Astronomy / Space Aliens.
- Thread starter Surfinjo
- Start date
It's even worse than what the comic implies. Technically, extraterrestrials would have no more legal rights than animals.
Since a few months. in France the animals are recognized by the law as sentient beings. And the people who abuse the animals are going in prison
We have that in Germany, too, but that is still nowhere near what human rights grant you. If ET landed in your backyard and you killed him, it'd still not count as murder, because he by law he would not be considered a person.
The aliens would probably not consider it murder as such either...just like we wouldn't call an insect killing someone with poison murder. it would be more of a pest control issue.
I would guess it varies. I imagine some alien civilizations would uphold some notion of "universal sentient being rights", which include among others the right to live. Others may not give a damn about the younger, technologically less-developed cultures, and would indeed regard us as mere insects. But the thing is, if the latter type showed up here guns blazing, exterminating all humans so they can use the planet for themselves, we'd not even have the right to complain, because our very own laws would permit the same action if the roles were reversed.
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I would guess it varies. I imagine some alien civilizations would uphold some notion of "universal sentient being rights", which include among others the right to live. Others may not give a damn about the younger, technologically less-developed cultures, and would indeed regard us as mere insects. But the thing is, if the latter type showed up here guns blazing, exterminating all humans so they can use the planet for themselves, we'd not even have the right to complain, because our very own laws would permit the same action if the roles were reversed.
It would be interresting to have a conversation on these topics, with the Thargoids when they come
They'll just say "We want to live and let live. But the AIs you created 1000 years ago don't, prepare to be exterminated."
This is unfortunately possible
Pretty sure even if they crashed and most of their tech was disabled, they would be more then enough advance to handle us, unless we of course had managed to become interstellar as well.
And that said, when (since I believe it exists somewhere) aliens meet humans, and we react with aggression or such xenophobic knee jerk reactions, I am fairly sure it would have dire consequences.