I represent an interstellar civilization, What does Earth offer for export?

[-Velocity-]

I would say that Earth could offer its biology and history for export. Other civilizations will have scientists too, and they would appreciate information we could give them on the geological and biological history of Earth. Their biologists would be interested in Earth species, and we could offer the information we have collected on them. They might also want samples, though a full description of an organism's genome and the ways in which DNA information is catalyzed into proteins might be enough for an alien civilization to recreate that organism from scratch. Maybe we'd have to provide information on cellular structure and mitochondrial DNA too, I donno I'm not a biologist. But theoretically, we could transmit all the information they needed to recreate an Earth organism, if they had a method for assembling the requisite proteins from scratch.

And of course, we could offer human history and maybe the human arts, if the aliens appreciate the arts.

So yea, other than perhaps biological samples, I can't imagine we'd have any physical goods to offer for export. And besides, interstellar trade of physical goods is likely too expensive and difficult to really be feasible. We don't have resources that can't be accessed more easily by asteroid mining, and like they always say, knowledge is power. We'd offer information for export.

And a bunch of politicians and celebrities. We'd find out if there was some prison planet we could export them to.

Edited December 16, 2013 by |Velocity|

[ZetaX]

Maybe terraforming Mars to offload population growth makes sense, but in order to make it feasible, we'll need multiple space elevators to lift all those people from Earth into space and a swarm of ultra-cheap spacecraft to ferry them to Mars. That might be a tougher challenge than actually terraforming Mars, but it MIGHT be realizable with space-based manufacturing (especially if a lot of AI and robotics and asteroid mining are involved). I'm betting that either it never becomes economically feasible, or overpopultion forces us to address the real problem (that we're breeding out of control) before spaceflight advances and terraforming open up very cheap Earth-Mars travel and habitation.

Even if terraforming mars and bringing people there costs absolutely nothing, it would still be just a small water drop on the glowing hot plate of exponential growing population. At the current rate, this gives you a couple of years. Also don't forget that the overpopulation is not really a problem of lack of space to live in, but of lack of food or water; at least the latter would be used a lot to terraform mars, and all in all such amounts of effort are probably better placed on building huge fusion (or whatever) powered energy sources used to make food in whatever way is cheapest.

[MC.STEEL]

Yes but populations are bound to grind to a halt anytime now, i mean look a japan its already in the future, its overpopulated and its denizens arent really interested in procreation.

Once this happens to the entire earth whe just have to cope with the large elder bulge in the population,once that normalises whe would probably even start declining.

I just hope that whe dont go entirely just because our grand grand frand...grand childen just wont be in the mood for some quality time.

Edited December 18, 2013 by MC.STEEL

[-Velocity-]

Yes but populations are bound to grind to a halt anytime now, i mean look a japan its already in the future, its overpopulated and its denizens arent really interested in procreation.

Once this happens to the entire earth whe just have to cope with the large elder bulge in the population,once that normalises whe would probably even start declining.

I just hope that whe dont go entirely just because our grand grand frand...grand childen just wont be in the mood for some quality time.

LOL I don't think you have to worry about that. Humans are pretty much all ***-crazed perverts as far as mammals go; but we kind of have to be because our sense of smell sucks so bad the males can't tell when the females are in heat

No but seriously, if some segment of the population experiences decreased fertility, they will just be replaced in the next generation by those who did not.

[shoveycat]

Aliens, we have these things called "Video Games"....

[Ralathon]

LOL I don't think you have to worry about that. Humans are pretty much all ***-crazed perverts as far as mammals go; but we kind of have to be because our sense of smell sucks so bad the males can't tell when the females are in heat

No but seriously, if some segment of the population experiences decreased fertility, they will just be replaced in the next generation by those who did not.

Birthrates in developed countries seem to disagree with you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_increase

We have this thing called anti conception and children are expensive.

[MC.STEEL]

Birthrates in developed countries seem to disagree with you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_increase

We have this thing called anti conception and children are expensive.

Exactly my point and plus im not saying it will happen but our ways of thinking will probably change too,slowing reproduction rates even more.

Whe will be a bunch of old people that live to 200+ who rely on technology to keep alive(and hopefully look the part) in what,the end of the century?

btw this is getting out of topic now

[-Velocity-]

Birthrates in developed countries seem to disagree with you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_increase

We have this thing called anti conception and children are expensive.

Over the long term, as long as the desire to not have children is not TOO strong, and there are not population controls or mandates or some kind of genetic control, then evolution is going to win out over birth control. The child-rearing desire is almost certainly at least slightly inheritable. How quickly evolution will win out over birth control will depend on how inheritable this desire is, and how strong the selection pressure towards this trait is. Since humans first became smart enough to time their sexual activities to avoid having children, perform abortions, and create birth control devices, there has been a selection pressure towards the desire to have children just for the sake of having children. Maybe that's even a part of what caused monogamy (a VERY rare trait in mammals) to evolve in humans (it doesn't look like monogamy evolved ALL the way though, and how much of our monogamy is mandated by genetics and how much is mandated by social pressures is debatable). Maybe it's part of what helped the perception of "cuteness" to evolve (though, you have to wonder then why humans often find animals cuter than babies and children). Today though, the selection pressure for child-rearing desire is becoming even stronger, with modern birth control and the specifics of today's societies.

Anyway, even if the desire to have children is fairly strongly inheritable, you would expect a decline in birth rates after a sudden decrease in the overall desire to have children or increase in the effectiveness of birth control. Evolution toward a strong child-rearing desire cannot be INSTANT; those persons who have very strong child-rearing desires only make up a fraction of the overall population.

Anyway, besides potential evolution towards an increased child-rearing desire, your worry about whether or not we'd eventually go extinct misses some other key points that makes it, to me, something silly to worry about-

1) Much of the reason we don't want to have as many children anymore is because of overpopulation- if the population starts decreasing a lot, then people will want to have more kids.

2) People are smart enough to worry about whether the human race will go extinct if they don't have enough kids. People are likely to view having kids as their "duty" if the population were to drop to a low enough level. The government(s) could even mandate that everyone has at least a certain number of children.

So it's really not something I think anyone should be worried about. Right now, fewer kids is probably a good thing, though, I worry about potential economic impacts down the road when you have a lot of retirees and old and decrepit people, and fewer young people to take care of them. (Our medical technology needs to be able to HEAL old people and return them to some level of self-sufficiency, not just keep them alive to be a drain on our resources.) This is a BIG problem that China is beginning to face, because of its one-child policy (retiring "Baby-Boomers" are putting a much less extreme, but similar pressure on us here in the US). How China is able to deal with this problem will be extremely interesting to observe over the coming decades, as it looks increasingly likely the entire world may have to eventually, one day, enact population controls (granted though, increases in farming technology, energy efficiency, and "green" or renewable energy sources could delay these problems for quite some time). But if population controls do become necessary, China is a sort of a test bed for the rest of us.

Edited December 19, 2013 by |Velocity|

[Aladran]

Our democracy, if you don't want it, you are either a communist or a terrorist, therefore you are going to be assimilated.

Resistance is futile.

[mikewalker11]

golden syrup?

[InfinityArch]

Absolutely nothing, and honestly, any "contact" with interstellar civilizations would probably consist of them picking up radio waves from a nearby star system, and sending a relativistic kill vehicle our way to wipe us out. Or the hypothetical "deadly probes" offered as a solution to the Fermi Paradox finding us and doing the same thing.

As much as I'd like to buy into the line of thought that any civilization capable of interstellar travel would be above violence, the only real requirement is that one civilization out-competes all the others, and evolution naturally favors the most ruthless *******s out there, so I feel like we'd probably be killed off just because, some point in a million years, we could be potentially threatening to said civilization. Or because they created deadly probes to kill all other life in the universe.

Edited December 19, 2013 by InfinityArch

[TimMartland]

M

We are mostly a service society.

We can provide entertainment and services. [shows, movies, music, and entertainment goods.] Services account for a large bulk of our GDP and would be the easiest to mass produce.

We will begin streaming reruns of "House of Cards" and "Breaking Bad" along with music from "The Beetles" and "Beyonce" using our best satellites. We'll charge your interstellar species $5/hour indefinitely.

Please don't bomb or eat us.

"We surrender! Take HBO, just lets us live!"

[-Velocity-]

Absolutely nothing, and honestly, any "contact" with interstellar civilizations would probably consist of them picking up radio waves from a nearby star system, and sending a relativistic kill vehicle our way to wipe us out. Or the hypothetical "deadly probes" offered as a solution to the Fermi Paradox finding us and doing the same thing.

As much as I'd like to buy into the line of thought that any civilization capable of interstellar travel would be above violence, the only real requirement is that one civilization out-competes all the others, and evolution naturally favors the most ruthless *******s out there, so I feel like we'd probably be killed off just because, some point in a million years, we could be potentially threatening to said civilization. Or because they created deadly probes to kill all other life in the universe.

Have you read "Forge of God" and "Anvil of Stars" by Greg Bear? They would be right up your alley. Excellent novels!

Personally though, I do not favor this explanation, as I think that space is spacious enough, and interstellar travel difficult enough, to resolve all potential such conflicts. Additionally, there's the question of how an civilization as brutal and ruthless as you describe could get past the nuclear age at all. Finally, if Human civilization is any guide, then civilization itself is sort of a rebellion against Darwinism. Here's something I wrote up about it earlier-

The whole purpose of civilization is to ensure that we humans are no longer subject to the “laws†of nature. We all know that “all men are created equal†is a lie, but that’s what we base our legal system upon. We do this to protect the weak from domination by the strong. Yet it was these very inequalities between men that used to be one of the main driving forces behind human evolution. It’s controversial, but some scientists believe that humans have stopped evolving, or even, have begun to devolve. It’s a known fact that in modern western civilization, smarter individuals on average have fewer children than less intelligent persons. It’s possible we have already hit our intellectual peak, and are now on a downward spiral. While a glance at news headlines that are usually dominated by infantile, banal stuff like Hollywood celebrities will strongly suggest this is the case, any de-evolution, if it has in fact occurred already, would probably not yet be big enough to have noticeable effects.

But our civilization is certainly a rebellion against Darwin. We do not want to live under the laws of nature. We do not want our men raping every woman they can find and overpower so as to best spread their genes. We do not want unfit stupid, crippled, or insane people starving and dying in the streets, or being euthanized. We do not want to live in fear that someone stronger than us will arrive someday to murder us and/or take away everything we’ve worked so hard to build. We want to give everyone an equal chance, and even in failure, guarantee that those people continue to at least LIVE. We humans are telling Darwin to take a hike, and are imposing our compassion, empathy, and love in his place. Some minor deleterious effects aside (such as potentially, a slow de-evolution of the species, and the curtailing of certain freedoms by society and governments), it is a VAST improvement to the natural order, at least for the everyday life of individual humans.

Of course, this doesn't say nearly as much as alien civilizations; they are alien, after all, and it's hard enough predicting where our OWN civilization is going. But it's a thought, the thought being that, civilization is, almost in essence, a rebellion against nature- against survival of the fittest. Even the definition of "civilization" is very nearly, "not natural". So I find your application of Darwinism to modern and future civilization(s) questionable.

Edited December 20, 2013 by |Velocity|

[Seret]

As much as I'd like to buy into the line of thought that any civilization capable of interstellar travel would be above violence, the only real requirement is that one civilization out-competes all the others, and evolution naturally favors the most ruthless *******s out there, so I feel like we'd probably be killed off just because, some point in a million years, we could be potentially threatening to said civilization. Or because they created deadly probes to kill all other life in the universe.

The general thinking isn't that an interstellar civlisation is above violence, just that by definition any society capable of raising itself to that tech level must be driven more to create than destroy. It's not really logical that the most violent societies would reach an advanced tech level. Conflict does drive innovation, but too much conflict stifles it.

It's arguable that an advanced alien society would be (like us) apex predators, since prey species on Earth don't seem to select for intelligence, while predators do. So it's reasonable to assume that an alien civilisation would be capable of great violence, but also reasonable to assume that it wouldn't be their default response. We are, after all, absolutely no threat to anybody that remote from us. I'm sceptical that interstellar space flight at relativistic speeds is practical with any tech we can develop in the foreseeable future, which should keep us safe for a good long while.

[dudefinal]

I think interstellar beings would have probably far transcended biological comprehension replacing themselves with superintelligent robots. They would probably visit our planet as tourists or for entertainment purposes. These interstellar beings might also be composed of a radically different biochemistry. For example they may be silicon based instead of carbon based. They may use different solvents as a substitute for water or air. They might not be biological at all and be a plasma dust cloud that has formed complex structures resembling biological compounds. Any way I think of it they wouldn't want anything from our planet physically.

[LordFerret]

What do we have to offer? People, slave labor ...or... food source, we're quite tasty, akin to pork ("long pig"). Considering mans inhumanity to man, why not? We like shiny pretty baubles by the way ... what have you got to trade?

[GeneralVeers]

We humans are unique in that we enjoy having fun. Pretty much every alien species in our movies and books is the opposite of fun; they never land on our planet just to say hi. They want to conquer our planet, or harvest us as food, or steal our water, or harvest us for food AND steal our water, or blow up the planet to make room for a hyperspace bypass, or they crash-landed and aren't curious about us at all and just want to go home, or they're in a war with other aliens and one of their missiles goes stray and blows up the Sun, or in a few cases they don't even realize we're an intelligent species and they blow up our planet by accident.

Look, aliens, this is real simple. We don't care about interplanetary politics, and we consider science uncool. Hell, our species doesn't even go to the Moon any more. We like to have parties and watch archaic two-dimensional movies and listen to music and ingest substances that scramble our brains (if you aliens don't have any substances that scramble your brains, give us some time and we can probably come up with something that will give you a SERIOUS trip, and by "trip" we don't mean the kind that uses warp engines or spacefolding.....)

Bonus points to folks who can find the references I hid in there.

[totos_totidis]

Entertainment like television, radio, theater, the internet computer games like ksp, artwork, maybe silicon that is plentyful on earth but not so much on other bodies,. Liquid water. Land. If they have a similar metabolism to ours food and drugs.

[Alphasus]

A almost 2 year necro.... Well, we have lots of land on our planet. And a sweet thing called sugar.

[Aethon]

Anybody who show up here won't need anything we've got. Art is the only thing thing we have that is unique and may be marketable.

[StrandedonEarth]

Souvenirs. We have tons of them. "I visited Ghklh,knb (aka Sol System) and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!"

Oh, and buy two T-shirts and we'll throw in the Kardashians (not to be confused with Cardassians).

[Fisk02]

You can take my old shoe...

[RainDreamer]

First we have to know the demand of the buyer. Market research first!

But I think we have knowledge to export. Our (hopefully)unique physiology and evolutionary path combine with history will provide quite a lot of data for their scientists. Though that would probably run out fast.

We can create arts, of course, as mentioned. Something that is subjective. We can also export unique life form on our planet, like spices and animals and trees for that exotic trade. Lets hope they don't take human as commodity too.

[PB666]

We have

Anarchy

Chaos

Political Satire

Clueless politicians

And . . . . . .

Humpback whales.

[StrandedonEarth]

First we have to know the demand of the buyer. Market research first!

But I think we have knowledge to export. Our (hopefully)unique physiology and evolutionary path combine with history will provide quite a lot of data for their scientists. Though that would probably run out fast.

We can create arts, of course, as mentioned. Something that is subjective. We can also export unique life form on our planet, like spices and animals and trees for that exotic trade. Lets hope they don't take human as commodity too.

Yes, the most obvious things would be unique plants and animals, which may yield useful compounds for them. Spider Silk FTW!

And sitcoms... Lots and lots of sitcoms

Or they just may stay away in fear of our superheroes. SpiderMan FTW!