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What do we do if SETI is successful?

• alganet 1y ago
  We can make it so it's never aliens, or always aliens. Public and science opinion has become a free for all lately. People are so caught up in the 3I/ATLAS stuff, for example. Should we beam a message to it? What should we think of it? It's a circus. Let's go back to Boyajian's Star instead. Can we really be sure the dimming is not caused by a mothership coming from that direction? It explains everything, right? Maybe that's how they communicate, by sending a paper plane and opening a large occlusion origami that says "we come from this general direction" (I'm cosplaying Avi Loeb here, satirically). There's something about interpretation in all of this. Space is full of radio signals. We determine lots of them to be natural (with good reason). I'm afraid proposing "we should answer" (in case of electromagnetic signals) could lead to a scenario in which people are encouraged to believe something without the means to verifying it. Some idiot group could do it just to increase the popular optimism about space in order to induce a favorable perception on the development of space technologies with the ultimate goal of just bumping some industry with money. It's the kind of world we live in right now, unfortunatelly. If we want to be serious about humanity's place in the universe, first we need to be serious about our home right here. I don't think we're mature enough to have responsible control over technologies that could be used to send a powerful signal into space.
  • estimator7292 1y ago
    I've always thought that the public reaction to aliens in Contact was precisely, painfully accurate. Panic, cults, religions, the typical human response to something huge, unknown, and unknowable.
    • vee-kay 1y ago
      You should see the movie Don't Look Up. It is even more painfully accurate portrayal of our times, and it eeriely explains why the world's richest men are building and testing rockets and spaceships. (Answer: No, it ain't merely for space tourism or mere profits. They know their misdeeds will ruin the Earth one day, so they are preparing a Plan B.)
      • alganet 1y ago
        Dude, the movie Don't Look Up is a metaphor for climate change denialism. It has nothing to do with asteroids.
        • vee-kay 1y ago
          The movie Don't Look Up is still an apt metaphor, because the variable (how the apocalypse will happen) may change, but the outcome won't. The same richest elites that refuse to acknowledge and do anything to revert climate change, will do nothing (except try to escape Earth in spaceships) if and when any humanity detects and anticipates any Earth destroying apocalypse inducer (asteroid/meteor or extreme solar flare) from out of the depths of space.
          • alganet 1y ago
            It's kind of a stretch. To a more naive, metaphor-blind audience, your mention of Don't Look Up makes it look like the scientists are warning about an alien comet and I'm the one ignoring it. I'm very familiar with apocalyptical narratives of all kinds, but what I'm approaching here is much different. I'm talking about the integrity of scientific endeavours. In particular, space exploration endeavours.
  • wijwp 1y ago
    > People are so caught up in the 3I/ATLAS stuff, for example. Should we beam a message to it? What should we think of it? It's a circus. Is it really a circus? Seems almost everyone who knows what they're talking about says it's just a natural object. Anything can be a circus if you listen to people who don't know what they're talking about.
    • alganet 1y ago
      I think Avi knows what he's doing, and he wants other scientists to dismiss him in public, so he gets an audience. However, there is a chance he could be underestimating that audience, or at least part of it. Finding a new type of comet is a scientific breakthrough, and I think his work points in that direction (still a guess from him though, but an educated one). He is trying to cake up those potential genuine discovers with sloppy sensacionalist makeup on top, and that's why I call it a circus. If in a few months we confirm that 3I/ATLAS is a new kind of comet, he could use the papers he wrote to say he found evidence of that new type first, and also described its landmark characteristics. It would "legitimize" him. But the alien stuff would probably continue to be garbage. He can then say the scientists were skeptics, but he was right. Now, what angle the aliens narrative serve? Why would a scientist subject himself to being a clown? I don't exactly know. In his case, I don't think it's good stuff. I chose Tabby's Star to satirize him because my description of a mothership deploying an origami-like occluder matches the overall conclusion from the research at the time (a disturbed exomoon). It's an object from that system that changed is shape. In fact, "disturbed exosatellite" and "unfolding mothership from a planet" are quite compatible descriptions. What matters here is epistemology (we can't know if it's natural or not). Also, it's a good demonstration that we (general public non-astronomers) don't need his antics to imagine things.
• Bender 1y ago
  What Do We Do If SETI Is Successful? Not sure. Can some of HN at least agree that if it's the Empire we all join and act as if we love serving the Emperor and then put subtle code in the planet killing weapons that overload and self destruct if pointed at human listed planets?
  • tetris11 1y ago
    If survival is key in that regard, then we'd probably be encouraged to spread/cohabit with other species' planets so that the target is more fuzzy. Earth might still be at risk, but never underestimate the human ability to sell large tracts of land to foreign investors in exchange for a few concessions.
    • Bender 1y ago
      we'd probably be encouraged to spread/cohabit with other species I will do my part to find out which humanoid-like species are genetically compatible with as wide of coverage humanly possible.
      • IAmBroom 1y ago
        Username does not check out.
        • Bender 1y ago
          Hard disagree [1] [1] - https://theinfosphere.org/Bender_Bending_Rodriguez#Relationships https://theinfosphere.org/Bender_Bending_Rodriguez#Relations...
    • general1465 1y ago
      Unless we will find some Space Nazis like Qu from All Tomorrows.
• boznz 1y ago
  Humanity Needs Aliens to Survive => https://rodyne.com/?p=3051 https://rodyne.com/?p=3051
  • no_wizard 1y ago
    Though I feel this is fairly lazily written, it does have a basic premise I've seen before. I read an article about post cold war US society. Basically, from 1989-2001 the United States was in a transition period that culminated with the first opportunity to seize on a "universal bad" (terrorism) because the USSR filled the role so readily for so long, US society was set adrift with partisan factions that couldn't find a common enemy to get behind in times of internal struggle. That is the gist of the article, sub USSR for aliens and all of humanity for US society and you have the same basic outline
• general1465 1y ago
  As a pragmatic opportunist - Setup a massive array of antennas in space for reception only - Try to decode their radio traffic and understand how they are exchanging information - Steal their their knowledge and use it to advance human race forward. - Reduce all our electromagnetic emissions to minimum to deny them the same advantage. Forbid anyone from sending signal towards them so we have time to technologically catch up to them without them noticing. Any kind of contact will ends up in abysmal disaster as we have seen in the past, when advanced civilization shown up on shores of less advanced one.
  • edflsafoiewq 1y ago
    You're unlikely to get any radio signal that isn't specifically meant for you.
    • general1465 1y ago
      If SETI would be able to catch their signal on Earth, then antenna array in the space aimed at them, far from Earth to prevent our noise could work.
    • IAmBroom 1y ago
      That's not how electromagnetic radiation works.
      • nh23423fefe 1y ago
        Efficient communication looks like noise.
      • jerf 1y ago
        It kind of is. You're thinking directionality, but there's also the fact that optimal transmission will involve using compression and possibly encryption, which by its nature turns the signal into noise if you don't already know it's a signal. An optimal signal, which it seems reasonable to assume would be what aliens would be using by the time they're communicating across star systems, would be much more difficult to detect as a signal than something like an FM radio station, which puts a lot of energy into broadcasting a carrier that is there even if the station is transmitting total silence.
• fph 1y ago
  With the current world leadership, I'm (non-sarcastically) afraid someone will try to 'export democracy' to Mars.
  • vee-kay 1y ago
    Don't Look Up
• knowitnone3 1y ago
  Send memes. Most commenters here assume receiving a message means aliens can reach us - they can't. Think about how distant the closest galaxy is and think about how long it would take to reach them even at light speed. The size of the ship needed, the amount of fuel needed not only for acceleration but stopping as well. Even if they 100x or 1000x our space abilities, it would still be impossible.
  • ianburrell 1y ago
    It also assumes that it is nearby aliens. Our radio transmissions have only gone 100 light years, and probably not detectable beyond a few. But the aliens could be saying hello to everyone from thousand light years away. It also could not be a message. I think we have ruled out nearby Dyson Swarm (as in thousands of light years), but we could find one in rest of our galaxy or even Andromeda. Dyson Swarms should be noticeably weird infrared stars. It is also quite possible that we never decode their message. Even with one designed to be decoded, their thinking could be too different.
  • general1465 1y ago
    Or they could just pop up here because they have mastered quantum physics and can just use quantum tunnelling to teleport whole ship across space in an instant.
• leeroyjenkins11 1y ago
  Get better camouflage so we don't get get found in the Dark Forrest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis >The name of the hypothesis derives from Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest, as in a "dark forest" filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like ghosts". According to the dark forest hypothesis, since the intentions of any newly contacted civilization can never be known with certainty, then if one is encountered, it is best to make a preemptive strike, in order to avoid the potential extinction of one's own species. The novel provides a detailed investigation of Liu's concerns about alien contact.
  • sdwr 1y ago
    That's an allegory for life under authoritarian rule, not a literal alien contact plan
    • cousinbryce 1y ago
      Bold to assume aliens will ascribe to something besides despotism
      • kulahan 1y ago
        You can't imagine that one single alien race anywhere will deviate from this? Wouldn't that kinda imply that your vision on the topic is almost certainly wrong anyways?
    • IAmBroom 1y ago
      Or, both.
    • 9dev 1y ago
      IIRC the author said there are no meta layers of meaning, it’s just honest to god fiction written to be entertaining. I’m struggling a little myself to accept that for the entire trilogy, but that’s that.
      • 1y ago
• vee-kay 1y ago
  The moot question isn't what will happen after Earth receives and confirms an alien signal. The question is moot, because any alien species advanced enough to send directed signals across solar systems, can and will reach, overwhelm and subsume Earth with ease, once we Earthlings manage to contact such aliens. And if such events happened in the past, that might explain a few interesting notions we humans tend to have. "Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God." ~Shermer's last law But what if that was their intention from the very beginning? What if Earth itself is just yet another alien farm? What if Earth's beautiful and bountiful life (flora and fauna) was the result of terraforming, by aliens, but indirectly using spores tacked onto cosmic flying objects (comets, meteors, asteroids) that they knew will cross such solar systems and crash into inhabitable planets on some not so random chance? Abiogenesis is the emergence of life from nonliving organics. It is the leading theory regarding how life spawned on Earth, but it is being questioned due to recent evidence. Conditions for Life: For life to exist, certain conditions must be met. These include: * Presence of Water: Essential for biochemical reactions. * Organic Compounds: Building blocks like carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen are crucial. * Energy Source: Sunlight or geothermal energy can drive life processes. Evidence and Research: While no definitive evidence of extraterrestrial life has been found, scientists continue to explore environments on other planets, such as Mars and Europa, which may harbor conditions suitable for life. The study of extremophiles on Earth—organisms that thrive in harsh conditions—provides insights into how life might exist elsewhere in the universe One prominent theory regarding the extraterrestrial origin of life is Panspermia. The Panspermia Hypothesis suggests that life, or the building blocks of life, may have been transported to Earth via comets, asteroids, or space dust. There are several forms of panspermia: * Naturalistic Panspermia: Life evolves on another planet and is ejected into space, eventually landing on Earth. * Directed Panspermia: Intelligent beings from another planet intentionally send life to Earth. * Intelligent Design Panspermia: Life is designed and seeded by extraterrestrial intelligences. I believe Earth life is the result of Natural Panspermia. But if SETI or other observatories detect and confirm alien signal, then Directed Panspermia might be our origin. https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a66036689/a-scientist-says-aliens-may-have-started-life-on-earth/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a66036689/a-scientist...
  • wkat4242 1y ago
• Simulacra 1y ago
  Isn't that what the movie Contact was about? In all seriousness, I think if we did receive something, it would be classified immediately, and the government, or governments, will move very swiftly with a heavy hand to silence the discovery. At the very least until they know exactly what it is, what it is conveying, and how to respond. That said, I think that if it got out, a lot of people would absolutely lose their snot. Completely. It would be chaos in some places.
  • whiplash451 1y ago
    People would simply not believe it. I don’t think there is world where aliens messaging is taken seriously on earth (at scale). People would attribute it to the military.
  • tstactplsignore 1y ago
    Ha, or, perhaps for a 2025 variant: it would quickly be shared publicly by government scientists (who are not as secretive or good at keeping secrets as the public seems to think!), the evidence all shared publicly, subject to international peer review and consensus. And then 70% of people would believe it's made-up. The US-sphere would believe China made it up as a plot (or "globalists") and the developing world and BRICS would believe the US made it up as a plot. Western countries would repeatedly sign and then remove themselves from international treaties to prepare for contact. Bit too on the nose, maybe, but a heck of a lot more likely than a coverup by government scientists.
    • marcosdumay 1y ago
      So... Like Contact?
      • lloeki 1y ago
        More like the X-Files
  • flux3125 1y ago
    >That said, I think that if it got out, a lot of people would absolutely lose their snot. Completely. It would be chaos in some places. It would definitely be the most important discovery ever made and would move some billions of dollars, but realistically I think people would just carry on with their lives (assuming physical contact with them is impossible in a lifetime).
• gmuslera 1y ago
  Time is a factor here. How close in time and space would be them? If we get something coming from more than 100 light years away we might not have the technology to respond, and if we do it may not matter anyway if we are at risk of not having a technological civilization anymore 100-200 years forward. So the meaningful actions on those cases may not include answering back. Then it will be the actual use of that message. Lets assume that we will decide that is a signal from a civilization that is out there. It will be a signal meant for us and for any other civilization that doesn't have the knowledge/culture level as them, meant for giving us a common ground for communicating back, or it will be something that just will tell us that someone intelligent is out there, but no mean to understand it? So the options are that we find apparently benevolent aliens willing to contact us, or that we find out that someone is out there but no way to communicate/reach them. I think the second scenario is the most probable one, and how our civilization will react if widely enough will change with time, novelty at first and indifference a few years later.
  • kulahan 1y ago
    I cannot imagine any scenario where we're just 100-200 years away from "no more tech" that isn't purely total nuclear destruction. Even then, we'd probably be so close to getting back to a technological civilization that it'd be a blip in the radar at best if we're talking about a society that far away. We lost 150 years of progress? That's okay, we had 800 more years to advance before the aliens showed up or whatever. It's such a weird thing I see so many people assuming. We were down to like 16,000 humans on Earth at one point, and that was before we'd developed things that you could theoretically scavenge and jumpstart your tech. People need to stop doomscrolling; I'm certain this is depression projected.
    • wat10000 1y ago
      It was also before we'd burned all the easily accessible fossil fuels.
      • smallmancontrov 1y ago
        We mined all of the easily accessible drywall gypsum too, I guess we wouldn't be able to have houses either and would have to live outside in the cold and rain!
• em-bee 1y ago
  this is a question i have explored as part of my own scifi world building: what is a realistic timeline for first contact, and how will it actually happen? so we decode a message that we are pretty sure is of alien origin. we send a message back and then wait a few decades or centuries. we don't know how far away the origin of the message is. let's assume that it is less than 50 light years. that's still a round trip of 100 years. in other words it's a generational project, and we don't know if our first response is understood. we'll have to keep iterating until we can confirm that we are actually communicating. and then, the next step will be to try to understand each other. with a round trip that long, even under the most optimal conditions just establishing a dialog based on say math is going to take a few centuries. of course once we have a dialog, communication is going to speed up because then we can send longer messages. but then it could still take anywhere from 500 to 1000 years before a common language is developed and we are able to share actual scientific and engineering knowledge. once we reached that level of communication however, we can collaborate on developing FTL. contrary to star trek, it was always my idea that FTL travel is not developed by the inhabitants of each planet/star system on their own, but only in collaboration across multiple such systems. maybe even more than two. driven by the desire to meet each other. so from the point of the first received message it will be one millennium before we get to learn anything about and from these aliens, and another millennium before we can meet them in person. and that's the optimistic projection. it could just as well take 10 times as long.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • analog31 1y ago
    I predict that if FTL travel is possible, it will happen in our lifetimes, perhaps even as soon as 20 years ago.
    • the_gipsy 1y ago
      That's what they said 30 years ago
    • AppleBananaPie 1y ago
• fuzzfactor 1y ago
  >What do we do if SETI is successful? Resume the search for intelligence right here on Earth?
• skc 1y ago
  If SETI is successful it would be a fascinating to sit back and observe the deeply religious.
  • kulahan 1y ago
    The Catholic church answered this question ages ago. I assume the other major religions did too. It's really not concerning at all to the institution; the major problem would be with people who don't actually understand their own religion. Granted, this would be a lot of people, but I think it'd be a midrange of "kinda religious, but not enough to dive in"-types who are mostly freaking out over the revelation.
    • 9dev 1y ago
      So, how does the story go? Only earth is blessed by god, because Jesus crashed here, and all the alien races are toast because they didn’t have a chance to learn about Christ, Savior of the strange bipeds from Earth? I’m sure they came up with an elaborate story how Jesus loves sentient mollusks from Alpha Centauri, but I hope most people are smart enough to realise how little sense it all makes. I for one am curious how this plays out, if I’m lucky enough to witness it.
      • kulahan 1y ago
        tl;dr Humans were first and most important, but if you're omnipotent and building an ant farm, it's logical to provide a nearly infinite number of things to interest and enrich your creations. If there are other creatures, and they're given a rational soul, they were also made aware of God's existence. At the end of the day, the Catholics (at least) don't believe they were given full knowledge of the universe at some arbitrary point in the past. Instead, we were plopped into it and expected to explore and understand it. This will require us to occasionally update our teachings - just like how scientists need to update their teachings when they discover they didn't understand something before. It's unbelievably obnoxious to simply assume everyone who doesn't scoff at religion simply isn't "smart enough". You clearly haven't taken much time to understand the topic if you can't come up with even one good argument. Even Richard Dawkins is able to connect with religious logic to a degree.
• dudeinjapan 1y ago
  Broadcast them Star Trek reruns to convince them to adopt the Prime Directive.
• aurizon 1y ago
  Earth has a number of very high power semi directional transmitters operating. By this I mean the assorted 50 hertz and 60 hertz AC power systems. These are coherent in areas because there are separated adjacent systems that act to isolate them. These are long in wavelength at about 3000 miles and will penetrate the ionosphere via capacitance. If we had a long wave receiver in orbit past the earth, it could listen on an incrementally varying wavelength from 25 hertz to ~~300 hertz for any similarly radiating civilisation. This radiation would be reduced by square law spreading, but a phase locked loop receiver that gradually scanned this frequency space should be able to detect such radiation out to 100-500 light years. The PLL listens for a long integrating interval, and then steps to the next frequency. The antenna can be tuned to cover the 25 Hz to 300 Hz spectrum by use of mechanically adjustable loading coils. Such an antenna could be a simple long wire that is gravitationally solar stabilised so it would sweep annually. A similar one could be earth centered to enable sweeps at it's far from earth orbit much faster than annually? This is a project that Elon Musk could easily perform and it might get us a Nobel? if we found anything? It would sit there and sieve data in hope of success?
• wewewedxfgdf 1y ago
  I think SETI is a worthwhile thing do but rank its chances of success at zero. Just my personal opinion.
  • 7373737373 1y ago
    I think it's wise to follow the maxim of not calling something impossible unless some physical law prevents it
• kulahan 1y ago
  In the end, I kinda... don't care. Look up - there's nothing. There should be at least some alien civilizations trying to make their presence known. There should be some signs somewhere that could be recognized universally as either "stay away" or "come here". It really should be trivial to locate technological civilizations unless you've got some incredibly solid reason as to why EVERY SINGLE ALIEN CIVILIZATION IN THE UNIVERSE acts a certain way. Color me doubtful. We have billions and billions of data points showing the Universe is empty. We have exactly one (1) data point showing it isn't. And that's us. Besides, just look at the timeline. The universe has only been cool enough, with enough stable stars, with enough formed planets for potential life to form for a few billion years. Between that and the Drake equation, life alone is likely to be unreasonably uncommon. Life that forms after a planet becomes stable, doesn't have any planet-altering disasters, evolves to complex multicellular forms, evolves some kind of intelligence, becomes social, forms a society, advances technology, and starts exploring the universe...? Why bother? The math doesn't work. Note: I'm not speaking about any KIND of life existing, I'm speaking about technological civilizations. My belief is that we are essentially the forerunners.
  • squigz 1y ago
    The idea that humanity is the only civilization in the entire universe strikes me as the absolute height of human arrogance.
    • kulahan 1y ago
      Lots of things seem arrogant to lots of people, but without some logical basis, it's worth ignoring.
    • pfdietz 1y ago
      This is an ad hominem argument. It attacks a position not because it's wrong, but because if you advance it you're a bad person.
      • squigz 1y ago
        Not really. An ad hominem argument would be more like calling GP an idiot for thinking it should be "trivial" to find civilizations in the universe, but I wouldn't do that.
• theletterf 1y ago
  For a somber, deeply intellectual view of what could happen, I can't recommend enough Stanislaw Lem's His Master's Voice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice_%28novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice_%28novel%... "Given that our civilization is unable to assimilate well even those concepts that originate in human heads when they appear outside its main current, although the creators of those concepts are, after all, children of the same age—how could we have assumed that we would be capable of understanding a civilization totally unlike ours, if it addressed us across the cosmic gulf?"
  • chistev 1y ago
    Mathematics
  • themafia 1y ago
    Me and my dog cannot talk. I understand my dog and he understands me. If they experience death then we have massive common ground already.
    • beAbU 1y ago
      And you are comfortable being the dog in this cosmic relationship then?
      • conartist6 1y ago
        it's that we're made out of meat: https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...
        • carpo 1y ago
          Man I love that story.
      • estimator7292 1y ago
        Does it make you uncomfortable to think an alien civilization might be somehow superior to humans? That's a pretty immature thing to be insecure about.
• breve 1y ago
  I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
• allenrb 1y ago
  > What do we do if SETI is successful? Beg to be saved from ourselves? Fire up the old electronic thumb? Open a theme restaurant?
• bluGill 1y ago
  The decision to not respond should not be considered an option for the UN. They can get a week max to decide what to respond, but a response needs to be sent quick. Otherwise you can assume someone will take the choice away and respond anyway. That someone could be a nation not liking the UN discussions, or it could be a rogue scientists with access to the powerful radios. (I doubt most of us could respond if we wanted to - even if someone is willing to break all laws they are either protected by too much security or they are too expensive to afford - but I guarantee someone who works at such a facility is willing to risk responding if governments delay too long) Even if the UN makes a respond expect someone else to send a different one at some point.
  • joe_the_user 1y ago
    No individual is going to have the resources to respond to an alien signal unless it comes from Proxima Centari (very maybe) or not much further. No current earth broad would be easily recognizable from Proxima Centari with earth technology - a factor to consider when thinking about why entities aren't being easily detected. A powerful and very carefully aimed laser might work for greater distances but that wouldn't be something that can assembled in someone's garage. But oppositely, if naturally defusing radio waves could be somehow detected from some further away location, the aliens would know already we're here and indeed lots about us so hand wringing about responding seems dumb there too.
    • socalgal2 1y ago
      This! I asked JPL/Nasa friends, if we were at Alpha Centuri could we detect Earth signals. Answer: No, not currently. Please correct me if you have data to the contrary.
      • godelski 1y ago
        They are correct. The sun is very very loud, and across a wide spectrum of radiowaves.
      • N19PEDL2 1y ago
• wernerb 1y ago
  This is referenced in a sci fi book "The dark forest" of the series "The 3 body problem". It sets a convincing narrative that because of time taken for observation and response and development speed of society it is most likely that all civilizations that announce themselves would likely be a threat in terms of technological supremacy eventually to observing civilizations. In other words, we don't hear anything because any sufficiently advanced civilization would not want to risk being discovered. I.e., the "dark silent forest".
  • Balgair 1y ago
    I never did buy the dark forest argument. I mean, even in the books, there were smidgeons of humanity left over. And then all the dimension collapsing strangeness. You just can never be sure. I dunno, it just reeks of the culture of suspicion in communist China. A product of that place and time. My own idea is the 'used car salesman' idea of the universe. (Reeking of my own mind and place and time). To me, economics will rule in the galactic community. In that water, metals, energy, it's all cheap and everywhere. No need to have any competition over it. No, the only scarce thing is life and then even more it's intelligence. Any other civilization will be desperate to get rights over us and our history. So, to me, the aliens will come to us loud and proud. Balloons and banners. And of course, a contract as long as a the rings of Saturn, with print as small as the atoms. We shouldn't be wary of the weapons, but the lawyers
    • antonvs 1y ago
      I agree, the dark forest argument seems rooted in a kind of paranoia bordering on the insane. No sane culture says “we better just exterminate anyone else we come across just in case,” which is essentially the threat that the dark forest is guarding against. And a culture that does act that way is likely to end up exterminating itself.
      • stickfigure 1y ago
        And yet we see nations like Russia (well, leaders like Putin) acting as if the world is a zero-sum game. The war in Ukraine vaguely looks like the Borg trying to assimilate every resource (geographical or human) in sight. China (well, Xi) seems to be eyeing a similar path. I feel like there's something worth noting about the Three Body Problem being a product of its culture.
• gxd 1y ago
  My upcoming story game, a love letter to SETI and the Hacker News crowd, offers some perspectives on the question: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3040110/Outsider/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/3040110/Outsider/ It will be out in 2 weeks!
• ricksunny 1y ago
  former chairman of the board of the SETI Institute John Gertz: 'In fact, the author has heard from serious U.S. SETI researchers that they are convinced that “men in black suits” will appear at their laboratory door the moment a detection is confirmed.' Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.08422 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.08422
  • psunavy03 1y ago
    And yet no one is ever able to describe what agency or jurisdiction these "men in black suits" will work for. This basically is just demonstrating how people very very good in their field can still fail Civics 101. Men In Black were some funny movies back in the day, but they were just movies.
    • ricksunny 1y ago
      I see the speak-first,research-never is strong with this one. —- https://www.public.news/p/pentagon-is-illegally-hiding-secret https://www.public.news/p/pentagon-is-illegally-hiding-secre...
    • tbrownaw 1y ago
      Well obviously they'd be employed by the oil companies to suppress knowledge of advanced energy sources.
    • protocolture 1y ago
      The "Men in Black" thing predates the comedy films and the comics they were based on. They are (true or not) a persistent element in UFO abduction stories. "The term is generic, as it is used for any unusual, threatening or strangely behaved individual whose appearance on the scene can be linked in some fashion with a UFO sighting." Some stories dont even posit them as being from the government, just designed to give that impression. Some reckon alien hybrids. Even in the MiB films they were separate and just controlled the government largely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_black https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_black Its a general fear of government intervention. If you are asking on what legal basis this fear is founded. I don't think there needs to be one. Lots of governments do illegal stuff. Suits are the classic G man look. They dont need "Jurisdiction" to dress in a suit and harass SETI.
• ricksunny 1y ago
  The new proposed protocol from IAA that the article references but does not link to: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.14506 https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.14506 IMO a protocol that doesn't involve automated instantaneous backing up of data on a publicly-referenceable blockchain is worthless due to the apparently legitimate (in the eyes SETI researchers that a former SETI institute chairman references) concern about security services quietly stepping in the way. (see my other comment for reference)
• ProAm 1y ago
  With the world today, if it is successful we should 'run'. We will attack them and they will kill us.
• back2dafucha 1y ago
  [dead]
• King-Aaron 1y ago
  Well now that Beatriz Villarroels paper on transient objects in orbit prior to our space programs has been through the peer review process and has been published, what if we framed the question as "What do we do if the non human intelligence was already here" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-92162-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-92162-7
• nowittyusername 1y ago
  Run for the hills!! Any advanced alien civilization that willingly contacts us should automatically be deemed an existential threat. Because they would be smart enough to know the societal damage they caused by this revelation and they did it anyways...
  • moomoo11 1y ago
    "its just a prank bro" - alien broccoli heads
  • autoexec 1y ago
    > they would be smart enough to know the societal damage they caused by this revelation Ideally they'd hold off until we were in a place where they thought we could handle it, but I can also see the argument made that the damage is just "growing pains" that every society in the universe has to eventually deal with, and that societies which survive the initial societal damage will recover quickly with the help of the knowledge and technology they gain access to while closed-minded and inflexible societies that fail to survive the initial societal damage might not be the kind of folks you'd want to be a part of your interstellar community anyway. How we'll react when confronted with the fact that we aren't alone in the universe might be the test that determines if we get to join to club, or be sold as pets, or put to work in the mines, or just get left alone.
  • awb 1y ago
    > Because they would be smart enough to know the societal damage they caused by this revelation and they did it anyways... That seems like a human-centric perspective. Maybe they’re a cooperative, altruistic society with an innate desire to help, and maybe had been helped by others before. To not teach us about the imminent dangers of the universe might seem unconscionable to them. Or maybe they’re a highly ordered society with an innate common goal and see nothing wrong with asking other entities to join their mission. Sure, some humans may view their contact as intrusive or harmful, but that doesn’t mean they automatically would as well. If I had to bet, I’d bet you’re right, but the universe is a big place and who knows what societies might be out there that would feel totally foreign to us.
• moomoo11 1y ago
  We'll deal with it when it happens.
• anigbrowl 1y ago
  Absolutely pointless filler article, given the massively path-dependent consequences of what form this discovery might take.
• khafra 1y ago
  We'd want to do what we should be doing anyway--put a few trillion dollars, and all the scientific prestige we can muster, into solving ASI alignment; and then into building ASI. The local aliens that we're just beginning to get to know could put us in a much better negotiating position when we meet the aliens from other places.
• kyledrake 1y ago
  > Even Carl Sagan (a general believer that any civilization advanced enough for interstellar travel would be altruistic, not hostile) called the practice of METI “deeply unwise and immature,” and recommended that “the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand. https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
  • olooney 1y ago
    What's the original source for this Sagan quote? > carl sagan called METI “deeply unwise and immature" It's repeated ad nauseum online, but always verbatim, just those few words and never a full passage, and never with a citation. In other words, it has all the hallmarks of an apocryphal quote or misattribution. The reason I'm suspicious is because Sagan contributed to the Aricebo message[1], which is literally sending such a radio signal, and the the Voyager disc[2], which is similar. He even wrote an entire sci-fi novel[3] about it. He describes radio contact in generally positive and hopeful terms in his book Cosmos. He of course acknowledges the dangers of encountering a more technologically advanced civilization, but he goes out of his way to contrast the frightening example of the Aztecs with other more peaceful first encounters such as the Tlingit. He also argues that any significantly more advanced species that had survived millions of years would necessarily have achieved zero population growth and would likely be peaceful. You don't have to take my word for it, you can read his own words in the Encyclopedia Galactica chapter of his book on the Internet Archive[4]. So, if the quote you cited was true, it would represent a late-in-life and somewhat surprising change of heart from cautious optimism to "dark forest" style paranoia. Personally, I believe it's simply one of the many falsely attributes quotes floating around the Internet. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(novel) [4]: https://archive.org/details/sagancosmos/page/n184/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/sagancosmos/page/n184/mode/1up
    • 1y ago
• Animats 1y ago
  The real question is whether faster-than-light anything is possible. If not, which is what physics has been saying for a century, then we probably don't have to worry about anything further than 20 light years away. If we pick up something from the other side of the galaxy, it's probably harmless. Arecebo was potentially able to communicate with a similar dish at galactic range. In the neighborhood, there are 83 stellar systems within 20yl, and most have been looked at reasonably thoroughly. There are about a dozen plants in the habitable zone among them. If there's something that could affect us, it's probably one of those stellar systems. Most likely Kepler-90. None of them seem to be talking using RF. There probably is life out there, but spread so thinly that civilizations don't interact.
  • sgt 1y ago
    You're too focused on human lifespans. If you disregard short lifespans, then intergalactic journeys well below light speed (think 0.1c, 0.2c) is perfectly feasible for such a civilization. Humanity will get there too, with post-biology. That doesn't necessarily mean we become machines, but we will have machines augment us.
    • jbstack 1y ago
      > If you disregard short lifespans, then intergalactic journeys well below light speed (think 0.1c, 0.2c) is perfectly feasible for such a civilization They're feasible even with short lifespans with the use of generation ships. Or with suspended animation technology. Given that all three possibilities (life extension, generation ship, suspended animation) are already considered within the realms of possibility by humans (even though we haven't solved any of them yet), it seems a very flawed assumption that no other civilization could solve any of them.
      • vee-kay 1y ago
        The short lifespan is an issue only for species with a fast metabolism. Advanced alien species could have some unique biology (maybe capable of withstanding extreme environmental conditions), and they may have a slower metabolism that allows them to live longer. On Earth itself, some animals or birds such as Greenland Shark, Bowhead Whale, some species of Tortoises (e.g., Galapagos Tortoise), Macaw, Arctic Tern, Koi Fish can live a long time (more than a hundred years). Ocean quahogs are bivalve mollusks known for their impressive lifespans, often exceeding 500 years. The immortal jellyfish, scientifically known as Turritopsis dohrnii, is a unique species capable of biological immortality. It can revert to its earlier life stage after reaching maturity, effectively allowing it to avoid death and potentially live indefinitely. This unique ability is due to a process called transdifferentiation, where its cells transform back into a polyp state. Despite its ability to revert to an earlier life stage, Turritopsis dohrnii is not truly immortal. In nature, it can still fall prey to predators or succumb to disease. Thus, while it can theoretically avoid death through regeneration, individual jellyfish can and do die under various circumstances. Researchers are fascinated by Turritopsis dohrnii for its potential insights into aging and cellular regeneration, which could have implications for human health and longevity.
• alimw 1y ago
  Is this as well as inventing a superintelligent AI? Too much.
• jojobas 1y ago
  1) If a signal is detected, not having a protocol for another 20 years would not make any difference, who cares if the response comes in 10000 years or 10020? Then again, assuming the origin and wavelength is published, sending some gigawatt pulses is feasible even for private rogues today, and scientists keeping it secret appears even more sinister.
• allcottonlinen 1y ago
  Whoa, that’s a wild thought! If SETI actually finds intelligent life, it could change everything — from science and religion to how we see ourselves as humans. I guess the real question is: are we ready to handle that kind of discovery?