• GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Wait so a super technologically advanced life form that is able to travel through the universe easily doesn’t have the knowledge to create technology that can mine for gold on a different planet? That instead they need slaves?

    I mean if you are going to go down this crazy route at least make it more plausible!

      • GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Yes. What gets me is how people devalue humans. That if our linage doesn’t come from aliens then somehow we are not special?

        I’d say everything that had to happen for humans to exist is more impressive than “aliens”

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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          5 months ago

          I agree completely. We’ve achieved amazing things with our limited primate brains which evolved to be hunter-gatherers, but that’s not enough for these people.

          • Pandantic [they/them]@midwest.social
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            4 months ago

            Even more than that, just the sheer factors that came together to create life, and then sentient life, and then intelligent life were immense in their variability. And we have no idea if it would have worked if some of the variables were not favorable. It’s hard to compare when you can only look at a sample size of one.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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              4 months ago

              What’s funny to me is that even if we find intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, we will still likely only have a sample size of one when it comes to intelligent life that can survive on this planet for any length of time without a lot of artificial help.

              You need to add to this conspiracy theory the reason the aliens could breathe our atmosphere when whatever atmosphere they evolved to breathe could not possibly have the same composition. We also may have too much or too little UV radiation coming through, but almost certainly not the right amount. Their eyes may not be able to see things in the same wavelengths we do, giving us a huge home field advantage when it comes to just hiding from them. There’s no reason they would be able to withstand our amount of gravity either.

      • Sludgehammer@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Also with differentiated asteroids like Vesta, Ceres (and maybe Psyche) they’re entirely cold. So rather than scrabbling around for the flecks of gold on the surface like on Earth, you can just tunnel down into the core and mine all the heavy metals that sunk during the planetoid’s molten era.

    • Seleni@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Sadly that is the most plausible part, for two reasons.

      For one thing, machines need constant maintenance from qualified professionals, or they break down. And, once they’re broken, you have to pay for even more expensive repairs or buy a new one. Slaves, on the other hand, you can abuse almost to the point of death and they will keep functioning; they’re also somewhat self-replicating.

      The second reason is why so many people want to bring slavery back: the cruelty is the point. There’s a certain mindset that really loves lording it over people; and even better if those people are so in their power that they physically/legally cannot escape. See also: people who verbally abuse wait staff.

      Of course, it’s up to debate whether a truly alien lifeform would be thinking in such a human way, but it’s certainly possible.

      (That being said, these people are lunatics. Douglas Adams once said, ‘Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?’ and I think that sums their insane rantings up perfectly.)

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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        4 months ago

        I can’t argue against the cruelty part, but I would think that it would be very likely that aliens with the power to travel across interstellar distances and subjugate entire planets would have developed self-repairing technology.

        • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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          4 months ago

          Maybe there is something about gold that we don’t understand yet.

          Maybe its seen as preferable and moral to create and later free a new slave species (self sustaining biological robots) then to liter the universe with artificial non-intelligence

          I can not recommend actually believing this stuff with no bit of proof but if you keep an open mind its not completely inconceivable.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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            4 months ago

            It’s not completely inconceivable that I put an Invisible Pink Unicorn in your garage, but it’s a similarly silly thing to give credence to considering there are far richer sources of gold in our own solar system which have apparently never been mined.

            That and the fact that we basically have an unbroken line of skeletons between us and our chimp-like ancestors which suggest we evolved over time like everything else on this planet, no alien slavers required.

            It doesn’t matter if there is something about gold we don’t understand yet, because based on what we do know about everything else, humans evolved naturally and leprechaun aliens don’t exist.

            • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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              4 months ago

              Well i didn’t exactly look into the details of the whole conspiracy, just the general premise of why a presumed higher being may do anything,

              There is a lot we don’t know about our past. Homo sapiens have walked the earth for 300 000 years. For reference the oldest cave art is 60 000 years. The oldest buildings 12 000 years.

              I dont like to junp ship and yell aliens at this largely unrecorded time but i do like to revel in the mystery of it.

              How did people live, could there be lost empires? What knowledge and motivations did people have and lose.

              If aliens where ever involved id love to know trough scientific pursuit.

              I agree that our evolution is natural but i consider that for a god like in comparison species any advanced technological act could be perceived as magic or nature.

              What if the aliens visiting are just a npc faction spawned in by more elusive alien simulation developers?

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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                4 months ago

                We have zero evidence of domesticated plants or animals before 10-12 thousand yeas BP. If there were great civilizations before that, there would be evidence in the DNA of plants and animals. There is not. The idea of a great civilization without any domestic agriculture or livestock is nonsense.

                There is no room for aliens either. Not one shred of evidence.

                I know people like Erich von Daniken and Graham Hancock sound appealing, but they aren’t. They’re also racists. Von Daniken and Hancock believe in a master white race that created everything.

                Hancock:

                Professor Patrick Nunn, who specializes in researching Pacific geography and archaeology at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Hancock’s theories about who built Nan Madol strip Indigenous peoples of their rich histories and can be traced to “racist philosophies” and “white supremacist” ideologies of the 19th century.

                In a May 2000 essay published on his website, Hancock writes: “I have consistently argued that the Americas were inhabited in prehistoric times by a variety of ethnic groups – Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid … Such ideas have caused deep offense to some American Indians, who have long claimed to be the only ‘native’ Americans.”

                He goes on to describe various prehistoric artifacts that he says prove the presence of Caucasians and Africans before Columbus landed on the continent in 1492. This includes his research into the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, who he says was described by the Aztecs as “tall, white-skinned and red bearded – sometimes blue eyed as well”.

                https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/01/netflix-ancient-apocalypse-canceled

                If we look to von Däniken’s work, there can be little doubt that his racial beliefs influenced his extraterrestrial theories. After a short stint in jail for fraud and either writing or appropriating the material for a number of other books that developed his ancient astronauts theory, von Däniken published Signs of the Gods? in 1979. It is here that many of his racial views are most boldly stated. British archaeology officer Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews points out on his Bad Archaeology blog just a few of the many racist questions and statements posed by the author: “Was the black race a failure and did the extraterrestrials change the genetic code by gene surgery and then programme a white or a yellow race?” He also printed beliefs about the innate talents of certain races: “Nearly all negroes are musical; they have rhythm in their blood.” Von Däniken also consistently uses the term “negroid race” in comparison with “Caucasians.”

                https://list.uvm.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A3=ind1811&L=SCIENCE-FOR-THE-PEOPLE&E=8bit&P=601416&B=--------------E30651E1332C1BC529D29260&T=text%2Fhtml; charset=utf-8

                This all comes from 19th century racist ideas, especially those of Madame Blavatsky:

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky

                You are falling for racist propaganda. Please don’t.

                • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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                  4 months ago

                  I am falling for propaganda?

                  That’s cute, i literally don’t know who these people are and i have yet to express support for any potential narrative.

                  You’re falling for too much social media, at least the godwin spin in your argument alludes as such.

                  As a general rule one shouldn’t believe in stuff that cant be proven. And if it can be proven only a fool would choose not to agree. Can we agree on this as a baseline?

                  Other than that, we have to consider that we cant know what we don’t know, science is the measurement of reality but can we really understand reality?

                  Can any argument you make continue to stand against my brain in a jar style existentialism and optimistic nihilism? Surrender to the fact that the belief in facts does not make them true and that the true goal of science isn’t to answer any questions, (animals live a full life without) but to see how far we can take the art of questioning itself, exploring ourselves within the universe.

                  There are many angles i can weasel out on why there may be… and why no evidence of argiculture… but that wouldn’t be the point. The point is to make you stop thinking in terms of what can’t and start thinking in terms of what can. Because honestly i feel the world needs more of that right now.

                  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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                    4 months ago

                    As a general rule one shouldn’t believe in stuff that cant be proven.

                    Then why should I believe your suggestion that there were cultures that existed before the Younger Dryas with zero genetic evidence of domestication of plants or animals?

                    The point is to make you stop thinking in terms of what can’t and start thinking in terms of what can

                    There was someone who recently told me that one shouldn’t believe in stuff that can’t be proven.

                  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    4 months ago

                    As a general rule one shouldn’t believe in stuff that cant be proven.

                    what do you mean “believe in”? lots of people believe in economic theories that can’t tbe proven. some people believe in the goodness of mankind. everyone has some sort of myth (or likely many) that help them understand the world, regardless of how true or provable they are.

    • uid0gid0@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Also if this was even remotely true we would never see surface level minerals since they would have all been collected first. Easiest way to debunk the ancient aliens here for our resources stories.

    • odium@programming.dev
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      4 months ago

      Humans still use horses, cows, sled dogs, etc., even though we have cars, tractors, and many other machines which can do the same tasks.