Extraterrestrial Contact: Placing My Bet

Why do I waste my time contemplating extraterrestrial First Contact? There is no evidence that intelligent aliens exist. We may not have the proper technology to discover them ourselves. It could be decades, if not centuries, before First Contact occurs, if it ever does at all. Aliens could be so far away in the universe that we may never even know they are there, let alone make contact. Pretty depressing.

My thought is this: why not bet on the long shot? The odds are long; incredibly long in this case, but the importance of the race cannot be understated. Direct Contact with intelligent aliens would change our civilization. Even long-term, far-away contact would change our perspective on the wider universe and our own society. In a way, it’s a reverse payout. If First Contact does occur, instead of there being some big prize for humanity there may be incredible challenges. So, to not bet on the long shot, to not prepare for the long shot, opens us up to danger. The lack of consideration and planning for this subject is a real problem. If First Contact were to happen, human society would not have a response. Hopefully, it will take years for us to transmit back and forth with aliens, due to the distances between star systems. That would provide plenty of time for the inevitable discussion, debate and action to take place. But what if it is Direct First Contact, where aliens visit our solar system to say hello? Such an event would leave us no time for planning and little time to take action.

The big problem with considerations of extraterrestrial First Contact is that everything is speculation. If it’s impossible to define what might happen, how do you prepare for it? I would agree. Trying to plan details for a First Contact response would be a waste of time. Our conjecture would likely be wrong and thus a detailed plan not of much use. However, we could have a general plan that answers a few important questions. First, who will represent Earth if we make First Contact? I’m not talking about one person, but rather a group. Which group will lead contact messaging? While scientists would be the ones setting up the transmission it would seem logical that people who are trained in diplomacy should decide the message, with plenty of input from governments across the planet. Hmmmm… that sounds like the United Nations. Indeed, SETI scientists have tried for many years now to have the United Nations take First Contact seriously. Unfortunately, that has not happened. So, there is a first step that could help in just about any First Contact scenario. Perhaps the United Nations could allow the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to take up the issue and develop some basic protocol.

What would be the reaction to such planning? Undoubtedly there would be snickering in the media, and as UN officials probably fear, ridicule of the UN and its mission. From the UN perspective reputation is everything. And if you’re trying to handle civil war in Syria, prevent starvation in Africa and join nations together in environmental causes, why would you jeopardize your reputation for something that may never occur? It’s a very practical point of view. And in a sense, it’s just another bet. The UN folks are betting that First Contact will not occur and putting their entire wager on our current human challenges.

I get this. I even understand the snickering of the media. We haven’t taken issues of extraterrestrial intelligence seriously in our popular culture. What makes us think that we will take it seriously in the realm of international relations? Action by the UN will take guts and determination. It will take courage and vision.

So, why do I waste my time on what some might call a childish pursuit? Well, I actually agree that it is a childish pursuit. What child doesn’t wonder, at some point or another, about what might be out there in the universe? Those people often grow up to be astrophysicists or science fiction writers. We can’t lose the childish wonder that fuels our passion to discover new things. I’ll keep embracing that wonder as I continue writing for this blog. It’s a high stakes race, if the race is ever run. I’ll keep betting on the long shot and perhaps someday the UN and governments may put down their own small wager as well.

What do you think? Are we wasting our time contemplating First Contact? Join the conversation on the Alien First Contact Facebook page.

Extraterrestrial Contact: Would machines be inherently more adaptive?

If an extraterrestrial civilization designed intelligent machines to roam the universe those machines would likely have an important characteristic: the ability to adapt. Learning is part of intelligence. The ability to adapt would be combined with the learning process for active endeavors to overcome challenges and respond to new problems as they occur.

Machine extraterrestrial intelligence is a topic worth pursuing.  Considering that humans send probes into space to explore, it seems possible that extraterrestrial civilizations might do the same. Paul Davies and Seth Shostak have talked about this idea for years now.

There would be possible benefits and many issues in such an extraterrestrial First Contact.

What would the adaptability of intelligent machines mean for us? It could take away many of the barriers in terms of communication and cultural understanding if extraterrestrial machines were to visit our solar system. Why? If they wished to make contact, they would learn and adapt to do so. An intelligent machine wanting to make contact would likely spend some time learning about us- our languages, our cultures and our technology. This would make sense for any intelligent extraterrestrial visitor. It’s probably what we would do if we discovered an extraterrestrial civilization in our travels. There would not be much to gain by charging in without knowing languages or understanding the cultures of the beings on the planet you wished to contact. Alien machines would want to learn human languages, they would be interested in how we might react and, perhaps most importantly, they would have a game plan, a process for undertaking an introduction.

Could alien machines be better able to adapt than biological visitors? They probably wouldn’t be hung up with the prejudice of biology and culture, perhaps making them less judgmental and more open to other ways of being. However, their programming and base intelligence would probably be very different from ours. Sorting that out could be difficult for us. Also, our conception of machine intelligence might be very different from the type of advanced technology we might encounter. Our machines serve us. Alien machines could be self aware and have their own agenda, different over time even from their creators.

There is certainly plenty of fun science fiction on this topic. And all of this imaginative speculation would have positive and negative impacts if a real situation was to develop some day. There could be fear of machines on our part, thanks to the Terminator movies, the TV show Battlestar Galactica and other popular fiction that features computers taking over the world. This alone would force adaptive alien machines to consider human public relations and carefully study how we interact and how we would best respond.

It all comes back to motives. Intelligent machines, just like biological extraterrestrials, would have a reason for coming to our solar system. Perhaps they are designed to explore, much like our probes? Perhaps they are designed to make contact? We could hope that would be the case, because then the need to understand human culture could be built into the machine programming. Any help we could get in First Contact would be a good thing. If the machines were not designed to adapt or even care about human interaction it could be a mysterious alien encounter that we would never fully understand. And that could be the most frustrating scenario of all.

What do you think? Join the conversation on the Alien FirstContact Facebook page.

Extraterrestrial Contact: Post it on You Tube?

I thank the readers of this blog for providing great insight over the years. There are not many of you out there, but those who are reading tend to have thoughtful and well-considered ideas about the aspects of alien First Contact that are rarely discussed.

Mark from Australia had an interesting thought about the use of social media in a First Contact scenario. I have proposed using the traditional media to bypass national governments, allowing extraterrestrials to reach all humans at once and perhaps start a process of diplomacy with the United Nations. Mark wonders if some sort of landing, and the resulting video sharing, pictures and social media posts it would produce, could mean that the aliens wouldn’t even have to worry about the traditional media.

The idea of social media or internet contact of some kind is interesting. I suppose it really comes down to a matter of control. Aliens may not care how we react. They may not have a specific agenda that requires a certain response from us. If so, merely sending a signal from outer space in the areas we are currently searching would be the easiest method of contact. However, if aliens did want a specific reaction they would want to carefully control the process. I know that sounds a bit devious, and it certainly could be, but controlling the process isn't devious, in and of itself. It's something those of us in the PR profession do all of the time. We control not only the message, but also the way in which the message is delivered, in order to achieve the reaction and response we hope for. The traditional media is easy to understand, because they have set patterns of behavior. The same could be said of law enforcement and military personnel. If you have a good idea of how these groups might react you can design the process to get the response that you want. That's why my main character Alex, in my novel the “Ashland City Landing”, chooses a public landing designed specifically for the media response. The reason is simple: to bypass individual national governments and get straight to the United Nations.

Let’s get back to social media possibilities. Aliens might want to issue a message to the entire human race, without going to the trouble or taking the risk of appearing in person. If so, they could start out with a signal from space, for scientists to “discover” and then follow up with a You Tube video greeting for the human public. It would be impossible for any government to block such a message and it would be taken seriously if the signal that had already be sent through space was confirmed by scientists as being outside of possible human creation. In First Contact, disproving the hoax will be the primary issue. There is so much crazy material on the internet currently, there would have to be some clear and verifiable evidence that messages were coming from extraterrestrials and not human jokesters. This is no small matter and devising the method of evidence would be critical to any First Contact scenario in which the aliens are making contact with us.

Putting a video on You Tube or staging a landing event for humans to disseminate via social media could work, but it would be highly problematic, given the vast number of hoax messages and scams on the internet. One of the currently hot social media news sites is Reddit. In the case of first contact one could expect many posts on Reddit and in a time frame quicker than the traditional media. That might be fine for video of an alien craft or news of some sort of landing, but what can it really do beyond that? Sites like Reddit have no safeguards for accuracy. The New York Times Magazine recently examined how Reddit posts propagated false suspect rumors in the Boston Marathon case.

So, in short, yes, social media could certainly be used for First Contact. But the use of social media has many negatives. The primary weakness would be lack of control. You can hope that certain actions will happen with social media, but those actions are not nearly as predictable as events tied to the traditional media, especially television news media in the United States. In the end, predictability is your friend if you wish to make contact with humans. It allows you to plan a series of events and have a reasonable expectation that they will occur in that fashion.

There is also the overall issue of authority. The traditional news media, scientists and law enforcement hold positions of authority in our society. When those institutions talk, people listen. Social media does not have that kind of clout, just due to its populist nature. I would imagine that even respected scientists would be less likely to announce First Contact in a Tweet or Facebook post, than they would in a news conference on TV. And certainly material posted on sites like Reddit would be viewed with a critical eye, with preference given to those sources that hold traditional authority. Our old institutions still have great power in our society, even if that power is changing as the internet grows in new ways.

Join the conversation on the Alien First Contact Facebookpage.

Extraterrestrial Contact: The Great Debate

Humans tend to have a monolithic and yet shallow view of First Contact.  This is especially true of Direct First Contact, a scenario in which aliens make contact in close proximity to Earth, or on Earth, thus enabling humans and extraterrestrials to have an actual conversation and begin a relationship. Such an event would be extraordinary and most of us agree that it would have a profound impact on the human civilization. But after the awe and wonder we will have to move forward. So, I ask- what happens next?

The optimists would say we would go skipping down the path to a grand new future. The cynics say we would be destroyed, either by aliens with evil intentions, or by ourselves, as our society in thrown into chaos. As with all extremes, both of those poles seem rather unlikely. What does seem likely is the messy middle- a little of this and a little of that, much that we never expected, and plenty of serious challenges. Those challenges are likely to be based on the great debate. The topic for discussion: What do we, as a human society, do next? Do we open relations with extraterrestrials or keep them at a distance? How much access do we give them in communication? Do we control who they communicate with? Who does all of this deciding, anyway? Does the United Nations take the lead? Do scientists lead the effort? How much is this situation about diplomacy and how much is it about science? What do we ask the extraterrestrials to tell us about themselves? Do we want scientific information? Do we want information about their technology? Who decides what we want to know about? Do they even care what we want? How do we deal with that?

I could go on for a good bit. You get the picture. There would be a million questions and many of them quite pressing in a Direct First Contact situation. Decisions would have to be made. In the end, one hopes anyway, those decisions probably wouldn’t be made by a small group of people. If news of Direct First Contact does indeed reach the entire human population, humans from all corners of the globe will rightfully demand some sort of input into what decisions are made. We would most likely rely on our national governments to relay those concerns and expect governmental leaders to act on our behalf. Those concerns may be wide ranging and divergent. People in one nation, and from a certain culture, could feel very differently about First Contact from people in another nation, and from a different culture. We may have 20 different opinions about any one particular question. And most likely nations and cultures would be divided in opinion within themselves.  

If national governments are the only representation for the people of planet Earth, there would need to be a forum for governments to debate the options and decide a path forward. The most logical forum would be the United Nations, as it is made up of most nations on Earth. Other International groups are less representative or designed for specific tasks- such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. Scientific groups, such as the International Astronomical Union, while representing scientists worldwide, do not have experience in diplomacy or wide-ranging international policy. They would be hugely helpful for input and expertise, but no scientific body is designed to debate policy and make governmental decisions. That only leaves one real choice.

There is a regular debate in the United Nations on many different issues. The framework and infrastructure for debating issues of extraterrestrial contact are in place and ready to go, even if that particular subject has never been seriously considered. Sure, there would be plenty of additional work to set up additional committees and sub-committees, but even some of these already exist. One would imagine that the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space might be a good place to start (even if they have failed to plan for this eventuality).

The discussion needs to involve all nations and come from many different perspectives.  It should not be controlled or dominated by powerful governments or institutions. There is no doubt that nations such as the United States, Russia and China will have a huge role in the post-First Contact decision making. However, they would need to respect other nations, listen to the diversity of opinions, and then allow the General Assembly to make decisions.

It will be hard, because there will be a lot of different voices. The fringes would need to be heard, despite how unsettling their points of view may be to the majority.  Diversity would be critically important and we would actually have to listen to each other. We might even change our opinions as a result and come up with new ideas. This would be the fruit of the process. In this particular debate there would be no precedent to examine. Perhaps some finer points could be gleaned from examining our past, but for the most part we will need to look towards the future with imagination and using critical thinking. We will be making decisions that could affect many generations to come.

There will be a big internal struggle. Post First Contact decision making cannot be controlled by politicians, corporations and those seeking to keep power or acquire new power. If that sounds like a tall-order, it would be. After all, who appoints representatives to the United Nations?  Governments.  And that, of course, means politicians and bureaucrats. Politicians and bureaucrats are heavily influenced by corporations and lobbyists- it’s how most governmental systems work. It will be impossible to stop all influence, and of course, corporations and interest groups deserve to be heard as well.

If it all sounds like a nightmare, it certainly could be. Post First Contact decision making will need to be led by tough and rational facilitators who have a greater calling: the betterment of humanity. Once again, I point to the formation of the United Nations. This is their charge. This is why the body exists. Would First Contact challenge an already at times beleaguered and often maligned organization? Most likely. This would be the time for the United Nations to step up and make a difference. If the body has been searching for a purpose, as critics have implied, contact with extraterrestrials would appear to be a pretty good reason for existing. Will the United Nations need to change, become more responsive and better administered? Of course. But all of that would have to start somewhere.

Time for you to chime in with your criticism of the UN. Join the conversation on the Alien First Contact Facebook page.