this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
82 points (97.7% liked)

No Stupid Questions

48037 readers
768 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] T156@lemmy.world 5 points 13 hours ago

A fantastic amount of talking. The militaries would want to be in readiness, for example, just in case the extraterrestrials are not friendly, and the diplomatic corps would be doing their best to figure out how to communicate with them.

A lot of religions might also be thrown a bit into the air by the arrival of aliens, so there would be some chatter there, too.

Are aliens subject to human rights? Are they beings also made in God's image, etc.

[–] FanciestPants@lemmy.world 7 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Do you mean like if an alien just showed up on my doorstep and was like, "take me to your leader"? Because I would ask, "How about we just chill here for a bit?" because nothing good is going to come from the next part.

[–] Lasherz12@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

Maybe we can all just pretend that Bernie is our leader. It's a nice thought anyways.

[–] JennaR8r@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Okay but whatever the case, please remember that Barack Obama volunteered to be the ambassador for such an event. So if an alien shows up at your doorstep please contact Barack obama.

[–] Lasherz12@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

We'd better hope they don't have healing technology to share with us because he'll give it to the insurance industry to manage after slapping a few guard rails on it.

[–] wraekscadu@vargar.org 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

I don't think it would be in the advantage of a smart civ to willfully contact another smart civ till it is confirmed that the "to be contacted" civ has a really good understanding of game theory.

You cannot negotiate mutually assured destruction with a civ that does not understand what mutually assured destruction means.

Do I think we would be destroyed if some other alien civ finds us? No. If civ A observes civ B destroying civ C, everyone would want to destroy civ B immediately. The possibility of there being peaceful contact for civ B goes away.

Also, contacting us must be in the benefit of the civ that contacts us (assuming they are rational).

[–] HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

When one civilization meets another, far more advanced, civilization, what tends to happen to the less advanced one?

Yeah, that. It's gonna suck.

[–] Lasherz12@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

Pretty sure we'd have no communication with the alien that wasn't just corrupt politicians trying to speak for us to get some sort of trade out of them to increase their own power. It's too important for any/all normal people to have a voice, and then when the aliens dislike the abhorrent greed we'll probably just suffer some how more than we already do. I'd say we're better off not reporting any alien sightings. I would trust almost any human on earth more talking to aliens on my behalf than a so called leader currently. Maybe Ireland, Spain, a handful of others have better than regular Joe leaders, but it's rare.

[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago

Not sure but I have said that it'll happen under Trump. It has to. The way things go lately this is just expected at this point

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

At this point?

I see 100% of the world, all the narcissists and psychopaths in power, asking them to please take them away from this horrible world

[–] Aneb@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

Take me wit u?

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 4 points 22 hours ago
  1. They remove our ability to leave the planet.
  2. Continually

Done.

[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 2 points 22 hours ago

Anal probe.

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

To be realistic I think they would have scanned our airwaves and observed from afar and decided to get the hell out of this quadrant of the galaxy. If they needed our resources then it would be like the "Independence Day" movie, only the aliens would easily win.

[–] Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 21 hours ago

Hopefully more like war of the worlds.

"hey check out this video, they have a contingency plan if we send in ground troops"

"They sneeze on us and we die?"

"....... We have to check if that works."

[–] pelley@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Watch the movie “Contact” for a good depiction of this.

[–] BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

Depends where and how. If alien space ship crash landed on earth, I'm pretty sure every government would be eager to salvage every bit of priceless tech onboard.

But if it was a diplomatic mission with controlled first contact over radio signals, then it would probably go very differently.

[–] Steve@startrek.website 10 points 1 day ago

They would be sick of our shit in 5 minutes

[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 12 points 1 day ago

Something similar to what happened to india or Indonesia when the British/ Dutch showed up

[–] NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

War, then our extermination.

[–] Lasherz12@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I think in the event of war, it would be about as long as the time it takes for us to announce the war until it's over. The technology to freely planet hop from another solar system is like the large hadron collider vs an ant using a leaf to cross a puddle.

[–] NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Oh yeah, that’s exactly how I see it going down. Before we could finish saying “kill ‘em all!” they’d have killed us all.

[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 73 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Seeing how incohrrent and fractured humanity is, we'd meet them with a jumbled mix of:

  • Rabid xenophobia
  • Aggressively trying to convert them to a dozen of our different religions
  • Forming multiple cults worshipping them as gods
  • Creating a shit load of really weird rule 34 AI-generated porn focused on them
  • Dismissing their existence as some sort of a deep fake conspiracy
  • Trying to sell them some worthless shit for a massive profit
  • Trying to sell them fellow humans as slaves
  • Trying to steal their technology to conquer the galaxy
  • Flooding then with brainrot memes for the lolz
  • Trying to destroy them with conventional weapons

And they would see all this and either destroy us in disgust or get the hell out of the solar system ASAP and cordon it off with hazard signs.

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You forgot "eat them".

The real answer to the Fermi paradox is that ET wants nothing to do with us and pretend they're not even there.

[–] bitteroldcoot@piefed.social 14 points 2 days ago

The reality of course, is they already have seen what we are like and chose not to talk to us.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] darthelmet@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Die of some random common illness we don't have any antibodies for.

Hopefully a species advanced enough to master interstellar travel would be mindful of that kind of thing though. I suppose at least they would probably be protecting themselves against that, so maybe it would go both ways?

[–] Lasherz12@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

I've heard that carbon is not necessarily the best basis for self replicating structures. Silicon is able to form a lot of similarly complex bonds that carbon is with a similar chain of reactions to our own. I don't know if another life form from the ground up would even have diseases, although I guess cancer is pretty likely in any self replicating system due to cosmic rays. That would make it pretty hard to space travel though, one would expect their repair mechanisms to far excel beyond the durability of our own, which is actually pretty crap and easily confused with symmetrical DNA chains, excessive damage, repeating sequences, etc. There are other animals on earth that have better repair systems in place than us allowing them to live virtually forever, but none are mammals. Biological Immortality Wiki

[–] upandatom@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Our strongest EMP rays did nothing to them, but in the end they succumbed to a simple stick.

There is also just the possibility that their common illness affects something biologically they possess that we do not.

I too hope the protections would go both ways. I guess it depends if whatever they'd exhaust is toxic to us

[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Within less than an hour, Rule 34 will come into effect and someone will make a porn-film about them.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] chaosCruiser@futurology.today 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

boom

But seriously though, it depends on the type of aliens we’re encountering here. If they’re malevolent, they will probably wipe the earth clean and take all the resources.

If they’re more benevolent, they’ll just take pity on us, and turn back. Humanity is a problem that will fix itself if you just give it some time.

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Sigh.... If only... Anyway, don't blame me, I voted Kodos.

[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Given that they have the means to have travelled from another world (presumably from outside the Solar System, as there are no signs of space colonising extraterrestrials in our neighbourhood we can observe), they must be technologically far superior to us. My guess is that they would treat us, little guys on a blue marble, like we do with ants.

Although ants have a very intricate way of life, with jobs, conflict, infrastructure, etc., most humans don't put too much thought into keeping them safe, we trample on their cities that we say are primitive compared to our own, and we export some ants to new worlds. Additionally, even among our own species, colonialism was commonplace in all parts of the world throughout the world and its remnants still exists today, as one group of people believed they were superior to another.

Intelligent extraterrestrials capable of interplanetary (and probably interstellar) travel would definitely outclass us in every metric, and they could easily wipe us out, either by accident or on purpose (through disease, conflict, colonisation, etc.)

However, I hope that these extraterrestrials eventually acknowledge our existence as a civilisation. A little like how there are entomologists who study ants for a living and conservationists who preserve their habitats. Or perhaps organisations like UNESCO, in charge of protecting dying cultures and lost traditions, could be formed by these extraterrestrials. Maybe treaties of reparations and acknowledgement of past crimes would be signed between our species, like how many countries do today.

That's just my thoughts though.

[–] neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Id think they'd treat us like how we treat a remote tribe that's been isolated from humanity for hundreds/thousands of years.

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I think this is basically us.

I feel like we are not alone because the Universe doesn't do things just once, and the only thing less likely to be the case is if there's just two species for some reason, they and us. Which gives that life is ubiquitous and therefore not that interesting, so if we were to be contacted it'd be some alien researcher writing another boring thesis on uncontacted civilizations like ours that are about to kill themselves off due to dumb.

Like, maybe they'd catalogue us for posterity or something. That'd be nice.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

A little bit of pee comes out.

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'd be PSYCHED. For whatever comes. It'd galvanize humanity. I think our problem is that we don't have enough external enemies. That's why we fight each other. Best game on the planet. Bet if aliums showed up we'd come together to destroy them and have a barbecue, and we'd lose, but it'd be nice to all feel like friends for once.

[–] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 4 points 20 hours ago

I think if we didn't unite when the air could cripple people, we aren't uniting over anything external.

[–] ultranaut@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

It depends on what the extraterrestrials are like. I think its probable they would be as incomprehensible to us as we are to fish or bugs. I am confident that a significant percentage of people will immediately freak out and react with aggression regardless of what they are like, and that the wealthy will be looking for any way to make money from them, even if it means selling out life on earth.

[–] Evil_Incarnate@sopuli.xyz 19 points 2 days ago (9 children)

If they came to us it would not be for the resources on earth, there are plenty more in space easier to get. I think it would be curiosity. They would study us, and probably all life on the planet.

Hopefully with curiosity comes empathy and they uplift us.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 days ago

Trump will post on Truth that we had a war and we won.

[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (7 children)
load more comments (7 replies)
[–] spongebue@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

Trying to overcome language barriers, probably.

[–] JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago

One group will sell out the rest of us, guaranteed.

load more comments
view more: next ›