Friday, August 26, 2011

They Need A Screenwriter In The Room

Scientists on predicting scenarios that would occur if we made contact with aliens:

"Green" aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. "These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets," the authors write.


McCardle nails them:

it's really remarkable, in fact, how often the aliens in science fiction just happen to be preoccupied with the exact same political issues that obsessed intellectuals of the era when the fiction was written. And yet it's still somehow breathtaking. They don't even notice that they're not noticing all their embedded assumptions. For example, the scientists do not even consider the possibility that the recent decline in church attendance among the citizens of the world's most powerful nations could be a signal to advanced, god-fearing aliens that we are a decadent and irreligious species who should be wiped out.


And it's just plain stupid. If the aliens can wipe us out for fear of expansion, they're going to wipe us out regardless of whether we pass cap and trade or buy a Prius.

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