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    What do we do if SETI is successful?

    (www.universetoday.com)
    174 points leephillips | 11 comments | 20 Oct 25 17:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.985s | source | bottom
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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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    1. wkat4242 ◴[20 Oct 25 21:00 UTC] No.45649320[source]▶
    This presumes they have the same nasty survival-of-the-fittest kill-or-be-killed attitude as humanity. Our evolution kinda created that but it doesn't have to apply everywhere. I think it's entirely possible that alien civilisations could exist that are a lot more symbiotic.

    We have a saying in Holland "the innkeeper trusts his guests like himself" which seems to apply here.

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    2. Koshkin ◴[20 Oct 25 22:18 UTC] No.45650137[source]▶
    Right; or, since they are not competing with us for resources, they could kill us just for sport.
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    3. wkat4242 ◴[21 Oct 25 03:06 UTC] No.45652023[source]▶
    Again the concept of sport imposes human concepts on a hypothetical alien culture.

    There's no reason to assume their society would have developed along similar lines. I'm sure there's alien civilisations that are more aggressive than us, but also ones that are less so.

    I don't think we'll ever meet any though as our lifespan is just so short on a universal scale. And FTL travel seems to be impossible otherwise we'd have seen signs of it.

    Of course according to our current physics understanding it is also impossible but I don't think humanity is very smart yet. But this thing might be right.

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    4. akimbostrawman ◴[21 Oct 25 11:42 UTC] No.45654659{3}[source]▶
    >the concept of sport imposes human concepts on a hypothetical alien culture.

    Many animals like cats do it. Its not a human concept but one from superior smarter predators which should occur regardless from what planet they are. The greater the differences in intelligence and power the easier it is to justify cruelty.

    I do think it's less likely because to actually travel space they would need to be so technologically advanced that we simply wouldn't be worth fighting or destroying. Maybe studying which could be cruel in its own way.

    5. hermitcrab ◴[21 Oct 25 19:17 UTC] No.45660340[source]▶
    >Our evolution kinda created that but it doesn't have to apply everywhere.

    Presumably any alien species was also shaped by evolution, so is also likely to be similarly competitive. Maybe you can escape your evolutionary past. But maybe not.

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    6. throwup238 ◴[21 Oct 25 19:19 UTC] No.45660363{3}[source]▶
    > And FTL travel seems to be impossible otherwise we'd have seen signs of it.

    What signs? Projects like LIGO that measure gravitational waves are still measuring cataclysmic collisions of ultra massive bodies. Maybe once the detector is good enough to detect exoplanets and smaller objects we can start drawing some conclusions.

    I don’t believe FTL is possible, but on the off chance that it is, we’d be so deep into technology-as-magic territory that any speculation on detectability is totally pointless.

    7. wijwp ◴[21 Oct 25 19:23 UTC] No.45660432[source]▶
    They'd have to get through The Great Filter, so maybe they'd have avoided or have moved beyond some of our evolutionary downfalls.
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    8. babelfish ◴[21 Oct 25 19:34 UTC] No.45660583{3}[source]▶
    "The Great Filter" is probably just interspecies contact.
    9. anigbrowl ◴[21 Oct 25 19:37 UTC] No.45660619[source]▶
    It doesn't even apply in this world. There are many examples of a more advanced civilization steamrolling a simpler one, but there are also examples of that not happening. It's by no means an inevitability.
    10. layman51 ◴[21 Oct 25 19:37 UTC] No.45660621[source]▶
    I would hope so, but this whole situation reminds me of a quote from the writer William S. Burroughs: "This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games."

    It is a bleak view. When I even think about the behaviors of some of the animals (e.g. seals, praying mantises) we share existence with, it seems like it could be accurate. On the positive side, the concept of the infinite game (e.g. culture) is what should give us hope.

    11. scj ◴[21 Oct 25 22:18 UTC] No.45662437{3}[source]▶
    > I'm sure there's alien civilisations that are more aggressive than us, but also ones that are less so.

    What is the minimum amount of aggression necessary to evolve sentience? What is the maximum amount of aggression in an interstellar space-faring species? Where is humanity on that scale?

    A super-aggressive species would likely self-annihilate before possessing sufficient energy to travel interstellar distances... So the jury's still out on us.