Should We Search for Extraterrestrial Life?

So what do you think about searching for extraterrestrial life?  The idea sounds pretty cool, but should we really be doing it?  I’m not so sure that it’s a good idea.  There are arguments both ways, but I think it makes sense for us to avoid it for now.

I think some people have a dream that we will befriend some far away civilization that has incredibly advanced technology and they are just going to hand over all their knowledge for us to use as we like.  Really?  Do you really think there’s some benevolent civilization somewhere whose primary activity is floating around the galaxy doing good things for all the other civilizations they come across?  I highly doubt it.

If there is intelligent life capable of space travel over long distances, then it’s more likely that they’ll find us.  We’re not going to find them somewhere with a few big telescopes and then just invite them over to our planet for a visit.  If they’re out traveling around in space then they probably have a good reason for it.  Most likely, they’ve depleted the resources on their planet so much that they’re out looking around for new sources for the stuff they’ve used up on theirs.  In that case humans would just be in their way and they would probably prefer to just get rid of us so they could go about the business of gathering up anything Earth has to offer and carting it back home.  Think about that for a minute and remember “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells.  As an aside, if you haven’t read that book you really should.  It’s an amazing piece of literature and I’m sure you’d like it.

So what if aliens visited Earth and contacted us?  What would they look like and how would we communicate with them?  In a best case scenario they would look like the little green or gray men as they are depicted in the movies.  Their language would be audible like ours but it would sound like a foreign language to us.  Ok, we could work with that.  But what if they were just moving blobs of semi-transparent goo and they communicated with each other telepathically?  How would we handle that?  The thing is, if they were substantially different from us we would probably just assume they were hostile and immediately start unleashing our weapons on  them.  If something is different or unfamiliar to us we generally treat it as hostile and assume bad intent.  It’s an instinct that will eventually go away if we are able to continue the process of human evolution, but for now we’re just stuck with it.

To me, the thought of aliens finding us is terrifying.  Not because I’m not curious about it - I certainly am.  It’s because we have no idea what they would do.  They might just regard us as a curiosity and move on.  Maybe they would try to befriend us.  Or another possibility is that they would be similar to us and consider us a threat that needs to be eradicated.  Humans seem to think that any living thing that’s not like us should be conquered, enslaved, or eradicated.  It’s what we do and we do it well.

Given the uncertainty of what would happen in an encounter with aliens, I think it makes more sense for us to not go looking for trouble.  We make enough trouble for us all by ourselves and we don’t need to be out looking for more.  That being said, we’re already advertising our presence to everything within about a gazillion miles away with our heavy use of the radio waves.  The first radio transmission was May 13, 1897 by Guglielmo Marconi.  At that point the cat was out of the bag.  Our use of the radio spectrum has increased exponentially since then, so all of our cats are now out of the bag.  Even if we realize the danger we’ve put ourselves in, we can’t just stop using radio waves.  We’re completely dependent on it now.  And even if all the world’s leaders got together and totally banned all radio transmissions, there would be some dumbshit who did it anyway.  All it takes is one.  

So what should we do about all of this?  Nothing.  We should do nothing.  If there’s a civilization out there with the intelligence and technology capable of hearing us, then they’re either already aware of us or they will be when Marconi’s first radio transmission eventually makes it to them.  There’s nothing we can do now to prevent this from happening.

Anyway, that’s my opinion on the question of searching for extraterrestrial life.  We should just concentrate on trying to undo some of the damage we’ve done to our planet and to each other.  It will be better in the long run for us and our children and their children.