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[Shinotsa]

Psychology is a powerful tool to use against the human race... let's hope they don't catch on.

"Wait... this whole race is motivated by a sense of belonging and a steady mate? Jackpot! Glorg, bring out the Sexybot 3000's!"

[darkrider2]

Psychology is a powerful tool to use against the human race... let's hope they don't catch on.

"Wait... this whole race is motivated by a sense of belonging and a steady mate? Jackpot! Glorg, bring out the Sexybot 3000's!"

All they'd have to do is study our past, and our present. I'd be more scared of them learning about the concept of fear projection than anything else, since that's almost exclusively what politics runs on these days.

[Graknorke]

Manipulating people is easy. Just tell them you're better than them and tell them what to do. If they think they can't do anything about it, they'll probably do it.
Even if it means hurting other people.

Manipulation is easy.

[Karnewarrior]

Manipulation is so easy you could literally roll Osama Bin Laden up to the POTUS in a motorcade and no-one would notice until he got out.. Simply walking into a place you have no right to be and acting like you belong there is such a powerful disguise it tricks the Secret Service of who may be the most powerful single man on the planet.

But it could also work the other direction. Could we manipulate aliens the same way? It could be just as easy.

[Graknorke]

Manipulation is so easy you could literally roll Osama Bin Laden up to the POTUS in a motorcade and no-one would notice until he got out.. Simply walking into a place you have no right to be and acting like you belong there is such a powerful disguise it tricks the Secret Service of who may be the most powerful single man on the planet.

But it could also work the other direction. Could we manipulate aliens the same way? It could be just as easy.

So we just go to the aliens going pretty much "Oh hey there, how are you? Nice calm solar activity around now isn't it?"? Because that is basically the best plan. Just play it cool. Pretend like it isn't a shockingly big deal.

[darkrider2]

I'm just looking forward to the collective millions of people shitting their pants when they find out.

[i2amroy]

i'd rather be enslaved than exterminated. if a technological superior alien showed up, i know where i'd pledge my allegiance

Only question for me, would you betray others for that privilege?

of course!

unless they're really intending to wipe us out, if they're as technological advanced as it is predictable, any resistance would be effectively futile and naive. if we surrender long enough to be assimilated we may be able to absorb enough technology to, if we're still willing to by then, be better equipped to fight them
besides, they're benign enough to dominate us instead of outright wiping us out, they'll probably do a better job of running this place than us

This is of course if they are the nice overlords and not the raping and pillaging kind

what is there on earth to pillage for a civilization with ftl travel? i doubt the xenosexual freaks of said civilization would be numerous enough to convince their leaders to invade a planet so they could have their way with our sexy selves

Really there is no point in "invading" a planet for anything other then the actual "life" on the plant (so the biosphere, for the technical out there). Meaning that there would actually be almost no chance of a destructive invasion. I mean think about it, if they were coming to steal something like water, then couldn't they just pull it in a much more transportable state from saturn's rings? (And get all sorts of useful trace minerals to boot!) If they were after some sort of mineral, aren't there millions of planets, astroids, or moons out there that you could mine from without needing to face a potentially hostile population? I mean there are moons out there with more valuable minerals then we have on Earth. That only leaves the biosphere as a potential resource, in which case you would be trying your hardest not to disturbs the planet since you don't want us to go nuke crazy and destroy whatever resource you want.

In the event that the thing that they wanted wasn't part of the biosphere (like if for some reason we have some crazy "unobtanium" here, then your best bet is still not to wage some war of enslavement. To quote Warhammer 40K, "In war, one should seek to take and hold the high ground. From there, the enemy's movements are clearly visible, and he will struggle just to reach you, let alone fight you. High orbit is the highest ground there is." The best bet at that point is to simply nuke that could potentially get in your way from orbit. Then you just wait a month or two for the dust to settle, then move in and take whatever you want. Really if an advanced alien life form finds us as we are and for some reason wants the Earth, there will be nothing that we can do about it other then start nuking things and hope that we can destroy whatever the aliens want from here before they kill us to take it. Earth has no "mystical electronic fields" like in Avatar that forces the invading race to use low level technology, so to put it shortly, we would be utterly screwed.

[Karnewarrior]

I have one word for you, just one word.

Plastics.

Although it's probably completely possible to synthesize plastics. But if you're at war and your factories are busy making bullets and you can't synthesize enough plastic...

[MonkeyHead]

Plastics are just rearranaged hydrocarbons. Any planet with a long enough geological and biological history will probably have the raw ingredients for plastics. Heck, Titan is pretty much swimming in them IIRC, so its probable that you can find the compunds for making plastics quite readily in the cosmos.

Besides, any life form advanced enough to cross the stars probably has little need for low tech plastics or the ability to synthesise thier own in some manner.

[ZoomyZebra]

On a somewhat related note...
Has anyone read The Mote in God's Eye? Pretty much humanity meets a race which reproduces much faster than we do and in visiting their solar system, we bring the technology that they need to expand into our solar system. The end result can be summarized as humanity shouting "OH SHIT, SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING!". The sequel ends in trade being established so let's disregard that.

[Hanslanda]

On a somewhat related note...
Has anyone read The Mote in God's Eye? Pretty much humanity meets a race which reproduces much faster than we do and in visiting their solar system, we bring the technology that they need to expand into our solar system. The end result can be summarized as humanity shouting "OH SHIT, SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING!". The sequel ends in trade being established so let's disregard that.

I could see something similar happening in reality, if FTL travel ever becomes non-fiction or if we develop some sort of long term space travel idea, stasis or whatever. We reach an alien world, discover intelligent aliens that are nonetheless at a lower tech level than us. We get cocky because they've got spears and sticks, they kill a shitpile of us and jack our shit.
Now we get to deal with a highly intelligent, possibly aggressive race that just jacked tech way beyond what they had before.

Basically, we'd be the aliens in pretty much any movie.  Only realistic issue with this is how the aliens would work our tech if we're so far beyond them.

[Karnewarrior]

The obvious solution is we induct them and eat their culture.

Om nom nom

[Kogan Loloklam]

To go back to the discussion of interplanetary conflict a bit...

You all argue about how easy it is to hit a predictable orbit object, the earth. Absolutely it CAN be easy, if your calculations are right. The problem is the Earth"s natural shieldS. The moon is our shield of last resort. We have everything from Jupiter to the Solar wind working to beat back them alien xenocidal missiles. "But Kogan," you call, "any elementary-grade Folabboxi can compute these variables to decimals our tiny human brains can't comprehend! They will just find that sweet spot and it will get through!"
Well, to answer you, I pose this question. You have a 10" diameter marble launched at .7625c from Alpha centauri towards earth, perfectly aimed at the sweet spot. 1/2 a light year away, you have a stationary butterfly's wing angled 1 degree offset from dead on, perfectly in the path of the marble.
What happens to that marble?

Okay, take away the butterfly's wing and instead add in a few dozen objects with the mass  of pluto randomly moved along likely paths of assault. As long as the intellegent agressor has no wamprats back home, we can defeat attacks by missiles we can't really make yet using technology within our reach today. And even if they were successful, we're not that far off from extraterrestrial colonies, and airless areas aren't in danger from this sort of attack. Mankind is on the cusp of being durable like no earth species before, and we're bringing cats and dogs with us. The jury's still out on elephants and dolphins. One thing is for sure, I hope our fellow earthlings aren't as intellegent as some people think they are...

[Scoops Novel]

One of the main reasons i would want to be cryogenically frozen would be to see how our fellow earthlings evolve. At the very least, i want to be around once we pull off talking to dolphins. Now that could be a world changer.

[Adequate Swimmer]

The separation in time is so vast (age of cosmos vs age of civs) that the most probable contact would be ancient ruins. Probably so old and bizarre that nobody would realize for years that there was anything even there.

Also, this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schliemann