This post is about a little different topic than my normal topics of software engineering and investing. The beauty of having a personal blog is that I can write about any topic that pops into my head. This post is about potential dangers of contacting extraterrestrial civilizations before we are ready for such adventures. I have always been interested in space exploration so this topic is near to my heart. I am also in the process of reading the Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin which is an excellent science fiction book, and very closely related to this subject. Highly recommended.
I have gotten sick with Covid (again) as I am writing this post. It made me think again how fragile our biological existence is. First, we require very specific external conditions conveniently present on this planet. Things like gravity, temperature, pressure have to be just right. We have to receive the right amount of different forms of radiation from the Sun, but be shielded against too much radiation by the ozone layer and the magnetic field of the Earth. And would we still be here, if we did not have Jupiter as a babysitter, to attract some of those flying space rocks away from us?
But the internal requirements for a specific state inside our bodies are much more rigorous. It is estimated that we need up to 30 different chemical elements in our body, in correct proportion. These include well-known ones like Calcium and Magnesium, but also obscure ones with very small trace amounts. But those trace amounts still need to be there, however small they may be. We need to keep good bacteria inside our bodies, to digest food for example, but simultaneously keep all of the bad bacteria out. The temperature inside our bodies needs to be very specific and if it's off by just one or two degrees, bad things start to happen. Same with pH and so forth. There are probably thousands of little things that have to be just right for us to live, or at least to function at an optimal level.
Lets say there was a hostile extraterrestrial civilization who wanted to conquer us. How would they go about it? Some still seem to think that it could look like traditional warfare that we are used to, perhaps popularized by Hollywood movies. Something like fighter jets shooting down UFOs from the skies. But this does not make any sense whatsoever. Why would an advanced civilization ever do this and put themselves at risk like that? The preferred military strategy we have on Earth is about using overwhelming force and avoiding a "fair fight" as much as possible. Given the fragile state of our biology, the easiest way to attack us would be to develop a bacteria or a virus. It would be an incredibly easy thing for an advanced civilization to do, given that we have already reached the level of technological progress to be able to work with bacteria and viruses ourselves. There is the theory that Covid19 itself was made in a laboratory, after all, which cannot be fully ruled out. Indeed, this type of attack could come from a rogue group of humans and not from an extraterrestrial source.
Some people seem to think that it would be a good idea to actively try to contact ET civilizations and inform them of our presence. In my opinion this is a very dangerous idea that is filled with unrealistic optimism. Contact with another intelligent species would be a situation with little to gain but much to lose. Lets say for example that we encountered a species similar to us in terms of intelligence, emotions and motivations. This would be about as optimistic scenario as we could expect. But as our history (and present) shows, we are terribly busy in killing even members of our own species in wars and other calamities. Would two such species really embrace each other as brothers and sisters and live happily ever after? Sadly I do not think so.
But what if the other species developed intelligence, but did not develop emotions such as empathy towards other living things? What if they operate more like say the ants we are familiar with? Ants are not malicious or evil. But they devour any other living beings they come in contact with. They operate on instinct and automated actions, not by choice. This would be a much scarier scenario because you could not communicate with them using intellectual arguments or appeal to their morality or pity. Unfortunately humans in general tend to assume too much that other things are like us and extrapolate that to everything. This human-centric view of the world is very common to us. The Borg was a reasonable attempt to describe this kind of civilization.
What if we get "lucky" and encounter a really virtuous angel-like species, the pure embodiment of good moral values. (And their moral values coincidentally match with ours.) How would they judge us, with all our shortcomings? Would they say that we are a "dangerous, savage child-race" like Q did? Would they annihilate us just to purify the galaxy?
But if things went well, what benefits we might be able to get from a species more advanced than us? We could receive scientific knowledge and access to advanced technologies beyond our current capability. But would those advanced technologies truly go to benefit humanity as a whole, or would they be kept by a small group of humans to advance their own interests? Moreover, we seem to be perfectly capable of developing advanced technologies by ourselves. This is because scientific and technological progress seems to follow somewhat of an exponential curve. So there is less and less time between major breakthroughs. Think of what we have accomplished in the last hundred years, compared to previous hundred before that. Some would say that our technology progresses too fast already and it is difficult to keep up! If we keep this up, even without fully exponential growth, we should have pretty advanced technologies in say a thousand years from now. A thousand years may seem like a long time, but actually it is really just a blink of an eye in the cosmic timescale where events often take millions of years.
Some people have even more utopistic ideas about what contact with alien species could bring. Something like ending all wars or curing all disease. Sadly it is not so easy. When so much of our society is organized around warfare and healthcare, you cannot just take out a major piece of a system instantly without creating catastrophic ripple effects everywhere. Transforming our society into something better has to be done gradually and patiently, however painful it may be. And how would such ET-dictated transformation occur in practice? They would tell us to lay down our arms because now we are part of the Galactic Brotherhood? We would be pretty suspicious and rightly so! And humans are pretty stubborn in general, we do not like to be told what to do, even by our own leaders! Fixing our internal problems is up to us. Do not look for some external savior to come to the rescue.
With these arguments, I do not believe it is wise to be actively sending radio signals into space in order to make other potential species know about our presence. There is limited upside in a best-case scenario but the worst-case scenario is devastating (extinction of our species). This post may seem to have a pessimistic tone, but actually I am optimistic that we can overcome our challenges and grow up as a species. I love humanity, even with our shortcomings, because the beauty of what we are capable of is so dazzling even though we are capable of ugly things as well. We will be able to join our galactic brothers and sisters, if there are any, one day. But we are not ready yet. We have to learn more about the nature of the universe, and our place in it. We have to build safeguards to protect our fragile biological existence, not just against bacteria and viruses found on Earth, but against more advanced engineered ones. We have to learn to stop petty wars between nationstates and work together towards bigger goals such as colonizing other planets. We have to make sure that our destiny as a spacefaring species is not hijacked and derailed by a rogue group of humans. So, we have our work cut out for us! None of this will be easy and nothing will be given to us for free. But we can do it, just like we have come so far already against overwhelming odds.