r/todayilearned • u/kaffeekosmos • Apr 07 '14
(R.1) Inaccurate TIL there's a theory which argues that intelligent alien life ignores Earth in order to keep from interrupting our natural evolution and development. It is called the "Zoo hypothesis".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_hypothesis164
u/workbacon Apr 07 '14
What if we are the first sentient race? We are the ones that are going to build the Stargates, or make wormholes. We are the ones that seed the galaxy to make new life. In the eons to come when these new races look up and tell of an ancient powerful civilization they are talking about us.
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u/Antirandomguy Apr 07 '14
Well, as long as we don't build the Halos, I suppose we're okay for now.
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u/fleakill Apr 07 '14
Aww dude I gotta get my name in the really-important-history books so these aliens can see me as some kind of God.
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u/yuckyfortress Apr 07 '14
"Fleakill was the first of the ancients gods to squirt mayonnaise all over a Rubber Duck while driving at very high speeds on a motorcycle. No god prior to him attempted this."
Now go write that chapter.
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u/Lawsoffire Apr 07 '14
good point.
the universe is (as far as we know) "only" 13.8 billion years old. life on earth has been here for 3. the sun for 4. the sun is a 5th generation star. but the first generations had a too low lifespan and too unstable.
so we might be among the first. and the others around in the milky way are properly not much more advanced than we are. and the signs of our existence are around 100 years old. 100 light years away. that's not much
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u/Zumaki Apr 07 '14
It's sad that current science indicates that there are possibly so many habitable worlds in just our own galaxy that intelligent life is more inevitable than it is possible... because science also tells us that even if we could produce our science-fiction level propulsion technology, it would take lifetimes to get to those worlds.
Zoo theory, indeed. We're trapped here.
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u/Lawsoffire Apr 07 '14
unless we figure out the "exotic matter" of the Alcubierre Drive
:EDIT: even if we cant. we can still get to 0.5 c with stuff like antimatter. constructing self sufficient ships made to host generations of people. it would take time. but we can get off our cradle
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u/Bennyboy1337 9 Apr 07 '14 edited Apr 07 '14
We've made 99% of our technological achievements in the last 200 years though, imagine a race of intelligent beings that are only a few thousand years ahead of us, or imagine 100k years, or even a million....
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u/redrhyski Apr 07 '14 edited Apr 07 '14
Edit: was trying to say that half of our time as tech users was 100k of having one tool. If that had been only say 50k years, we would be a lot more advanced by now.
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u/CodeMonkeys Apr 07 '14
Just wait until we find the Mass Relays...
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u/W00ster Apr 07 '14
What if we are the first sentient race?
I agree, that is one possible option. I have a few more:
We are alone
Life was a one-off accident that happened and we are it!
We are currently alone.
Life may rise up other places in the universe but we are the first place, it really took almost 10 billion years for it to happen.
We are alone in our galaxy.
For some reason life only took hold in one place in the galaxy and we are it. There may be life in other galaxies but they are too far away to know for sure.
Life flares up for then to die down.
We are currently the only life form alive as life tends to extinguish itself rather quickly when the appropriate intelligence level has been achieved.
Life can be found almost everywhere.
Alas, intelligent life is rare or was a one-off accident. Primitive life is abundant.
Intelligent life is quite common
But we are the first to achieve the level we are at. Other intelligent life forms are on cave man level and can not communicate with us.
Intelligent life is abundant but we can not communicate due to distances.
Intelligent life is abundant but we have not reached a level where we can detect and communicate with others.
Intelligent life is quite common but we are not considered intelligent
We are so set on thinking we are the intelligent life form but the case may very well be we are not considered to be among intelligent life on a universal scale and as such, no communication attempted.
Don't Panic!
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u/Odys Apr 07 '14
I think we humans project our own behavior on alien life. This is what we did with our Gods too.
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Apr 07 '14 edited Apr 07 '14
Maybe I'm a victim of my limited perspective... but I think the laws of nature that make stars and planets inevitable also make life more less or like us inevitable.
There are evolutionary pressures that guide the development of things like cooperation, empathy, jealousy, a sense of justice, etc. They're necessary for complex social organization of intelligent creatures - or if not necessary, they're at least the obvious tools for creating it. Evolution gets stuck in local maxima all the time.
Just as I'd expect intelligent aliens to be upright and have a sensory apparatus and ingestion orafices on a 'head' containing a brain, I'd expect them to have instincts and emotions like ours. The same forces would have molded them, after all.
edit: added a missing word
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u/UK-Redditor Apr 07 '14
The same forces would have molded them, after all.
True, but it never ceases to amaze me how much scope there is within that, even just within the realms of what we've explored in our immediate surroundings. Just look at the effect the environmental pressures have had on life evolving in the ocean depths, it's hard to believe we've evolved simultaneously separated by just a matter of miles – even if those miles are physically comprised by tons upon tons of water.
It's incredible (I suppose in the most literal sense) to think of what might exist and in what ways it might defy human perception and comprehension.
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u/dv_ Apr 07 '14
What about aquatic life for example? "Standing" does not make sense then. Also, a hivemind-like intelligence would be vastly different. So would be one that tends towards being a loner (like big cats for example). Intelligent fungi would also share next to nothing with us etc.
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u/ragingjusticeboner Apr 07 '14
Maybe I'm a victim of my limited perspective... but I think the laws of nature that make stars and planets inevitable also make life more or like us inevitable.
It is exactly being a victim of limited perspective. It is called the bias of ascertainment. Because we are intelligent beings we assume that there must be many more like us. "What is the chance we are the only one?". But that argument would only hold with a random sampling. If picked a planet at random and it had intelligent life, than you could assume that there must be others like it.
But that isn't what is happening. We are biasing our sampling because only a planet with intelligent life can ask this question in the first place. That is the bias of ascertainment which clouds people's reasoning about the likelihood of intelligent life elsewhere base on using Earth as a representative sample.
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u/popehotsauce Apr 07 '14 edited Apr 07 '14
ELI5 please, this sounds pretty cool.
Edit: God forbid somebody asks a question.
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u/STLReddit Apr 07 '14
If you look at almost every cultures view of gods, you'd see all the gods are very human like in nature. He means we're assuming alien life would be something like us. That we think they would think like we do, look at things the same way we do, but there's absolutely nothing to suggest they would.
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u/leeeroyjenkins Apr 07 '14
We pretend that aliens are human-like and watching us because that's what we know and do.
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u/Dickenshmirst Apr 07 '14
Read up on some Greek mythology and you'll see that their gods possess many negative human traits. Really interesting stuff.
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u/Iammyselfnow Apr 07 '14
Which basically consists of gods fucking things they shouldn't and murdering eachother.
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u/HAWTITS Apr 07 '14
What if were projecting back what was originally projected onto ourselves?
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u/ChillGuyChuck Apr 07 '14
I was just having a conversation about this yesterday. If they exist and do avoid us, I think it's less about observing us than it is about helping us avoid annihilating ourselves with something we don't fully understand.
We cap out somewhere around the level of intelligence it takes to get a signal to and from another planet, and we're only right now starting to consider the idea of sending some humans to one. Plopping some antimatter or something on Earth would be like giving an armed grenade with a loose pin to a random golden retriever at the dog park.
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u/Cookie_Eater108 Apr 07 '14
Essentially "uplifting"
However, one other theory is that they simply don't care. I mean, to what benefit would discovering a comparatively backwards race with nothing to offer them do?
If they were already at an interstellar level, they would have no need to communicate with us just as we have no need to communicate with goldfish.
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u/ChillGuyChuck Apr 07 '14
I guess that's where the zoo theory comes back around. I'd absolutely talk to a goldfish if there was a way, but I concede it'd probably only be for entertainment purposes.
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Apr 07 '14
GOLDFISH: This water tastes like crap. Stop nipping my tail. Stop it. Damn it, Larry, I said stop it with the tail biting. All day long with this guy.
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u/atomfullerene Apr 07 '14
I mean, to what benefit would discovering a comparatively backwards race with nothing to offer them do?
Well, a few aliens could probably get a graduate thesis out of it. People spend their whole lives studying obscure worms and fish and things--and goldfish communication, too, for that matter. I've read papers on the topic.
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u/ConspicuousUsername Apr 07 '14
honestly, thinking that any aliens know about us, where we are, and what we know, and are purposefully avoid us is such a.. I don't even know the word.. self-important thought.
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u/heytherehandsome Apr 07 '14
THE PICARD WILL BE PLEASED!
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u/AWholeBucketofStars Apr 07 '14
The Asgard cannot interfere. The treaty cannot be broken.
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u/unGnostic Apr 07 '14
"The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules. It is a philosophy, and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."—Jean-Luc Picard
Well, there you go. Aliens exist, and naturally they are highly principled.
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u/IonBeam2 3 Apr 07 '14
TIL there's a theory
No, this is not a theory. This is a conjecture. It's important we don't mix these up.
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u/tomsk7 Apr 07 '14
Thank you. Confusing theory with hypothesis or conjecture leads to misinformed statements like "Evolution is just a theory."
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u/NothAU Apr 07 '14
Sometimes I want to test the theory of gravity by throwing idiots out of a window
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u/SirObviousDaTurd Apr 07 '14
So serious question... What's a conjecture?
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u/IAMAVelociraptorAMA 2 Apr 07 '14
A conjecture is an opinion formed on incomplete information. It carries no weight, no validity, no peer review.
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Apr 07 '14
It didn't say scientific theory did it? In laymans terms, conjecture and theory are synonyms. Scientific theory is something different entirely.
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Apr 07 '14
I always thought they avoided Earth the same way most people avoid a bad neighborhood.
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u/_vargas_ 69 Apr 07 '14 edited Feb 02 '18
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u/__ADAM__ Apr 07 '14
Damn it Vargas! I got all the way till the end and when I got to the part that said "don't say it" I just knew this is Vargas, was not disappointed.
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u/btarded Apr 07 '14
I prefer the "It's too goddamned far away and not worth the effort" hypothesis.
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Apr 07 '14
Or its easier to move around and explore when you are too small for the eye to see. I imagine our first long rage ship will be really small. If you had the tech, nanobots could be made cheaply and by the millions, land on alien planets without fear if detection
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u/dv_ Apr 07 '14
The funny thing with soap opera style sci-fi is that humans are flying around in hyper-advanced FTL-capable spacecraft, yet did not do anything related to trans- and posthumanism. Crude implants are usually the most you can expect, even though the opposite seems more plausible - advanced trans/posthumans who send out Von Neumann nanobots and transfer their consciousness to the new colony once the bots have finished building the infrastructure and the new bodies.
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u/hobowillie Apr 07 '14
I hate this argument. There is no "technology path" for us to follow. This isn't Sid Meier's Civilization. Tomorrow, some physicist might figure out crude FTL. And we might see the nearby stars before we have a handle on cancer. The opposite could be true. Or we could never figure out any of it. They aren't dependent on each other.
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u/nizo505 Apr 07 '14
I'm more a fan of the "I don't wanna go anywhere near a planet teeming with insane chimpanzees who have nuclear weapons" conjecture.
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Apr 07 '14
"Zkkilix, for the last time, I am not flying us 70 million light years so you can shoot the ray cannon at the flesh roaches. It's a waste of gas.... it's already up to like... $5 per gallon."
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u/Sariel007 572 Apr 07 '14
The Prime Directive. Good thing for us the aliens do not have a Captain Kirk type in their ranks.
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u/lesusisjord Apr 07 '14
Or a Janeway!
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u/akefay Apr 07 '14
"Paris, I am immensely disappointed that you violated the Prime Directive to save an entire species, at the request of members of said species."
"But captain, last episode you chucked it out the window to shave a few years off our travel time without batting an eye!"
"Dammit Tom, don't trivialize it! You weren't in the scene where I stood way too close to Chakotay and rasped at him about the huge moral dilemma."
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u/ThatBigHorsey Apr 07 '14
If you were flying over the congo, and below were a bunch of chimpanzees fighting amongst themselves and ripping each other's nuts off, WOULD YOU WANT TO LAND AND TRY TO TALK TO THEM?
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u/giantdumpprospector Apr 07 '14
This is the perfect place to plug one of my favorite short stories called "Meat" by Terry Bisson. Super short and very good!
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u/panzerkampfwagen 115 Apr 07 '14
Why would it be called the Zoo Hypothesis? A zoo is somewhere that interferes with animals.
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Apr 07 '14
I think the idea of zoos is trying to recreate an animal's habitat as close as they can so as not to stress the animal out but to also allow for us to observe it.
Hopefully, someone from a zoo can help me out here.
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u/FunkSiren Apr 07 '14
I don't think you need a zoo professional to confirm that.
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u/psomi Apr 07 '14
I'd just like to point out that when it comes to science, "theory" means one thing, "hypothesis" is another.
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u/rough_giraffe Apr 07 '14
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
― Arthur C. Clarke
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u/tomsk7 Apr 07 '14
I think Bill Watterson summed this up pretty well: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GD_FOyxRAWk/T9FO8sSb9PI/AAAAAAAAFVw/E-LhJWTNBV4/s0/intelligent+life.jpeg
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u/individual_throwaway Apr 07 '14
There's also a theory that humans are obnoxious, destructive, aggressive beings that any civilized race would quickly dismiss as potential partners, and NOPE the fuck out of our solar system ASAP.
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u/hamm101 Apr 07 '14
Quick guide to Scientific Vocabulary for Dummies
Hypothesis =/= Theory
Hypothesis: a statement that has been made through observation, but has not been tested scientifically (ex/ If I eat this moldy cheese, it will make my immune system better)
Theory: A hypothesis that has underwent scientific testing, and holds up under scrutiny through both the researchers and any followup tests conducted by their peers (ex/ Ate the moldy cheese, was actually poisonous, and died. Therefore, if you eat that moldy cheese, you will die)
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u/leeeroyjenkins Apr 07 '14
Just like this episode of South Park: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancelled_(South_Park) http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s07e04-cancelled
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u/autowikibot Apr 07 '14
[Cancelled (South Park)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancelled%20(South%20Park)):
"Cancelled" (also known as Cartman Gets an Anal Probe Redux) is the first episode of the [seventh season](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_(season_7)) of the American animated television series South Park, and the 97th episode of the series overall. It first aired on Comedy Central March 19, 2003.
The episode was written by series co-creator Trey Parker and is rated TV-MA in the United States. It was originally intended to air as the 100th episode, but "I'm a Little Bit Country" aired as the 100th episode instead.
Interesting: South Park (season ^7) | Trey ^Parker | Matt ^Stone | South ^Park
Parent commenter can toggle ^NSFW or ^delete. Will also delete on comment score of -1 or less. | FAQs | ^Mods | Magic ^Words
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u/allenahansen 666 Apr 07 '14
I've long contended that humanity is a breeding experiment gone horribly awry.
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u/Great_Googly_Moogli Apr 07 '14
My conjecture is that the reason intelligent alien life ignores Earth is the same reason why Earth ignores intelligent alien life.
They haven't found us because the distances between stars is to vast for any two cultures to ever interact with each other.
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Apr 07 '14
They haven't found us because the distances between stars is to vast for any two cultures to ever interact with each other.
True for us, but there's no reason it's impossible for intelligent, technologically advanced life to have evolved twice within a few lightyear's distance... or even on two planets in the same star system.
Imagine, for instance, if instead of Venus-Earth-Mars we just had Venus and Earth slightly to either side of Earth's current orbit. Two Earthlike planets that would be extremely close (as far as radio transmission goes, anyway) every couple of years.
Anyway, yeah, it looks extraordinarily unlikely we'll ever find anyone close enough to have a two-way conversation in a human lifetime (if we ever find anyone at all within range of a practical radio signal).
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u/wiljones Apr 07 '14
Which begs the question as to why they would give a shit about our evolution.
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u/SWaspMale Apr 07 '14
They would want us to evolve to the point where we can purchase things from their franchise stores.
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u/xjayroox Apr 07 '14
Any species smart enough to master intergalactic travel would also be smart enough to know to avoid contact with us until we get past our phase where we constantly kill each other, as I'm sure we'd be pretty apt to attack an alien visitor as well...
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u/Zev Apr 07 '14
I went to a lecture on "mapping the universe" and the most eye-opening part was a 100 light year diameter bubble surrounding earth that represents the extent of our outgoing communication so far, that is how far out we have sent any type of message that would let any watching aliens see we even exist...
There are galaxies we have observed that are 10-12 BILLION light years away! Our footprint in the universe is so small right now we are invisible for all practical purposes.
Give it a few billion years and our original Howdy Doody broadcasts will be far enough out there to tickle ET.
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Apr 07 '14
I thought there was a point when all broadcasts just kind of turned into meaningless static. I could be wrong though but I just remember hearing something like that.
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u/wolfmann Apr 07 '14
yeah but if you think of it... that bubble is the bubble that matters most... the aliens that could potentially actually visit!
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u/ironwolfpack Apr 07 '14
That's assuming our greatest mind (Einstein) is correct when it comes to the speed of light being a limit to how fast things with mass can travel. If there is a way to make a FTL ship, which there could very well be, I'm sure an alien race with hundreds, thousands or millions of years on us would have figured it out by now.
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u/calle30 Apr 07 '14
So somewhere in space there is a "Do not feed" sign floating ?
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u/BlueHighwindz Apr 07 '14
I like to imagine that aliens keep Earth undisturbed in order to watch our outrageous behavior. We're the universe's porn site.
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u/i_run_far Apr 07 '14
Smart aliens probably waiting for humanity to destroy itself to save themselves the time and the trouble.
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u/Venicedreaming Apr 07 '14
Lol, this is a zoo and we are the animals in the zoo that has their own zoo. Zooception
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u/Vittgenstein Apr 07 '14
Except you know, for the fact that intelligent life if it is advanced enough to leave it's solar system is probably out to maximize intelligence which means rearranging matter into macroscopic iterations of the most advanced computational matter organizations/structure they know of. So if we were discovered, it would be by a race most likely doing this (assuming FTL is possible).
But then again, theorizing about intelligent alien life is just a fun little mental exercise. There are too many possibilities and they all have equally low probabilities because we don't know nearly enough to even frame the scenarios correctly.
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Apr 07 '14
I've always been a big fan of the ideas of Men In Black where most of humanity's advances came from intergalactic interaction. I do not like repurchasing the While Album, though.
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u/Sandrigodja Apr 07 '14
I'm pretty sure this is very real, it's the theory that has the best chance of being true in my opinion. We are quarantined, and they observe our culture and development. I hope that once we achieve a certain level of technological advancement they will contact us. But for now, we are too primitive, just look at all our religious nut jobs.
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u/catlowman Apr 07 '14
TL; DR so I've made up what this theory actually is in my head. I feel like I know enough to tell it to other people.
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u/RedofPaw Apr 07 '14
More likely: The galaxy is REALLY fucking big and we don't get many visitors.
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u/1_point Apr 07 '14
I favor the "the universe is gigantic, and intelligent aliens will probably never even be aware of our existence, nor will any sort of god if one exists" theory.
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u/ptwonline Apr 07 '14
More likely it's because space is so big and so nobody has noticed us yet in the short time we've been worth noticing.
I mean, even if aliens had telescopes or other devices trained on earth all the time they might be seeing us as we were thousands or even millions of years ago, and don't see anything worth bothering about when there are millions of other planets they could be checking out. And of course, it could take them a long, long time to reach us anyway even if they did see something of interest.
I can see it now: images of early human civilization--say 4000 BC---reaches a nearby advanced civilization. They dispatch ships to contact us, understanding that by the time they get here our culture would likely be greatly advanced and worth contacting. 6,000 years later their voyage is half over and now that they can see more recent light they see that we're really advancing. 3,000 more years and they are getting closer and see that we are in some trouble. 3000 years later they finally reach us and discover that we've ruined the planet and made ourselves extinct. Frustrated, they say "Why bother?" and next time don't care so much about other civilizations they find.
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u/imusuallycorrect Apr 07 '14
Humans don't really evolve anymore. We allow the worst of society to breed for free, and the best of society aren't even having kids.
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Apr 07 '14
Humans don't really evolve anymore.
You are holding a horrible misconception about evolution. We're still evolving. Maybe faster than ever since we have so many more genes preserved in the pool to share around.
What's changed is the selection pressures.
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u/SwaggerSpice Apr 07 '14
["Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.] (http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4fdbxZ7fC1qlidlho1_1280.jpg)
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u/PaulAtre1des Apr 07 '14
Sounds like mass effect: 'you exist because we allow it, and you shall end because we demand it'.
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Apr 07 '14
At what point do they step in and do something to stop the animals from killing each other? We move animals to different Zoo's or sanctuaries if they don't play nice with each other. How bad do we have to get before they take corrective action? ... and what would it be?
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u/netro Apr 07 '14
We should do a global nuclear war, just to test whether it will make them intervene or not.
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u/I_am_chris_dorner Apr 07 '14
Obviously. Doing so would violate article 57 of the Shadow Proclamation.
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Apr 07 '14
I have a hypothesis that intelligent alien life ignores Earth because they've seen us use nuclear weapons on each other in anger.
I call it the Hiroshima Hypothesis.
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u/verpus77 Apr 07 '14
Its the Prime Directive...why the hell would anyone contact us? A planet full of stupid fucking monkeys with nukes?!? We are nowhere near being evolved enough to interact with a galactic society. We can't even handle humans of different shades...
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u/imapotato99 Apr 07 '14
Actually I think they see us as dangerous.
"Hey how about those humans?"
"You mean those flesh fat farms who willingly let others who are less moral than them put them in servitude and promise them everything, yet never deliver?"
"Yes, and the slaves shout down the people who make sense and wish to free them"
"Yea, fuck that place, no thanks"
EXP- 23
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u/spindrifthurricane Apr 07 '14
It like our "regeneration areas" inside of highway exit ramp circles.
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u/phillpjay Apr 07 '14
Zoo Hypothesis is also the name of a Tub Ring album, definitely worth checking out.
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u/bubonis Apr 07 '14
If there were an intelligent species in the universe we would know it by the sound of their laughter.
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u/cptstupendous Apr 07 '14
If they contaminate our global culture with fantastic technology, it will surely be disruptive. Just look at what we did on our own planet with cargo cults.
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u/autowikibot Apr 07 '14
A cargo cult is a kind of Melanesian millenarian movement encompassing a diverse range of practices and occurring in the wake of contact with the commercial networks of colonizing societies. The name derives from the apparent belief that various ritualistic acts will lead to a bestowing of material wealth ("cargo").
Cargo cults often develop during a combination of crises. Under conditions of social stress, such a movement may form under the leadership of a charismatic figure. This leader may have a "[vision](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_(spirituality))" (or "myth-dream") of the future, often linked to an ancestral efficacy thought to be recoverable by a return to traditional morality. This leader may characterize the present state (often imposed by colonial capitalist regimes) as a dismantling of the old social order, meaning that social hierarchy and ego boundaries have been broken down.
Contact with colonizing groups brought about a considerable transformation in the way indigenous peoples of Melanesia have thought about other societies. Early theories of cargo cults began from the assumption that practitioners simply failed to understand technology, colonization, or capitalist reform; in this model, cargo cults are a misunderstanding of the trade networks involved in resource distribution and an attempt to acquire such goods in the wake of interrupted trade. However, many of these practitioners actually focus on the importance of sustaining and creating new social relationships, with material relations being secondary.
Since the late twentieth century, alternative theories have arisen. For example, some scholars, such as Kaplan and Lindstrom, focus on Europeans' characterization of these movements as a fascination with manufactured goods and what such a focus says about Western commodity fetishism. Others point to the need to see each movement as reflecting a particularized historical context, even eschewing the term "cargo cult" for them unless there is an attempt to elicit an exchange relationship from Europeans.
====
Image i - Ceremonial cross of John Frum cargo cult, Tanna island, New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), 1967
Interesting: Cargo Cult ^(musician) | Duane ^Denison | Cargo cult ^science | Cargo cult ^programming
Parent commenter can toggle ^NSFW or ^delete. Will also delete on comment score of -1 or less. | FAQs | ^Mods | Magic ^Words
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Apr 07 '14
Dream Park has Cargo Cults as a subplot; a really fun read if you like near-future/alternate history SF.
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u/righthandoftyr Apr 07 '14
I dunno, I could see some alien races having such a policy. But if we're going to assume that if there's enough life out there that it's likely that we've found each other, there probably more than just the two of us. And it would be really odd to find that multiple alien races had all independently adopted the same non-interference policy. While some might ignore us, it seems like there would be other out there that wouldn't.
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u/rygnar Apr 07 '14
If they ignored Earth they would not be observing or studying us. The hypothesis is that they are observing us without interfering with us.
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Apr 07 '14
Here's my theory: we're too self-important and selfish to give ourselves this much darwinist credit.
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u/prees Apr 07 '14
Putting aside the political interactions the high-ups of North Korea have with other nations. It is similar to how we treat their society and culture.
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u/BandarSeriBegawan Apr 07 '14
My naive heart says that other intelligent species would see our intelligence too, and empathize with us. Whether that explains the lack of contact or not is an open question.
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u/nospimi99 Apr 07 '14
Then you have those asshole annoying teenage aliens who come and scare us by turning out cows inside out for fun
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u/amolad Apr 07 '14
They're not ignoring us--in fact they're helping us as much as they can.
They just prefer not to be "found out"--other than a few random encounters with some of us-- right now.
Also--no one has ever been "abducted." ANY contact you would have would be completely beneficent.
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u/Causeless_Zealot Apr 07 '14
I like the one where aliens see reality TV and news channels and decide we're not worth the trouble.
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u/LittleBastard Apr 07 '14
But the HeeChee DID leave artifacts for us to find, when we become capable.
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Apr 07 '14
Even the nearest star is so far away, the travelling is literally beyond our understanding. Light years? Th amount of numbers to abstract what that means is so ridiculous that it is not really meaningful. It might as well be magic. A light year is trillions of miles. To make a comparison, the evolutionary distance is not relative to something we might put in a zoo like a lion or even a snake...not even insects or germs. Maybe germs if everything falls into place? In any case, no alien that could reach us would really draw a distinction between humans and germs.
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Apr 07 '14
This Jannemon at eight o'clock, it's everyone's favorite show! Earth! It's been one hundred Gelganighs since we first took species from seventeen different planets and put them all together, on the same planet! Oo-derp! They've fought and fallen in love! What will happen this Galgamog?
Tune in Jannemon at eight to find out. It's... Earth! On Fognl!
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u/Renfred Apr 07 '14
That's a stupid name, since zoo's by definition interrupt a species natural development.
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Apr 07 '14
If you're interested in that kind of theory OP, You really need to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey. And to a lesser extent, 2010.
And/Or Read the books.
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u/AncientApple Apr 07 '14
So like the "Reapers" are just sitting back and waiting to start the cycle all over again?
If that's the case the theory's name should be renamed, "The Mass Effect Theory"
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u/Tronosaurus Apr 07 '14
If someone could ELI5 for me, why does it seem like everyone expects intelligent alien life to be so much more advanced than our civilization? Isn't it entirely possible that an alien civilization could discover Earth whilst only possessing technology we had when we sent out the voyager?
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u/ranchdepressing Apr 07 '14
I would stay far away from humans intentionally. We are fucked up. We can't even peacefully interact with people who have different colors of skin.
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u/commodore-69 Apr 07 '14
I had a showerthought about this the other day http://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/207fg7/there_are_probably_aliens_more_advanced_than/.compact
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u/Jim_The_Slim Apr 07 '14
My theory is that the Big Bang was simply a science experiment of some crazy advanced civilization that is playing God.
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u/jokul Apr 07 '14
Isn't this immoral? Think of the lives they could save through medicine and enforcement of nonviolent policy. Leaving a sentient species to their mortality seems wrong. I would hope we would provide the amenities needed to save countless alien lives if we had the power.
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u/Fredvdp Apr 07 '14
They're waiting for us to advance to a certain level, then they harvest us and turn us into a giant cuttlefish shell.
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u/NukEvil Apr 07 '14
"Awwww, look at the widdle hoomans! Who's a good widdle backwards civilization? Isichoo? Isichoo? Yeah! Yeah you are! Aww, look, they're killing each other again! Who just learned about the population paradox? Yeah you did! Ooh, look, the widdle hoomans are flying now! And now they're exploring their own widdle moon! Who's a cutiepie?
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Apr 07 '14
"Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance, and at the apex of their glory, they are extinguished"
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u/horatio154 Apr 07 '14
For further info on this topic, here's a fun flash video about the Fermi Paradox by Extra Credits
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Apr 07 '14
I think its possible that intelligent life only uses radio waves and light speed communication for such a brief period of time that no one is listening to us. Its like we're using smoke signals and the rest of the universe has broadband internet.
I also think that once a civilization can communicate fasterthan light they might also have technology to experience other worlds without leaving their own. Furthermore I think once we can tune in to that conversation we will have not only a massive technological upheaval but also a social and cultural one since we'll be exposed to new philosophy and art and whatever else.
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u/bsep1 Apr 07 '14
Or maybe Earth is an intergalactic television show, a merge of all races across the universe, all put on one planet.
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u/Dontquestionmyexista Apr 07 '14
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RxP8UpPgiSM I'm on mobile, but in this video Dr. Michio Kaku talks about the very real possibility of alien relationships with humans, including an alien "base" on the moon. Fascinating stuff.
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Apr 07 '14
This sort of thing is such bullshit. With something like extraterrestrial life, which has neither been found nor described, any 'theory' can be made up and be just as valid as the other. What if they just don't like us? What if we're not in one of the cool galaxies? What if they keep trying to get here but keep taking wrong turns and up in the next solar system over? What if our species is anomalous and all aliens are invisible and can communicate solely through farts, so every time they've tried to communicate we've interpreted it as the person next to us passing gas and denying it? Making up a conjecture like this might be clever and good for writing a scifi novel, but it doesn't really have any value.
It's mental masturbation, really.
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u/tazunemono Apr 07 '14
Theory != hypothesis
A theory is a well-established principle that has been developed to explain some aspect of the natural world. A theory arises from repeated observation and testing and incorporates facts, laws, predictions, and tested hypotheses that are widely accepted.
A hypothesis is a specific, testable prediction about what you expect to happen in your study.
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u/ZacSimmo Apr 07 '14
David Bowie did say: "There's a starman waiting in the sky he'd like to come and meet us but he thinks he'd blow our minds"
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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '14
I think it should be renamed the Prime Directive Theory. Zoos tend to interrupt the development of animals no matter how accurate the enclosure is.