What If We Were About to Make Contact? The Hypothetical Implications of Confirmed Extraterrestrial Intelligence

What could be the worst-case scenario upon announcing the discovery of extraterrestrial technological intelligence? This list is not inclusive.

Scenarios after Human-ETI Contact. This list is not inclusive of all possibilities.

Potential Consequences:

1. Mass Panic:

The crisis of order. Exploitation could surge, with doomsday cults gaining followers and charlatans claiming to be “ambassadors” for the aliens, preying on the fearful.

Economic collapse might occur, as markets could crash due to radical uncertainty following an extraterrestrial discovery. Misinformation would fill the information vacuum, leading to conspiracy theories and fear-mongering, potentially inciting violence and civil unrest.

However, studies of disasters (including the COVID-19 pandemic) suggest that true, sustained mass panic is less common than often assumed.


2. A Retraction: The Crisis of Credibility

What if subsequent investigations prove the discovery to be false, requiring a retraction? This could discredit the entire SETI field.

Such a scenario would be a catastrophic embarrassment. The field already struggles with what some call the “giggle factor,” and being discredited for a generation could severely damage public trust in scientists and science as a whole. Securing funding for future searches might become nearly impossible after a failed extraterrestrial discovery.


3. Humanity Dethroned: The Crisis of Meaning

What if the extraterrestrial discovery implies that humankind no longer occupies the pinnacle of evolution in the cosmos?

Religions centered on human exceptionalism could face a fundamental crisis. However, studies on this subject have shown that the impact may be negligible.

Our entire worldview, which places humanity at the center of meaning, could be invalidated. This could lead to profound, species-wide depression, a loss of purpose, and what philosophers term “cosmic despair.” Why strive, create, or even continue if we are but ants on an unremarkable anthill?

(I disagree.)


4. The Optimistic View (The Cosmic Perspective):

Would this discovery temper humankind’s worst instincts, such as warfare, and diminish the power of despotic rulers?

Carl Sagan and others have hoped that knowing we are not alone would foster a “cosmic perspective.” Realizing we are all citizens of a fragile, shared planet in a vast cosmos could make nationalism, racism, and warfare seem petty and childish. Such an extraterrestrial discovery could unite humanity and pose a threat to despotic rulers whose power relies on manufacturing “us vs. them” conflicts.

(I agree.)


5. The Pessimistic View:

A despotic ruler thrives on controlling information and manipulating fear. An alien intelligence could become the ultimate propaganda tool.

A dictator might claim that the aliens pose a demonic threat, justifying crackdowns and military expansion to “protect” the populace.

They could also claim that the aliens have endorsed their rule, creating a new “divine right” to govern after such an extraterrestrial discovery.

The discovery could trigger an unimaginably high-stakes Cold War, where nations fight not for territory or resources but for control of communication channels and any technological secrets the aliens might reveal.


(Well, that’s why we have HAM radio operators and satellite dishes.)

4. WHAT IS A UFO?

The author examining 35 mm negative with a digital microscope, MUFON case #111680, 1995.

It isn’t clear if UAPs are the product of human or non-human technology. It is only by their shape and fantastic alien flight characteristics that a non-human origin can be inferred. Human planes can not make 90° hairpin turns or accelerate from zero to hypersonic speeds in the fraction of a second.

Prof. Kevin Knuth, Associate Professor of Physics and Informatics, University at Albany, explained this in his article “Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles“.

The majority of the public believes that other intelligent life in the cosmos exists and that we are not the only species inhabiting the Universe. This concept was popularized in the TV show “Cosmos” by exobiologist Carl Sagan and it is held to be true in the general consensus.

People who believe that humanity plays a more special role in the cosmos (anthropocentrists) do think that UFOs come from our own future, instead from alien worlds. They cite the large distances between solar systems as an obstacle for interplanetary spacecraft to make contact.

Some people think that it would be easier to build a time machine than a faster than light spacecraft. Otoh, with a time machine, superluminal flight would be easy. Just slow down the clock dial whilst maintaining forward momentum and viola!, speed is increased.

Superluminal flight implies time travel, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity. Time slows down progressively the more one approaches the speed of light. And should one travel in excess of light speed, then time begins running backwards. That follows from the theory and mathematics of relativity, which does not consider time paradoxes. It’s just numbers.

Book cover of “Identified Flying Objects”, 2019, by anthropologist Michael Paul Masters

Professor of anthropology Dr. Michael Paul Masters is one of the proponents of the UFO as time travelers. He explained it in more detail in his book “Identified Flying Objects” calling the time travelling occupants of these craft “extratempestrials”.

I believe that it’s a definitive possibility that some UFOs do come from our own future. Yet the infinity of possible futures in time means that SOME UFOs will also come from other worlds, even if it’s just our mutated time-traveling offspring from thousands of years into the future visiting their ancestral home planet.

If they exist they may be just visiting their ancestral home planet, or their great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Is there a paradox?

The Contact Initiative (https://reddit.com/r/contactproject) wants to discover if it’s possible to make radio contact with UFOs, to ask them what they are. It’s as simple as that.

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