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What do we do if SETI is successful?

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174 points leephillips | 2 comments | 20 Oct 25 17:13 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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gmuslera ◴[21 Oct 25 19:54 UTC] No.45660850[source]▶
Time is a factor here. How close in time and space would be them?

If we get something coming from more than 100 light years away we might not have the technology to respond, and if we do it may not matter anyway if we are at risk of not having a technological civilization anymore 100-200 years forward. So the meaningful actions on those cases may not include answering back.

Then it will be the actual use of that message. Lets assume that we will decide that is a signal from a civilization that is out there. It will be a signal meant for us and for any other civilization that doesn't have the knowledge/culture level as them, meant for giving us a common ground for communicating back, or it will be something that just will tell us that someone intelligent is out there, but no mean to understand it?

So the options are that we find apparently benevolent aliens willing to contact us, or that we find out that someone is out there but no way to communicate/reach them. I think the second scenario is the most probable one, and how our civilization will react if widely enough will change with time, novelty at first and indifference a few years later.

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kulahan ◴[21 Oct 25 20:04 UTC] No.45660980[source]▶
I cannot imagine any scenario where we're just 100-200 years away from "no more tech" that isn't purely total nuclear destruction. Even then, we'd probably be so close to getting back to a technological civilization that it'd be a blip in the radar at best if we're talking about a society that far away.

We lost 150 years of progress? That's okay, we had 800 more years to advance before the aliens showed up or whatever.

It's such a weird thing I see so many people assuming. We were down to like 16,000 humans on Earth at one point, and that was before we'd developed things that you could theoretically scavenge and jumpstart your tech.

People need to stop doomscrolling; I'm certain this is depression projected.

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1. ruszki ◴[21 Oct 25 22:03 UTC] No.45662297[source]▶
When we have a nuclear destruction, and some of us survive, then we will have a problem which we cannot solve easily even today: absolute annihilation of the ozone layer. It won’t be a soft reset at all. If the ozone layer disappeared right now, its consequences would be absolutely catastrophic even with the current civilization completely intact.
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2. sgt ◴[22 Oct 25 09:04 UTC] No.45666504[source]▶
It'll recover even after a nuclear war, but it'll take time. But the impact on Earth in terms of resources will also be significantly lower during those 200-300 years it takes to rebuild.

The population will be very small, but being very focused and hopefully able to jump start civilization again based on all the materials and knowledge still available.