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Alien Contact Extensions – Alien Contact Good
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Alien Contact Extensions – Alien Contact Good[____] [____] Alien societies will be far more advanced than ours and share their technology, allowing us to thrive and benefit from their research Matt Smith, writer for the San Francisco Weekly, 4/1/1998, “Heavenly Secrets,” SF Weekly If the musings of the more enthusiastic scientists who conduct the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence are any guide, once we know we have company in the universe, astonishing advances will occur. Then, because the civilization communicating with Earth will most certainly be thousands of years more advanced than our own, we will instantly become privy to the wisdom of the ages. That civilization will have learned how to cure disease, outlive nuclear weapons, and solve the countless other quandaries haunting our species, so life expectancy on Earth will skyrocket. Earthlings will wire into an intergalactic Internet, through which far-flung civilizations communicate across time and space. As earthlings are freed from planetary tethers, eons of alien science will make us immortal, omniscient, and transcendentally wise. [____] [____] There’s no reason for aliens to be aggressive or try to exploit us – it’s not practical to travel so far for the resources Earth has. Jeff Foust, Space Review Editor, 8/23/2010, “SETI at 50,” Space Review, http://thespacereview.com/article/1686/1 Others, though, noted that we have been broadcasting, as radio broadcasts and other emissions that have “leaked” out from Earth over the decades that could be easily detected by an extraterrestrial civilization. “This horse has left the barn,” Shostak said. “Any society that could possibly be a threat to us can easily know that we’re here.” Shostak and others also took issue with the claim that such civilizations, alerted to our presence, would go after us for our resources. “To me it is almost inconceivable that there is a material resource worth traveling light-years to collect,” said science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer. “The energy required to collect it will almost always be more expensive than the cost of making it at home.” An advanced civilization would likely have to get any warlike instincts under control if it is to survive, added social scientist Douglas Vakoch. And even if they didn’t, “can they do us any harm at interstellar distances?” Extraterrestrial Perspective Extensions[____] [____] Even insignificant contact with extraterrestrial life will revolutionize humanity Allen Tough, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, 2000, “When SETI Succeeds: The Impact of High-Information Contact”, http://ieti.org/tough/books/succeeds/sectII.pdf Post-contact society is likely to affect our views of ourselves in at least three ways. First, it will speed awareness that we are part of the biological universe (Dick, 1996). Contact, even under minimum detection scenarios, is likely to accelerate our views of our selves as a part of a larger, interstellar humanity,” to extend the terminology of Olaf Stapleton’s “ interplanetary man” (Dick, this volum ) . Many other factors—such as our progress in spacefaring—will contribute to our consciousness of the cosmos. Second, knowledge of relationships among extraterrestrial subpopulations could help us gain insight into intergroup relations on Earth. We may learn, for example, from how ETI societies treat different societies as well as their own subpopulations. This discovery could cause us to reflect on how we ourselves treat people from different cultures and subcultures. By seeing how ETI manages diversity, we may learn new models for group relations on Earth. Almost a century of work in psychology and sociology shows that other people’s treatment of us shapes our views of ourselves. People who are treated as competent and worthwhile individuals tend to develop high self-confidence and perform well. Selfconfidence and success tend to feed upon each other and generate an upward spiral of events. People who are treated as inferior and incompetent lose self-confidence and motivation, and perform poorly. Low self-confidence and poor performance also feed on each other, in this case creating a downward spiral. [____] [____] Whether or not we find life, SETI will help answer questions about our place in the universe. David L. Chandler, science writer for the Boston Globe, 6/25/1984, “ASTRONOMY; LISTENING TO THE STARS GETS RESPECT,” Boston Globe But for the most part, the scientists gathered here were not interested in such practical spinoffs from their work. "I wouldn't want to justify it on those grounds," Morrison said. The justification the SETI scientists prefer seems to be more philosophical than practical. Michael Papagiannis, BU astronomy professor, president of the IAU's SETI commission and organizer of the symposium, summed it up thus: "We stand at a historic threshold. We have the chance to open the windows of our tiny planet. We can now seek experimentally the answers to ancient and fundamental questions." Morrison adds that one of the benefits of SETI research is that it causes us to take a "broad look at our own history." Sagan says that "provided we play the game, we win whether we find extraterrestrial intelligence or not. Suppose we do a comprehensive search and find nothing. Is this a failure? I don't think so." Whether we find signals or not, he says, it will teach us valuable lessons about our place in the universe. 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