COMMENTARY: Why the News Story on Trying to Contact Aliens in 2015 is a Bad Idea
There's a news article for 3/29 of 2015 on why some people think we should try to contact aliens.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/03/active_seti_should_we_reach_out_to_extraterrestrial_life_or_are_aliens_dangerous.2.html
As much as I would love to reach out and meet aliens and learn about new technologies and what is outside of our solar system, Humankind is not mature enough to handle First Contact from another race (as of 3/29 of 2015).
1) Humans can't agree on things
2) Many governments lie to their people
3) Greed can be used to convince the masses to wage war with aliens
4) Countries with hackers like China and North Korea will try to hack the alien database for Intel
With the first point where humans can't agree upon things, politics plays a role in this. I think it's safe to say that despite flaws in the United States the American ideals of freedom and equality for living things such as men, women, gay people, and animals are good ideals.
However, not every country agrees with that. There are countries that treat their women like garbage and think they're inferior. There are countries that block the Internet because they don't want their people becoming educated or enlightened to where they'll realize they're being oppressed by their government. The United States is an advocate of these beliefs.
I think that it's safe to say that if aliens tried to make First Contact with humans, they'd reach out to the most advanced culture that is understanding and tolerant of being different. That would be the United States.
If aliens made contact with the United States and asked Americans to be the liaison between their alien race and humans, there would be countries that would be upset about that.
Russia, China, North Korea, and the Middle East would be furious, suspicious, and refuse to trust seeing the United States getting cozy with aliens. They would be paranoid and believe that the United States is badmouthing their countries. They'd think that the U.S. is telling aliens not to do business with them or not trust them. That would create resentment.
Even if it isn't true or the United States has just cause to warn alien emissaries about the duplicitous nature of certain goverments that are corrupt, the anger from other countries could trigger a World War.
The 2nd point is that governments lie to their people. Even the United States had an ulterior motive when it came to invading Iraq. It was under the guise of American freedom, but it was also about oil. American politicians were able to fool the American public into believing they were fighting for a just cause.
To some degree it was, but there was a hidden agenda. The complicated politics and greed underlying the actions of the U.S. were employed and the American public went along with it.
That's really bad when you can fool or trick the masses into doing something.
This applies to aliens because they will most likely have superior technology. When major politicians and business CEOs drool over the abundance of alien technology with better weapons and armor, they're going to want it like a kid seeing a toy at the store.
When they ask for aliens to give them that technology and aliens say no citing that humans are "not ready" or "not mature enough to handle dangerous technology," those people will get mad or throw a tantrum.
If they can't get their hands on it by asking nicely, they'll find an excuse to take it by force.
However, because those people need the support of the people to legitimize taking the technology, they'll cook up a scheme or plot to convince people that aliens are bad. They'll convince the (ignorant) masses that you can't trust aliens that have superior weapons and armor. They'll tell people that it's up to humans to "liberate" that technology from aliens "to make the world a safer place."
People, who don't know any better, will believe (sly) humans over aliens because aliens are different.
That's how you get the 3rd point of how greed will cause an intergalactic war that will break out between humans and aliens. Because humans in their pride and ego won't want to admit they're wrong or were throwing a tantrum, countless lives will be lost all because humans were being spoiled brats.
You see this in American society today with Zero Tolerance. If you make a mistake, people will throw a class-action suit. It's the norm now. If a major corporation has a bad employee that screws up, the company gets sued.
That's what will happen when aliens refusing to share their technology offending humans will experience. Humans will lash out at aliens and attack them because aliens deemed humans as not being ready.
The 4th reason why aliens don't reveal themselves is so that countries with hackers like China and North Korea won't try to hack the alien database for information on technology. China has been suspected of stealing technology from the companies of United States.
Imagine what Chinese hackers will do when they see all the technological goodies that aliens are in possession of. Once they lock onto an alien database and study the system, they'll make it their mission to hack the alien spaceship mainframe to get their hands on that stuff.
The Chinese government will justify their hacking because of the perceived threat to National Security. If the United States or United Nations demands China or whatever country that stole the alien technology return what they took, they'll refuse.
I would even point out that this distrust and anger between countries was played out in an episode of "Stargate: SG1" where the Russians were upset that aliens were working with the U.S. Military. So the Russians had their own Stargate they were secretly working on. The episode downplayed the discontent of how the Russians didn't like that aliens were working more closely with Americans, but it was an issue. They weren't happy.
If aliens decide to work with the United States, Russia won't be happy with that. They'll form an alliance with China eager to get its hands on the alien technology. So you'll have lines drawn. The United States will swear they're not in possession of any alien technology. Russia and China will refuse to believe the U.S. demanding transparency on all operations. The U.S. will refuse. Even if they U.S. does concede to those terms, Russia and China will still think the U.S. is hiding stuff.
That brings us to the greed of hackers. All tech companies have to do is post a reward for any hacker that is able to crack the alien mainframe and get their hands on the Intel and the first to succeed will be given millions of dollars.
My belief is that aliens have already discovered our Planet but we're being treated like animals in the wild where we're being monitored, but aliens do not interfere with the natural evolution of our species.
I've said that I think there's a Milky Way United Federation of Planets just like in "Star Trek" where they have a Prime Directive where they're not allowed to interfere with the affairs of pre-warp societies. Those infant societies have to mature first before they'll extend welcome to a species that is just beginning to develop technology that will allow them to leave their solar system.
In the mean time, I believe there's a huge "Do Not Disturb" Sign placed around our Solar System where all other alien races that have warp technology and can travel to our Planet are told to stay away.
I think all those other alien races belonging to the United Federation of Planets know not to mess with a fledgling race that is volatile, barbaric, immature, and irrational.
I know I sound like a pessimist regarding the human race. However, until people learn to be honest with themselves, how do you expect to be honest with aliens?
Humans are like 5 year olds. If humans are caught with their hand in the cookie jar and there are crumbs all over their mouths and all over their hands, they'll lie just lie a 5 year old denying that they took the cookies. Even though there are all kinds of clues that ponit to this, humans will be in denial. It's hard to work with a society that can't be honest with itself when it looks in the mirror.
I've even said that "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams about Earth as a Super Computer is all true. Computers run off of math and numbers. If aliens are able to travel across the stars, they must have a better understanding of math and science than humans do.
That being said, I claim that aliens already know that Earth is alive and how to track its life signs. I would go so far as to say those Crop Circles are like "Mathematical Braille" Symbols. It's where aliens ignore humans and just talk directly to the Planet. It's better for aliens to just deal directly with the Planet rather than humans who don't even know their Planet (and Sun) are alive.
I claim the reason why aliens know this and respect Planet Earth and the Sun is because their own Home Planet is alive. Their own Sun is alive. When those aliens left their solar system, their own Home Planet and Sun like a parent told them to play nicely and respect other alien cultures.
I say this because I've spent over 10 years studying numbers, calendar dates in history, and Electromagnetism to hash out patterns in the way the Planet (and Sun) behave where it's not all random.
I even challenge the Scientific Community to collect all the data on UFOs that have very specific coordinates, calendar dates of sightings, and shapes/colors of UFOs for study. I believe it will show th UFO sightings show a mathematical pattern. Those aren't random dates and locations. There are UFOs that were sighted by aliens because they were letting us see them. There was a symbolic meaning to the calendar date and where they made themselves visible.
They go through all this trouble to respect the Mathematical Code of the Planet that is a Super Computer.
This is a really important point. If aliens really wanted to take over our Planet, why would they go through so much trouble to respect our Mathematical Code?
With superior technology, they could have taken over humans and enslaved our race decades or centuries ago. We woudln't have stood a chance, especially in the last 50 years when the Internet and wireless technology hadn't been invented yet. Aliens could've easily overpowered us like ripping legs off an insect.
However, they don't because they're peaceful. I claim they're also showing the Planet Earth and our Sun (as living organisms) that they respect our culture. They are respecting their own Home Planet and Sun that was like a parent telling them to play nicely with other races when they go exploring the galaxy.
Aliens were taught that when they go exploring the galaxy not to tamper with other solar systems and conduct themselves in a respectful manner. Those aliens know that if humans (or other primitive races) are approached incorrectly, they could set off an intergalactic war resulting in millions of lost lives or even the destruction of an entire race or Planet if it turns out the immature (barbaric) race cannot be contained and "pacified."
People like to think they're evolved such as in "Star Trek' with our interpretation of humans in the United Federation of Planets. However, we're really like hotheaded Klingons that get angry at every little thing. Then you've got greedy corporations that are sly and manipulative ilke Romulans.
There are a handful of good humans like in "Star Trek." There are also logical humans like Vulcans. However, the population density as of 3/29 of 2015 is more full of hotheaded Klingons and sly Romulans than there are rational Vulcans and sympathetic humans.
I really wish we could have the type of society that the late Leonard Nimoy (who passed away 2/27 of 2015) envisioned for us, but we're not there yet. Until humans can look themslves in the mirror and be honest with themselves, trying to mingle with aliens with our current mental state would be a total and utter disaster.
=====
Is This Thing On?
19
18
43
The fierce debate over whether we should try to contact extraterrestrial life or wait for aliens to contact us.
By Dan Falk
Littler Green Men
Earth to the Toy Story aliens. Do you read us?
Photo by JD Hancock/Flickr
This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. On Thursday, April 9, Future Tense will host an event in Washington, D.C., on the future of space exploration. For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.
It’s been more than 50 years since astronomers carried out the first systematic attempt to hunt for radio signals from civilizations beyond our solar system-a quest known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. During that time, our telescopes have heard only deafening silence-which has some scientists wondering if it’s time for Earthlings to start the conversation.
Proponents of “Active SETI” believe that, instead of just passively listening for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, we should be actively reaching out to our galactic neighbors-that is, we should be using our most powerful radio transmitters (like the giant dish-telescope at Arecibo, in Puerto Rico) to send messages in the direction of the nearest stars.
“In the past we’ve always assumed that any extraterrestrial civilization with the capacity to detect us will automatically take the initiative to make contact, sending us a powerful signal to let us know they exist,” says Douglas Vakoch of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and a leading proponent of Active SETI. “But there may be civilizations out there that refuse to reveal their existence unless we make it clear that we want to make contact.”
Active SETI has always been a contentious issue. Back in 2006 the International Academy of Astronautics convened a committee on SETI-but when the group refused to push for a ban on proactive transmissions, two prominent members, John Billingham and Michael Michaud, resigned. Even the editorial board of the prestigious journal Nature has cautioned that “the risk posed by active SETI is real. … It is not obvious that all extraterrestrial civilizations will be benign-or that contact with even a benign one would not have serious repercussions for people here on Earth.”
The debate reignited in February at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in San Jose. Vakoch arranged for a symposium as well as a press briefing to discuss Active SETI at the conference; later that week, he convened an all-day workshop at the institute-and once again the discussion was heated.
What everyone agrees on-and it’s just about the only thing they agree on-is that any alien civilizations we find are likely to be much more advanced than our own. (It’s a simple matter of statistics: We’re only a few hundred years old as an advanced industrial species, while the galaxy has been here for some 13 billion years; any ETs we encounter are sure to be a lot older than us, and thus, presumably, a lot more advanced.) Fancier technology, greater risk.
Science fiction writer David Brin is an outspoken critic of Active SETI. He points to the history of our own planet, in which encounters between cultures of greatly differing technological sophistication rarely go well. “We have many examples where a technologically advanced civilization contacted a technologically less advanced civilization,” he says. (European colonizing efforts in Africa and the Americas come to mind.) “And in every one of those cases, there was pain. Even when both sides had the best of intentions.”
This pattern, Brin says, applies even when human beings aren’t involved. When plate tectonics brought the land masses that we now call North and South America together, about 3 million years ago, it enabled contact between the placental mammals of the north and the marsupial mammals of the south. “Within a million years, almost all of the marsupial mammals were extinct,” Brin says. “Contact between biomes had major extinction consequences every time it happened on Earth. I’m not claiming this is how things will go when we meet aliens-but it suggests that we should at least talk it over first.”
SETI pioneer Jill Tarter, the astronomer who famously served as the model for the main character in Carl Sagan’s Contact, agrees that it’s prudent to listen before we shout. “We should recognize that asymmetry [in technological sophistication], and allow the older technologies to take on the greater burden of transmitting,” she says. “We should listen, first, as youngsters.”
Unless Vakoch is right, and they are waiting to hear from us. If that’s the case, and we choose to remain silent, we’re squandering an incredible opportunity. “Perhaps interstellar communication is a form of economic exchange, where civilizations share valuable information with one another in a multigenerational form of reciprocal altruism,” he says, adding that examples of this sort of altruism can be seen in a variety of animal species here on Earth.
Seth Shostak, the institute’s wisecracking, mop-topped senior astronomer, agrees that we have little to lose, and possibly much to gain, by reaching out. Besides, they probably already know we’re here: Our radio and television broadcasts, and especially our military radar, have been leaking into space for some 70 years, Shostak points out. There’s no putting the electromagnetic cat back in the bag.
“Any society that’s at least 100 or 200 years more advanced than we are will be able to pick up our leakage,” says Shostak. “Unless they’ve stopped developing technology-which is of course possible, but then they’re of no threat to us.” (Shostak’s license plate, incidentally, reads SETI GUY; Vakoch has the more cryptic ASETI, for Active SETI.)
But maybe we haven’t yet blown our cover: Brin doesn’t accept Shostak’s assertion that “they” already know we’re here (sometimes called the “barn door” issue). Shostak is too generous in calculating how visible we are from hundreds (or even thousands) of light-years away, says Brin, who holds a Ph.D. in planetary science and has done consulting work for NASA. Terrestrial radio and TV signals, from I Love Lucy to whatever is leaking out of Vandenberg and Guantánamo, are relatively weak. Furthermore, electromagnetic signals fall off in proportion to the square of the distance (and ETs, if they exist, are pretty darn distant). Most likely, Brin says, they have no idea we’re here-and they won’t, unless we start beaming powerful, highly directed signals in the manner that Vakoch proposes. (The few physical-artifact messages that we’ve sent-on the Pioneer and Voyager probes, for example-are long shots in the extreme. They contain basic information about humans and our planet; on Voyager, there was also a gold record with music ranging from Mozart to Chuck Berry, and other greetings from Earthlings. They’re not heading for any particular star, and thus may never be intercepted at all-but Voyager 1 will be within two light-years of a star called Gliese 445 in about 40,000 years.)
Brin isn’t alone in urging caution. More than two dozen scientists have signed a position statement calling for a moratorium on Active SETI until “a worldwide scientific, political and humanitarian discussion” has taken place. Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, has signed on; so too have planet hunter Geoff Marcy and best-selling science author Paul Davies. The petition doesn’t say anything about ravenous, drooling aliens-it merely notes that “it is impossible to predict whether [extraterrestrial intelligence] will be benign or hostile.” But some, like renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking, have been more direct. Hawking recently warned that an advanced alien civilization, having depleted the resources of its home planet, might be “looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach.” He also cited the analogy of Christopher Columbus arriving in the Americas, “which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”
Clichéd as it may be, the oft-repeated Columbus analogy sometimes feels as though it has the power to sink Active SETI. It is, however, a gross oversimplification of human history. Kathryn Denning, an anthropologist at York University in Toronto, points out that not all cross-cultural contact has been harmful. Even the European arrival in the Americans wasn’t all bad. “Many of the First Nations of the New World are very much alive, and on the ascendancy, [especially] in the Southern Hemisphere,” she told me recently. Yes, there was a period of turmoil; but later there was “syncretism, friendship, intermarriage … a slow merging of two societies.”
Will ETs be friendly teachers or despotic overlords? Will we be their pupils, or their lunch? For an endeavor that purports to be rooted in science, much of what SETI enthusiasts have to say seems to hinge on whether they grew up with the death-ray-wielding invaders of The War of the Worlds, or the benevolent brainiacs of Contact.
Top Comment
Given the massive number of habitable planets out there, I'm pretty sure that there's intelligent life on many of them. More...
-dsimon
45 CommentsJoin In
For optimists like Vakoch, the mere possibility that ET might be benevolent is enough to justify reaching out. Making contact would provide, at the very least, “a unique opportunity to hold a mirror up to ourselves-to understand how much about our human way of experiencing the world is unique to our species, and how much taps into a more universal way of understanding.” Are math and science universal, or mere human constructs? What about ethics? With contact, at last we would know. “We might learn about alien culture, art, and music,” says Vakoch. But even more importantly, deciding what we wanted to say would have an immediate payoff (a sentiment that even Brin agrees with). Pondering what we want to say about ourselves to another civilization, he says, would force us to think about our most basic values.
“We sometimes talk about SETI as an attempt to join the galactic club,” Vakoch says. “But I never hear anyone talking about paying our dues-or even submitting an application. That’s what Active SETI is. And it may just be the approach that helps us make contact with another world.”
Dan Falk is a science journalist based in Toronto and is the co-host of BookLab, a podcast that reviews popular science books.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/03/active_seti_should_we_reach_out_to_extraterrestrial_life_or_are_aliens_dangerous.html