Unless the extraterrestrial species are the only macroscopic life-form on their planet, it’s likely they evolved among other species and did not exterminate them all. This might lead to them having cultural values about preserving biodiversity and not exterminating species unless really necessary.
To me that’s not a culture , but a bias (the hunter gatherer bias).....there are thousands of animal species serving no real purpose for our cause and still we slow down our growth because of concerns regarding their survival , not only that , but after having analyzed our daily values and necessities it becomes perfectly crystal clear how we’d only really need the 5 big crops + plants for photosynthesis , insects and impollinators in order to survive and thrive , plus we would be able to support much more people ! Imagine a planet where 15 billions humans live and each and everyone of them consumes 2700 kcal/day and contributes to the world’s economy because nobody has to suffer hunger anymore.… that would be possible if we got rid of wastes and inefficiencies . So In my opinion if we ever find other forms of intelligent life and we can’t trade with them , eat them , learn from them or acquire knowledge studying them , then yes I am all up for bombing them , just as I am all up for (and I know many will hate me for this :-D ) running a railway + HVDC line through the giant panda’s territory , or finally get rid of domesticated animals like cows which convert calories and proteins from grains so poorly .
Also I agree with @woodchopper , we should stop sending messages literally “Across the Universe” in order to avoid perishing .
An other approach we might use in the remote future could be only using old technologies to broadcast an “hello signal”..… stuff we’ve long moved from , so we could try to select for civilizations which are way behind us technologically so we could sort of be in control of their destiny like your usual anthill , but even then it could be a trap or they might catch up during the time necessary to make the trip or they could be monitored by some other advanced civilization which is not monitoring us , so we would just signal our presence to them as well...
we’d only really need the 5 big crops + plants for photosynthesis , insects and impollinators in order to survive and thrive
Time and time it turned out that we underestimated the complexity of the biosphere. And time and time again our meddling backfired horribly.
Even if we were utterly selfish and had no moral objections, wiping out all but a handful of “useful” species would almost certainly lead to unforeseen consequences ending in the total destruction of the planet’s biosphere. We did not yet manage to fully map the role each species plays in the natural balance, but it seems like it’s very deeply entangled, everything depending on lots of other species. You cannot just remove a handful of them and expect them to thrive on their own.
More like leading to a temporary collapse to a lower level of complexity (including much less if any in the way of humans) until all the available niches were re-filled by radiating evolution from the surviving forms.
Hmmm. wonders if the open thread is a place for a quick analysis of that news item going around about interesting optical signals seen in a few hundred stellar spectra from the sloan digital sky survey …
To me that’s not a culture , but a bias (the hunter gatherer bias).....there are thousands of animal species serving no real purpose for our cause and still we slow down our growth because of concerns regarding their survival , not only that , but after having analyzed our daily values and necessities it becomes perfectly crystal clear how we’d only really need the 5 big crops + plants for photosynthesis , insects and impollinators in order to survive and thrive , plus we would be able to support much more people ! Imagine a planet where 15 billions humans live and each and everyone of them consumes 2700 kcal/day and contributes to the world’s economy because nobody has to suffer hunger anymore.… that would be possible if we got rid of wastes and inefficiencies . So In my opinion if we ever find other forms of intelligent life and we can’t trade with them , eat them , learn from them or acquire knowledge studying them , then yes I am all up for bombing them , just as I am all up for (and I know many will hate me for this :-D ) running a railway + HVDC line through the giant panda’s territory , or finally get rid of domesticated animals like cows which convert calories and proteins from grains so poorly .
Also I agree with @woodchopper , we should stop sending messages literally “Across the Universe” in order to avoid perishing . An other approach we might use in the remote future could be only using old technologies to broadcast an “hello signal”..… stuff we’ve long moved from , so we could try to select for civilizations which are way behind us technologically so we could sort of be in control of their destiny like your usual anthill , but even then it could be a trap or they might catch up during the time necessary to make the trip or they could be monitored by some other advanced civilization which is not monitoring us , so we would just signal our presence to them as well...
Time and time it turned out that we underestimated the complexity of the biosphere. And time and time again our meddling backfired horribly.
Even if we were utterly selfish and had no moral objections, wiping out all but a handful of “useful” species would almost certainly lead to unforeseen consequences ending in the total destruction of the planet’s biosphere. We did not yet manage to fully map the role each species plays in the natural balance, but it seems like it’s very deeply entangled, everything depending on lots of other species. You cannot just remove a handful of them and expect them to thrive on their own.
More like leading to a temporary collapse to a lower level of complexity (including much less if any in the way of humans) until all the available niches were re-filled by radiating evolution from the surviving forms.
Hmmm. wonders if the open thread is a place for a quick analysis of that news item going around about interesting optical signals seen in a few hundred stellar spectra from the sloan digital sky survey …
/facepalm