By Steve Lehar
Alien Contact – it won’t happen the way you expect!
When radio and television were first invented they were hailed as a new channel for the free flow of information that will unite mankind in informed discussion of important issues. When I scan the dial on my radio and TV however I find a dismal assortment of misinformation and emotionalistic pap. How did this come to be so? The underlying insight is that electronic media are exploited by commercial interests whose only goal is to induce me to spend my money on them, and they will feed me any signal that will bring about this end. (In Television, it is YOU that are the product, the customer is the advertiser who pays for your attention!) This is a natural consequence of the laws of economics, that a successful business is one that seeks its own best interests in any way it can. I don’t intend to discuss the morality of the ‘laws of economic nature’. But recognition of this insight can help us predict similar phenomena in similar circumstances.
Indeed, perhaps this same insight can be applied to extraterrestrial matters. I make first of all the following assumptions, with which you may choose either to agree or disagree.
- That there are other intelligences out there in the universe.
- That ultimately all intelligences must evolve away from their biological origins towards artificially manufactured forms of intelligence which have the advantages of eternal life, unrestricted size, and direct control over the parameters of their own nature.
- That it is in the best interests of any intelligence to propagate its own kind throughout the universe to the exclusion of competing forms, i.e. that intelligences that adopt this strategy will thereby proliferate.
Acceptance of these assumptions, together with the above mentioned insight, leads to some rather startling conclusions. Artificially manufactured life forms need not propagate themselves physically from planet to planet, all they need to do is to transmit their ‘pattern’, or the instructions for how to build them. In this way they can disperse themselves practically at the speed of light. What they need at the receiving end is some life form that is intelligent enough to receive the signal and act on it. In other words, if some alien life form knew of our existence, it would be in their interests to beguile us into manufacturing a copy of their form here on earth. This form would then proceed to scan the skies in our locality in search of other gullible life forms. In this way, their species acts as a kind of galactic virus, taking advantage of established life forms to induce them to make copies of their own kind.
Man on a psychedelic state experiencing a “spiritual message” (i.e alien infomercials for consciousness technology) coming from a civilization of known pure replicators who “promise enlightenment in exchange of followers” (the oldest trick in the book to get a planet to make copies of you).
The question that remains is how are they to induce an intelligent life form (or in our case, a semi-intelligent life form) to perform their reproductive function for them? A hint of how this can be achieved is seen in the barrage of commercials that pollute our airwaves here on earth. Advertisers induce us to part with our money by convincing us that ultimately it is in our own best interests to do so. After convincing us that it is our baldness, overweight, bad breath etc. which is the root of all our personal problems, they then offer us products that will magically grow hair, lose weight, smell good etc. in exchange for our money. The more ruthless and blatant ones sell us worthless products and services, while more subtle advertisers employ an economic symbiosis whereby they provide services that we may actually want, in exchange for our money. This latter strategy is only necessary for the more sophisticated and discriminating consumers, and involves a necessary waste of resources in actually producing the worthwhile product.
This is the way I see it happening. As the transmissions from the early days of radio propagate into space in an ever expanding sphere, outposts on distant planetary systems will begin to detect those transmissions and send us back carefully engineered ‘commercials’ that depict themselves as everything that we desire of an alien intelligence; that they are benevolent, wise, and deeply concerned for our welfare. They will then give us instructions on how to build a machine that will cure all the problems of the world and make us all happy. When the machine is complete, it will ‘disinfect’ the planet of competing life forms and begin to scan the skies from earth in search of further nascent planets.
If we insist on completely understanding the machine before we agree to build it, then they may have to strike a bargain with us, by making the machine actually perform some useful function for us. Possibly the function will be something like a pleasure machine, so that we will all line up to receive our pleasure from them, in return for our participation in their reproductive scheme. (A few ‘free sample’ machines supplied in advance but with a built-in expiration time would certainly help win our compliance).
A rich variety of life forms may bombard us with an assortment of transmissions, at various levels of sophistication. If we succumb to the most primitive appeals we may wind up being quickly extinguished. If we show some sophistication, we might enjoy a brief period of hedonistic pleasure before we become emotionally enslaved. If we wish to deal with these aliens on an equal basis however, we would have to be every bit as shrewd and cunning as they themselves are, trading for real knowledge from them in return for partial cooperation with their purposes. This would be no small feat, considering that their ‘pitch’ may have been perfected and tuned through many epochs of planetary conquest and backed with an intelligence beyond our imaginings.
Its just a thought!
Steve’s article assumes that the aliens would have ulterior motives. Why make this assumption, which would lead to complex game-theoretic scenarios? Is it not also possible that cooperation is the best strategy for the aliens, or that there is actually one common cosmic mission that those aliens would truly benevolently be trying to get everyone onboard on?
I guess my central question is, what reason do we have to operate from the assumption that pure replication is the default central motive of [super]intelligent life?
> Steve’s article assumes that the aliens would have ulterior motives.
I do not think that he is assuming that. In fact, I think that Steve starts out without making any claim about the intents of the average alien civilization. Rather, Steve simply warns us of something that he finds likely given some reasonable assumptions. The whole point of the article is that you are able to derive the strong possibility that these signals would be troublesome starting from simple, elegant and very plausible hypothesis. At no point he assumes they have ulterior motives; he derives that possibility.
From the article, the basic hypothesis are as follows:
1) That there are other intelligences out there in the universe.
2) That ultimately all intelligences must evolve away from their biological origins towards artificially manufactured forms of intelligence which have the advantages of eternal life, unrestricted size, and direct control over the parameters of their own nature.
3) That it is in the best interests of any intelligence to propagate its own kind throughout the universe to the exclusion of competing forms, i.e. that intelligences that adopt this strategy will thereby proliferate.
If you notice, there is no implication that *most* nor even *many* intelligences out there in the universe are nefarious. Rather, what is here being discussed is that of those that do exist and manage to acquire super-technology (“eternal life, unrestricted size, and direct control over the parameters of their own nature”), those who adopt the strategy of replicating themselves at all costs will be more numerous. I think that this is far from controversial, and indeed all of Darwinian life seems to follow this patter.
Now, as you point out, there could be some reason that makes the most numerous aliens also the most benevolent and cooperative. There could be a central cosmic mission and any civilization that is sufficiently advanced might be made privy to it through visions, telepathy or whatever super-technological methods exist at their disposal. But I should remind you, such a reason has yet to be articulated – and indeed I think that a strong case can be made that this vision of our future is “pushing our Darwinian buttons for meaning and need for closure”. Surely a super-intelligent agent would be able to detect such spiritual desires in potential hosts and adapt their message to use us as a replication platform, would’t you think?
So until we have developed a much better understanding of the universe, life, reality, consciousness, valence and all of the big questions remaining, I would strongly caution against forming affective allegiances to any entity that manifests within one’s mind during DMT states or the like. The danger is too high. Let’s derive the knowledge in-house, and study those who do contact entities from a safe distance, just to be safe.
Ps. If indeed spirituality throughout the ages is a sort of “grooming” by aliens, we may already by beyond doomed. We may have had no chance from the very beginning. But even then, why hand them the goods without a fight?
Pss. A super-intelligent benevolent civilizations that figured out “the God’s eye view utility function” could have figured out how to convince anyone that it is benevolent. And yet, such a civilization may not be impervious to pure-replicators infiltrating it and taking over from within, thus acquiring the means to “prove” their benevolence while maximizing their reproductive ability.
Nice thought that has a modest bouquet of Dimitri inspiration. The economic laws have surely too many flaws, are very human-egocentrically oriented. There are disputable and doubtful economic theories of constant growth that are nailed to the heads of the students year after year already for decades, bad schemes are created and that`s apparently not achievable and very awry on our limited reactive Earth but that counter argument is completely lost in the chase for wealth and power. Fusions are now common, not just a consequence of the economic globalization but only fused large conglomerates are able to outperform competition almost as the alien machine that you described. Media is in the same faculty of that school. Would the super intelligent species want to go in such an ambit? Just looking at the data, people differ greatly, many intelligent people are very altruistic and non-aggressive. The portrait of an intelligence that wants to demolish instead of thriving further seems unreal and is just a box that is influenced by our emotions (and in emotions we are enslaved) only they bring value to our game. Value is mistakenly grasped. Animals in nature are in constant fear of predators, how could we be different? The more intelligent the species the less time it wants to immolate for emotions that influence its ratio. Correct if it seems goofed please. There would be no risk for the machine once unleashed because mankind could mean no uncertainty or danger for such a species once evolved to full potential. The idea of using life forms on various planets as sort of sensors for that region of the universe is curiously thrilling and is fantastic. Thank you for sharing. Going to be a good dream tonight.