox: we're one of the "Elder Civilizations." Many people don't like this idea, but the original universe was hydrogen and helium with a beyond minuscule smattering of lithium, beryllium, and boron. Folks, you just aren't likely to put together life, much less complex, intelligent life, with that combination.

 

Given that we've got a pretty good handle on even early universe star formation and supernova events (that latter is both how you get heavier elements and get them scatter about galaxies), as well as mixing rates to get those heavy elements mixed in so they're both spread and in sufficient quantity to enable rocky planets, much less this whole life thing, and when you run the numbers, our Sun was likely one of those that formed in the earliest time frame where there would have been enough of the elements needed (carbon, oxygen, silicon, iron, etc.). Now, that is plus or minus a few million years, and a lot could happen in a few million years, but the point is, there may not -be- any older intelligent life out there. We very easily simply could be among the first.

 

Now, feed that into your "here come the humans!" scenarios.

 

To me another issue in human-alien interactions is that even if they are out there, and more advanced technologically and otherwise, I find it doubtful that our planet would be terribly hospitable to them, or theirs to us. That said, perhaps interactions will be on the amicable side as we can mine and get into places after resources that they can't, and vice versa. But I suppose that's a whole different conversation, isn't it?

[bigdamnhero]

Given that we've got a pretty good handle on even early universe star formation and supernova events (that latter is both how you get heavier elements and get them scatter about galaxies), as well as mixing rates to get those heavy elements mixed in so they're both spread and in sufficient quantity to enable rocky planets, much less this whole life thing, and when you run the numbers, our Sun was likely one of those that formed in the earliest time frame where there would have been enough of the elements needed (carbon, oxygen, silicon, iron, etc.). Now, that is plus or minus a few million years, and a lot could happen in a few million years, but the point is, there may not -be- any older intelligent life out there. We very easily simply could be among the first.

Interesting. I am not a lawyer astronomer, so I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying. The universe is 13+ billion years old, and my understanding is that the earliest stars started forming within the first billion years, which means there were stars around for 7+ billion years before our sun formed. But what you're saying is those stars wouldn't have had enough heavy elements to form planets, and therefore life, until (relatively) recently?

 

Even if you're right that complex life didn't start developing until "plus or minus a million years," it occurs to me that unless we think the typical lifespan of advanced civilizations is hundreds of thousands of years, I'm not sure it changes the Drake Equation much? [way above my expertise]

[Kesedrith]

Interesting. I am not a lawyer astronomer, so I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying. The universe is 13+ billion years old, and my understanding is that the earliest stars started forming within the first billion years, which means there were stars around for 7+ billion years before our sun formed. But what you're saying is those stars wouldn't have had enough heavy elements to form planets, and therefore life, until (relatively) recently?

 

Even if you're right that complex life didn't start developing until "plus or minus a million years," it occurs to me that unless we think the typical lifespan of advanced civilizations is hundreds of thousands of years, I'm not sure it changes the Drake Equation much? [way above my expertise]

 

Pretty much right, yes. Even with a rate of large star formation that was higher than present, there's a huge volume to spread material through in even a small galaxy. Now, again, it's not a model that doesn't go without protest. There's galaxy collisions going on to get all those heavier elements mixed in at a higher rate than just turbulent flow in the rotating galactic system, stirring from supernovae and high stellar winds involved with lower mass stars going to planetary nebulae, and things such as that. Still, the thing to look at is that even a 300 solar mass star (the believed limit in the primordial universe), it's still going to produce a comparatively small amount of its mass as heavy elements, an even smaller amount of that (since it's at the core) is going to get expelled before the core collapses to a black hole, and when you spread that around a galaxy...there's just not that much being mixed into new stars from any one. Therefore, yes, it could potentially take several billion years' worth just to get appreciable levels into the new stars. Consider that roughly 8 billion years passed between the Bang and our Sun forming, and it still only has 1.34% of its mass as elements heavier than helium. Granted that means it doesn't take a lot of those heavier elements to allow for planets like Earth, but at the same time, wow! In that much time, that's all that got mixed in.

 

I would say you're correct about it not changing the Drake Equation much. All it really does is shift that it's not 13.4 billion years for it to be in operation, but more like four to maybe six. I'm also not trying to say this is what happened, but it's something to consider: humans may very well be one of the first emerging intelligences, which is why we haven't heard or seen anybody else: we're all at about the same level, just starting to make steps off of our starting rocks. To me, it's an interesting bit of speculation to work with, as you can likely guess from this.

[Nolgroth]

I'm going to bring up an unpopular, but quite likely, answer to the Fermi Paradox: we're one of the "Elder Civilizations.

 

Unpopular or not, I have long held a similar belief. My belief is not based on anything remotely scientific so much as just being sick of the constant "aliens must be stronger, smarter, better than humans because they are aliens" literary trope. At the very least, having a handful of species that are roughly equivalent in development would be nice.

 

I kind of like the idea of one or more elder races that have since died out/moved on in some form of apotheosis or something similar. That means there might be ruins to explore and tantalizing hints at something that might still be out there. I loved the Jockey Race from Aliens before Prometheus took the mystery away from them. They were this enigmatic species that was transporting some very dangerous cargo. It was so long ago that the pilot of the LV-426 ship died that he fossilized in the navigation chair. Until everybody had to explain it, there was this thing that had no relation to anything the humans had encountered before (and let's not even go with the Xenomorph itself). It was a mystery and one that would have puzzled human archaeologists for years with never an absolutely clear answer. I love that kind of stuff because it mimics real life. How many mysteries from our very own planet still remain unsolved? Imagine what an entire universe might hold.

 

And humans would be the pioneers that go out and rediscover this universe. Humans would be the ones that go out and claim it as their own. Manifest Destiny writ larger than anything that can be imagined.

 

Or maybe we'll just sit on this rock called Earth until the Sun burns out.

[bigdamnhero]

Unpopular or not, I have long held a similar belief. My belief is not based on anything remotely scientific so much as just being sick of the constant "aliens must be stronger, smarter, better than humans because they are aliens" literary trope

Not necessarily stronger-smarter-better, but more technologically-advanced. The challenge from a writing standpoint is most traditional SF (esp. space opera) is set within a few hundred years of today in order to keep humans recognizable and relatable. But that means we're almost certainly going to be among the newer kids on the block.

 

At the very least, having a handful of species that are roughly equivalent in development would be nice.

Sure. But even assuming we "only" have Kesedrith's plus or minus a million years to play with, it strains credibility when too many species all just happen to be at the same tech level we are. Honestly, think how much our tech has changed just in the last 100 years?

[Nolgroth]

Not necessarily stronger-smarter-better, but more technologically-advanced. The challenge from a writing standpoint is most traditional SF (esp. space opera) is set within a few hundred years of today in order to keep humans recognizable and relatable. But that means we're almost certainly going to be among the newer kids on the block.

 

Why? What if our technology is the pinnacle of development in the known galaxy/explored space? We don't have to be the new kids, but the real challenge comes from writing humans as the apex species. Too often, science fiction falls into the trap that something out there is better, so that humanity can be challenged. While it has almost certainly been explored, I think the greater challenge is to create a setting where, even though humans are at the top of the technological food chain, other factors become the challenge.

 

Sure. But even assuming we "only" have Kesedrith's plus or minus a million years to play with, it strains credibility when too many species all just happen to be at the same tech level we are. Honestly, think how much our tech has changed just in the last 100 years?

 

 

The tech levels don't have to look alike and species can specialize in different areas of tech. What if we had FTL and ran across a species that didn't. What they do have is biotech science that can run circles around us. Another species may make better FTL drives than us, but never really learned how to maximize crop yields. Still another has developed massively precise sub-light drives that allow for pinpoint, fluid control. The net result is that all of the species are roughly equal in terms of applying their collective will upon the universe.

 

When I say roughly equal, what I mean is that you don't have the Malvans (Hero games species) who are so technologically advanced that a single warship can take on the entire human fleet. All the while they wave their hands and technomagically create energy to fuel every ship, city and planet that every species has ever colonized. Let us not forget that their technology is so powerful that death literally has no meaning. The rest of us, by comparison, are lucky to successfully harvest a tomato plant in our hydroponics garden. That's the trope that I hate, especially if the story demands that humanity be pitted against an opponent so powerful that successfully opposing it blows credibility right out the airlock.

[Kesedrith]

The tech levels don't have to look alike and species can specialize in different areas of tech. What if we had FTL and ran across a species that didn't. What they do have is biotech science that can run circles around us. Another species may make better FTL drives than us, but never really learned how to maximize crop yields. Still another has developed massively precise sub-light drives that allow for pinpoint, fluid control. The net result is that all of the species are roughly equal in terms of applying their collective will upon the universe.

 

I must admit that this is also a favorite source of speculation for me. Examples from our own history include things like the Baghdad Batteries or that the steam engine was actually invented at least as early as 100 BC in the form of the aelipile (Hero's engine as an example). Basically, technology is not a linear process, and it does not necessarily all advance together. It is not impossible that we could have had automobiles, but only just be discovering antibiotics.

 

So how does this tie in with the discussion of this thread?

 

Well, perhaps we get out into space and meet an intelligent species that has an evolutionary history derived from a hypercarnivore. They have ridiculous weapons, "okay" space flight technology, but their medical skills are pitiful by comparison. They just didn't think that way because it was all about the hunt, the kill. One of your family/clan/team gets hurt? Well, you bring them food, keep them warm, and hope they get better.

 

In short, humans could be dangerous simply because, as is the case here on our own planet, we're just damn good generalists. We're not super at anything, but we're "good enough" at pretty much everything.

[bigdamnhero]

Why? What if our technology is the pinnacle of development in the known galaxy/explored space?

What possible logical reason would there be to expect that? If other races have been around for hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of years longer than us, why wouldn't at least one of them be more advanced than us? Seems pretty damn statistically unlikely, unless intelligent life is just really really rare. But if you want to tell stories with other spacefaring races, either they all happened to achieve spaceflight at about the same time we did (staggeringly improbable), or they reached spaceflight long before we did but then plateaued for some reason and haven't advanced much since (makes little sense), or some of them are going to be more advanced than us in at least some areas.

 

The tech levels don't have to look alike and species can specialize in different areas of tech.

Sure, it doesn't have to be equal across the board, and I agree it's more interesting when they aren't. (And the Malvans are a comic-book trope, not a serious sci-fi race.) But if all alien races are less advanced than us in all/most areas - which is what you suggested above - then you've got some major logical hoops to jump through to justify why.

[massey]

What possible logical reason would there be to expect that? If other races have been around for hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of years longer than us, why wouldn't at least one of them be more advanced than us? Seems pretty damn statistically unlikely, unless intelligent life is just really really rare. But if you want to tell stories with other spacefaring races, either they all happened to achieve spaceflight at about the same time we did (staggeringly improbable), or they reached spaceflight long before we did but then plateaued for some reason and haven't advanced much since (makes little sense), or some of them are going to be more advanced than us in at least some areas.

 

Sure, it doesn't have to be equal across the board, and I agree it's more interesting when they aren't. (And the Malvans are a comic-book trope, not a serious sci-fi race.) But if all alien races are less advanced than us in all/most areas - which is what you suggested above - then you've got some major logical hoops to jump through to justify why.

 

Somebody has to be first.

 

If rocky planet formation really only took place about 4 billion years ago, and then you're waiting for the molten planet to cool, and then you're waiting for amino acids to come together to form DNA, etc., then we may be one of the very first to develop space flight.  At least in our region of the galaxy.  Perhaps space travel is a significant barrier -- it's something most civilizations won't ever develop on their own.  Their version of Einstein said that FTL travel is impossible, and their people believed him.  Humans were the ones who said "but I want Star Wars!" and spent a lot of time and money figuring out a way to do it anyway.

[massey]

I think the most likely scenario with encountering an alien race would be that we'd have wildly different applications of technology.  First contact would be dangerous because it's so unpredictable.

 

The US developed stealth aircraft in the 1970s to counter Soviet radar technology.  Stealth has its limitations, but the US has spent billions of dollars refining it and improving it.  There are ways around the technology (the Serbs managed to shoot one down in the late 90s by modifying their radar, and by knowing when and where it was supposed to strike), but generally it's pretty good.  Today we've got more advanced aircraft than the F-117A that the Serbs shot down.  China is supposedly installing high-frequency radar arrays that might be able to detect stealth aircraft.  And so everybody has been developing countermeasures and defenses and things for 40+ years now.

 

But what if we encountered an alien race that didn't use radar?  What if they had some other thing that we hadn't considered?  What if their technology looked for traces of spent fuel in the atmosphere?  Our stealth technology would be useless.  We'd have developed all these countermeasures for something that they never built in the first place, defenses against a technology that they don't have.  They would have used some other technique.  Of course, they wouldn't know about radar.  They'd have these jets that left as minimal a fuel trace in the atmosphere as possible, or something like that.

 

A lot of our military technology is built with specifications based on what our enemies have.  We have a tank cannon that can penetrate X amount of armor, because that's how much our enemies' tanks have.  The tank gun had to be a certain size to get that penetration ability, which means that the tank's suspension has to be a certain strength.  And it has to carry so much armor, because that should provide protection from their tank weapons.  And so on.  They have a missile that can travel 200 miles, and it goes so fast, so we have to have an AEGIS system that can track at 200 miles, and calculate its trajectory in 14 seconds or something, because it needs to be able to shoot it out of the air.

 

Our real world capabilities were created to combat specific real world threats.  An alien army would have none of those known quantities.  Some of their technologies could be overwhelming to us, and against some of ours, they'd have no defense at all.  I think you'd see very high casualties on both sides.  Ships we thought were invincible would fall apart, and boring old tech that we never considered impressive would prove to be devastatingly effective.

[Christopher]

I must admit that this is also a favorite source of speculation for me. Examples from our own history include things like the Baghdad Batteries or that the steam engine was actually invented at least as early as 100 BC in the form of the aelipile (Hero's engine as an example). Basically, technology is not a linear process, and it does not necessarily all advance together. It is not impossible that we could have had automobiles, but only just be discovering antibiotics.

Actually discussions like this happen on the traveler Forums from time to time. Mostly with how certain Techlevel might be in use without everything on a planet being on that techlevel. I firmly believe that any divergence bigger then 1 TL will not work out.

 

The problem is that to some degree, they have to develop the same way.

Without understanding of germs/antibiotica automobiles would just spread diseases even faster. What limited the deathtoll of the Black Death and similar diseases was the lack of transportation. If you just substract the humans medical knowledge, we would be wiped out by a planetwide epidemic propably within one Quarter year. And that is before you consider the people-transports only mater with the lifespan given to us by antibiotics (and similar treatments) in the first place.

In turn antibiotics need Automobiles. they are way to specialised to be produced on site at every place that might need them. How would our medical system work without the Ill people being moved to a Hospital?

 

Despite your asumptions, the Automobile and Modern Medicine actually need one another to exist.

What use is a steam engine if you lack the metallurgic skill to actually apply it on a large scale cost-effectively?

 

Somebody has to be first.

 

If rocky planet formation really only took place about 4 billion years ago, and then you're waiting for the molten planet to cool, and then you're waiting for amino acids to come together to form DNA, etc., then we may be one of the very first to develop space flight.  At least in our region of the galaxy.  Perhaps space travel is a significant barrier -- it's something most civilizations won't ever develop on their own.  Their version of Einstein said that FTL travel is impossible, and their people believed him.  Humans were the ones who said "but I want Star Wars!" and spent a lot of time and money figuring out a way to do it anyway.

That asumes only our species has a inate drive to survive. Every species on our planet has that. We are simply the only specie able to do stuff other the reproduce, hunt and move to serve this purpose.

Even if earth somehow has uniquely unstable tectonically, there would still be the danger of Asteroid impacts.

 

But what if we encountered an alien race that didn't use radar?  What if they had some other thing that we hadn't considered?  What if their technology looked for traces of spent fuel in the atmosphere?  Our stealth technology would be useless.  We'd have developed all these countermeasures for something that they never built in the first place, defenses against a technology that they don't have.  They would have used some other technique.  Of course, they wouldn't know about radar.  They'd have these jets that left as minimal a fuel trace in the atmosphere as possible, or something like that.

The ability to detect "traces of fuel in the atmosphere" from usefull distances is centuries aheady of radar in the first place.

It would be so much easier to just detect the metal/material of the aircraft using the same technology, then to look for a few traces per million. Effectively they just have a "Material Sensor" against wich Radar reduction techniques would propably fail either way.

 

Why try to smell the markings on the Ant-trail*, if you can literally see the ants moving along it?

*It is nice to know how that works for science. But for practical life (and military has to be rather practical for realistic reasons) you would look for B, not A.

[Nolgroth]

What possible logical reason would there be to expect that? If other races have been around for hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of years longer than us, why wouldn't at least one of them be more advanced than us? Seems pretty damn statistically unlikely, unless intelligent life is just really really rare. But if you want to tell stories with other spacefaring races, either they all happened to achieve spaceflight at about the same time we did (staggeringly improbable), or they reached spaceflight long before we did but then plateaued for some reason and haven't advanced much since (makes little sense), or some of them are going to be more advanced than us in at least some areas.

 

What logical reason do we have to expect another intelligent race out there. We have zero evidence (Ufologists claims notwithstanding) that another species has developed already. We have found nothing out there. Is it so implausible that we are the ones that are going to be the pioneers? For that matter, how is anything improbably or likely without some sort of statistical data to back either claim up. The only statistical data we have at the moment is that we are the only known technology using species in the galaxy/universe. Until we get a larger sample size, all bets are off. We can make up all sorts of formula to predict something but anything we prognosticate is a shot in the dark at best.

[Nolgroth]

So how does this tie in with the discussion of this thread?

 

Humans have a pretty strong expansionist urge. Perhaps we are so dangerous simply because we push the boundaries where other species tend to be the proverbial "sticks in the mud." We also tend to be conquerors and pretty warlike. Combine that with any realistic technology and we can deal some damage. There may be much smarter aliens than us, but we make a pretty frightening bunch. If you have to have rubber science and the aliens have to be better at it, then we might come across a superior species out there. I just don't think it is a foregone conclusion that humans are the weakest/least developed species in a potential group of alien neighbors. 

 

 

[massey]

Actually discussions like this happen on the traveler Forums from time to time. Mostly with how certain Techlevel might be in use without everything on a planet being on that techlevel. I firmly believe that any divergence bigger then 1 TL will not work out.

 

The problem is that to some degree, they have to develop the same way.

Without understanding of germs/antibiotica automobiles would just spread diseases even faster. What limited the deathtoll of the Black Death and similar diseases was the lack of transportation. If you just substract the humans medical knowledge, we would be wiped out by a planetwide epidemic propably within one Quarter year. And that is before you consider the people-transports only mater with the lifespan given to us by antibiotics (and similar treatments) in the first place.

In turn antibiotics need Automobiles. they are way to specialised to be produced on site at every place that might need them. How would our medical system work without the Ill people being moved to a Hospital?

 

Despite your asumptions, the Automobile and Modern Medicine actually need one another to exist.

What use is a steam engine if you lack the metallurgic skill to actually apply it on a large scale cost-effectively?

 

The automobile was an invention on Earth.  There's no guarantee it would have been developed somewhere else.  Imagine a society built around mass transit.  No cars, just railroads.  Cities would be designed around foot traffic, very high density.  No such thing as "suburbs".  You wouldn't need a car.

 

 

That asumes only our species has a inate drive to survive. Every species on our planet has that. We are simply the only specie able to do stuff other the reproduce, hunt and move to serve this purpose.

Even if earth somehow has uniquely unstable tectonically, there would still be the danger of Asteroid impacts.

 

The ability to detect "traces of fuel in the atmosphere" from usefull distances is centuries aheady of radar in the first place.

It would be so much easier to just detect the metal/material of the aircraft using the same technology, then to look for a few traces per million. Effectively they just have a "Material Sensor" against wich Radar reduction techniques would propably fail either way.

 

Why try to smell the markings on the Ant-trail*, if you can literally see the ants moving along it?

*It is nice to know how that works for science. But for practical life (and military has to be rather practical for realistic reasons) you would look for B, not A.

 

Other species would have a drive to survive.  But they don't think in terms of billions of years.  They aren't worried about their sun dying.  They believe that FTL travel is impossible, so they focus on sustainable agriculture and pollution-free industry.  They build great telescopes and determine that there are no Armageddon-sized meteors headed their way.  They don't invest in FTL travel for the same reason we don't invest in wizard schools -- they think it's mumbo-jumbo.  But they don't have a romantic attachment to it like we do,

 

Detecting traces of fuel in the air is just a simple example.  Though I think with the right equipment you could do it.  Gas chromatography, like a breathalyzer, measure the light coming in.  On Earth, it's easier to just look up and see the damn thing.  But we don't know what visibility is like on Imaginary Planet #6.  The point is to illustrate that many of our technologies were developed in response to something someone else did.  And there's no guarantee that those circumstances are going to repeat on another world.

[bigdamnhero]

Somebody has to be first.

Somebody has to win the lottery, too; doesn't mean it's likely to be you. Especially not if others may have gotten a million year head start on buying tickets.

 

Don't get me wrong: if you're proposing "What if humans are first" as an interesting idea for a story/game/whatever, then fine. Cool. But if we're talking about what's most likely, color me skeptical.

 

What logical reason do we have to expect another intelligent race out there. We have zero evidence (Ufologists claims notwithstanding) that another species has developed already. We have found nothing out there.

Sure, tho to be fair we've just barely started looking and the universe is a big place; me I'm not ready to write off the possibility just yet. But you're absolutely right that we're just speculating. And sure, if it turns out life is staggeringly rare, and intelligent life is even rarer, and technologically-advanced life is rarer still, then yeah it may well be just us.

 

But you started off by proposing that there are other intelligent alien races, they're just all technologically behind us. The odds against that seem pretty high to me. If you want to assume that intelligent life is really rare, fine. I'm saying that if intelligent life is relatively common, the idea that humans are going to be first/best into space is a bit of a stretch.

 

Humans have a pretty strong expansionist urge. Perhaps we are so dangerous simply because we push the boundaries where other species tend to be the proverbial "sticks in the mud." We also tend to be conquerors and pretty warlike.

Those traits are hardly unique among species even on the one planet we do have good data for. Agent Smith's monologue about "Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment" is utter nonsense - every species of life on Earth multiplies as rapidly as it can, expands as rapidly as it can - see rabbits in Australia - and exploits its environment as much as it can. Species that don't, tend to get squeezed out by those that do because that's how evolution works. Humans are just better at it than most; which is how we became the apex predator on this planet. Which leads me to speculate that any species that becomes the apex species on their planet is likely to have evolved with those same traits, unless evolution itself works radically different on their planet for some reason.

 

The automobile was an invention on Earth.  There's no guarantee it would have been developed somewhere else.

That example was just to point out how different fields are far more interconnected than we typically think. Physics informs our understanding of biology, which informs our understanding of medicine, which informs computer science, social sciences, yadda yadda. They don't evolve in isolation. Sure, not every species is going to develop things at the exact same pace and in the exact same speed we did. But the idea of some other race discovering FTL travel early on but still using wooden ships and crossbows is a highly entertaining fantasy, but nothing more.

 

Other species would have a drive to survive.  But they don't think in terms of billions of years.  They aren't worried about their sun dying.

Humans don't think in terms of billions of years. And we can barely get most people to pay attention to worry about climate change, let alone the sun dying. If we reach the stars it will be in spite of those traits, not because of them.

 

Again, I have no problem positing the existence of a race(s) that thinks so differently than us that they never developed space travel yadda yadda. But the notion that nobody else is going to figure it out before we do seems not only wildly improbable but frankly kindof arrogant.

[massey]

It seems as though you're assuming that there's only one path for technological development to take, and that's the path that we took.  In other words, every society would develop antibiotics, the internal combustion engine, powered flight, the atomic bomb, electronic computers, etc.  The point I was trying to make is that another civilization doesn't need to duplicate our technology, they could have their own technological advances that could make them a peer civilization, even if the tech functioned very differently.

 

Of course, it's hard for us to come up with what appear to be reasonable examples of this, because we're talking about technology that our society didn't develop.  Something we thought was impractical, or just plain never thought of.  Like my vapor-sniffing missile earlier, people are like "that's dumb that'd never work".  The best example I can think of is steampunk, which slaps a 19th century aesthetic and kinda-plausible looking technology to duplicate modern advances.

 

South American civilizations never discovered the wheel.  The ding-dang wheel.  Of course those civilizations existed in very mountainous terrain, so the wheel wasn't as useful as it was everywhere else in the world, so that may have contributed to it.  I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that a spacefaring civilization may never have developed wireless data transfer technologies, or radar absorbent paint, or maglev trains.  Some particularly necessary heavy element is available in far lower quantities there, or is only found in a politically volatile part of their world, and so certain tech is never created.  Likewise, they'd have entire branches of the tech tree that we'd have never considered, because our world didn't have the important things that theirs did.

 

As far as us being first, it's really a question of how quickly can you develop.  There's no real way to know, no way to assign odds.

[Nolgroth]

But you started off by proposing that there are other intelligent alien races, they're just all technologically behind us. The odds against that seem pretty high to me. If you want to assume that intelligent life is really rare, fine. I'm saying that if intelligent life is relatively common, the idea that humans are going to be first/best into space is a bit of a stretch.

 

Those traits are hardly unique among species even on the one planet we do have good data for. Agent Smith's monologue about "Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment" is utter nonsense - every species of life on Earth multiplies as rapidly as it can, expands as rapidly as it can - see rabbits in Australia - and exploits its environment as much as it can. Species that don't, tend to get squeezed out by those that do because that's how evolution works. Humans are just better at it than most; which is how we became the apex predator on this planet. Which leads me to speculate that any species that becomes the apex species on their planet is likely to have evolved with those same traits, unless evolution itself works radically different on their planet for some reason.

 

I still maintain that there can be other species out there that are not as advanced as we are. Let me be clear that there very well may be. I am simply contending that alien does not automatically equal better or more advanced. Nothing out there is automatically guaranteed to be better. It is only our own interpretations that drives that concept. It could be that other advanced civilizations did exist. Somewhere along the way, cosmic catastrophe, war, or something else removed them and we are the "last species standing." Maybe I'm completely wrong and we are some cosmic "Gas 'n' Sip"  on the back end of nowhere. I just don't automatically make that aliens=better equation in my head.

 

You are, of course, free to make whatever assumptions you like. I seriously don't think that either one of our arguments is going to be proven in our lifetime. If there is an advanced race that appears and makes itself known, I'll acknowledge your foresight.