Extraterrestrial Contact: Three Human Reactions

I propose that there may be three basic human reactions after high information First Contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. First Contact could be a huge mystery, requiring many years of study to sort out even the most elementary answers. If we discover a signal in far-off space, it is likely to take quite some time to figure out where it came from, what it says and what might have sent it. It would be unlikely that those discoveries would occur in some great flash, but rather they would probably move at the pace of human science, which is often necessarily slow and methodical. However, under the right circumstances First Contact could occur with a great flash of information. For example, if a message is sent to us in a language we could easily understand or if aliens stopped by Earth to say hello. While the later (years of scientific effort) is much more likely, I think there is value in examining the possible human reactions to a high information First Contact event.

It comes down, I think, to these basic reactions: no-go, go-slow and go-go. Sorry for the cute terminology, and bear with me for the explanation. There will be those humans who are incredibly excited by the information that a First Contact situation might bring. They will want to know everything they can about the aliens and their knowledge, as quickly as it can be known. I call these folks the go-go group. On the other side of the spectrum will be people who are quite worried about First Contact and the influence of alien thought and ideas. They may react by suggesting that humans send the aliens away, ignore the messages, or otherwise set up a barrier between human and alien interaction. I would call these folks the no-go group. I would further suggest that the no-go group may be tied to conservative, fundamentalist religions and the go-go movement may be lead by those with a great deal of faith in science.

The go-slow group falls in between those two poles. The go-slow folks would say: this is exciting and there is much to be learned, however let’s prepare a framework for that discovery before we proceed. We must move slowly in order to protect our human institutions, especially our method of science. If we move too quickly we could undermine our scientific institutions, which could be harmful to our future.

As you might imagine, if you have read this blog for very long, I fall into the go-slow group. I think that we should welcome First Contact in whatever form it takes, and use a great deal of caution and critical thinking in moving forward. We cannot assume anything. First Contact would, by its very nature, be a situation we have never dealt with before and one that not very many of us have actually considered with any rigor. We would be unprepared and need to take immediate steps to ready ourselves. That means limiting the type of information we receive at first and building a framework that is carefully tailored to our sciences for the transfer of information from extraterrestrial sources.

The go-slow group, by its very placement in the middle of the two opposite poles of no-go and go-go, is a moderate route. Moderates are often made fun of in the American political system. They can be viewed as those who do not have strong opinions and thus are willing to be swayed by opposing political forces. In reality, moderation is a philosophical idea that has been explored for thousands of years by humans. The Greeks used the term “meden agan” or nothing in excess. In this context, moderation is often used to describe everything from food intake to alcohol consumption. In action, moderation simply means that the path between the extremes is a safer and perhaps healthier path forward. Moderation could be seen as a more natural state. Moderation allows for growth and development, where extreme reactions tend to stifle growth and development or allow it to be reckless.

There are those who will argue that the go-go movement is not an extremist point of view. They will likely be joined by advocates seeking complete freedom of information in human endeavors, especially on the Internet. They will say that humans have a great capacity for understanding and limiting extraterrestrial information will limit human development. They will also be highly skeptical of anyone who suggests that information flow be controlled, especially if that call comes from institutions or governments.

I understand the go-go sentiment (or the one likely to occur if First Contact ever occurs). Freedom of information is the key to the future of humanity. We must give ourselves the true benefit of our new technology. The Internet allows us to have access to the entirety of human knowledge, at least as much as can be put into language and onto a computer. The free flow of that information, across all nations and all cultures, will allow humans to grow and develop in ways not previously imagined. I agree with those principals wholeheartedly, just not when it comes to extraterrestrial information. I should be clear, I don’t think there would be anything wrong with finding out where extraterrestrials come from, what they are like and the characteristics of their planet and solar system. I think we could learn whatever they can teach us about their history and their history exploring the universe. The dangerous part is the dissemination of information about physics, biology and technology. These are subjects that could literally explode human scientific paradigms left and right. Let’s be quite clear about this, there is a huge difference between a paradigm shift and a paradigm explosion. A shift is just a remarkable movement in one direction of thought or another. The paradigm doesn’t lose its foundation, but rather sets off from that foundation in a new direction. Alien information could cause a paradigm explosion, where the very foundation of our knowledge is eroded. I’m not saying that we should labor under false information willingly, but rather that in certain sciences we must move carefully and with great deliberation. We must work at every step to make sure we fully understand the information presented and that we align that new thought with our current foundation. In a sense this is what any student does. The physics grad student doesn’t throw out everything learned in her freshman year of high school, but rather takes the time to incorporate the new knowledge into her previous understanding. Doing such means that the student sees the progression and how the whole model fits together. If you simply dump graduate physics into the lap of that high school freshman she would likely struggle to understand and perhaps just jump to the end result.

Why bother going back to incorporate the new knowledge with the human foundation in the field? The answer is scientific muscle. If you work to acquire new knowledge in a gradual way, using the foundation you have already acquired, you build new scientific muscle and you will have the ability to transcend the new information and make new discoveries. If you are merely spoon-fed the new information and don’t do the hard work of incorporation, you will be knowledge rich and process weak. You will be dependent on alien spoon feeding and eventually lose the ability to make discoveries of your own.

Now granted this entire conversation assumes that the aliens we meet will be in advance of us technologically. If they have the ability to send us a high information message in a language we can understand or they show up in our solar system, they will be more advanced than us in technology. We do not currently have the knowledge or resources to do the same. There is also another huge question: would they be willing to share technological information at all? There are certainly plenty of arguments for not sharing such knowledge, with competition perhaps being the primary concern.

What would be your reaction in the wake of First Contact: no-go, go-slow or go-go? Join the discussion on the Alien First Contact Facebook page.

Extraterrestrial Contact: Social Justice Aliens

If aliens ever visit planet Earth and say hello (and I don’t think they have yet) the aliens will have a reason for doing so. That agenda will frame our relationship with them. The question is how intrusive that agenda might be. What do they want from us?

I’ve discussed a bunch of ways this scenario could go. The one that seems to worry people the most is an intrusive agenda: the aliens want something and they take action to get it. That intrusive agenda doesn’t necessarily have to be abducting our women or stealing our valuable mineral resources (I’m joking here people). They may want to change our behavior. That would of course still be deeply concerning to us.

Imagine if you will social justice aliens. They arrive on planet Earth to say hello. And then they start to make demands. Why don’t you treat women fairly in your society? Why don’t you treat minorities and other cultural groups with respect? Why does government X not allow people to vote? Why don’t you start treating dolphins as intelligent beings? Why do you eat cows?

The list could go on. Now these are very anthropocentric ideas. Aliens would likely have an entirely different perspective and thus a list of our problems that perhaps we don’t consider problems at all.

The point is members of an alien civilization questioning who we are and how we handle ourselves would be troubling. It’s a matter of human autonomy. Even if you agree with their assessment of our weaknesses, that doesn’t mean we want aliens telling us to fix it. It’s very much akin to the human response when someone from the outside criticizes your family. You may be quick to respond: we can pick on each other because we’re family. You’re an outsider, so butt out.

This is certainly something to consider on the flip side. Perhaps we’ll be the travelers visiting a far-off world for First Contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. They could do all sorts of things on their planet that we view as unfair or barbaric. We would be wise to keep our mouths shut. Relationships require a certain amount of respect for autonomy, no matter whom or what is involved.

Check out the new Alien First Contact Facebook page with links to interesting First Contact articles. It’s also a forum for you to share your ideas.

Extraterrestrial Contact: Bad Humans

What would extraterrestrials think of us? It’s a question that commonly finds answers along two poles: they would love us or hate us. Of course, being the intelligent creatures that we are, we realize that it would likely be much more complicated. However, those two poles are where our hopes and fears lie and with any discussion of extraterrestrial intelligence, hope and fear play big roles. Interestingly, they both make the same assumption: humans are bad.

We fight with each other. We kill. We subjugate the weak. We take advantage of each other. We build nuclear weapons and threaten to blow each other up. We treat our planet and fellow creatures like crap.

We build civilizations. We celebrate complex art and culture. We develop science to help us unlock the secrets of the universe. We spend time, effort and money on medicine and do everything we can to save human life.

The love side of things assumes that aliens will want to help us. They will see the good side of our nature and help us to overcome our conflicted ways and develop new technology to ease our environmental burdens.

The hate side says that aliens would want to control us or get rid of human civilization altogether. They will see the bad side of our nature and decide that they don’t want to deal with us if we manage to develop interstellar travel.

It’s a question of perception. That’s one thing that’s tough to speculate about. Alien perception would be a product of what they are as beings, what they believe and how they have developed as a species. They could be a warring, nasty bunch and consider us to be cream puffs. They could be peaceful and thoughtful and think of us as brutes.

Does it really matter? Of course it does- we want to have a positive relationship with any extraterrestrial civilization that we meet. But are we going to fix our human weaknesses overnight to get ourselves ready for extraterrestrials that may or may not meet us some day? Clearly not. We will be here, warts and all, ready for inspection if an extraterrestrial civilization takes interest. We can’t change who we are in the short term. There are many positive signs that if we don’t blow ourselves up or destroy the environment, we may actually have a peaceful and prosperous future.

The point is that we can’t change where we have come from. We can only work to make the present and the future better for humanity. We need to stop worrying about whether they will love us or hate us. If aliens choose to make contact with us, in whatever form, it will be their agenda and that agenda will be based on their needs, not ours.

However, there is a bigger lesson in this discussion. In the same way we may hope that they don’t judge us on our weakness, we need to be prepared to find many things about their culture and civilization that we dislike. It’s that way in any new relationship with a foreign being. If you list the things you like and dislike about some other nationality, if you know that culture well, it’s bound to be a long list. There will be things about extraterrestrials that we will like and things we won’t like. These likes and dislikes could be dramatic at first, until we truly understand where they have come from and what they want for their civilization. We need to accept their weaknesses, acknowledge their strengths and find a place for mutual understanding.

We are a weird bunch, the human race. But you know what? I bet the aliens are just as weird.

Check out the new Alien First Contact Facebook page with links to interesting First Contact articles. It’s also a forum for you to share your ideas.

Extraterrestrial Contact: We’re Just Not That Important

Harlow Shapley did the scientific work necessary to show that humans are not at the center of everything and then he took the argument to the next level, showing how such discoveries are changing the human perspective. Perhaps most importantly, he provided a road map for where we might go in the future with our self-perception and our place in the universe. All of that concocted in 1918 and expounded on throughout the early days of space exploration. Astronomers know Shapley (1885-1972) for his observations at the Mount Wilson Observatory, which eventually lead him to conclude that Earth is actually at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy. Why was this a big deal, aside from the scientific accomplishment? It was a further blow to the idea that humans are at the center of everything. It’s the progression of scientific thought from the Earth and the solar system at the center of the universe, to a wider understanding of reality. Shapley called the change in human perspective, fueled by the scientific discoveries, the fourth adjustment.

JoAnne Palmeri explores these ideas in a chapter about Shapley in the book “Cosmos and Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context” published by NASA. Shapley viewed anthropocentrism as a serious barrier to our development and clearly we humans still have a long way to go. We spend time speculating about meeting intelligent creatures from other planets, and yet we treat intelligent creatures from our own planet like, well, animals. Dolphins deserve much more respect than we give them. Some people have even called for dolphins to have recognized “personhood”. I enjoyed this article by Kay Holt calling for more science fiction folks to explore dolphin rights. I do remember a great science fiction story in which the aliens arrive on Earth specifically to communicate with dolphins; they’re just not that interested in us.

I only bring this up to show that anthropocentrism drives much of how we perceive the universe. This was Shapley’s main point. Such thinking builds a barrier to us better understanding the cosmos. His phrase “star-stuff” was designed to open our perspective to a wider view. He simply pointed out that the Earth and its subsequent inhabitants were formed from elements cooked-up in stars and thus humans are made of “star-stuff”. It’s a common idea now, but a bit out-there in the 1920s and 1930s. Shapley provided fuel for generations of scientists and science fiction writers alike, including Carl Sagan who used the “star-stuff” phrase frequently. Like Sagan, Shapley was an active public speaker and considered his advocacy role to be as important as his role as a scientist.

Shapley had his fair share of problems. Famously, he disputed Edwin Hubble’s assertion that there are other galaxies in the universe, at times calling Hubble’s theories junk science. We know how that turned out.

What can Shapley provide for us today? He made a powerful argument for the coordination of science, philosophy and religion. Certainly not in a sense that science should be a religion or religion should drive science. However, he did speak to a widening of the religious perspective to see the human place in the vast universe. The problem from a religious context seems to be anthropocentric. For some folks, religion teaches that humans are the center of the universe and God’s primary concern. For others, religion shows the vastness of the universe and humans are just part of the grand fabric. It’s a significant difference. Can people pray to God if they don’t have a direct pipeline to the heavens? Can God worry about humans and space aliens equally? Is Jesus the savior for humans and space aliens? How about Muhammad?

The Palmeri article does an excellent job of examining the path that Shapley took in religion. The understanding of science, and especially astronomy, lead him to religious considerations. Shapley gave lectures with topics such as “Stars and Spiritual Things and “The Religious Implications of Astronomy”. However, Shapley was also known for criticism of contemporary religious institutions. Shapley disliked the “superstitious” side of religion and the anthropocentric and rigid nature of religious institutions.

So, why worry about Shapley now? He’s an important voice in the conversation and one which may need to be recalled if we face the challenge of First Contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. Such an occurrence would cause all sorts of seismic events in the religious communities on Earth. While some may call Shapley’s views humanist, given his anti-anthropocentric inclinations that would not be correct. His views were truly Universalist. It’s perhaps that context that we will need if we enter a new era for humanity After First Contact. 

Check out my new Alien First Contact Facebook page for more articles and links.

Extraterrestrial Contact: Fighting and Fornication

If extraterrestrials watch HBO they may notice a common theme in the original series: fighting and fornication. No matter what the backdrop or who the characters, the plot lines return frequently to those two actions. Of course, it’s not just HBO. Fighting and fornication have been a fixture in human storytelling for hundreds of years. Fighting and fornication are the two elemental parts of biological existence and they have a common denominator: survival. We are still fighting and fornicating, in many different ways, each and every day on planet Earth. We may try to clean things up in modern society, but it always gets back to those elemental themes. I really like football. Every now and then, though, I take a few steps back in my mind to view what’s actually occurring on the field. You got it: fighting and fornication. Well, not the act of fornication itself. It’s more the prelude, as women jump around in skimpy clothes cheering while the guys clobber each other.

Survival is the essential part of biology that binds us together with all animals, plants and microbes. It makes sense that extraterrestrials would have their own survival themes in their society. Who knows, perhaps it even comes back to fighting and fornication? That was certainly the Star Trek theme. Klingons and Romulans had visceral tribal customs involving the aforementioned activities. The Vulcans tried to rise above such activities and yet they too had a history of fighting and, of course, fornication.

The biological imperative of fighting could be changing. For millennia, fighting meant survival, which was fine when fighting meant clubbing one person over the head to protect your family. Technology flips that equation. These days, if someone feels they have to protect their country, they can fire a nuclear missile and kill millions of people. Perhaps not fighting is the new biological imperative?

Why do we care about such things? Our ability to relate to extraterrestrials will be greatly enhanced by commonalities. The things we have in common with extraterrestrials will provide a meeting point for initial understanding. If we have common societal themes, it will be easier to build understanding between humans and extraterrestrials. The more differences we have, the harder that process.

Extraterrestrials would not even have to participate in a current culture of Earth-style fighting and Earth-style fornication to share commonalities. Perhaps extraterrestrials we meet some day have a rich history of fighting and fornication, and yet have moved beyond such things? They would be wise to share that history with us early in the relationship, so that we might better connect.

Humans are likely to have an interest in fighting and fornication for quite some time. And this is one human who is okay with that. However, we are changing and we are evolving. Survival themes may become less important to us as our technology progresses. Biological imperatives may weaken. The evolutionary road that we are on could be similar to the road extraterrestrials have traveled. If so, we’ll want to share the stories of our voyage. And most likely those stories will include…well, you know.

Extraterrestrial Contact: The Ultimate Alien

The term alien has many meanings, one of which is the primary use when describing extraterrestrial beings: belonging to another and very different place. That certainly makes sense. But there’s also the use of the word alien to describe something as strange. That usage could have a big impact on how we might relate to a member of an extraterrestrial civilization. Strange in our popular media has tended to be portrayed as serpent or insect-like creatures. It’s perhaps easiest for us to imagine extraterrestrials as having characteristics of fauna here on Earth. What might be harder to wrap our heads around would be machine intelligence.

Astrophysicists and science fiction writers have suggested that space-faring aliens might be machine intelligence for several reasons. Machine intelligence would be tougher, could survive for a longer period of time, and require far less support than biological creatures. Machine intelligence could be intelligent probes created by biological creatures to explore the universe. I think we could probably understand the concept of intelligent computers. But what if the machine intelligence is the evolved form of biological creatures? We wouldn’t be dealing with a sentient computer, but rather a whole new form of life.

Why would this be tough for us? Much of what we consider as human comes from our bodies: senses, emotions and reproduction. The very state of being alive as a human requires that the human body be working. Without the body we are dead. If even the most outlandish looking alien had a living body we would have more in common with that being than machine intelligence. We could ask about their senses and biological functions. The answers to those questions could help us better understand how those biological aliens perceive the universe and thus we could find commonalities. Those commonalities would be incredibly important. No matter how open minded humans would like to be, there would be a bias against creatures incredibly different from us. The first things we would likely search for would be similarities. That’s fine for biological creatures, but how about machine intelligence? Could we find commonalities with machine based beings?

This is no small question. The entire relationship with any extraterrestrials we may meet in the future will be determined by these questions. In the popular media it seems we fear the machine intelligence creations (think Terminator) at least as much as the weird looking serpent aliens. In some ways we may fear them more, because machine intelligence represents something threatening in a very basic way: it calls into question our biology and thus our humanity.

In the end, it may depend on the aliens themselves. If they are advanced enough in technology to have evolved into machine intelligence one would hope they would be able to find ways to communicate with us that would make us feel comfortable. A machine based being speaking colloquial English with a Midwest accent would be much more comfortable to us Americans. If the aliens did their homework they would study human relations carefully and make some public relations decisions. Scientists often put off such considerations as being too anthropocentric. But if you’re the visiting alien don’t you want to make the best impression possible? Why wouldn’t you study the beings you are about to approach and determine a form of introduction and communication that would make those beings the most comfortable?

While such work in human relations would be important for an extraterrestrial relationship with humans it would not be the most important factor. The big question would be the reason for the aliens saying hello in the first place. They wouldn’t go to the trouble of saying hello without a motivation for doing such. What they expect from the new relationship will be the primary consideration for humans if First Contact with an extraterrestrial civilization ever does occur.