Originally Posted by
Yvaelle
The biggest misconception about aliens is that they are of comprehensible intelligence and technology to us, given the nigh unfathomable depth of time. 100 years ago we didn't have cars or planes or computers or television or satellites. 100 years from now, if we survive, we will be integrated with technology in ways you cannot even fathom - our brains will be connected to an internet that lets you share another persons experiences and memories precisely, our bodies will be only partially organic - upgraded by mechanical and electronic wonders of technology, yet even then we won't be deep into space travel - even if we do find FTL at that time.
200 years from now we may not even have biological bodies anymore, we may well be technological willow-wisps, our brains uploaded into machines without need for a physical container - or if we do have such a container - continuing miniaturization may reduce our containers to little tiny drones with more processing power than all the CPUs on earth in even 100 years from today (hence willow-wisps). Only then, and still assuming we invent FTL travel in that time - will we make even a remote dent into our solar cluster, in our galaxy, in our super-cluster of galaxies, within our universe.
By that time - Earth likely won't have a noticeable radio sphere emission - because all our communications will be via some new kind of fibre optics, or potentially quantum tunnelling. Earth has only had a radio sphere that we might identify for just over 100 years now, and 100 years from now - we may no longer have any radiosphere to detect.
If a detectable radiosphere for a comparable civilization may only last for 200-300 years, out of 14.5 billion years of time so far - that means that even if we were currently within the radiosphere of another civilization - the likelihood of us not detecting an in-range civilization is 99.9999999862%.
What if they are currently at the industrial era? We wouldn't detect them. What if they are 300 years ahead of us? They would detect us, we wouldn't detect them. The likelihood of us detecting a civilization who is at the same level of development as us, inside our tiny radiosphere, is basically non-existent. I like that somebody is looking - somebody needs to be looking - but really we will never find life via the SETI project.
Which means if we can't find life, then we can only be found.
That means a more advanced civilization than us - that means we won't detect their communications or technology, ever, because they won't want us to (whether malicious, defensive, or simply because spamming the radio waves with noise isn't an efficient means of communication for them - in the same way that we no longer communicate via mountain-top signal fires).
If they choose to reveal themselves to us, they will likely be able to take whatever form they wish for first contact - including our own - or they will choose to show up looking like Asari's knowing we will be extra nice to them, or they won't have bodies at all - and we'll just be talking to their AI curator while they have a hundred billion consciousnesses inside servers on their mothership, playing video games and fapping while trotting around the stars - and none of them will find us interesting enough to greet us personally - so we'll just get the answering machine greeting and a request to download the sum total of human knowledge for their archives, in exchange for like - the cure for cancer or something equally trivial to them.
Oh - and we will pose ZERO threat to them. Like, less than a common ant poses to you. The dumbest idea in sci-fi is that we're going to fight off an alien invasion - if anyone with FTL wants us dead, we're so collectively fucked it's not even worth illustrating the myriad annihilations they could select for us, given the power to fold space, distort time, and instantly accelerate mass beyond light.
So there are really two things I wish everyone would walk away with, regarding aliens:
1) it is a virtual certainty that in our ~infinite universe, life not only exists beyond earth, but exists often - and intelligent life even beyond us is out there, but beyond our reach - and/or if we are not beyond their reach, they have no desire to reveal themselves to us
2) forget everything you know about what aliens look like, and abandon all hope of defeating them - whether by hax0ring their mothership, or shooting their ground invasion troops in the head, or sprinkling water on them, or whatever other dumb idea you have seen.
With that said, I love alien movies and games especially - but mostly because of what it says about humanity - not because I think any of them are good accounts of alien contact.