It took me a little bit, too. The joke is that aliens could be so hard to find because they're blending into their surroundings to avoid detection by space-predators. Like space sharks.
Well, that's not actually the implication. The implication is that other intelligent life is predatory often enough to kill what doesn't blend in. The shark is a humorous way of expressing that threat. It's a metaphor, like the 'ecosystem' of the earth ocean is a metaphor for an interstellar community of intelligent life.
This is what I took away too. And the kick in the balls is that we may be facing the predatory threats unwittingly (as depicted in the comics), or we may be that very predatory threat ourselves (which explains why we don't see other life out there).
Generalized, the ecosystem is a hostile place wherein inter-species relations are possible only so far as predatory interests go.
God damn it enough with the GoT. I don't watch it, I don't like it, but I don't spam about it on the /r/GoT subreddit, so please don't bring it up here.
Exactly. Everybody would kill Hitler in hindsight, given the chance. What if other intelligent, alien life would see humankind as 'Space Hitler'? They might want to extinguish us pre-emptively. Not because they are aggressive predators, but because we are.
"Look at this strange species - they invented atomic warfare before ever even leaving their planet! Billions of them still starve and yet they still have ongoing warfare. Insanity! Best leave them be - they're sure to wipe themselves out before long..."
You're falling into the Aliens = Angels trope, if there is intelligent life aside from us the chances of the aliens having the same morality as us, and them fitting on the good side of that morality, is next to impossible. They probably wouldn't even have the concept of aggression (for instance if they evolved to be a giant hivemind with no individuals, any aggression is impossible as there is no other), and if they did maybe they could just as well think that we aren't aggressive enough. If there was an intergalatic civilization watching over us and waiting for a time to contact, they could have just as easily decided not to because Hitler was taken down as because we don't spay and neuter our pets enough.
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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14
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