I am still struck at how pathologically naïve the people who thought it was a good idea were.
Doing that assumes the odds are for near-zero chance an advanced civilization capable of long-distance space travel would come to conquer or exterminate us. Or "benevolently" opress us forever.
That's "I'm going to hike in the Morrocan Atlas because everyone is nice and peaceful" level of stupidly naïve.
( That ended-up with two young Scandinavian women raped then beheaded for Allah's glory. )
Yes, well, it's pretty much like the first season of ST:Enterprise, isn't it?
First episode:
Humans: "Yay! We're going out to space to make lots and lots of friends!"
Vulcans: "Not everyone is like us"
Humans: "Ah, it's fine! Let's go!"
Later:
"Why does everyone shoot at us?"
Though actually, what really gets me is how humans expect to be treated AS EQUALS by a technologically superior species. That's about the most laughably hypocritical thing about it.
When they talk about "First Contact", they always speak of it as being like INTRA-species contact - Europeans with New Worlders, for instance. But it's more like Europeans meeting North American grizzly bears - an INTER-species encounter. And we're the lower-tech beast.
And THAT is why I think Independence Day is the most hypocritically stupid, self-blind piece of garbage ever made. (especially that puke-inducing speech). Humans themselves would find every reason to declare a species in their way "not people, just 'animals'" if there was something THEY wanted on another planet. Unless they happened to be pretty enough to be legally fuckable. All you need to do is examine Chomsky's amazing moving goalposts wrt ASL and other language-using non-human apes. No matter what the apes accomplished, it would never be good enough for him, because he doesn't WANT them to have language - it might upstage his precious turd-whirlder commies, boohoo.
I am still struck at how pathologically naïve the people who thought it was a good idea were.
Doing that assumes the odds are for near-zero chance an advanced civilization capable of long-distance space travel would come to conquer or exterminate us. Or "benevolently" opress us forever.
That's "I'm going to hike in the Morrocan Atlas because everyone is nice and peaceful" level of stupidly naïve.
( That ended-up with two young Scandinavian women raped then beheaded for Allah's glory. )
Yes, well, it's pretty much like the first season of ST:Enterprise, isn't it?
First episode:
Humans: "Yay! We're going out to space to make lots and lots of friends!"
Vulcans: "Not everyone is like us"
Humans: "Ah, it's fine! Let's go!"
Later:
"Why does everyone shoot at us?"
Though actually, what really gets me is how humans expect to be treated AS EQUALS by a technologically superior species. That's about the most laughably hypocritical thing about it.
When they talk about "First Contact", they always speak of it as being like INTRA-species contact - Europeans with New Worlders, for instance. But it's more like Europeans meeting North American grizzly bears - an INTER-species encounter. And we're the lower-tech beast.
And THAT is why I think Independence Day is the most hypocritically stupid, self-blind piece of garbage ever made. (especially that puke-inducing speech). Humans themselves would find every reason to declare a species in their way "not people, just 'animals'" if there was something THEY wanted on another planet. Unless they happened to be pretty enough to be legally fuckable. All you need to do is examine Chomsky's amazing moving goalposts wrt ASL and other language-using non-human apes. No matter what the apes accomplished, it would never be good enough for him, because he doesn't WANT them to have language - it might upstage his precious turd-whirlder commies, boohoo.