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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: 0s | 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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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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1. 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.