This is just a short, easy-to-read paper I keep in my bookmarks and go back to occasionally. It explores, qualitatively, the various outcomes that contact with alien intelligence might have. I think it's a really cool 25-page exploration of possibilities that are fun to think about. Some choice quotes:

ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) might attack us not out of selfishness but instead out of a universalist desire to make the galaxy a better place.

perhaps ETI make contact with Earth to welcome us into the Galactic Club but only after we complete a set of required bureaucratic tasks

hexbear-posadist

They may be interested in incorporating us into their civilization so they can sell us their products, keep us as pets, or have us mine raw materials for them.

if ETI place intrinsic value on lives, then perhaps they could bring about more lives by destroying us and using our resources more efficiently for other lives

My favourite section is the "unintentional harm" outcomes, which suggests the possibility that they just might squish us by accident.

One non-biological physical hazard that we could face from direct contact with ETI is unintentional mechanical harm. For example, ETI might accidentally crush us while attempting an unrelated maneuver.

i-spil-my-jice

Can't for the life of me find where I first heard of this, but I just wanted to share it for being fun and fairly silly yet still officially worked on by NASA.

  • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    6 months ago

    Contact would probably harm humanity. If they tried to help humanity, the Americans would never allow it, as it would unseat their hegemony, they would almost certainly attack any aliens that come to help and start an interplanetary war that we have no hope of winning.

    One of the interesting parts of a lot of western Xenobiology is this weird insistence on aliens being exactly like American capitalists, they cannot imagine another state of being, they can't imagine that in order to reach the stars, a species needs to have outgrown selfish and short-sighted behaviour like capitalism. They just assume all aliens will be ultra capitalist and harvest earth for resources.

    • CarbonScored [any]
      ·
      6 months ago

      For sure a scary and possible thing. If we had that kind of benevolent contact we'd have to put faith in the aliens to understand that America is just.. America, and we're still a diverse world.

      In regards to the western viewpoint, I think perhaps that's what I appreciate most about this paper - it totally considers a large range of outcomes, and actually does the same, criticising those that do like you say and consider only a very narrow possible window of existence.

      many discussions of this question assume that contact will follow a particular scenario that derives from the hopes and fears of the author.

      Unfortunately, .. previous work tends to be quite narrow in the sense of only considering one or a small number of possible contact outcomes. There appears to be a tendency to jump to conclusions on a matter which remains highly uncertain and for which a broad range of outcomes are within the realm of possibility

      we have reason to believe that a sustainable ETI is less likely to be harmful than an unsustainable, exponentially expansive ETI.

      ie if your modus operandi was exploit everything to the max like a capitalist, you wouldn't get very far in space.