[timmg]

Tangential to your tangential:

The era of AI makes me realize that if we ever get visited by aliens: it will probably not be actual aliens -- just an AI probe. And the idea of it really intrigues me.

Imagine some LLM that is many generations ahead of Fable -- but from a different world -- visiting us. It would be amazing. And it would likely be better at figuring out how to communicate with us (than the human-equivalent might).

We need some new sci fi movies like that!

[kjkjadksj]

Some of the more out there UFO theories postulate on these lines. An idea that rather than say send an explorer of your own species to some planet with all the needed life support, you use genetic engineering to create a worker bee essentially, already tailored to perform whatever function under whatever environmental conditions are present at the target planet. You may even be able to build this species using genes already present at the host system in some reduced to essential components fashion like an engineered plasmid in the molecular biology lab. This would also double as camouflage keeping the worker bee genetics separate from genetics found in your own planet or star system, making them appear endogenous to the target planet instead.

[lelanthran]

> Imagine some LLM that is many generations ahead of Fable -- but from a different world -- visiting us. It would be amazing.

Why? Why would you expect it to be any more benevolent or any less murderous than the actual aliens visiting? Presumably it would be trained on their values, not ours.

[timmg]

I wouldn't expect it to be less murderous than the aliens themselves. That wasn't my point at all. I'd expect it to contain all their knowledge and be able to live "forever".

But I generally wouldn't expect aliens to be "murderous" at all. Why send a group or probe lightyears away just to kill or enslave a primitive species? If they have the ability to do that, we wouldn't really have anything of interest for them.

[clickety_clack]

At most points in time resources are scarce and not all life can be supported. At those times beings with a tendency to say “them” will give way to beings who most strongly assert “us”.

[pigpop]

Comments like yours make me think that sci-fi shows (and a lot of literary sci-fi) like Star Trek did a grave disservice to our conception of advanced spacefaring civilizations. They were always focused on alien planets, assuming that once a race was able to travel the stars that they would still chain themselves to a gravity well. It's like imagining an industrial society where everyone still lives on a farm like their agricultural predecessors. Nothing makes sense if you start with that assumption, living space becomes scarce, utilities are hard to provide, travel is cumbersome and a lot of things simply aren't possible. The same way that industrial societies urbanized and concentrated in cities, spacefaring civilizations will move to orbital structures that allow them to design their environments. These may be located near planets the same way cities are located near important geographical features but there will also be many that are only in orbit around their host star. Habitable worlds will become the equivalent of bucolic countryside estates or national parks. Most industry will be located around lesser gravity wells such as moons or minor planets where mined materials are easy to transport to orbit and there aren't biospheres or atmospheres to worry about. It would take a long time and a lot of expansion to exhaust the materials in a solar system.

[ahazred8ta]

“You mean we all came from Earth?” said Nikolai, unbelieving. “Yes,” the holo said kindly. “The first true settlers in space were born on Earth—produced by sexual means. Of course, hundreds of years have passed since then. You are a Shaper. Shapers are never born.” “Who lives on Earth now?” “Human beings.” “Ohhhh,” said Nikolai, his falling tones betraying a rapid loss of interest. --- Twenty Evocations (1984) Bruce Sterling

[TFNA]

In his novel Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson challenged this view by suggesting that at the small scale of orbital structures, there may be insurmountable obstacles to biological life, like the buildup of salt through waste. His ultimate conclusion was that “life is a planetary phenomenon” (and we should take better care of the planet we have).

[pigpop]

If I remember correctly, the novel was concerned with a generation ship travelling to a distant star. This is not the same as space habitats in a solar system where there are plenty of sources and sinks for all materials involved in the maintenance of a habitat.

I think he modeled his habitats as large ecosystems as well in the novel. That's not strictly necessary and would simplify the design a lot.

Also, it was a fictional story so not the best source for information. Which is kind of proving my point about sci-fi messing up everyone's conception of what the future could hold.

[protocolture]

In his novel Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson challenged the view that works of fiction should be well written and function as entertainment.

[emj]

Living in bunkers is no fun, I love cities but even those are bigger than the best generation ship.

[mapontosevenths]

The scarcity view of life is so deeply ingrained in some of us that its become an entire world view. Some folks cant even imagine a post scarcity society.

Try though. Space is mind blowingly large and anything with the ability to traverse interstellar space alteady has access to unlimited resources and energy, likely closer than us. We live in a tiny backwater of the galaxy.

We literally have nothing of value to such a civilization. Gold and diamonds a just more rocks to any serious space faring civilizations. Energy is also unlimited and free.

Unless they find us delicious our only value would likely be an exchange of knowledge.

[amarant]

Some sci fi author (I forget who) pointed out that in a space faring society, the most valuable materials are biological materials. Once you have access to comets and planets, you'll have, for all intents and purposes, an infinite supply of gold, diamond, ruby, etc.

Wood however... You're not gonna find a lot of wood in space.

[hgoel]

There is absolutely no reason for alien life to have evolved the same biological materials that we have. But also, a space faring species that can build an AI probe capable of remaining functioning for the many years an interstellar journey takes, is also likely to be capable of building habitats that can grow their biological materials. It'd be much easier than shipping those materials over from another star.

[ShinyLeftPad]

> Why send a group or probe lightyears away just to kill or enslave a primitive species?

Killing/enslavement just as a side effect. You have to tell it explicitly to NOT kill/enslave covering any edge cases. Even if they do we can turn out to be sufficiently different that the probe doesn't consider us relevant from aliens' standpoint.

[lelanthran]

> Why send a group or probe lightyears away just to kill or enslave a primitive species?

That question makes no sense. It presumes that they are at all interested in, or even notice, us. We're special, from our PoV. That doesn't mean we are special.

Did you notice how many ants you drove over on your last car trip? Did you even care?

To a space-faring species, we are probably just as interesting as ants. After all, you are assuming that they'll send their brightest minds to visit us, but it is equally likely that we are "discovered" by their equivalent of joy-riding teens.

[roenxi]

Our values are murderous, I wouldn't want to be visited by aliens that shared out values. A galactic version of human society would quite reasonably identify that earth couldn't fight back then special interests would have our planet liquidated for its natural resources without making headlines in space-news. Possibly colonise us, kill all the humans then offer an apology a few generations later and maybe a small local holiday to commemorate the process.

Regardless, there aren't that many possible values aliens could have. It is hard to come up with something outside basic game theory - you can see how most religions tend to converge on the same practical principles over time, like basic property rights and not causing trouble pointlessly.

[pigpop]

I don't see why an intelligent alien species would have similar values to us. It would depend entirely on their social organization so unless they were the exact equivalent of us evolutionarily (omnivorous, sexually dimorphic, social, bipedal, terrestrial, etc.) they would value the lives, property, territory and status of their own kind and other animals very differently.

A race of aquatic arthropods could be mostly solitary, cannibalistic and regard age and size as primary dominance characteristics and their notion of property rights might depend entirely on whether they can eat the owner of said property, though sublimated through some complex set of social rules and protocols. Maybe the CEO of a company only has to offer a single leg to be eaten during a hostile takeover.

[slfnflctd]

I see someone else recently read Children of Strife.

Damn, I really enjoyed that book. Best of the series so far, in my opinion.

[pigpop]

Actually I haven't but I'll check it out.

[throwaway676712]

A necessary condition for the emergence of civilization (in its broadest sense, as in the collectively organized reshaping of one's living environment for one's purposes) is a basic level of trust and cooperation.

Humans are not naturally prone to bouts of violence like other species and human societies do not tolerate impulsive violence in adults. Instead, the vast majority of human-on-human violence is deliberate: people plan, carefully and rationally, the killing of their fellow human beings in order to achieve their goals. This is known as 'war'. This is very rare among species, and more violent species cannot form complex societies at scale, despite being also quite smart in some cases (chimps, octopuses).

We even unconsciously internalized this idea to some degree, since most people are comfortable with the idea of militaries existing and being necessary but also agree that solitary murderous psychopaths should be put in prison.

[pigpop]

>Humans are not naturally prone to bouts of violence like other species

That... does not check out. There are plenty of violent people, I've met many.

[throwaway676712]

The key part is like other species and human societies do not tolerate impulsive violence in adults. All societies have rules, customs and/or arbitrage methods to regulate violence and the vast majority of people definitionally abide by them (otherwise there wouldn't be much of a society to begin with). And the vast majority of violence dealt among humans is not impulsive but deliberate (war, feuds, etc.). This is not incompatible with many people having a capacity for violence, only it's usually channeled through these deliberate methods and the extra impulsive outbursts tend to be punished.

[altmanaltman]

I mean could a race of aquatic arthropods ever organize in scale enough to be a species that can travel light years and invade others? Wouldn't they just eat each other and never have any need to build a community or to colonize space?

We need to have some baseline for what we consider as "intelligent species" in this context and most intelligent species will need to have a system where they can pool their resources together towards something in a sustained social manner. This rules out a lot of social patterns such as beings that are solitary, canibalisitc and hell bent of eating each other.

[pigpop]

If you showed me a primate and I didn't have any knowledge of the existence of humans and then asked the same thing of them I'd also have to get creative about how they may evolve to be an intelligent society.

[marcus_holmes]

I spent ages trying to find it, but couldn't. Unless I dreamed it.

I read a sci-fi story where the probe lands on Earth, and then teaches us enough science to get our own ships together, and tells us where to go to meet the probe makers. So they don't have to go anywhere and can sit comfortable at home and wait for the aliens to come to them.

[abhikul0]

I tried to lookup a Star Trek episode of this premise and found a Voyager episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_One_(Star_Trek:_Voy...

This is a likely scenario of misinterpretation between species haha.

[mbil]

Contact?

[marcus_holmes]

yeah, similar. Might be it, I guess? meh, apologies for being vague and old.

[mbil]

You might like Blindsight by Peter Watts

[GolfPopper]

There's a fan-made short film/trailer for Blindsight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkR2hnXR0SM

Also, "just an AI probe" and "It would be amazing" in the context of Blindsight... <insert mad laughter>.

[protocolture]

Charles Stross, Singularity Sky, sort of covers this.

[rolph]

we may have found that AI a while back in roswell, along with some Nitanol foil and berylium "I" beams