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What do we do if SETI is successful?

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174 points leephillips | 1 comments | 20 Oct 25 17:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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general1465 ◴[20 Oct 25 19:33 UTC] No.45648192[source]▶
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.

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ivell ◴[20 Oct 25 19:56 UTC] No.45648477[source]▶
> Forbid anyone from sending signal towards them so we have time to technologically catch up to them without them noticing.

This is going to be difficult. Immediately there would be cults that would be inviting them to earth to salvage us.

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1. general1465 ◴[20 Oct 25 20:17 UTC] No.45648760[source]▶
Yeah but they would need to transfer for a long enough time to be noticed and decoded by the other side, so it would easy to spot and eliminate them quickly. Unless they are a smart cult and managed to make some self unpacking and executing coding which they could send over radio.