Thoughts about meeting aliens

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An article on why contacts with aliens are best if they do NOT occur, as interesting as it may sound. It should provide an excellent answer to the Fermi Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_Paradox). This article is written from a scientific viewpoint.

Contact

This is not a discussion of whether such a meeting would be nice or not. Such a meeting would indeed be interesting and exciting, but that doesn't mean that it would be good for us. It would be best if the aliens had no way of coming here and/or did not know where Earth is.

1. Why we don't want physical interactions with aliens:

• Rabbits in Australia. [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia)
• Cockroaches, which can live virtually anywhere that humans can. [2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blattodea)
• Kudzu in the United States. [3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu)
• "Africanized" bees.
• Scientific literature has many other examples of supposedly innocuous things having significant effects in a new environment.

2. Why any first contact, especially when it is negative, must be released to the public carefully, and should be initiated as far away as possible (i.e., "you stay in your solar system, we'll stay here in ours"):

• H.G Well's War of the Worlds radio show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio)) is the classic example. Even rebroadcasts and broadcasts of similar shows have had similar effects, so it's not a one-time fluke.

3. Social signals. We don't even have universal body signals, which means that we have trouble not offending other members of our own species. See references below.

• There is no universal body signal indicating "agreement" and "disagreement". In the United States, agreement is often indicated by nodding the head, and disagreement by shaking the head laterally, but other cultures have other signals.
• A common thumb gesture in North America which is considered positive is regarded as insulting in Australia

4. Sociology. We can't even get along well with our own species. When was the last time that there was no war at all anywhere on the planet? How can we expect others to be peaceful when we can't be?

5. Overwhelmed by more powerful cultures, even if unintentional:

• American Indians, Mayans, Aztecs, Australian bushmen, among many others are now gone or second-class citizens in their own original land.

6. Technology.

• Only 20 years after WWII, technological advancement and military power were sufficient for one country to effectively destroy all WWII-era countries using a scorched-earth policy.
• It is unreasonable to assume that an alien visiting spacecraft would not be significantly more advanced than we are, especially considering that it would be difficult for it to be any less advanced.
• Consider the difference in our technology between now and a hundred years ago; even if some catastrophe occurs, life a hundred years from now will likely be barely imaginable to us in modern times, just as people a hundred years ago would find modern times barely comprehensible.
• Consider that a hundred years is an extremely small "drop in the ocean" in the grand scheme of things; the universe works on time scales of millions and billions of years.

Existence of intelligence

On a related note, how likely is it that there even exist aliens who we are able to learn the existence of? Consider these issues that the earth has faced and is facing now:

• Evolution seems to be accelerating, and the overall intelligence level of animals is rising over time. However, it took a couple billion years for the first multicellular forms to come about. On the other hand, the rising intelligence means that in a few million years, especially with the challenges of avoiding becoming roadkill and surviving/avoiding pollution, "ordinary" animals may gain intelligence comparable to our current intelligence.

• Disease conflicts: Many disease organisms have become immune to antibiotics and the like. A small but increasing number of diseases have no real cure; the only thing stopping them so far is their slow spread. Imagine a variation of AIDS which spreads as easily and quickly as the common cold. As an example, almost all amphibians on Earth are currently being killed off by a fungus; it has been likened to the extinction of the dinosaurs. [4] (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17166620)

• Prions. Prions are corrupted proteins that cause damage to cells. They seem to be able to either corrupt other uncorrupted proteins the same way or else somehow cause the body to create more of them, and they are extremely difficult to destroy; must be incinerated at high temperature. Mad cow disease is an example. It's not unusual among cannibals.

• Drugs. Drugs are common and many are considered, rightly or wrongly, to be virtual necessities. Many drugs are pulled from the market after a significant number of people present delayed side-effects. Consider that many vaccines are mandatory (with few exceptions) for children nowadays, even in poorly-developed countries. Some drugs are known to have effects on the next generation which were not apparently in the current generation. Consider a vaccine which becomes mandatory (for bird flu, perhaps) and irreversibly sterilizes all second-generation women who were conceived after their mother was treated; this is something which would take 1 to 15 years to come to light, depending upon the sterilization mechanism.

• Homogeneity. With increased globalization, it seems likely that the average person in the future (in perhaps a thousand years or so) will have a partial epicanthic fold and a permanent tan. From the viewpoint of a disease, this is a good thing; virtually the entire population would have the same susceptibility. If the disease is deadly, then a significant proportion of the population would die. Keep in mind that a whopping 90% of the cells in our bodies are bacteria, many of them symbiotic; we cannot be completely bacteria-free without, at the very least, significant changes to our diets.

• Technology and medicine taking the place of biology. For good or bad, many people today are saved and kept alive with modern technology and medicine. This creates an increasingly-large proportion of the population which would die if technological society were to collapse. From an evolutionary point of view, it also creates an increasing number of people who cannot have children without technology or medical assistance, and whose children cannot survive without assistance. So, at least in the technologically-developed areas, and in the areas which depend upon the high agricultural productivity of the developed areas for food, a collapse of technology would result in a collapse of population and probably also of civilization. The developed areas would probably experience a secondary phase when a smaller number of children are born and raised.

• Water tables are dropping, which means that rainfall is less than water usage. What happens to people, crops, and industry when water availability drops too low?

• Environment. It seems likely that if we don't try to keep the environment and biosphere stable, things will deteriorate to the point where our crops won't grow. It won't mean the end of Earth, by any means, but it'd likely mean the end of many of us.

It seems likely that aliens would have many of the same problems, and perhaps others. As a result, I think that there's a relatively strong chance that any allegedly-intelligent species (such as Homo Sapiens) will manage to kill itself off, if an asteroid or nova doesn't happen first.

References:

1. Gesture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesture) article from Wikipedia
2. The writings of Charles Darwin on the web (http://pages.britishlibrary.net/charles.darwin3/expression/expression11.htm) by Charles Darwin, transcribed by John van Wyhe Ph.D
3. Xenopsychology (http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm), by Dr. Robert A. Freitas Jr.