Talk:The Forge of God

Section Edit links are hinky on this article!

For some reason the Edit links for the individual sections are all appearing together at the bottom of this article. This is happening in Firefox but not IE and only in this article. --irrevenant [ talk ] 03:13, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

The viewpoints presented in this book are interesting and I believe that even Steven Hawking has said that we should also be wary of advanced alien intelligence with bad intentions. However, I think that such thinking may take us in completely the wrong direction. Huge amounts Little green men doomsday sci-fi are taking us far from reality and filling our heads with paranoia and xenophopia. Any superior intelligent life would by definition not be interested in destroying other intelligence. There is no reason in this universe for someone to travel 100s of light years across our galaxy to destroy an inhabited planet. For one thing there are many more uninhabited planets which can be made suitable for biological life.

In fact if anything an advanced species would have more reason to fear us, being a primitive species and looking at the attrocities we have committed since "learning to walk", which is probably why we do not hear from advanced species out there. In short, we have much to gain by making first contact but little to offer.

I fail to see why 'superior intelligent life' would automatically not be interested in the destruction of other sentient life. Were humanity to encounter a species of similar intelligence to our own that was attempting to occupy the same space that we do, would it not attack them? Or, at the very least, arm itself in preparation for a potential conflict, thus potentially sparking fighting? Yes, there is a prevalence of xenophobic science fiction literature that focuses on being invaded by some otherworldly creature, but the premise behind these fears is very possible. Life requires resources and, even in a galaxy, there is still a finite amount of certain resources. In order to take control of these, it is not inconceivable that there would be some extraterrestrial life form that would be willing to kill for them. In this kind of situation, the best way to stay at the top of the galactic food chain would be to eliminate threats long before they began. That's where the idea of self-replicating killer robots that target advancing civilizations (and other such devices or tactics) come from. As you said, we as a species have committed countless atrocities in our brief time on Earth. Why would any alien race with knowledge of our past allow us to develop to the galactic stage where we could become a threat not only to them, but to all life in the galaxy (see The Day the Earth Stood Still). What is more, your assumption labels humans as intelligent, a claim that may not be substantiated by a space-faring civilization. As many scientists have stated (I don't have a direct citation on this, but a brief search of the internet would garner results), we don't know what life might look like if we ever do encounter it, so why can we assume that anything that lands on Earth would recognize us as intelligent. Much like we regard ants as unintelligent, despite their complex social structures and architectural accomplishments, an intelligent species capable of space travel may regard us as little more than bugs. Lastly, many of the xenophobic stories that exist in science fiction are really based in fears of terrestrial aliens or 'others'. This is true of many works, like those that include hordes of mindless drones that threaten to overwhelm a technologically superior civilization with sheer numbers. These mindless hordes are a reference to the threat of the rising Asian powers and the many thousands of individuals that would be at the disposal of a political and military power that could arise there. In short, the reasons for the writing of works like this are not wholly based in a potential future first contact, but also have a place in their particular historic period. Even were these stories only within the vacuum of the future, the reasons for looking to an intelligent race from the stars with a measure of fear and suspicion are both many and justifiable.GrinandGregBearit (talk) 23:46, 22 March 2015 (UTC)