# Aliens: Rationals?



## Abstract Essence (Apr 22, 2010)

If there were visitor aliens, they would most likely be a healthy variety Rationals, right? I mean why else would they travel those crazy distances just to study us? 
If not Rationals I hope they are Idealist...


----------



## Vaka (Feb 26, 2010)

I have no idea what their real motives are. I do believe in extra terrestirals, and I do believe that they have come to Earth,...but I do not know their motives xD


----------



## sarek (May 20, 2010)

What is reasonable about traveling all this way to go see a monkey colony?
Humans might do that. But then, humans are not rational.


----------



## thehigher (Apr 20, 2009)

sarek said:


> What is reasonable about traveling all this way to go see a monkey colony?
> Humans might do that. But then, humans are not rational.


Humans are not completely irrational either


----------



## Abstract Essence (Apr 22, 2010)

sarek said:


> What is reasonable about traveling all this way to go see a monkey colony?
> Humans might do that. But then, humans are not rational.


 Well for the sake of investigation and experimentation. Rationals are not really rational at all. Not as long as We ENTPs are still in the mix


----------



## Peter (Feb 27, 2010)

Abstract Essence said:


> If there were visitor aliens, they would most likely be a healthy variety Rationals, right? I mean why else would they travel those crazy distances just to study us?
> If not Rationals I hope they are Idealist...


Why do we study the behavior of animals? Are the people that study animals all rationals?


----------



## lirulin (Apr 16, 2010)

They'd probably be bacteria, really.


----------



## vel (May 17, 2010)

ever watch Star Trek? well, sometimes you get Vulcans ... and sometimes you get Species 8472


----------



## firedell (Aug 5, 2009)

Ssssh, i'm scared of aliens.


----------



## NeedsNewNameNow (Dec 1, 2009)

maybe they would have personality types we cannot even fathom?


----------



## thehigher (Apr 20, 2009)

unleashthehounds said:


> maybe they would have personality types we cannot even fathom?


yea..... like ytxr's ....cognitive functions like..... like.... 1e 3i 5e 9i


----------



## NeedsNewNameNow (Dec 1, 2009)

thehigher said:


> yea..... like ytxr's ....cognitive functions like..... like.... 1e 3i 5e 9i


yeah, well if you can communicate telepathically, does E/I mean anything?


----------



## thehigher (Apr 20, 2009)

unleashthehounds said:


> yeah, well if you can communicate telepathically, does E/I mean anything?


hahah nice. Aliens are my favorite. Not really. They scare me actually. When i was a kid i would watch the history channel documentaries on them and they would play the creepy music and then show a picture of an aliens face..... so scary... so scary.


----------



## touched (Nov 18, 2009)

unleashthehounds said:


> yeah, well if you can communicate telepathically, does E/I mean anything?


Well if earthling introverts really do have richer inner lives than earthling extroverts... in a world with telepathic communication, an earthling introvert would be an alien extrovert and vice versa :laughing:


----------



## bionic (Mar 29, 2010)

thehigher said:


> hahah nice. Aliens are my favorite. Not really. They scare me actually. When i was a kid i would watch the history channel documentaries on them and they would play the creepy music and then show a picture of an aliens face..... so scary... so scary.


Don't worry... you can put your face in my bosom anyday. I will protect you... KARL.



I like to believe that aliens do not have personalities and instead are masses of pretty particles that have capabilities beyond what we could imagine.


----------



## Proteus (Mar 5, 2010)

The other day I came across this article about what aliens that visit Earth might be like. The article claims that the aliens will be "just like humans" in terms of their thoughts and motivations. This opinion is way too simplistic to be accurate.

The image of aliens as being anthropomorphic and bipedal has never struck me as logical. It's natural to project our own image of a physical being onto that of beings from other worlds but it's also incredibly myopic. Even though popular depictions of aliens don't always resemble that of **** sapiens 100% they still have the same general shape and amount and placement of appendages. It's absurd to assume that this would be accurate. Unless of course the human race was just some offshoot or seed colony of another far older form of being but that is something to be contemplated separately.

What, exactly, alien life forms might look like is something completely wide open. They need some manner of leg-type apparatus with which to convey themselves? What's to say they aren't possessed of some manner of locomotion that does not require them to touch the ground or some similar telekinetic ability to manipulate objects around them. Laws of nature and environment such as gravity, atmospheric pressure, and temperature might be completely foreign to them, just as their bodies may be impacted by forces that are completely unknown or irrelevant to us.

The article describes aliens as likely having the same mindsets as humans with regard to their thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Again it's very short sighted to assume that extraterrestrials are even possessed of the equivalent of human empathy, id, ego, or whatever term you would like to use. Does sentience actually require any form of emotions, or the capacity to have them? Could it be possible that even the most base of human emotions are completely inconceivable to aliens? And that they, in turn, operate with a psychic apparatus that is completely beyond the realm of our understanding?


----------



## Andrea (Apr 20, 2009)

that's like asking the personality of an amoeba


----------



## dagnytaggart (Jun 6, 2010)

Aliens would be "rational" to us. They'd seem T, because unlike humans, they don't have preconceived notions/emotions/earthly biases. They are pure observers of Earth, forced to ponder and make connections, some of them abstract, making them seem N.

However, their motivation for coming here could be SF. Perhaps they'll want to extract human samples in order to promote family harmony on their home planet, etc etc blah blah. 

Time to promote a Meyer Briggs beyond the Milky Way campaign...


----------



## cdeuterian (Apr 28, 2010)

Proteus said:


> Again it's very short sighted to assume that extraterrestrials are even possessed of the equivalent of human empathy, id, ego, or whatever term you would like to use. Does sentience actually require any form of emotions, or the capacity to have them? Could it be possible that even the most base of human emotions are completely inconceivable to aliens?


-Fear helps the individual be wary of environmental dangers
-Love and sadness promote empathic cooperation and communitarian allegiance
-Righteous anger refines the individual's ethical codes and promotes communitarian behavior
-Happiness, the pursuit of, motivates volitional behavior

Emotion serves important evolutionary purposes to ensure the survival of the individual/community so its difficult to imagine the evolution of sentience without emotion. However, it is possible that a species which has attained the technology of interstellar travel has also reached some sort of zen-like state of transcendent consciousness inaccessible to current human understanding. Conception of the most base of sentient emotions would still be known to the aliens, even if it is collecting dust in the archives as a chronicle of their evolutionary past.

But personally I think the aliens will have a highly advanced sense of empathy and perhaps be a telepathic, omni-empathic INFJ hivemind. xD


----------

