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[SalmonGod]

Conflict doesn't necessarily mean war as we conceive of it.  Our warfare is a product of very specific psychological and cultural components working together.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if alien species had no understanding of it.

As for the single-mind hypothetical that I half-assedly threw out, that was inspired by observations of fungus coating the floor of old-growth forests, which have been recognized as behaving much like a single giant nervous system.  Such a thing would be forced to break apart in order to spread out into space, unless it wholly abandons its own planet and continues to travel as one unit.  That still doesn't mean it would cease to identify with itself, much less have any reason to develop conflicts of interest leading to violence, or be incapable of reconnecting when in proximity.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Conflict doesn't necessarily mean war as we conceive of it.  Our warfare is a product of very specific psychological and cultural components working together.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if alien species had no understanding of it.

No it isn't. Our warfare is just the same as the conflicts between all life. We just so happen to be the only example of extremely numerous megafauna with advanced weaponry on Earth.

That still doesn't mean it would cease to identify with itself, much less have any reason to develop conflicts of interest leading to violence, or be incapable of reconnecting when in proximity.

If it is separated, it is having different experiences and thoughts in each segment. Given enough time, those segments will become distinct individuals with different judgements, and that will eventually lead to conflict. Its the same issue as what happens when there's an exact copy of you. Sure, at the start Alpha-You and Beta-You are going to be physically and mentally indistinguishable, but even if you're attached at the waist you'll eventually be different people.

[SalmonGod]

Conflict doesn't necessarily mean war as we conceive of it.  Our warfare is a product of very specific psychological and cultural components working together.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if alien species had no understanding of it.

No it isn't. Our warfare is just the same as the conflicts between all life. We just so happen to be the only example of extremely numerous megafauna with advanced weaponry on Earth.

Very few species engage in conflict in any sense comparable to what we call warfare.  A fight between two creatures is not warfare.  A fight between a few creatures is not warfare.  Warfare is large-scale, organized conflict, the goals and methods of which are not wholly understood by any single participant.

Prerequisites for human-style warfare that might not be shared by an alien species
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Psychological:  Lack of empathy or the ability to bypass empathy (cognitive dissonance / re-defining enemies as lesser or non-human).  Other species with empathy might have it hardwired deeper.

Psychological:  Unit-oriented social structures (what many would call tribalism, but I don't like this word).  People separate themselves out into families, social cliques, etc and care primarily for the well-being of their unit.  Other species might not be so naturally inclined to organize themselves by separations.

Cultural:  Hierarchal societal structures -- a handful of people giving orders and a majority following them unquestioningly.  Much of the social infrastructure behind warfare breaks down without this.  People at the top of the hierarchy avoid triggering their empathy by being disconnected from the conflict, while organizing the structure beneath them to disable the empathy of those in the midst of it.

Cultural:  Our social structures are also designed to select selfish and conflict-oriented people for placement at the top of the social hierarchies.  These people use their influence to initiate warfare.  Note that it also tends to take a great deal of effort to convince the people who will actually do the fighting to go along with it, usually requiring massive misinformation campaigns or broadly felt dire circumstances.  Societies that select their leaders differently would find warfare less frequent or non-existent.

Circumstantial:  Our social structures are a product of the circumstances in which our civilization arose.  We developed algorithmic social principles to abstract the large-scale allocation of resources to help us deal with scarcity, which led to the cultural foundations listed above that enable warfare.  Civilizations from other planets might have developed under differing levels of scarcity, learned to deal with it differently, or have modified their social structures after defeating scarcity (as we have done in many respects, but thus far failed to account for in the functioning of society).

That still doesn't mean it would cease to identify with itself, much less have any reason to develop conflicts of interest leading to violence, or be incapable of reconnecting when in proximity.

If it is separated, it is having different experiences and thoughts in each segment. Given enough time, those segments will become distinct individuals with different judgements, and that will eventually lead to conflict. Its the same issue as what happens when there's an exact copy of you. Sure, at the start Alpha-You and Beta-You are going to be physically and mentally indistinguishable, but even if you're attached at the waist you'll eventually be different people.

I find "differences = conflict" to be a distinctly human way of thinking. 

The hypothetical fungus-being becomes less and less relevant, but just to entertain that example, since it's the most plausible form of distributed single-mind being I can immediately conjure, just because they will become different over time while separate doesn't mean they don't remerge when they encounter each other.  I find this to be the most likely default mode of communication for a being that is accustomed to being One.  There's also no reason to believe we couldn't encounter such a being before any significant drift like you described has occurred.

Who knows what form an alien intelligence could take.  We make these assumptions because we are naturally anthropocentric.  We don't identify well with things that aren't like us.  You don't even need to look at how we relate to other species to see this in action.  It's well understood that people tend to judge others based on their understanding of themselves.  This is how we get phenomenon like projection, or two cultures each thinking the other is stupid because they don't operate by the same set of values, etc.  This is why we have a tendency to anthropomorphize absolutely everything, even abstract concepts like weather.

[Scoops Novel]

If it was a nature reserve, i doubt you'd get just one intelliogent species in the area, and the odds that all of them have such thinking is rather low. Rather anthropocentric, yes, but at least one species is in it for the entertainment and Breaking Bad.

[MrWiggles]

Na, other animals have wars. Especially us Primates. You need conflict (Or fitting to your environment) to drive evolution. After a certain point, an apex predator will need grow into conflict itself to sustain evolutionary pressure.

If this supposed fungus being is sapient, then its a predator. And if its a predator then it probably kills things to exist. Predatory Organism so in far are congruent with intelligence. I can only think of one example of a creature thats possible not predatory but possbly sapient being the Indian Elephant. But Orca, Bottle Nose Dolphins, Octopuses or Squids (Cant remember which one), just to rattle off a few are near sapient or sapient creatures are all predatory.

So in while this fungus being may not have warfare, it'd certainly understand killing, and competing with killing. And if its sapient, then its certainty modifying its environment to suit itself better, modifying everything for itself. With that, comes a value for resources. And a need to protect its resources and investments from competition.

So while the idea of war may be alien, the mechanics and applications, motivations behind it wouldnt be. It'd just be a different framing for stuff its been doing for thousands of years already, just potentially on a different scale and different overall purpose.

[DJ]

The only reason animals (primates and social insects excluded) don't have war is the lack of social organization and territorial behaviour required for it. Mind you, you still have things like a couple of young lions forming an alliance to take over an established lion's territory. Non-violent species would simply never make it through the evolution to sapience.

[Starver]

I think there's plenty of examples in literature (fantasy as well as sci-fi) of where mankind fits into a "universal" spectrum of different race qualities.

The regular/lazy assumption is that we're bog-average.  Some smarts, some strength, some imagination, etc, but by means not the smartest (or dumbest) or strongest (or weakest) or more imaginative (or unimaginative), and on and on...  There's always the "hulking great whatnot" aliens (or trolls or troll-likes, in fantasy) who are basically dumb (in our assessment, but the more imaginative representations show them as not actually totally thick, just differently thinking), while there are also the pale, fragile, perhaps even traditionalist and hide-bound aliens, few in number and resolutely non-expansionist who have knowledge (and perhaps also intelligence) beyond our wildest dreams.  If a creature is weak, stupid, works as a slave-race[1], etc, then it probably breeds like bally-ho.  Even further along those lines, consider Tribbles!

In these "humans are average" versions, we're given "bravery" (usually "against all odds") as an exceptional aspect to us.  Or (because we're a young race, not yet satisfied, hyper-expansionist, perhaps foolishly so.  That can probably be attributed as much to the needs of plot as any actual comparison with other races.  We could be "DobbyThe House Elf"s, compared to others, or sloth-like.

Sometimes we're shown to be the most warlike, or the most peaceful (but, as needs demand, adapting ourselves to equal the ferocity of our opponents).  So sometimes we're Starship Troopers or Space Marines or Nazis(/Red Army) In Space, sometimes we're all mostly like Ripley (as she started off).  Or we're just a young kid who had a dream of a 'circuit', or Doctor Zarkov in a well-meaning but (potentially) "Nice Job Breaking It Hero" attempt to make peaceful contact with an (it turns out) petulant and warfare-orientated extrasolar collection of civilisations.  Rinse and repeat with many other 'racial qualities'.



So what is 'universal' insofar as a cross-stellar race?  Expansionism, probably.  At least at first, but how quickly?  Do they 'seed' as many adjacent planets with 'suicide settlements' as they can, or are they cautious, perhaps only moving out of their home system due to a dying sun or threatening local conditions... or did they get given their initial "jump" by another race (willingly or not)?  And once they've got their 'empire' (or some form of trade network) do they expand further?  The "Neanderthals" of the book "Heaven" (Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart) are a trader race who do not colonise but are spread wide and far in their dealings with all kinds of other alien species.  When you've gotten your own particular interstellar niche (at least until some other race wanders in and disturbs the balance), how much further might you want to expand, and what further ambitions might you have?  Perhaps you don't.  And you work with the rules set by the community you've joined.

Intelligence.  Hmmm...  Well, various levels of panspermia hypothetically occur without intelligence.  Whether it's microbe (or biogenic precusor) spread or "space spores" or other plant-like seed dispersal or a caveman-level race that has found a (natural or precursor-created) wormhole network to wander through, or just about any creature that finds itself hitch-hiking on other travellers' ships.  Or hijacking them (c.f. "High Crusade" by Poul Anderson).

Profligacy then.  Well, there's too many (fictional, but at least partially justifiable) "lone example" aliens out there.  Last of their species (whether verdant beforehand, obviously they didn't attempt to maintain their population, or succeed against some form of adversity or another), or one of a very few seen away from their homeworld.  Or perhaps they're a one-off in the first place (sentient planets, yadayadayada).

Conflict and war!  [As I was writing before the above intervening ninjas, but I'll let this stand...] Development of tech in our experience seems to be accelerated by martial conditions, certainly.  But does that only affect the rate of development?  We haven't yet seen what a purely cooperative (hive mind?) society can do, probably because we've had too much war/corruption/individual resistance/whatever subverting any attempts to perfect the idea.  And already we've covered the usage of non-native methods of travel (natural or otherwise) that a fully-cooperative alien race might use without having to go through the whole V2->Saturn V->Daedalus Project route themselves.

I think I've already ruled out Willingness to expand and Intention to do so, in the above.  Look at the off-world Tau'ri in Stargate, quite a few of which are without more than their original (Earth-origin) societal values, or some analogue/parallel thereof.


Of course, insofar as the "Real World", we only have one example (us) to easily look at as (potential) interstellar travellers in their own right.  We can't say for sure where we lie on the scale of various measures of "racial qualities" (nor how much our individuals deviate from the norm, approaching or overtaking other races' qualities).  What if we're the Aliens[2], or the Minbari, or the Ewoks, or the Chigs, or the Luxans... Or the Tribbles!  What do the true 'average race' think of us?  Never mind those with the opposite balance of qualities from the mean...


[1] Insofar as work in which a weak and stupid creature can be useful doing as a slave.

[2] Ripliey/Nostromo/etc

[Darvi]

There's also insect hives that attempt to eliminate each other. Pretty Sure that can be constituted as a war.

[Helgoland]

Yup, ant wars. They're brutal. There's also a species of ants (or termites?) that engages in - you guessed it, ant genocide.

I think it was a greek philosopher who said: "War is the father of all things." If you replace war with suffering, I think you get quite close to the truth: Progress needs a reason, but also the means necessary. Any advanced civilization will therefore come from a place that is not desolate, but also not paradise in Earth/Insert Planet Name Here: They will know scarcity, and they will know how to deal with it.
The question is: What alternatives to warfare/"egoism-driven trade" are there for resource allocation?

[Starver]

The question is: What alternatives to warfare/"egoism-driven trade" are there for resource allocation?

(While not dismissing that warfare is, at least to us, a driver of development...) I already posited some other reasons (and means) for a civilisation to go off-planet, covering more than resource-allocation issues.

If you want one possible explanation for that simple answer...  "The sun's going to go nova!  Let us direct our civilisation's efforts towards developing the means to moving ourselves and our resourcefulness off-planet!"  Being a practical people (one assumes) they send out portions of their population on different interstellar trajectories in order to give themselves a good chance of re-settling somewhere, with or without advanced scouting or surveying methods guiding them.

Assuming they're capable of this in the first place (pretty much a given for this hypothesis), and regardless of whether aborted attempts at planetfall on unsuitable (or already occupied) targets have the ability to try yet another system, I predict that such a civilisation will dot colonies around on many different star systems.

Now, we get the fun.  Maybe the civilisation keeps itself homogeneous in philosophy, staying peaceful and (choosing their colony locations wisely, or being lucky) staying out of conflict with other races, building up partner societies.  I imagine that any colony that had conflict thrust upon it (either being discovered by someone else, or a colony ship realising that to survive it has to impose itself upon an unwilling host world and adopting a "practical approach to subjugation") may become an outlier of the original society.  Romulans to the others' Vulcans, as it were.  Or quite practically teach what it has learnt to its kinfolk.  (Not that I've seen it, but I think the new Battlestar Galactica's empire of Cylons probably work like that, from what I have heard.)

But all that's just a set of possible stories.  Again, without knowing "how typical" the human experience is I'm still desperately anthropocentricising the supposition.  In the entire scope of what races compose the Greater Galactic Civilisation, we may be ether pussy-cats, or tasmanian devils whenever we eventually start to involve ourselves with them.  Or H1N1.  Or a steamroller.  Or the much-needed arbitrator and rationaliser of the all conflicts the rest of the races are engaged in, between themselves.  Or the guy who hasn't had a bath in five years.  Anything like that any of those.  Or any combination thereof.  Or totally unlike any of them because we just don't have the words for it.


I remember quite liking the short story "Specialist", by Robert Sheckley, when I read it two or three decades ago.  The summaries of the plot that I've found[1] make me think that I wasn't wrong, even with the hindsight of more experience with life.  And that it's a (perhaps idealised, and of course plot-driven) example of non-warfare interstellar advancement.  Among any number of others, I'm sure.



[1] Short and sweet and very 'spoilery' at Wikipedia, longer and almost a story-telling example in and of itself at this other place, but I think the better place to read the tale if (like me) you can't easily find the original text reproduced on paper or on-line at all.

[SalmonGod]

Ok I've read for about 10 seconds and can already see that people didn't notice my word choice here...

Very few species engage in conflict in any sense comparable to what we call warfare.

Very few

Specifically, hive insects are the only non-human example I can think of.  I think primates have semi-organized group conflicts, but not what I would call warfare.

And I don't think it's lack of organization.  Granted, warfare cannot occur without large scale organization, so I speak from a position that cannot be proven nor disproven due to this limitation.  First and foremost, warfare is a long-term goal oriented affair.  Very few species seem to develop long-term goals in any way that's recognizable to us.  Hive creatures are once again a notable exception.  Beyond that, I think ideology is huge.  Ideology is what leaders use to drive their subjects into irrational hatred and scales of violence that would be inconceivable for the sake of any normal person's individual interests.  Ideology allows us to identify ourselves with a larger scale social unit and place it in opposition to an "other" who we redefine as something lesser or non-human, in accordance with the top two psychological traits I listed in my last post.  Other species cannot be so driven to hatred.

I also should clarify that I don't think it's unlikely if we encountered an alien species that it would be capable or practiced in warfare, only that I don't believe it's a certainty and that I wouldn't be too surprised if we encountered a species that was either peaceful or simply thought in a manner that was too bizarre to be compatible approaching conflict in a manner that we relate to.  We honestly have no idea what kind of circumstances could mold the evolution of an alien society.  Assuming that any species circumstances would be similar to ours is a projection similar to a hardened criminal assuming that all people are hardened criminals, because the world is a rough place that hardens everybody, right?  Hell, we could encounter a non-carbon-based form of life.  We have no idea how the mental functions of such a thing would compare to our own.

[Darvi]

I thought we did notice and we were just figuring out what is encompassed in this "very few"

[Starver]

Noting that I'm on the anti-anthropocentrism side, I have to say that when it comes to Earthly creatures none of the others that might be mentioned are anywhere close to becoming interstellar[1].

That is, of course, because (right here, right now) we're top dog and none of the other dogs that we know of (Laika excepted, and we sent her) have gotten the opportunity we're perhaps starting to avail ourselves of.

Another planet - another top-dog.  Or an absence of a dog-show and instead it's fat cats or wise owls or everybody's just another brick in the wall, in the building of their own particular (successful!) Tower Of Babel.

(Again, we're into "Unknown unknowns" here.)


[1] That we know of, inter-dimensional mice, Neanderthals in space, Silurians, aneorobic life-form transitioning off-world, yadayadayada...

[SalmonGod]

I thought we did notice and we were just figuring out what is encompassed in this "very few"

Ok, maybe you did.  I'm pretty sure Mr Wiggles didn't.  Doesn't matter much.  It just irks me slightly to be called out on things that I already acknowledged, but it's usually a simple mistake.

[DJ]

We honestly have no idea what kind of circumstances could mold the evolution of an alien society.

I think it's pretty safe to assume that there will be competition for resources, because life doesn't let perfectly good resources go to waste. If there's extra food either the population of the proto-sentient aliens will boom or another specie will expand into the niche.