Would you prefer a hands-off, leave them to their own devices kind of approach, a keep at arms reach gently advise, or something else altogether?
I seriously doubt it would be possible with humans still in the picture due to our impact on the biosphere and resource use.
No matter what high minded principles we might espouse, human history shows that we fuck up less tech advanced cultures, even when we think we are trying to help.
Case in point North Sentinel Island.
TLDR: Hunter gatherer society that the world has decided to leave alone as they do not want contact but some fuckhead US christian decided he knew better, attempted contact to tell them about God or whatever and got himself killed. While possibly infecting them with something they have no immunity for.
Suppose it was somehow possible though, beyond simply not intentionally/unintentionally fucking them up, what would you like to see?
Leave them the fuck alone.
Seems to me the Orcas have started, and I think we should send them more billionaires in yachts.
Humans would probably kill them or enslave them for profit. 😩
Yeah no way would we sit back and let other intelligent species go unmolested. We are the bad guys in all the alien invasion movies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_with_the_Newts
A short story about this from the same Czech author who (IIRC) gave us the concept and word ‘robot’.
Well, robot means (originally meant?) something a bit different in Czech. As I understand it, robots were basically indentured servants/ slaves. It means something like “one who doesn’t think.” At least that is if all the Isaac Asimov videos I’ve watched are correct.
We are not in a position to “advise” anyone. We can’t even look after our own kind with fairness and peace for all.
A former letter:
To whom it may concern,
We, the human species, have taken notice of your civilization. We here by request that you relocate it to the New York sewer system to fulfill our Futurama prophecy.
Thank you,
It depends. Are they delicious?
Lol, for real though, if deliciousness determined the fate of species, we’d live in a wild world. Imagine sophisticated tuna cities getting raided for sushi. Thank goodness we don’t snack on concrete, or we’d all be living in tents. We’re basically the galaxy’s weirdos who eat anything that doesn’t eat us first. 😆
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It seems like human civilizations are having trouble coexisting, so I don’t see how we could, with an other species, unless it was profitable for us in one way or another.(sadly)
I’m assuming this is about the British? If that’s the case then I say a hands off approach because it would be interesting to see if they develop any culinary skills. Who knows, maybe if their society evolves enough, they might even be capable of participating in economic trade with others. Stranger things have happened.
No…Not the British. More early human evolution where we saw homo sapiens existing alongside homo neanderthalensis, and wondering if that were to happen again (albeit possibly with a less related and more distinct species), how we might do things differently.
Okay, so, let’s say it’s the descendants of the rats from Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.
(Warning, this is probably fanfic. It is not intended as commentary on any particular human political situation, including colonialism, capitalism, communism, North Korea, Israel/Palestine, Native Americans, slavery, civil rights, libertarianism, or Trump. Really, I promise.)
They start out as parasites on our civilization; but they desire independence. Their philosophers believe (unbeknownst to us) that “to live without stealing” would be a desirable accomplishment for their people. They have ideas of both community and property; they have individuality and compassion. They argue with one another over their relationship to humans.
If we knew what was going on with them, we might have the chance to do something ethically competent towards them. But if a situation like this arises, we might not even notice it before exterminating it. Humanity has so much power over our world today that we might not even notice.
One initial problem is that we’ve been in the habit of fighting rats for millennia. They eat and shit in our food; they dig holes in our walls; we set cats and dogs and traps and poison on them. That’s how it’s been for a long time.
Another problem is that they know our language, but we don’t know theirs. Their ancestors were taught human language as a scientific experiment; after they escaped, they taught their children to read our language, so they could use our gadgets and protect themselves from our traps – and learn math and science and philosophy from our books.
(But the human scientists never learned how to speak Rat. When the uplifted rats escaped, from the scientists’ point of view, the experiment was a serious failure – even contaminating wild rat populations with the modified and trained NIMH rats. The research team tried to contain the failure, then disbanded and went different ways; the idea “there are now rats in the wild capable of human-level civilization” didn’t even make the scientific journals, much less the media or policy circles.)
In order to come up with an ethically competent response to this situation, we have to first recognize that it’s even happening. The rats dragging our electrical lights and books into their nest are doing so not just for nesting but because they want to read; the descendants of city rats are building complex colonies in our national parks because they want to become less dependent on humans.
But who notices new rat behavior first? People with rat-infested houses. Organic farmers who don’t use rat poison, whose cats are suddenly getting killed in farm equipment way more often than they used to. Exterminators. Health inspectors.
We’re more likely to notice the rats that don’t follow Nicodemus (who argued that rats must become independent of humans) than the ones who do. We’d first notice the clever and malicious ones; the ones who mutilate cats, evade traps, invade kitchens, and piss on our books and computers as if they were saying “we really fucking hate you.”
Or you’re a park ranger. The folks in town tell you the rats are being weird. Some wire and tools and books go missing … and months later some tripping campers come off the trail and tell you they saw a rat city in the deep woods.
After the fourth set of tripping campers talking about how the crazy city rats went and built their own city in the middle of a national park, you go up there to see it.
What do you think?
Whilst I don’t think it’s possible due to human activity, I’d love to see humanity help them, but I don’t think we would
I feel like avoiding them or waiting might end up with a situation where some group of humans causes irreversible harm because they think they know better.
Once enough deliberation has been done and we’re ready to act in good faith, we should probably make contact and set a good precedent quickly. Maybe then we can guide future interactions in a more positive way?
How do you define ‘civilization’? Do you count ants?
Let only certain people interact with them who agree to not drag their culture into matters. Some might say dolphins are a living proto-example of this. Some interaction can be good, but then there’s hypercultural exchanges we have with them. And then there will be interspecies scars that will resonate forever. Handle them similar to Antarctica.
I’d like to see us study them from a distance, find out what’s different about them from us, and consider what could be improved about our civilization.
