Invasive Aliens (Narration Only)
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Isaac Arthur
4.9 • 781 Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, SFIA audio listeners. |
| 0:02.5 | In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory, we're asked at the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge. |
| 0:10.5 | To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content, check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur. |
| 0:20.3 | This episode is sponsored by CuriosityStream. |
| 0:24.5 | Maybe invading aliens won't show up with laser guns blazing, but instead making |
| 0:30.4 | an offer we can't refuse. |
| 0:35.3 | Almost as soon as alien life began showing up in fiction, the notion of an alien invasion |
| 0:41.2 | came up too, which probably speaks volumes about humanity's mindset. |
| 0:46.5 | Of course, caution of the unknown is a wise idea, and evolution encourages that, since |
| 0:52.9 | in general nature is not a friendly place. |
| 0:56.7 | Interestingly, most early fiction assumed parallel evolution, aliens who looked and acted a lot |
| 1:03.1 | like us, so it would make sense they might have designs in our planet as a place to live or conquer. |
| 1:09.7 | But as we've noted on the channel before, even if there was some parallel or convergent |
| 1:14.6 | evolution, it's not very likely they'd be biologically similar to us enough to breed with |
| 1:20.1 | us or look just like us, but evolution might drive them to have fairly similar mindsets |
| 1:26.1 | about many things. |
| 1:28.2 | It's hard to be a technological civilization if you aren't curious by nature, and hard to |
| 1:33.7 | have a chance to have the stability and numbers for civilization that can in turn develop |
| 1:38.8 | technology if you aren't fairly aggressive and expansionist in some fashion. |
| 1:44.4 | This doesn't necessarily mean you went around murdering or conquering your neighbors. |
| 1:49.5 | Expansionism might take on the form of actively pursuing trade and peaceful unification, |
| 1:54.8 | but it is hard to imagine an interstellar civilization arising without such motives. Treating humans as probably average, until we know otherwise, you'd expect as many |
... |
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