Well then they'd have violated the Prime Directive through deliberately trying to affect the natural development of a pre-warp civilization.
Israeli official claims aliens exist, Trump didn't tweet about them
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It might be reductive and cynical, projecting "human nature" on to objectively non-human entities, but space-farers would be, by virtue of their having attained the ability to traverse the stars, curious people, and we, by comparison, extremely primitive curiosities; meaningful, two-way communication between the species would be all but impossible with literally no frame of reference.
Sure, sci-fi movies have taught us that mathematical communication could be a jumping off place cuz ain't we clever, but c'mon, do you know what your dog is saying when it barks or your cat when it meows? Those basest expressions of which they are capable? Sure we can guess "they're hungry" or "they want to go outside," but that's not really constructive communication, is it? That's our interpreting what we believe to be the case. Also, such animals can be trained to understand basic language, but train a dog in English, then take him to Russia; how effective would all that training be?
Now imagine you're an incredibly advanced civilization and stumble upon this tiny ball filled with billions of creatures who barely understand each other let alone the mysteries of the vast galaxy you've traveled. Oh, look! They're showing us a pattern of blinking lights; isn't that adorable? What's that? The lights are blinking in increments of ever-increasing prime numbers? Well, aren't they smart! We should grab a few, put a collar on them, feed them kibble and teach them to fetch our glorbfarshes on command!
You don't actually know that, it's pure speculation. I mean if this hypothetical species is that advanced to lick interstellar travel, then they are at LEAST as intelligent as us, but more likely much further along. And in our caveman level of intellect, even WE are intelligent enough to question our own motives and say things like "hey, should we actually do this thing? Maybe it isn't right for us to just take shit from people lesser than us because we can?" I see no reason to think that this level of intellectual introspection is somehow unique to humanity.
I mean I gotta be honest, if I were an alien the last thing I'd want to do is get drug into a war with Iran, being forced to honor treaties with Israel when its kooky-ass right-wing extremist government decides to "defend itself" by blowing up a bunch of Iranian centrifuges that were never capable of producing enough weapons-grade uranium to create a nuclear stockpile in the first place.
Aliens almost certainly exist, but understanding cosmic scale and civilization evolution it'd be impossible to hide a space traveling civilization. Fuck you can detect humans using radio waves from half way across the galaxy if you knew where to look. You can't do small little ships that can be shot down by 50s fighter planes. We'd be talking like Mass Effect's Citadel scale ships by their thousands traveling through space. So the take away is they exist somewhere, just not anywhere we'd ever find, see or meet them.
Also ghosts are so annoying. Why do they get to keep their pants? What, do pants have ghosts too? And why only be active a night? The sun is still shining, its just on the other side of the planet, and moonlight is just reflected sunlight.
So who wants to help flesh out the conspiracy theory that Covid-19 is actually extra-terrestrial in nature and a huge problem in the galaxy and humanity being better able to survive than other species was chosen to try and help develop a cure.....
What it's fun to make up this kind of bullshit sometimes.
What it's fun to make up this kind of bullshit sometimes.
Well one of the things in Star Trek was the idea of different civilisations technological development being different so offering potentially different solutions to problems or even solutions no-one else had thought of due to the planetary conditions and resources available. In Enterprise before the prime directive they were talking with and acquiring technology from all kinds of planets along with various creatures and other resources that had additional properties.
In Stargate we have something to offer due to our "Unique" way of thinking.
Fun fact you know Scientists have been able to fake the effect of seeing ghosts in a lab setting using helmets that use magnetic fields to stimulate certain areas of the brain.
Of course I don't "know;" this entire conversation is built on speculation. I'm just extrapolating a space-faring race's intellect out the many thousands of years ahead of us they most likely would be, and how insignificant we would be to them. I mean, scientists who test on lab animals aren't "bad" or "malicious" people by many standards, but what about to the rats and chimps squawking in their cages in "alien" labs, taken from their natural habitats and treated how we deem to be "humanely" by the subjective standards of our superior intelligence and ability?
My example of the two films I cited were of course extreme (with both races being overt antagonist,) but insofar as a vastly superior species viewing us as little more than curiosities, a similar situation as depicted in the films, if not so violently, isn't entirely unlikely. Like I said about people who claim to have been abducted: were that the case, is that any different from marine biologists who yoink sharks up out of the water, tag them with tracking devices and put them back to track their movements simply out of curiosity? We assume such animals lack the kind of cognition that would make that experience nightmarish and traumatic because they are so completely unlike us, but we "don't mean any harm" and we "think we're doing the right thing," right? What's to say we wouldn't be similarly so completely unlike superior aliens who want to probe our anuses and tag us so they can observe our migratory patters between work and home?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Prime Directive mandated that interaction with species who've yet to attain warp capabilities was a strict no-no for fear of endowing them with knowledge and technologies beyond their pay grade and thus directly affecting their natural evolution. The sharing of knowledge and technologies between species [ideally] only occurred between similarly advanced civilizations.
As for your Stargate example, makes for good sci-fi written by humans wherein humanity saves the day because "humanity," but in reality, I'd highly doubt a species whose biggest accomplishment will be a manned mission to Mars, the nearest planet within it's own solar system making it effectively a couple millimeters away on the galactic scale, has or knows anything life-altering for a species that travels the STARS for a holiday. If we had anything they needed, I doubt aliens would take the time for diplomacy with insects when they could basically take it, like my example of the beekeeper and honey combs: they smoke the bees out to make them docile, then take what they want, no lasting harm to the bees, so it's ok, right?
Maybe the aliens promised Israel real estate on Lendarx 5 so the Palestinians can have the West Bank thus ending the long-standing conflict between the two?
Why would it track that if they are thousands of years more advanced than us, that they would still behave as barbarically to other lifeforms as we do? That's the disconnect that I always have issue with, whenever someone suggests the "aliens will just kill us" theory. Especially since they so often discredit the "aliens won't be assholes" theory, immediately before stating their own stance is more accurate. Despite neither having anything other than pure speculation. But it often goes "They will be SO advanced beyond us!! " Ok....probably yes. So why wouldn't they also advance beyond us on how to behave to other living beings?
And regarding your points about animal testing, a lot of humans are very much against animal testing, and using animals as food sources, BECAUSE of the ethical stance. So it's not even a universal stance for us cavemen. That's the point that I take issue with. Your stance assumes nothing but technological advancement for thousands of years, while excluding any level of social/ethical advancement to go along with it. Which just doesn't seem to track very well, given our one sample species of ourselves. I mean the ethical stances of your average human society just 200 years ago, are vastly different to our view of the world today. And then to compare it to 2000 years ago, it's not even the same concept of existence. Years of fighting for rights, learning new aspects of how the world works, have had radical changes on our societal/ethical outlook. To think the aliens wouldn't have the capacity for that as well, just seems really narrow-sighted to me.
Now, I fully acknowledge, that I could be wrong, and they could be the equivalent of intergalactic, FTL tech wielding Mongolian Horde, and just sweep across the galaxy, but I don't think that any species, with the level of advancement needed to accomplish FTL and similar, would think that to be a good way to exist.
Nah, they built the pyramids remember? That means they are the Secret Egyptians, which means they were working for Pharaoh, which means they were actually against the Israelites.
I'm not assuming or narrowing my view to aliens being malevolent; simply that their advancement, even ethically, would be beyond our understanding and ours beneath them or at the very least so completely different as to potentially be unrelatable. Have you seen us lately? To a species that travels the stars, a measly one planet out of billions filled with a subspecies of creatures incapable of prioritizing its own, collective well being over the primitive hoarding of assets by the few to the detriment of the many really wouldn't be that interesting. Curious? Sure; let's take a sample...
I'd like nothing better than an episode of Star Trek: a fantastic space vessel enters our orbit, and oddly humanoid creatures materialize magically in front of world leaders with a cure for all disease and an end to hunger in exchange for the recipe for grandma's apple pie, but that'd be unlikely. You assume more similarities than are even really feasible. Look at our own planet, thousands upon thousands of different species all evolving within the same, closed ecosystem of the Earth, yet all wildly different. Why would one assume a sentient, super-advanced, space-faring species from an entirely other ecology would be anything like us?
Whatever the alien intentions, good, bad or indifferent, it's seems more likely that we'd get passed by, like walking by an ant hill or a pack of coyotes fighting over a deer carcass; we just don't have that much to offer a species that has the galaxy at their fingertips.
It does but they're often a bit loose with the rules as to how far that goes. I think the technical rule is no interference not no interaction. E.G. you can trade a few resources for stuff you wish to acquire but you're not allowed to use advanced technology to save a life or give them resources not naturally available. Also Warp is considered the point where civilisations are capable of dealing with such technology. It's not always the ultimate point though as some civilisations have been shown to be quite advanced with no warp technology at all. Or in the case of others the technology they have isn't their own creation.
It's possible they would just take it.
It's also possible that they could just have got lucky that their world had elements and naturally occurring things that allowed the development of better rocket fuel / power sources and better material to build them from. For all we know we might have minerals they've never dreamed of and vice versa. A single element can change a lot on societies and a single development can too. Think about Penicillin, a rare mold spore thought to have come from a mold sample taken out to air from the mold department, just happens to land on a unwashed petri dish in a lab looking to help fight disease. It just happens to be noticed before being washed and from there the medical world was revolutionised. We don't even fully know that much about our own world yet so specialised properties in other worlds entirely possible. I mean we didn't understand what made Roman Cement so good until very recently because we as a civilisation lost the recipe.
Well, duh. God obviously loves us best, and of course sapient creatures from another planet would also worship the Judeo-Christian God!
Nah.
Assuming aliens had spectroscopy at least on par with ours, the furthest stars from which human civilization would likely be detectable are in the 50-70 light year range. That's the point at which atmospheric CO2 starts getting whacky in a way that couldn't be fully explained by biotic processes, thanks to mass consumption of fossil fuels. Atmospheric CO2 levels are currently nothing compared to what they were in the early Cambrian and Jurassic periods, but the instability of the level is what matters. The possibility Earth is a life-bearing planet, that's anyone's guess, but the standard is the development of a civilization on the planet.
Not coincidentally, this is about the range at which radio transmissions from Earth could maybe be detected...if those same aliens had radiotelescopy vastly better than our own.