Jebus wrote:Isn't is strange and perhaps unusual in the universe that on earth on species is so much more intelligent than the second most intelligent species.
This is a misconception, we aren't actually much more intelligent. We're mainly more rational because of our memetic infrastructure/language.
Feral children are wild, aggressive, irrational, and think and act pretty much like wild animals. Apes trained in language become more calm and rational, and exhibit relatively remarkable intelligence (like children).
The actual margin of intelligence is only a couple standard deviations in terms of IQ to average humans (who are not very intelligent either).
This is one of those cases where a little bit of extra intelligence -- plus language and culture -- makes a very big apparent difference.
Threshold theory, in IQ, is probably the most accurate. There are points where certain kinds of thinking become possible.
Somebody with a 120 IQ can be radically different from 140, but 200 isn't really very different from 140.
Jebus wrote:We have lots of species that are similar in intelligence, such as horses and dogs, but none that are close to our level.
Elephants and some cetaceans are both very close. Possibly closer than other great apes (which are also pretty close).
Jebus wrote:What would the world be like if there were a second species of similar intelligence? I suspect there would be speciesism but probably no racism. Anyway, the relevance to this conversation is that if two competing species of similar high intelligence is usual rather than unusual in the universe than perhaps the surviving one can attribute its survival to aggressive traits.
Well, yes, but all wild animals and tribal societies are aggressive. Only modern civilization is really an outlier there. There were other human species, pretty closely related too, and we probably killed them off (as far as we can tell).
Jebus wrote:What I'm saying is that there is certainly no guarantee that any future visitors will be kind
I think there is a guarantee that they will be driven by
morality to come here (although they may not be nice, since good is not always subjectively nice), because there's no other conceivable motivation to compel such an endeavor. We're very, very far away. If they were merely selfish or mean, it doesn't make sense to come over here. Dogs may be aggressive if you come into their yards, but they're not going to run all the way from North America to China to bite some random kid there when there are plenty of kids to bite on their own block. And for an intelligent species, if they just wanted to be sadistic, they could breed entire populations to torture and subjugate.
The only trick is that their moral motivations, founded on legitimate philosophy and reason, may be the downfall of a cruel and complacent world.
Vegans are surely safe, though, given that these alien beings have advanced enough technology to be selective about who they kill. The less technologically advanced the aliens are, the more danger we are probably in as collateral damage in the war to dismantle human government and install something better.