What do we do if SETI is successful?

Me and my dog cannot talk.

I understand my dog and he understands me.

If they experience death then we have massive common ground already.

And you are comfortable being the dog in this cosmic relationship then?

it's that we're made out of meat: https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

Hardly a fair or realistic comparison.

Domesticated mammalian[1] pet which share 80+% of our DNA and bred and naturally self-selected over few ten thousand generations for their obedience and take fair amount of training from birth is not the same as anything else on earth let alone from another planet.

[1] Domesticating of non mammalian animals is already quite hard with limited true successes, some birds probably come the closest.

Humans and dogs have evolved together to be cooperative…

would you feel common ground with a predatory fish? Or a plant? An insect colony?

Man I love that story.

Does it make you uncomfortable to think an alien civilization might be somehow superior to humans? That's a pretty immature thing to be insecure about.

If they mean us harm, then yes, I am insecure about it.

Maybe the author should add this exception to their quote.

> would you feel common ground with a predatory fish?

The fish needs to eat, I need to eat. The fish has the drive to procreate, so do I, or at least I have a sex drive.

> Or a plant?

We both need sunlight to live, we both require a breathable atmosphere. We both need water.

> An insect colony?

Much of the above applies here as well, in addition to that I can see similarities between a large insect colony and our large cities, how things move, how roads and buildings are adjusted for efficiencies, how bad actors can harm the system.

Yes, I can see common ground between myself and all three of those things you listed.

Not the parent comment but what's your point? You can't use that common ground for anything, let alone communication, can you?. The fish wants to fuck? You want to too, what now? How do you stablish a common ground to understanding based on such things?

And yet, look at how pretty much every human society deals with immigrants/refugees. We most often find the least common ground between races, ethnicities, nationalities, or any other way to create outgroups, and you think humanity will handle an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization well?

What if they're indifferent about our existence? Would you be insecure knowing that a superior species existed that didn't think we were interesting enough to be bothered with?

We all share many similar biological imperatives And these contrived examples because we all evolved on the same planet. Even the worst case scenario of the Dark Forest has many anthropomorphic priors within.

Imagine an intelligent shade of blue. Thank you, Douglas Adams. I suspect we have no idea WTF is out there and I'm not a carbon chauvinist like Carl Sagan was. But I wish I would have lived long enough to find out and I suspect that won't be the case.

> Imagine an intelligent shade of blue

A finite intelligence, willing to talk across the galaxy, talking in finite sequences, using engineering and maths?

I'm sure there's a lot of universal aprioris

> We most often find the least common ground between races, ethnicities, nationalities, or any other way to create outgroups, and you think humanity will handle an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization well?

But we find PLENTY of common grownds when we talk to the smartesr of those groups and races, across milenia and continents via groups, scientific forums, discussion books.

We find very little common grounds when we have forced encounters with the uneducated trouble makers up to no good, in systems designed for high trust abused by said individuals.

> We find very little common grounds when we have forced encounters with the uneducated trouble makers up to no good, in systems designed for high trust abused by said individuals.

I'd bet good money lots of non-Western European civilizations had that same thought after the English, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. rolled up on their shores.

There's also a lot of "universals" that people take for granted as universal when it really isn't universal.

Things off the top of my head that humans usually take for granted as "universals":

- Separation of memory and DNA. What if memories were stored in DNA and can be passed between individuals?

- Inability to share memories. What if memories can be passed around like semen and sweat?

- Inability to easily read others' minds. What if kissing/touching someone would share all of each others' thoughts? How would that alien society develop differently?

- Existence of the ego. What if they live in a constant state of ego death, like some humans on certain drugs?

- Separation of the id and the superego. This is... one way to solve an alignment problem, I suppose. Imagine a species which replaced their sense of hunger/sexual craving, with a craving for morality. And they execute creatures like humans when they see a human do anything immoral, such as eating an ice cream when it can reduce your lifespan and thus deprive your children of a parent, or deprive your society of tax dollars.

- And many other possible examples that i can come up with that exists within human "thoughtspace", let alone concepts that do not exist within human thoughtspace

How would you feel if you met an alien species that communicates by raping their children? If that sounds weird to you, what if they can communicate via the DNA in sperm, so it'd be somewhat similar to how human sex transmits information from the human male to the human female?

> Thank you, Douglas Adams

actually, hp lovecraft

> - Existence of the ego. What if they live in a constant state of ego death, like some humans on certain drugs?

> .. And they execute creatures like humans when they see a human do anything immoral

You will enjoy reading: https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/the-wager

> - And many other possible examples that i can come up with that exists within human "thoughtspace", let alone concepts that do not exist within human thoughtspace

And this: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub / https://www.amazon.com/There-No-Antimemetics-Division-Novel/...

What if they are telepathic hive minds, able to regrow lost minds like some species on earth regrow limbs, thus having no concept of individual death as such?

Or something like the Cylon resurrection technology, which downloads your memories into the latest fast cloned avatar/physical body?

Pertinent here is that said fish has done something notable enough to have been discovered from, literally, across the galaxy. Those fish built some sort of civilization such that they're sending our lasers, radio waves, or building Dyson spheres.

Given that my opinions are correct, a superior being would have opinions which tend toward mine. So I'll be fine, dunno about the rest of you punks

I've never bought Wittgenstein's Lion for similar reasons. I am able to communicate with my cat, though it is not easy. We don't need language to do this.

It is also important to note that understanding is not equal. Certainly I understand my cat far better than she understands me. Famously Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are mutually intelligible[0], yet this does not create equal understanding between all parties. Norwegians fair the best while Swedes are out of luck. It probably isn't surprising that this happens even when all speakers are speaking the same language. You can speak in front of 10 people and you may hear 15 different interpretations, none need be what you intended.

Language is messy. It's incredible communication happens with it. But we're smart creatures, and there's ways to establish frames of reference. We have theory of mind, even if we don't all use it. But using it certainly helps. Communication is best when all parties are trying their best to understand one another. Sometimes we confuse that to mean we're trying because we're talking. You're not trying unless you're considering what was intended to be said, despite the words used. To which, that, I agree is the lion.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Danish,_Norwegia...

Actually, I was explicitly thinking of SCP-3125 there.

  > would you feel common ground with a predatory fish? Or a plant? An insect colony?

Yes.

Humans famously show compassion for all of these. I don't think alligators co-evolved with Steve Irwin.

Humans even show compassion for rocks and non-living things. We show compassion for the literal ground. We anthropomorphize it. Is this anthropomorphization not an attempt to understand and have compassion.

Regardless, you just asked how OP feels. I don't know how they do, but I can say how I do. "Yes"

If they were to visit us then they would be de facto technologically superior to us. But I'm sure we'd figure out a way to feel superior to them.

And what's it matter? There's lots of people superior to me. I'm not really concerned unless they're trying to do me harm. But that anger isn't due to their superiority, it is due to their harm.

Comfortable? I'd call that the best case scenario.

If they treated us like dogs they'd already be better stewards of humanity than we are.

I like the inverse question:

Would you, as a species advanced enough to have historically observed and begun to understand human behaviour, attempt to cooperatively interact with humans?

> But I'm sure we'd figure out a way to feel superior to them

You mastered interstellar travel and yet you arrived in THAT!?

An alien race arriving at our shores cannot be anything but disastrous for us, IMO.

Why go through the massive expense to come all the way here if the intention is something that is not conquering or total dominion over us? We did this to our own fellow humans a couple of hundred years ago.

So yeah, call it immature or insecure. But I prefer they just leave us alone to be honest.

> There's also a lot of "universals" that people take for granted as universal when it really isn't universal.

It doesn't matter if they kiss to talk or pass on their memories as DNA or they exist in a permanent stat of ego death.

Because we received a modulated signal across the Galaxy, it tells me they:

1) are willing to talk using sequences 2) are technologically inclined, hence they know maths and physics

> I'd bet good money lots of non-Western European civilizations had that same thought after the English, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. rolled up on their shores.

And you'd be correct.

> Imagine an intelligent shade of blue

A hooloovoo!

How can something be universal and not universal at the same time?

> But I'm sure we'd figure out a way to feel superior to them

Imagine all these scifi fans who aren't able to see actors in their favorite franchise but the characters. All of this bumped by factor of 10: pestering aliens why they aren't using e.g. photon torpedoes...

Still I'd be more concern about truly xenophobic people who'd either want to cease any contact - if it would happen or attack aliens to keep Earth and humanity "pure". Toss in religious fanatics seeing devils to spice things up.

> Famously Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are mutually intelligible[0], yet this does not create equal understanding between all parties. Norwegians fair the best while Swedes are out of luck.

Except that they aren't mutually intelligible. See what a Dane thinks: https://satwcomic.com/cold-reality-shower

> From the very beginning when I started making this comic Swedes and Norwegians have been telling me jokes about how weird Danish is, and how it's so weird not even Danes understand it so they have to speak Swedish or Norwegian to communicate. The Norwegian and Swedish languages are a lot closer to each other, so I can see where the joke comes from.

> That's all well and good and I laughed along, until I started meeting a lot of Swedes and Norwegians at conventions and realized a lot of them honest to god think that Danes understand Norwegian and Swedish

Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible (or if they aren't there's enough interaction that difficulties don't arise). Danish isn't mutually intelligible with either.

Written Danish and written Norwegian are mutually intelligible, because they have conservative orthography. But the languages have diverged.

Unfortunately, I was unable to follow this comment because eating ice cream may be healthy :) Here's a gifted link from the Atlantic which I sure hope is true because now I let myself eat a little ice cream every night. But otherwise, I agree, I cannot imagine what it would be like interacting with another intelligent life. It is also interesting to consider how different any travelers may be from their original colony, if faster than light travel is not possible.

https://www.theatlantic dot com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cream-bad-for-you-health-study/673487/?gift=6EKMJibpmKCfcPyLaO_bP7FbQ_X-xjAyMuvHMMdnIes

But we hardly evolved past apes at this point (on any cosmic/earth timescale); these aliens have transportation that is technologically something akin to whatever scifi we came up with and deem mostly ideas that are not possible in reality. They could be around for 10s of millions of years while we are here just for a few 300k or so years with our real advancements just starting. They might have gone beyond the 'you land, I take, you die' kind of 'animal' thing we humans have?

In my cutlery drawer we have a couple of mismatched forks, and one of them in particular is weird-looking. Somehow I don't like saying that it's weird-looking if it can "hear" me (i.e. if it's on the table rather than in the drawer)

> There's also a lot of "universals" that people take for granted as universal when it really isn't universal.

We have no idea if it's universal or not. You being able to imagine something does not mean it's actually possible

Maybe they are 100k-millions years ahead of us and are basically immortal AI's with iqs of 200k+ (so we won't understand anything they do or say and they find us literally less interesting than grains of sand) which are clustered via an higher dimension quantum entangled connection to the home world and the backup world? For sure if we manage to create AGI (no timelines; let's say we have it in 10k years from now and better than human body robots to match), we will surely shoot that into space to be 'forever' by the millions to explore. I would assume that every advanced race would do exactly that and if they are millions of years ahead of us, I cannot phantom them still being close to the barbaric mortal animals that we are, or they wouldn't have survived that long.

That's a terrible counterargument for aliens having moral systems incompatible with humans... because it applies to the existence of aliens as well!

You might as well as argue "we have no idea if aliens exist, being able to imagine aliens does not mean it's actually possible there are aliens", and you'd be technically right... right until the day we meet aliens.

Your line of thought is tantamount to "one should just close your eyes and cover your ears" towards the possibilities in this universe.

Note, I am not a conspiracy theorist and do not believe aliens have visited earth and abducted people or something stupid. But I find it extremely stupid to assume aliens would have familiar moral and ethical systems compared to humans, considering how extremely different human beings already are, and at least humans are all mostly similar! This is similar to european explorers being confused at matriarchal family systems when they meet some random tribe. If some humans cannot even wrap their head around matriarchy, how naive would it be to assume that the average human could be comfortable with alien ethics?

Ok, fair enough, I can accept this counterargument at least.

So? That seems extremely naive of you.

To use an example that a regular human would be familiar with: what if the aliens knew math and physics... and were basically ultra-nazis, and very happy to just subjugate you because "our nazi philosophy says that we are superior to everyone else and you are inferior to them" and put you in concentration camps as factory labor for their war machine? You have your own reasons for studying science and math, but what if their entire reason for studying science and math was to build rockets to kill others?

This seems extremely likely, actually! The vast majority of human history has been filled with autocratic governments that centralized power, not free democracies. From the sample size that we have in history, most of the time when the natives meet a stronger scientific power... has not gone well for the natives. What makes you think it will be any different if you meet an alien?

What makes you think just knowing math and physics means that the intelligent alien would be "good" by modern human standards?

And this is just standard boring political talk! We understand that from human politics! What if it's STEM-y and the aliens decide to say "we are killing all of you and slicing all of you into thin slices to scan, in order to scan you into training a LLM"? That sentence would not even be in human thoughtspace 10 years ago! There's almost certainly an even weirder concept that humans today do not have words for, which may be a strong motivation for aliens or even their primary motivation!

I am not an english major, by the way. I am a typical engineer with a strong STEM background, who has happened to have absorbed enough sci-fi concepts through osmosis. I do not consider it likely that we will meet aliens in our lifetime, but I do not expect aliens to follow modern human standards of behavior.

From the wiki I linked

  > Generally, speakers of the three largest Scandinavian languages can read each other's languages without great difficulty. The primary obstacles to mutual comprehension are differences in pronunciation.

  > In general, Danish and Norwegian speakers will be able to understand the other's language ***after only a little instruction or exposure***

Emphasis my own. The wiki goes on to discuss large variations and regional issues that can make understanding even harder.

The claim is not that they understand one another in a zero-shot setting, but they do need exposure and training. They are different languages. Mutually intelligible is a spectrum, not a binary thing (as would be requisite from the original comment).

>> would you feel common ground with a predatory fish? Or a plant? An insect colony?

> Yes.

> Humans famously show compassion for all of these.

But alligators rarely show compassion for humans, barracudas are not known for saving drowning babies and plants frequently show no compassion to anything.

IOW, Alien life might resemble alligator mindsets more than human ones. We don't know.

> But alligators rarely show compassion for humans, barracudas are not known for saving drowning babies and plants frequently show no compassion to anything.

On the other hand, even predatory mammals are documented on occasion to render aid to humans (i.e. dolphins rescuing humans from drowning, or intervening in shark attacks), and in domestic settings can be convinced to raise young from other species (domestic cats/dogs will raise most baby animals if introduced correctly). It's not as cut and dried as a hard species boundary on compassion.

Mammals have common roots and communications, for example, huffing.

Not to mention that traveling interstellar distances requires the work of multiple lifeforms working in conjunction. Which requires some form of compassion, slavery, or a really really intelligent and long living creature that is able to survey the land, smelt the materials, machine every screw, and build an interstellar spaceship. Even if it knew how to do such a thing, the time alone would be astronomical, so it really reduces the odds.

Compassion seems just a natural evolutionary direction as it is far more energy efficient for creatures to form coalitions.

To bring in some cosmic horror, is an ant aware of humans? Can a deep sea fish comprehend what is happening when a deep sea probe illuminates it?

Of course, that has the assumption that aliens are a bajillion years ahead of us in terms of evolution, size, consciousness etc, that's only one school of thought. If there's an alien race with comparable intellect and the like, I'm confident we'd detect it and communication would be possible.

Anyway my cat understands me just fine, she just chooses to ignore me.

> But we hardly evolved past apes at this point

And? Evolution is not "Progress to this $UTOPIC_POINT". Evolution does not mean "progress at all", using "progress" as you seem to use it in the rest of your post.

They may have evolved to not have any compassion for any species that is not their own. They may have evolved to a point of having no compassion whatsoever.

Why did you bring your wife's ship?

Your dog doesn't have political opinions; aliens most probably will.

If you spend some time in nature, you’ll also feel how cruel and alien it can be.

No.

Pleasantly surprised to see Ishtar Collective posted here, and SCP to boot!

There are a few facts you should know about this:

Formally Norwegian is West-Scandinavian (together with Icelandic and Faeroese), whereas Danish and Swedish are East-Scandinavian.

Also, please remember that the Norwegians have two different written languages (and the average Norwegian might not even speak any of those, as there are many dialects in Norway). One of those written languages is based on Danish from when Denmark ruled Norway.

In practice Norwegians and Swedes understand each other well when speaking, as their pronunciation are similar. Similarly Norwegians and Danes understand each other in writing, as the written language (and the vocabulary) are similar.

I know a lot of Danes who do not understand Swedish or Norwegian, and those movies or TV shows are normally subtitled in Denmark.

Source: I am Danish having worked a lot with both Swedes and Norwegians.

You final sentence is

> It's not as cut and dried as a hard species boundary on compassion.

My final sentence is

> We don't know.

So I think we're in agreement on this :-)

> Compassion seems just a natural evolutionary direction as it is far more energy efficient for creatures to form coalitions.

Coalitions within the species (family unit, clan, pack, etc), sure. Coalitions with external parties? That's rare outside of concurrent intertwined evolution (symbiotic relationships, parasitic relationships, etc).

We have a sample size of one, when it comes to self-aware sentient species, so I'm not sure we can draw any reasonable conclusions about likelihood of empathy between two such species

> We have a sample size of one, when it comes to self-aware sentient species, so I'm not sure we can draw any reasonable conclusions about likelihood of empathy between two such species

I'm not; I'm only pointing out that the conclusions I see ITT expressing the notion that a more intelligent species would necessarily be more compassionate is more unlikely than the converse, because from our one and only sample of life, we don't see it often.

IOW, I am replying "We don't know that" to the assertion "They will be compassionate.".

I didn't say that about evolution, you knee jerked it.

There is some (human, ape) logic that if you can survive millions of years while being technologically advanced, you probably have some compassion as if not, you would be extinct. But that's just human thinking; who knows. I would like to know.

  > That's rare outside of concurrent intertwined evolution (symbiotic relationships, parasitic relationships, etc).

You seemed to have carved out a way that everything falls under there

Everything evolves together. We're all on the same planet and working in the same ecosystem. Cross species collaborations isn't too uncommon and we even see it happen in some regions but not others.

The point is if you collaborate with your own you're very likely to collaborate with others. The smarter the animal the more common this is

Well the point was about a species able to build an interstellar ship. There's no point to compare to a snake who can't even build a piano.

We have a sample size of zero.

But again, you cannot build a ship with an individual. Physics gets in your way.

Thanks, it is good to hear from a first hand source.

I guess I should also add an important note: "mutually intelligible" is a spectrum, not a binary thing. If "mutually intelligible" meant "people understand one another with no issues" then 1) they'd be speaking the same language, 2) the premise of asymmetry mentioned in my original comment wouldn't be possible in the first place.

From what I'm aware, the Nordic mutual intelligibility still requires some training and exposure (it seems you're verifying this). Much like how a person from the West Coast of the US might think someone with a heavy southern accent or heavy New York accent is unintelligible until they get some exposure (but these are still the same language!).

> Inability to share memories.

That is literally what language is for (well, and also sharing ideas).