A New Scientist editorial: Should we try to promote contact by broadcasting our presence to the heavens? If alien civilisations exist, they are likely to be so far away that our message will not arrive until after we are gone. In that case, what is there to lose? We might as well let them know that we used to be around. If, by chance, there are intelligent aliens within a few tens of light years from Earth, their own SETI programmes might already have sniffed us out. … So let’s make some friendly overtures, rather than leave them to wonder why we’re not transmitting, and what we’ve got to hide.
if it was otherwise, and humans picked up alien transmission from, say, venus, and we found a weaker specie and a less advaced subculture there, plus a planet with resources, we would colonize and destroy them, like it happened so many times with our own kind in our own planet.
and for an alien civilization that could pick our signals and perform light / worm travels, the costs of a colonization couldnt be *that* huge
the indians in america didnt send smoke signals to europe before the colonization, yet it happened, no need to speed that up
How about if someone starts broadcasting a declaration of war? Complete with imagery.
"After all, by the time any aliens actually arrive here, we will likely have had centuries (or more) to prepare for them and will have likely been in communication with them during that time, right?"
There is no reason to think centuries is even close to the necessary time needed to prepared. They could be several millenia ahead of us. How much conversing we could do with them depends on how fast their ships go and how far away they are. Hell, if they were really out to get us why would the respond to let us know they were coming? Better to just show up and wipe us out.
One thing Fermi's paradox suggests is that if there are aliens they are being very, very quiet. Their reasons may well apply to us and thus it would be advisable to take the hint.
"If extraterrestrials should happen upon our weak little world we will have very little say in how they treat us."
Uh yeah, which is why we should hold off on shining a flashlight around and screaming "Anyone out there?". Obviously we can't just shut off the lights (and wouldn't want to) but that doesn't mean we should try to be found.
My understanding is that our regular broadcasting signal diffuses and is indistinguishable from background radiation once it gets 3 lightyears out. That is why the METI people want to start pointing giant lasers at distant stars.
This seems to me an instructive example of how badly a supposed “deep theory” inside-view of the future can fail, relative to closest-related-track-record outside-view.
I suggest that the motives you attribute to the 'academics' are incorrect or, at least, incomplete.
I suggest that the academics' motives are more basic: to do what humans have always done: to explore beyond our current limits, consequences be damned.
I applaud their efforts. Let the future get here faster!
As an aximoatic libertarian (heh), I believe the danger of granting any government on Earth the power to regulate transmissions into outer space almost certainly exceeds the danger from space aliens coming to destroy us. An exception to this rule is if the government (i.e., taxpayers) are paying for such transmissions; then they should get to decide. But if I want to do so *at my own expense*, and if I'm not violating FCC broadcasting regulations (which have reasons other than restricting SETI), or interfering with our satellites, spacecraft, etc, then the Government should stay out of my way. I.e., let's default to freedom. After all, by the time any aliens actually arrive here, we will likely have had centuries (or more) to prepare for them and will have likely been in communication with them during that time, right?
There's plenty of incentive for aliens to harm us. Interstellar distances are, as others say, too great for pillaging or even trade of physical resources to be particularly fruitful. But they are *not* too great for colonization. We can send Von Neumann probes to build homes for our descendants and spread our memes and genes across the galaxy.
Other aliens might want to do the same thing and see us as competition.
If we were actually worried about that, we could consider holding off on first contact until we built interstellar colonies. Assuming that aliens across interstellar distances would have difficultly figuring out where all of our colonies are, these colonies would offer second-strike capabilities much like nuclear submarines do in the present. If the colonies were constantly spreading, aliens stuck with the same speed-of-light restriction we're stuck with might have difficulty tracking them down.
To receive the Voyager message, wouldn't the aliens have to physically locate the spacecraft itself? I think there is more grounds to be critical in that the message is likely to never be found... Outside of floating around in space forever, I think the mostly likely fate of Voyager is to be returned to the Earth by spacefaring humans in the future. That said, I believe Sagan was also involved with the ARICEBO message, to which Hoyle's argument would apply.
It's not entirely clear to me that microbes from a whole different genesis of life could infect humans. However, I suspect it is plausible that some could. I don't want to bother pondering it too deeply, because there is definitely a chance that there is life out there from the same genesis, anyway -- from panspermia or at least "trans-spermia."
...And it is clearly conceivable that alien microbes from the same genesis could infect us. In addition to the above examples, here is a whole review by the well-respected Didier Raoult on bacterial taxa that can infect both man and unicellular amebae; he names 6 or 8 genera of them: http://cmr.asm.org/cgi/cont...
I've never thought about it before or heard of such an idea, but I wonder whether there is any chance that trans-spermic events could have ever figured in mass extinction events on earth. Or figured in major changes like the shift to an O2-emitting metabolism. This is certainly conceivable and I'd be surprised if no one has ever written anything about it.
I think previous comments have already explained why the fermi paradox is not very relevant to the argument. All benefits and harms associated with broadcasting to aliens are contingent on the aliens existing. The only reason to bring up the low probability for their existance is when you are discussing the cost of transmission or regulation, which are not so contingent.
"For pathogen to thrive on different species, there must be sufficient similarities."
Not true at all. Again take cholera. From Wikipedia:
"Cholera is rarely spread directly from person to person. V. cholerae harbors naturally in the zooplankton of fresh, brackish, and salt water, attached primarily to their chitinous exoskeleton. [...] Coastal cholera outbreaks typically follow zooplankton blooms, thus making cholera a zoonotic disease."
You don't get much more different thank humans and zooplankton!
Maybe people are confused about what "pathogens" means -- just parasites, not necessarily ones that wipe you out right away. I'm sure that whatever ET pathogens they'd bring would generally be not so much of a bother to them, since they've co-evolved in an arms race with their ET bugs. But we haven't.
Similarly, Europeans didn't find influenza any fun, but they were somewhat adapted to it, unlike the American natives -- who were wiped out to about 10% of their pre-Columbian levels by various Old World germs. Also, bubonic plague doesn't devastate the flea, nor malaria the mosquito, nor sleeping sickness the tsetse fly.
I say again -- read what zoonotic diseases are. You can start with the Wikipedia entry. I'm not going to count how many there are because there are lots. Cholera and bubonic plague for starters, likely measles, smallpox, influenza, HIV, and other crowd diseases.
Still wrong in framing the question, as it is the financial and health burden on humans from such diseases that matters, not the count of such diseases.
if it was otherwise, and humans picked up alien transmission from, say, venus, and we found a weaker specie and a less advaced subculture there, plus a planet with resources, we would colonize and destroy them, like it happened so many times with our own kind in our own planet.
and for an alien civilization that could pick our signals and perform light / worm travels, the costs of a colonization couldnt be *that* huge
the indians in america didnt send smoke signals to europe before the colonization, yet it happened, no need to speed that up
keeping it quiet sounds good for now.
We absolutely have a right to prevent actions that we believe may may cause us harm.
Your transmissions destroyed our crops.
There are 5 of us left.
Only 1 of us needs to survive the trip...
How about if someone starts broadcasting a declaration of war? Complete with imagery.
"After all, by the time any aliens actually arrive here, we will likely have had centuries (or more) to prepare for them and will have likely been in communication with them during that time, right?"
There is no reason to think centuries is even close to the necessary time needed to prepared. They could be several millenia ahead of us. How much conversing we could do with them depends on how fast their ships go and how far away they are. Hell, if they were really out to get us why would the respond to let us know they were coming? Better to just show up and wipe us out.
One thing Fermi's paradox suggests is that if there are aliens they are being very, very quiet. Their reasons may well apply to us and thus it would be advisable to take the hint.
"If extraterrestrials should happen upon our weak little world we will have very little say in how they treat us."
Uh yeah, which is why we should hold off on shining a flashlight around and screaming "Anyone out there?". Obviously we can't just shut off the lights (and wouldn't want to) but that doesn't mean we should try to be found.
My understanding is that our regular broadcasting signal diffuses and is indistinguishable from background radiation once it gets 3 lightyears out. That is why the METI people want to start pointing giant lasers at distant stars.
This seems to me an instructive example of how badly a supposed “deep theory” inside-view of the future can fail, relative to closest-related-track-record outside-view.
I suggest that the motives you attribute to the 'academics' are incorrect or, at least, incomplete.
I suggest that the academics' motives are more basic: to do what humans have always done: to explore beyond our current limits, consequences be damned.
I applaud their efforts. Let the future get here faster!
"Other aliens might want to do the same thing and see us as competition."
I agree. In addition, they might worry that we will eventually see them as competition and figure that the prudent thing to do is to wipe us out.
As an aximoatic libertarian (heh), I believe the danger of granting any government on Earth the power to regulate transmissions into outer space almost certainly exceeds the danger from space aliens coming to destroy us. An exception to this rule is if the government (i.e., taxpayers) are paying for such transmissions; then they should get to decide. But if I want to do so *at my own expense*, and if I'm not violating FCC broadcasting regulations (which have reasons other than restricting SETI), or interfering with our satellites, spacecraft, etc, then the Government should stay out of my way. I.e., let's default to freedom. After all, by the time any aliens actually arrive here, we will likely have had centuries (or more) to prepare for them and will have likely been in communication with them during that time, right?
There's plenty of incentive for aliens to harm us. Interstellar distances are, as others say, too great for pillaging or even trade of physical resources to be particularly fruitful. But they are *not* too great for colonization. We can send Von Neumann probes to build homes for our descendants and spread our memes and genes across the galaxy.
Other aliens might want to do the same thing and see us as competition.
If we were actually worried about that, we could consider holding off on first contact until we built interstellar colonies. Assuming that aliens across interstellar distances would have difficultly figuring out where all of our colonies are, these colonies would offer second-strike capabilities much like nuclear submarines do in the present. If the colonies were constantly spreading, aliens stuck with the same speed-of-light restriction we're stuck with might have difficulty tracking them down.
To receive the Voyager message, wouldn't the aliens have to physically locate the spacecraft itself? I think there is more grounds to be critical in that the message is likely to never be found... Outside of floating around in space forever, I think the mostly likely fate of Voyager is to be returned to the Earth by spacefaring humans in the future. That said, I believe Sagan was also involved with the ARICEBO message, to which Hoyle's argument would apply.
Agnostic is right.
It's not entirely clear to me that microbes from a whole different genesis of life could infect humans. However, I suspect it is plausible that some could. I don't want to bother pondering it too deeply, because there is definitely a chance that there is life out there from the same genesis, anyway -- from panspermia or at least "trans-spermia."
...And it is clearly conceivable that alien microbes from the same genesis could infect us. In addition to the above examples, here is a whole review by the well-respected Didier Raoult on bacterial taxa that can infect both man and unicellular amebae; he names 6 or 8 genera of them: http://cmr.asm.org/cgi/cont...
I've never thought about it before or heard of such an idea, but I wonder whether there is any chance that trans-spermic events could have ever figured in mass extinction events on earth. Or figured in major changes like the shift to an O2-emitting metabolism. This is certainly conceivable and I'd be surprised if no one has ever written anything about it.
I think previous comments have already explained why the fermi paradox is not very relevant to the argument. All benefits and harms associated with broadcasting to aliens are contingent on the aliens existing. The only reason to bring up the low probability for their existance is when you are discussing the cost of transmission or regulation, which are not so contingent.
"For pathogen to thrive on different species, there must be sufficient similarities."
Not true at all. Again take cholera. From Wikipedia:
"Cholera is rarely spread directly from person to person. V. cholerae harbors naturally in the zooplankton of fresh, brackish, and salt water, attached primarily to their chitinous exoskeleton. [...] Coastal cholera outbreaks typically follow zooplankton blooms, thus making cholera a zoonotic disease."
You don't get much more different thank humans and zooplankton!
Maybe people are confused about what "pathogens" means -- just parasites, not necessarily ones that wipe you out right away. I'm sure that whatever ET pathogens they'd bring would generally be not so much of a bother to them, since they've co-evolved in an arms race with their ET bugs. But we haven't.
Similarly, Europeans didn't find influenza any fun, but they were somewhat adapted to it, unlike the American natives -- who were wiped out to about 10% of their pre-Columbian levels by various Old World germs. Also, bubonic plague doesn't devastate the flea, nor malaria the mosquito, nor sleeping sickness the tsetse fly.
I say again -- read what zoonotic diseases are. You can start with the Wikipedia entry. I'm not going to count how many there are because there are lots. Cholera and bubonic plague for starters, likely measles, smallpox, influenza, HIV, and other crowd diseases.
Still wrong in framing the question, as it is the financial and health burden on humans from such diseases that matters, not the count of such diseases.