
How would the world change if we found extraterrestrial life? - lelf
http://phys.org/news/2015-01-world-extraterrestrial-life.html
======
Agustus
What kind of life is it:

1\. Intelligent life that had simply sent out colonizing platforms with
technology similar to ours would mean that we would integrate them (assuming
they just cyrogenically froze individuals and sent out thousands of seed
ships):

a. Are the seeders capable of transmitting back, if so, is the home planet
alive, how long until transmission reaches them, how long until the home
planet can send out another seeder ship/support ship? Can we stop them from
overpopulating the Earth? Should we stop them? b. Are the seeders virus
ridden? Are we dangerous to them, War of the Worlds style? c. Are the seeders
the only ones in the galaxy? Or are there warring factions? Are we aligning
ourselves to the correct side?

2\. Intelligent life superior in technological capabilities would:

a. Star Trek: Benevolent overseer

b. Battleship Earth: Enslaver

c. Independence Day: Eradicator of humans

Would we be able to do anything about it, we may be in a situation that Carl
Sagan foresaw that we may have the technology, but not the materials to reach
a location should a signal reach us saying: "Hey, we can solve all of your
problems if you can get a ship to alpha centauri within the next 8 years with
two double a batteries. If you do not reach here in 8 years, we will be
eradicated by Sunorian Plague."

~~~
civilian
Blindsight by Peter Watts
([http://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm](http://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm))
talks about the possible alien options, and I really enjoy it's answer.

\---

Once there were three tribes. The Optimists, whose patron saints were Drake
and Sagan, believed in a universe crawling with gentle intelligence—spiritual
brethren vaster and more enlightened than we, a great galactic siblinghood
into whose ranks we would someday ascend. Surely, said the Optimists, space
travel implies enlightenment, for it requires the control of great destructive
energies. Any race which can't rise above its own brutal instincts will wipe
itself out long before it learns to bridge the interstellar gulf.

Across from the Optimists sat the Pessimists, who genuflected before graven
images of Saint Fermi and a host of lesser lightweights. The Pessimists
envisioned a lonely universe full of dead rocks and prokaryotic slime. The
odds are just too low, they insisted. Too many rogues, too much radiation, too
much eccentricity in too many orbits. It is a surpassing miracle that even one
Earth exists; to hope for many is to abandon reason and embrace religious
mania. After all, the universe is fourteen billion years old: if the galaxy
were alive with intelligence, wouldn't it be here by now?

Equidistant to the other two tribes sat the Historians. They didn't have too
many thoughts on the probable prevalence of intelligent, spacefaring
extraterrestrials— but if there are any, they said, they're not just going to
be smart. They're going to be mean.

It might seem almost too obvious a conclusion. What is Human history, if not
an ongoing succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath
their boots? But the subject wasn't merely Human history, or the unfair
advantage that tools gave to any given side; the oppressed snatch up advanced
weaponry as readily as the oppressor, given half a chance. No, the real issue
was how those tools got there in the first place. The real issue was what
tools are for.

To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the universe
into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy, they were by
definition a rebellion against the way things were. Technology is a stunted
thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by
belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is
comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no
enemies? Why force change upon a world which poses no threat?

Human civilization had a lot of branches, not so long ago. Even into the
twenty-first century, a few isolated tribes had barely developed stone tools.
Some settled down with agriculture. Others weren't content until they had
ended nature itself, still others until they'd built cities in space.

We all rested eventually, though. Each new technology trampled lesser ones,
climbed to some complacent asymptote, and stopped—until my own mother packed
herself away like a larva in honeycomb, softened by machinery, robbed of
incentive by her own contentment. But history never said that everyone had to
stop where we did. It only suggested that those who had stopped no longer
struggled for existence. There could be other, more hellish worlds where the
best Human technology would crumble, where the environment was still the
enemy, where the only survivors were those who fought back with sharper tools
and stronger empires. The threats contained in those environments would not be
simple ones. Harsh weather and natural disasters either kill you or they
don't, and once conquered—or adapted to— they lose their relevance. No, the
only environmental factors that continued to matter were those that fought
back, that countered new strategies with newer ones, that forced their enemies
to scale ever-greater heights just to stay alive. Ultimately, the only enemy
that mattered was an intelligent one.

And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who've never forgotten
that life itself is an act of war against intelligent opponents, what does
that say about a race whose machines travel between the stars?

The argument was straightforward enough. It might even have been enough to
carry the Historians to victory—if such debates were ever settled on the basic
of logic, and if a bored population hadn't already awarded the game to Fermi
on points. But the Historian paradigm was just too ugly, too Darwinian, for
most people, and besides, no one really cared any more. Not even the Cassidy
Survey's late-breaking discoveries changed much. So what if some dirtball at
Ursae Majoris Eridani had an oxygen atmosphere? It was forty-three lightyears
away, and it wasn't talking; and if you wanted flying chandeliers and alien
messiahs, you could build them to order in Heaven. If you wanted testosterone
and target practice you could choose an afterlife chock-full of nasty alien
monsters with really bad aim. If the mere thought of an alien intelligence
threatened your worldview, you could explore a virtual galaxy of empty real
estate, ripe and waiting for any God-fearing earthly pilgrims who chanced by.

~~~
MarkPNeyer
the past isn't all meanness. you win more with friends you trust than with
slaves fighting for you.

even the greediest king needs to feed his soldiers. doing that is a lot easier
when your kingdom is prosperous because your people have property rights and
solid contracts.

the allies won the second world war because the nazis and the japanese killed
or ostracized all of their weirdos. we just kept ours busy cracking their
codes.

military conflict is only one aspect of history - and i'd say the bonds formed
between soldiers matter more than the violence they inflict on each other.

technology matters - sure. but you need to account for the technology of
trust.

a society that is strongly trusting of its internal members because they all
have historical records of statements they've made about each other and their
relationships, with measured accuracy and self-contradiction frequency - that
civilization will be more supportive of its members and quicker to defeat its
enemies. see
[https://github.com/neyer/dewDrop](https://github.com/neyer/dewDrop) for more
on that one.

look at game of thrones, and how powerful the stark family remains, even after
they are all killed. they are loved, and that's a power that the lannisters
totally underestimate, to their failure. even after Ned stark is gone, the
love his supporters bore him causes them to stick together, while the tyrells
and the lannisters squabble like a bunch of children. Coordinating group
effort is really fucking hard. Love, trust, and friendship are way more cost
effective than greed and selfishness.

love doesn't always win. it doesn't have to. it can wait patiently for greed
to chase its tail into a corner and starve itself to death. if love does that,
someone who loves it will come by and put it right.

look at how many corporations push for diversity - not because they care, but
because even a sociopath sees the value in _being seen as_ honest and caring
and good. once that becomes extremely difficult to fake, i'm sure it'll affect
the entire culture.

------
gyardley
That depends on the type of extraterrestrial life discovered.

There's a huge difference between us finding extraterrestrial life within our
solar system (microbes on Mars, for example) and extraterrestrial life from
outside the solar system finding _us_. The latter resolves the Fermi Paradox
while the former heightens it.

Personally, I'd be really unsettled if scientists found evidence of microbial
life on Mars. If life is so common that it can evolve independently twice in
the same solar system, the 'Earth is a very rare and special thing' hypothesis
is unlikely and there should have been many, many civilizations capable of
interstellar travel - and the fact that we haven't encountered any would
indicate something _deeply_ weird is going on, most likely extinction events
that keep societies like ours from ever reaching other stars.

Hell, it's already weird and disturbing that we're discovering so many
exoplanets - including earth-sized exoplanets, including exoplanets in the
liquid-water belt. Given the continued absence of alien life, that really
shouldn't be happening.

~~~
pmahoney
There was an article in _American Scientist_ a few years back about just how
big space is, and how even if there are many intelligent species, they'll just
never communicate due to the distances involved (barring exotic new physics).
It was a bit sobering.

I believe it was this article:
[http://www.americanscientist.org/my_amsci/restricted.aspx?ac...](http://www.americanscientist.org/my_amsci/restricted.aspx?act=pdf&id=47898461942155)

~~~
TheCondor
I think it's unlikely we will find any life on Mars, only the most optimistic
folks hold any hope and there is nothing that even suggests it.

Whether or not interstellar travel is possible is an interesting question. We
are talking about tremendous amounts of energy, time, and incredibly reliable
devices. It may simply not be practical or possible. What seems must likely to
me is we will sniff out pollution in an exoplanet atmosphere and then there
will be lots of discussions and debates about whether or not it could
naturally happen.

Lack of any radio communication sure is a puzzle though

~~~
tiatia
Mate, some people think we already FOUND live on Mars
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Mars#Viking_lander_biol...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Mars#Viking_lander_biological_experiments)

------
mc32
That might depend a lot on the kind of life found. Microorganisms vs
intelligent beings capable of interstellar communication. On the other hand
this would not change most people's religious perspectives where such have any
opinion on life outside Earth this knowledge would simply be co-opted.

Science, on the other hand would receive a pretty good boost in funds I
imagine.

~~~
uptown
"Science, on the other hand would receive a pretty good boost in funds I
imagine."

I bet science would find themselves in a struggle for dollars with defense
spending, and would lose that fight.

~~~
scardine
Defense funded a lot of science over history.

------
puranjay
If we found microbes and nothing more, the larger public would be
underwhelmed. We've been trained to think 'alien = adorable/murderous
creatures'.

The scientific establishment would be excited, of course, but I fail to see
how that excitement would percolate down to the average Joe.

What's more interesting is the long-term impact on human society. We will see
a gradual shift from human-centric narratives to more universal narratives

------
netik
I think one of the best examples of this can be found in Sagan's book,
Contact. The battle between the scientists, government, and religious fanatics
is played out pretty well (even more exaggerated in the movie.)

But currently, It seems the current position on our finding prior evidence of
microbial life has been met by much of the planet with a resounding "Meh."

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
For some reason most of the newsies missed this story a few weeks ago -
there's now good circumstantial evidence for ancient microbial life on Mars:

[http://phys.org/news/2015-01-potential-ancient-life-mars-
rov...](http://phys.org/news/2015-01-potential-ancient-life-mars-rover.html)

------
FLUX-YOU
The news would go nuts. It'll be all anyone talks about on social media and
internet forums. Every comedian will have an alien joke. Books, movies, and
games will be written about them. Talking about the aliens will carry the same
sophistication as talking about the weather. Conspiracy theorists and the
paranoid-delusional will confirm their worst fears and blame the government.
The government will roll out a Department of Extraterrestrial Security and
enforce more airport screenings. A lot of people would buy telescopes.
Benedict Cumberbatch will act as one. Potheads will make first contact
according to themselves. The stock market will go up (but I can't tell you why
-- that's insider trading). People will do cosplay of them. People will draw
porn with them. Xkcd will do a What-if and a comic or three. Python will add
'import aliens'. Silicon Valley will spawn at least 4 new startups related to
speculative data machine learning about their browsing habits once we show
them our internet. Colbert will do a special about being abducted and he never
really wanted to leave anyway. John Stewart will claim that Fox News were
aliens all along and this is the second wave. Fox News will find a way to
blame Obama and John Boehner will finally shed his ninth skin.

But that's just my take on it.

------
Fluid_Mechanics
Microscopic: Endless talk-show rhetoric about whether or not we introduced the
life-form to the other planet.

Macroscopic - cannot communicate: NASA is perpetrating a silly hoax to appease
the homosexual atheist liberals.

Macroscopic - can communicate, less advanced: Divine force seeded life among
the stars. Proselytizing the aliens put on collective bucket-list.

Macroscopic - can communicate, more advanced: Prepare for an invasion, nuke
all non-human scum, repent or die, etc.

Business as usual.

------
Spooky23
I think it would create a lot of chaos.

Fundamentalist religious types would have a problem with it. Many wouldn't
believe it.

~~~
spacehome
Please. Fundamentalists would adapt their interpretation of their scripture to
it like they have to every discovery and move on without skipping a beat.
Their doctrine is unfalsifiable.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Fundamentalists would adapt their interpretation of their scripture to it
> like they have to every discovery and move on without skipping a beat.

Many fundamentalists haven't adapted their interpretation of their scripture
to account for the discovery that the Earth is over ~6,000 years old, or the
discovery of biological evolution, so I'm not sure what "adapt their
interpretation of their scripture to it like they have to every discovery" is
supposed to mean.

~~~
anon4
They have. They say the lord made it appear to be over 6000 years old to test
your faith.

------
rokhayakebe
Question:

Is it probable that there may be beings terrestrial or extraterrestrial that
we may simply not be able to perceive through our senses?

------
Grazester
If they are anything like humans but more developed I dont see our world
changing for the better. Conquistadors anyone?

~~~
ctdonath
If they are anything beyond basic microbes, we may very well find our notion
of the nature of "life" challenged, _especially_ if they're something
construed as "intelligent". Imagine, say, discovering jellyfish for the first
time...now consider finding _intelligent_ jellyfish. Cognitive dissonance
follows.

~~~
colanderman
Agreed. We barely know how to communicate with the intelligent species on our
own planet except those most closely related to us (the great apes); let alone
those more distantly related (dolphins, crows). Imagine the extraterrestrial
intelligence were a colony of slime-mold like creatures with a far slower
metabolism than ours. I don't think humanity could even _begin_ to interface
with them, despite sharing traits with beings that are known to us.

~~~
ars
> let alone those more distantly related (dolphins, crows)

Our inability to communicate with them is not because we don't know how to do
it, but because they don't communicate much.

The stuff they do communicate we understood.

So I see no problems in communicating with an Alien that does actually
communicate.

~~~
colanderman
As recently as 2011 we discovered that Dolphins communicate by sonogram:

[http://www.speakdolphin.com/ResearchItems.cfm?ID=20](http://www.speakdolphin.com/ResearchItems.cfm?ID=20)

 _Our new model of dolphin language is one in which dolphins can not only send
and receive pictures of objects around them but can create entirely new sono-
pictures simply by imagining what they want to communicate._

------
guard-of-terra
Obviously it will be the most important scientific event to date.

------
binarymax
"How will the world change when we find extraterrestrial life?"

------
Fluid_Mechanics
ere

------
jkmcf
Not sure about the rest of the world, but a third of America would argue
against the science until it eradicated them.

------
NoMoreNicksLeft
The world wouldn't change. The people might change their behaviors. It's a
strange perspective that thinks the sociological sphere is the "world".

~~~
ctdonath
It's hard to have a conversation when common terms are deliberately
misconstrued. Obviously & colloquially, when someone says "how would the world
change if humans were given information X" we're discussing social human
behavior, not (say) natural geologic change.

~~~
rbrogan
That is not obvious (no offense). When I think of "the world", I also think
about things beyond "social human behavior". For instance, you could ask how
contact with alien life could affect how we use this planet Earth (e.g. usage
of natural resources, pollution, etc.). Conceivably, it could also change how
we think about (non-human) life on this planet. One can talk about "the world"
and talk about humans without necessarily being anthropocentric.

