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Study: Earthlings Not Ready For Alien Encounters, Yet
astroengine (1577233) writes "The people of planet Earth would be wise to raise their cosmic consciousness prior to contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, a new study shows. 'The scientific community now accepts to some degree that this contact may occur in the next 50 to 100 years,' said Gabriel De la Torre, a clinical neuropsychologist and human factors specialist at the University of Cádiz in Spain. 'Consequently, we are becoming more concerned about this possibility and its aftermath Certainly the topic of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations raises a number of questions that are not easy to answer. We estimate that this type of event will have not only a social effect, but also on both consciousness and biology as well.' Although we may not have the necessary social skill set to deal with an encounter of the third kind, scientists or astronauts might make the best candidates for the first alien conversation."
based on scanning we are doing of star systems out to thousands of light years? even if we find a sign of ET intelligent life, we have light-centuries to light-millennia of speed-of-light buffer time to protect ourselves after "they" discover our presence, before "contact" of any kind could be made
What was this based on? Did the PI rent Independence Day from Redbox last week and suddenly get an idea to spin a humanities degree into notoriety?
Stuff that *might* happen *might* lead to other stuff that *might* happen.
Slashdot makes me want to throw my laptop against the wall and punch people. Gahhh....
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
And where are they getting their data?
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Nonsense. Look back at history and see the millions of humans who allowed themselves to be enslaved, subjugated, or otherwise oppressed. Humans are excellent at playing second fiddle.
And much of that oppression / subjugation / slavery was based on race or religion, so it doesn't particularly matter if the new overlords are some new kind of "alien", and it doesn't matter what our gods tell us about them. If they stomp their boots on our necks hard enough we will kneel before them.
we can put a man on the moon, so...
*Can* we? We could at one time. I have wondered for awhile if projects like putting a living person on another planet and returning them safely to earth is something that a nation can do only at a certain stage of development, when the thirst for adventure is greater than the perceived need for safety, and bureaucracy has not yet quite managed to strangle large undertakings.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Ah that explains all those people they need to hold up the roofs of cathedrals.
'The scientific community now accepts to some degree that this contact may occur in the next 50 to 100 years,'
Based on .... what, exactly? The complete, utter, absolute, comprehensive lack of any previous contact?
- The scientific community now accepts to some degree -
- a clinical neuropsychologist and human factors specialist -
While some may prefer citations
and some may prefer credentials that include some basic science skills,
others will be happy to forge ahead with imaginative fantasies.
...omphaloskepsis often...
The one point in our favor, would be that a species capable of bridging the vast distances between the stars would presumably have vast technology and sufficiently advanced materials engineering and biological manipulation techniques that they would pretty much just need various useful atoms and lots and lots of energy. Our planet isn't worthless, in terms of material; but it's a hell of a lot less interesting than the solar system's larger objects in terms of volume, and it has a much more annoying escape velocity than the zillion-odd asteroids and comets and various bits of junk floating around.
This hardly means that they wouldn't consume earth in due time, possibly without even remarking on the fact that some of the carbon based macromolecules on the surface seemed pretty agitated about it, nor does it exclude the possibility that they'd fuck us up in some creative way just for the lulz, or because their hobby is eating as many different sentient organisms as possible; but, unlike the 'technologically advanced human culture kicks the shit out of primitive one, takes their stuff' story of history, anything that is doing interstellar travel might be advanced to the point of near-total disinterest. Pop out of treknobabble-travel-space in the vicinity of the sun, do a bit of scanning, consume the gas giants to refuel their world-ships, then leave to go do whatever it is has them traveling all this way in the first place.
Or they might drop a small singularity into our gravity well, just to watch us freak out on a global scale, knowing that it's sitting somewhere near the planet's core, steadily consuming it from the inside and there is nothing we can do except await an increasingly nasty series of geological upheavals and our inevitable doom; but that would be purely for spite's sake.
I think they would want to come here for the same reasons that we would want to investigate some other planet which shows strong signs of harbouring life. However, having seen how we have developed, it might not be too unlikely that they would at least consider destroying us before we've reached the point where we can leave our own solar system. Note: I've never even seen Independence Day. The notion that aliens would want to come all the way here just to destroy us had always seemed pretty silly to me. But upon further reflection i don't think it's at all silly now.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
This.
The US of the 60s was a dream factory. Anything was possible, anything you could think of someone could make. And that someone was the US, no doubt about that. If anyone can, the US can. Notice how anything the US did was by default good and sacred? Even Vietnam, a war that had by some margin less tangible effects on Europe, had mixed reactions in good ol' Europe and quite a bit of support, rather than the unanimous opposition the current wars of the United States are met with.
The US of the 60s could do anything in the mind of the people around the globe. In both senses, they were allowed to, and they were able to.
The US of today qualify for neither.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I would think the main constraint would be economic. What nation wants to commit so many resources for so little in return. The lunar missions were more important for political reasons (the Cold War) during their time than anything else. Would that thirst for adventure have existed had we not been competing with our red adversaries? It certainly wouldn't have had the urgency if not for the competition.
The main thing the lunar missions gave us was the various technologies that were produced as a result of them. So far the moon hasn't proved to be worth mining and it certainly has no appeal for colonization.
I could spend all my money on a giant diamond encrusted neckless. But my girlfriend would probably be real pissed and kick me out when I can no longer contribute. Similarly, our government could go back to the moon. But the electorate would be pissed because like an oversized diamond encrusted neckless it doesn't do anything but costs a shit ton. I guess it always sounds good to vilify the word bureaucracy and to make fun of nancys who are overly concerned with safety, but I just don't think it's a sound argument in this case.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow. -- Agent Kay
If the aliens trurn out to be like Kzinti?
What I meant was that I don't believe that the US government could put a man on the moon now. I suspect that, inevitably as a nation ages, bureaucracy increases to the point where no matter how rich the nation is, the cost of large undertakings balloons out of control until the project can't be done anymore. I suspect that a nation can do big projects -- the national electrical power infrastructure, building a comprehensive, integrated road system over almost 4 million square miles, and putting a man on the moon and bringing him back, can only be done during a "sweet spot" in a government's history. And we are past that point now.
Test by: In the 1960's, we built the largest, most complicated machine ever built by man (the Saturn V stack) and sent a payload to the moon and back. In the 1980's, we just barely, at tremendous cost, created a cargo plane that could make it into LEO and most of the time return safely to Earth. In the three decades since then, there's been a few attempts to recreate the heavy lifting and spacecraft capabilities we had in the 60's, but costs became too great and they were canceled. My point is, I don't think the US government could do it anymore.
Maybe private companies could, but the danger there is government over-regulation making it too costly. And then, with what are we left? Bond villains?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I agree with a lot of what you said. What I'm trying to say is that yes, the moon shots cost a shit-ton in the 1960's, but even adjusted for inflation, the cost of doing it now after the inevitable budget ballooning out of control, due to the process itself becoming fundamentally broken, would be so great that no amount of money could achieve it. The more money you would pour into such a project, the more money it would cost, with the goal being forever out of reach. I'm not saying a moon shot is not practical (that's a sound argument and a good subject for debate) but that it's not even *possible* anymore. Another case in point: A certain modern fighter plane intended to be an affordable replacement for a very expensive older model, has become so much more expensive than the plane it was supposed to replace that it's now in danger of cancellation.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
We are not going to encounter any aliens until we are ourselves are past great filter. If we make it past great filtering, than social, evolutionary, and environmental factors imposing change on humanity over time-frames involved in below-speed-of-light space travel will produce plenty of "aliens". They will be our descendants but they will be nothing like us.
Bozeman, Montana on 5 April 2063.
49 years from now.
Then you have this tripe: "'Further, by means of self-consciousness, man becomes capable of treating his own mental states as objects of consciousness. The prime characteristic of cosmic consciousness is, as its name implies, a consciousness of the cosmos, that is, of the life and order of the universe,' De la Torre writes in a study published in the journal Acta Astronautica."
I am very disappointed in you Slashdot.
There is a system for subverting the system and you should use that system!
2024; That's the year the Pak show up to seed the planet with thallium and tree-of-life.
I, for one welcome our new Pak Overlords. What's that smell, dammit...
Of course, it could be Kzin... :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
That seems logical, but that turns out not to be the case. A SETI scientist said in a talk (and I've seen this in articles since) that our deployed SETI listening technology is still nowhere near sensitive enough to pick up signals even from as close as the nearest star (Proxima Centauri, 4 light years away), if a planet there was broadcasting RF at current Earth levels.
(That doesn't mean SETI to date is pointless, because there's always a chance of a highly directional signal beamed our way, or of just something unexpected, like signals far far brighter than Earth's.)
So no, we have no idea whether the sky is saturated with radio waves or not.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
I see a creationist got mod points today.
I've often wondered how stupid would an extraterrestrial civilization be to want to come to this planet?
Of course, it could be Kzin... :)
I have a large ball of yarn in my garage, just in case.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Do you drink coffee or beer or eat peppers or yogurt?
These are all things that are capable of altering your mood and your behavior. Most of the time we don't notice the alteration, both because it's subtle and because believing in one's own self-ness is a survival characteristic.
The sophistication that allows trans-galactic travel will also allow substantial self-modification, including and especially modification of behavior to null out the instincts to honor self above others and the instinct to win at all costs.
Technology is simply leverage; the means of wielding power beyond that which we physically possess. To make a simplifying example: probably no one on earth today could responsibly handle an antimatter-powered 10 gigawatt hand-held ray-gun-type device. Normal people would be hard-pressed just to keep it safe from the rest of us and never use it. Anyone who actually has the power to keep it safe is already in the position of dominating others by virtue of how our society works. They are either at risk of being sacked by greedy competitors or they dominate so completely that they are already corrupt in their power.
Probably the real danger isn't in the form of a ray-gun. It's likely a virus or an AI or a self-replicating nano-tech. Even if you took away the part of our selves that generates our dangerous and anti-social behaviors, we would still have to deal with the real danger of just being too clumsy to come up with a safe way to handle some things like nano-tech or AI. We just aren't any good at evaluating things that exhibit geometric growth networks effects. Of course, the good news is that once you have control of the design of your own mind, you get to choose what you're good at.
A civilization that has tremendous technology will almost certainly have modified itself to be responsible in wielding it. To do otherwise would make survival less and less probable as the technology advances. Also, we can see that this is a pretty good parallel to the evolution of human society. When we were just smart mammals focused on survival, we had no particular qualms about killing each other. As technology has progressed, our notion of humanity has progressed roughly apiece. We're still brutal and horrible to each other, but on average, I think we're becoming more human all the time.
All of that said, I think that there's still a situation in which aliens would visit. I think it would be simply to foster the on-going proliferation and advancement of consciousness in the universe. At the end of the day, I think we'd all like for something of ourselves, some kind of consciousness to survive in the universe rather than for it to all die out. Having more creative, capable and varied consciousness in the universe is the best way to further that goal. Letting us know that there's something else out there could go a long way to waking us up to our part of the consciousness mission.
Do some research about what we did during the colonization of Africa. The same story goes for the discovery of America. We promised them "civilization", promised them better lives, but in the end we just exploited the native population for our own benefits.
If suddenly an alien civilization would show up and make the same promises, we are in deep trouble...
...You are over-qualified and under-paid. If we give you a raise, we will break the cosmic balance of the universe.
... in a multiverse to generate one Earth?
Just to add to the possibility of unlikelihood of other space civilizations, with quadrillions of totally empty universes...
Great analysis.
All that said, we just don't know the odds of alternatives within out universe. And we may be living in a computer simulation (like Minecraft?) with parameters set to generate either one or trillions of different space civilizations.
Although given how hardy bacteria are, it would not surprise me if our solar system had been inoculated by bacteria from far away.
A big irony of all this SETI stuff is that so many people act like finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe with a different culture or technology elsewhere would be a big deal, whereas we in the USA and also globally are so busy killing off whales, elephants, octopods, and people of different countries and religions for various short-term economic or xenophobic reasons... And our culture also have a history of ignoring great technologies like Smalltalk or QNX. Comments on SETI are often just some weird mix of irony, hypocrisy, and blindness... Not to say I have not been guilty of such myself sometimes...
Someone in another post talked about a popular fantasy that some alien technology would solve all our problems, but is that true? As Bucky Fuller said in the 1960s, and is only more true now, we have more than enough resources and technology to make life pleasant for everyone on Earth (well, except haters and greeders maybe). Eat more vegetables and fruits, get out in the sunshine and walk in nature, hang out with other people locally, sleep well, do good work, and so on are the basics for a healthy happy life (see "BlueZones"). People in the USA can see much happier and healthier people in Europe or Canada if they bothered to look, but US politics in general can't admit that. Can you imagine what the US political parties (either left or right) would say about some happier healthier more prosperous space civilization that was more communal? Or that had different sex roles? Or had different religious rituals? Or whatever?
Example of the kind of nonsense people in the USA would start spouting in talk-radio: "Yeah, those red-skinned aliens live 100,000 years each in perfect health traveling the universe if they want in FTL ships that can print anything they want in 3D, but it's an unhappy 10,000 years because they have high taxes and have a different notion of God/Universe and different rituals. We need to help these backward aliens come to know our loving God (by torture if need be) and how to vote correctly to give all their money to wealthy Earthlings who will create good jobs for all of them. Their medical care system sucks because they don't have private sick care insurance to deliver medicine by board-certified entrepreneurial MDs and the health care facilities and testing labs the MDs own and so the alien's million-year old political obviously will surely be insolvent soon. Anyone who explores or advocates their ways is an alien-sympathizer traitor, guilty of treason, and needs to be imprisoned or re-educated. Anyone who harbors an alien is guilty of aiding terrorists because these aliens want to destroy our way of life. For our citizens' own protection, we will not issue passports to anyone dumb enough to want to go visit them and anyone attempting to board an alien vessel will be shot out of our boundless compassion. The aliens are obviously here to corrupt our morality and sap the ardor of the hard-working minimum-wage-paid American to cause the USA to collapse. These aliens in their crappy ZPE-powered FTL ships obviously want to steal our fossil fuel coal, oil, and natural gas. We need to increase out military spending to counter this alien threat, and it is sensible to take simple precautions like a first-strike with nukes and plagues on the alien homeworld using stolen alien spaceships to keep this alien menace at bay. Better dead than Red."
For this playing out historically in North America centuries ago to "R
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.