Poll of the Day > Aliens come to Earth and offer us everything we need in exchange for...

(+) Yeah! (+)

Alright, so say Aliens came to earth, and offered the world what we need: access to unlimited resources, free energy, cleaning up pollution, and easy solutions to basically every issue in our world.

In exchange, all they want is to harvest our elderly (age 80+) as old humans are a delicacy in their world. In a humane fashion of course.

Would you consider this a fair deal? Also lets assume that due to all the improvements they have given us, most people would live long enough to be harvested

I thought you meant like a one-time deal at first. So it's like a permanent Logan's Run type of thing?

Depends... are they culling the 80 year olds because that's the perfect range, or are they only harvesting the near dead cuz if you get to 100 or even 110 you taste even better?

Drop the min age to 50 and i'm down.

I only get 13-15 years of retirement ? fuckkk noooooo

Make it 42

I'd sell out pretty much all of you for a cup of coffee, so I'm not seeing the downside.

Depends on if they help us with our whole "exploiting ourselves to the greatest extent possible" situation.

Because "unlimited resources" does not translate to "unlimited resources for me". For all I know nothing about my life would change except I would die at 80. Might just mean someone somewhere has 2 yachts instead of 1.

josh posted...

I only get 13-15 years of retirement ? fuckkk noooooo

If the aliens really have solved all the world's problems then presumably everyone would be free to retire at like 30 or something and live off some sort of UBI.

T0ffee posted...

If the aliens really have solved all the world's problems then presumably everyone would be free to retire at like 30 or something and live off some sort of UBI.

Nah, they'd just plug everyone into the Matrix and you'd live your whole live in a wish-fulfillment fantasy dream.

You don't need money if your body in the real world is being drip-fed nutrients and your digital avatar is literally a god.

T0ffee posted...

If the aliens really have solved all the world's problems then presumably everyone would be free to retire at like 30 or something and live off some sort of UBI.

yooo good point. i take it then

*looks up behavioral sink*

I think I'll go with no

Muscles posted...

behavioral sink

But that in and of itself would be an issue of our world, and if the aliens are offering easy solutions to every problem, it would presumably come with a solution to that as well.

The problem is they're not offering much for what they're asking.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd sell out pretty much all of you for a cup of coffee, so I'm not seeing the downside.

The downside happens when you hit 80.

Count_Drachma posted...

The downside happens when you hit 80.

Pffft, like I'm even going to make it to 60.

And honestly, I'm mostly just selling the rest of you out for the lulz. The benefits they're offering are pretty much secondary.

If I were in charge right now, or given this decision for everyone, I'd ask them what we get for a one-time deal, not as a perpetual thing. Since the world is in the grip of a bunch of old men, too many of them being 80+ or close to it, the past couple decades have told me exactly how things would play out.

First they'd say no. Then they'd try to negotiate for minorities in exchange for the fuels, etc. Then they would turn around and try to convince the general masses that the aliens are the enemy! And your best friend, neighbor, or dog could be one of them. The general masses would, sadly, eat it up, with too many of us arguing with one another about whether or not what was said and done had actually been said and done despite the exhaustive level of documentation. People will die needlessly, humanity would get none of the solutions, and then aliens would sigh before putting yet another tally mark under "Self-Destructive Humans."

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Pffft, like I'm even going to make it to 60.

You would with their solutions. As farmers, their goal is to keep you alive until it's harvesting time.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Pffft, like I'm even going to make it to 60.

Wait you're younger than 60?

Count_Drachma posted...

You would with their solutions. As farmers, their goal is to keep you alive until it's harvesting time.

Nah, because I'd become way more self-destructive.

Unless we're assuming they're straight up using psychic engineering to edit out those sorts of behaviors to make us placid cattle, but at that point I'd be content with it (artificially or not), and if they're "humanely" killing me to eat it wouldn't matter all that much. But if they're capable of and willing to resort to that level of control they wouldn't need to offer the deal in the first place, they'd just do it.

Either way, if I do manage to make it to 80 they'd still be giving me decades of extra (likely more exciting) life than I likely would have had otherwise (I'm already old and broken - give me a young body again and shit's on), so it's win-win. Plus the added satisfaction of treachery.

I have a long-standing stance of being willing to sell out the human race to aliens or AI or whatever outside threat comes to kill us all. I'm fully aware of the usual trope of the quisling who sells out expecting a reward getting killed for it ( https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RewardedAsATraitorDeserves ), but I'm not doing it for a reward. I'm doing it for the sheer misanthropic joy of screwing over my species. So the sudden and inevitable betrayal at the end where I'm "rewarded" with death is just an expected price to pay.

I did speak to this one really lucid 90 year old dude one time so i guess I wouldn't.

So this is basically a Logans run scenario with a higher age trigger?

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But that in and of itself would be an issue of our world, and if the aliens are offering easy solutions to every problem, it would presumably come with a solution to that as well.

So would they evolve us past our current human form? Aging is also a problem so would they stop aging too?

I would agree, with certain stipulations.

1. They implement the changes first and give us a trial run, minimum 10 years. So we could see and experience everything they offer, before offering up our elderly.

2. The age of harvesting increases, as our collective life expectancy gets higher.

3. It only applies to earth. So if we colonize other planets, those people would be exempt.

The main problem here is the aliens would then have a vested interest in our technological advancement and preventing us from reaching anywhere near their own level. If they munch on us at 80, they will want to perpetually be able to do that in the future and once we sign up, we will be forced into role of well, food. Comfortable food, probably treated better than we treat cows etc, but food.

Meanwhile most of our "problems" could be solved by our own advancement technology wise in the next few decades. The aliens in fact may not even be THAT advanced compared to us as they are not just taking what they want, and creating people factories (which can be an option I guess if we turn them down, perhaps they are just lazy).

In our current world right now, the general standard of living for people 80+ other then a small (very small) percentage of wealthy individuals SUCKS HARD. It's not really anything to look forward to tbh, and if you could actually get to 80 without having major medical issues/pains etc, in exchange for losing any years after 80, I think most people, looking at it objectively from outside their own life (IE you can see how your life would be before hand), would choose that option.

If you add in unlimited resources, not needing to work anymore, the best food/drink/entertainment etc for your life till 80, that would be WAY better than most peoples lives would have been.

Only less than 10% of the population would have anything comparable to that much life span and anything like that much free time/enjoyment in their lives etc, so for a vast majority of living human beings right now, it would be a really good deal.

It does give up a potential better future for humans, and it's a raw deal for the wealthiest humans in the world right now (but screw them), so it basically comes down to doing what is best for the current living generations and what is right for future ones. If it is in the hands of boomers based on past actions we already know what they would choose and we would become meals on wheels (at least till the boomers hit 80 or so...and they are getting close).

If aliens had that kind of tech, they'd Shirley be able to engineer a food source without needing to eat human meat

Metalsonic66 posted...

If aliens had that kind of tech, they'd Shirley be able to engineer a food source without needing to eat human meat

aint no meat sweeter than the aged meat of old man peter

Even in the star trek they admit that replicated, even though very very very close to real, just doesn't quite match the nuance of real.

Lokarin posted...

Even in the star trek they admit that replicated, even though very very very close to real, just doesn't quite match the nuance of real.

iirc, at least depending on the writer, that's more because the replicated stuff is very fixed and comes out the same every time, with no fluctuation in texture or flavor as you might expect from people handmaking those foods or beverages. It's like they catalogued the one time someone made something, called it a day, and whoops the Klingons' drink of choice is always the same degree of subpar or weak.

I'd take it. Most here are not likely to even make to 80. By that time I'd be pretty useless. Given that it would be humane I'm not really seeing downside here.

Old people probably taste like pipe tobacco and Bengay

Metalsonic66 posted...

Old people probably taste like pipe tobacco and Bengay

Don't pretend you don't already know.

Well the cheap dehydrated stuff is always over seasoned

CarefreeDude posted...

Alright, so say Aliens came to earth, and offered the world what we need: access to unlimited resources, free energy, cleaning up pollution, and easy solutions to basically every issue in our world.

In exchange, all they want is to harvest our elderly (age 80+) as old humans are a delicacy in their world. In a humane fashion of course.

Would you consider this a fair deal? Also lets assume that due to all the improvements they have given us, most people would live long enough to be harvested

Didn't the Twilight Zone's episode "To Serve Man" deal with this idea already? The only thing was that they were taking people no matter what their age as snacks back to their home world.

Sure. I see no downside.

GastroFan posted...

Didn't the Twilight Zone's episode "To Serve Man" deal with this idea already? The only thing was that they were taking people no matter what their age as snacks back to their home world.

They sort of did, but in that case the people didn't know they were snacks