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What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

theatlantic.com

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Re: What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

#51

Post by Udik »

remarkEon wrote: post #32
c_shu wrote: post #15

If the aliens are strong enough to land their spaceship on earth, investigating all countries is probably a piece of cake for them. There is no reason for them to tie themselves to a certain country or area. In another case, if they establish communication with a certain country/organization, but they cannot arrive, and somehow can only communicate with that certain country/organization, then it could be a different…

These thought experiments are always a little strange to me. If an alien race has the technology for interstellar travel I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to assume they’d also be able to do whatever they want to observe us (i.e. stay hidden if they like). I think a much more interesting thought experiment is this: if an alien race chooses to make First Contact with us, what’s the likelihood we’re actually the…

> Being a student of history, it’s a stretch for me to think they wouldn’t know these sorts of events trigger drastic changes in the native populations

I think we should really stop thinking that space travel is the natural continuation of the geographic explorations and colonizations of our past. It has nothing to do with it- new planets cannot be colonized because they're uninhabitable (Earth included for an alien) and distances are too big to transfer significant amounts of population.

Re: What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

#52

Post by simion314 »

zamalek wrote: post #14

First contact is a species event, I really don't think it matters who makes it first. My reasoning is derived from a though experiment (happy to explain, but it should be obvious), which is all we have to go on this stuff. Long story short: it's highly probable that a species wouldn't care about our primitive political systems when engaging with us. It would most likely be a philanthropic event - which is a strong in…

The article also mentioned the point that China or other state gets the signal(that could be not a deliberate communication to us) and keep it secret. So it can be important if the state that receives the signal is a secrecy state like USA or China.

Re: What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

#53

Post by remarkEon »

Udik wrote: post #51
remarkEon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These thought experiments are always a little strange to me. If an alien race has the technology for interstellar travel I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to assume they’d also be able to do whatever they want to observe us (i.e. stay hidden if they like). I think a much more interesting thought experiment is this: if an alien race chooses to make First Contact with us, what’s the likelihood we’re actually the…

> Being a student of history, it’s a stretch for me to think they wouldn’t know these sorts of events trigger drastic changes in the native populations I think we should really stop thinking that space travel is the natural continuation of the geographic explorations and colonizations of our past. It has nothing to do with it- new planets cannot be colonized because they're uninhabitable (Earth included for an alien)…

I don’t think your last sentence follows. Like I noted if they have the technology for interstellar travel I sincerely doubt they wouldn’t also be able to transfer larger populations across those distances. Even that idea might not make sense in this context. Perhaps they’d store their genetic code and simply grown the colonists upon arrival. For us yes we shouldn’t think of colonizing the solar system like it’s just a new continent, but that’s viewing it in the context of our current technology levels. If we had interstellar travel available suddenly that equation changes considerably.

Re: What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

#54

Post by noja »

Udik wrote: post #45
jzl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually found it really irritating too. I'm not endorsing Arrival. That said, the inter-country politics were by far the most interesting thing about it. And it's a major Hollywood film that literally addresses the question "What Happens If China Makes First Contact?"

> literally addresses the question "What Happens If China Makes First Contact? It does. And its very deep answer is "the Chinese fuck up because they're a bit dumb, and only thanks to a very bright, young and beautiful American the world is saved, again".

Give the film some credit - the "hero" figure was an expert this time, a big step up from "winging it".

Re: What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

#55

Post by nasredin »

ema wrote: post #29
nasredin wrote: post #20

I think US would be the country for "first contact", then Russia. Most of our planet is water. US has the biggest/best Navy & intelligence systems. And also pretty aggressive spirit. Russia has 1/6 (IIRC) of our planet's land mass and also a very stubborn spirit. So my uneducated guess is ET is going to be chatting with either Trump or Putin. ...God help us...

I think Chile would be the first country for "first contact". Why? it's an elaborate pun in their alien language and the alien bureaucrat in charge of that decision really loves puns.

If an alien civilization doesn't love puns, then I really don't want to meet them.

The world is already a shitty place. Earth doesn't need to add more species that don't understand or love puns.

Re: What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

#56

Post by glitch003 »

bnegreve wrote: post #41
0xFFFE wrote: post #36

What if we are the first/only intelligent beings in the universe and it is upon us to spread to other galaxies and stars? Probabilistically unlikely for us to be the only ones, but just a thought.

> Probabilistically unlikely for us to be the only ones, but just a thought. How do you even measure that? If the number of coincidences required for life to emerge is large enough, the probability of observing life on a planet could very well be far bellow 1 over the number of planets in the universe. That would make us probably alone :(

>How do you even measure that?

Probably like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

Re: What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

#57

Post by gmueckl »

Animats wrote: post #50

A fundamental question, of course, is whether FTL is possible. Special relativity says it isn't, and worse, that it would violate causality. We're probably fundamentally limited to having very slow conversations with any civilization that's within tens of light years. If any. We might find out about some that are further away, but there's not going to be interaction.

Well, this is our world view now. But we cannot predict future progress. Just as we laugh at the horribly wrong cosmological models of our ancestors from the middle ages now, our ancestors might do that with ours in a few centuries.

The interesting thing about both theories of relativity is that they only add one or two rather small ideas to existing theories each (electrodynamics and Newtonian mwchanics) and derive sweeping fundamental facts about our spacetime from that. Most of the building blocks were already there, but were not recognized for what they really are. The theories have held up very well to all direct tests we could come up with so far. This makes chances that there are loopholes or omissions left right there rather slim (based on our current knowledge, of course). There are oddities like solutions to the field equations that allow time travel. But as far as I know, these are mathematical oddities and unphysical solutions.

I have never understood how the destruction of quantum entanglement can avoid violating causality. Our professor confused us to no end at this point in the lecture and I have never tried to follow up on my own.

Re: What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

#58

Post by OscarCunningham »

bnegreve wrote: post #41
0xFFFE wrote: post #36

What if we are the first/only intelligent beings in the universe and it is upon us to spread to other galaxies and stars? Probabilistically unlikely for us to be the only ones, but just a thought.

> Probabilistically unlikely for us to be the only ones, but just a thought. How do you even measure that? If the number of coincidences required for life to emerge is large enough, the probability of observing life on a planet could very well be far bellow 1 over the number of planets in the universe. That would make us probably alone :(

One point of evidence to the contrary is that life appeared on Earth nearly as soon as it could. So it seems that given the correct conditions on a planet abiogenis always occurs.

Re: What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

#59

Post by baddox »

zamalek wrote: post #47
baddox wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how to guess at how first contact would actually go, but it’s interesting that government coverups of aliens is a common theme in fiction (x files, men in Black, etc.) and in conspiracy theories (Roswell, UFOs, etc.).

Fiction is great because it's compelling. I see no reason for the actual first contact to be more sublime.

I agree. I think the more anthropomorphic (socially) the aliens are, the more it makes sense that they would go along with our own social constructs and thus make contact through governments. An alien species that’s extremely similar to humans would be expected to contact government leaders, in the same way that a group of humans would likely pursue diplomacy when contacting another group of humans. In popular fiction, we see that in stories like Men in Black or Transformers, where the aliens are apparently mostly complicit in the governments’ efforts to conceal their existence from the general public.

Of course, it would also depend on the aliens’ goals and the circumstances of their arrival on Earth. If they just want the planet, they may as well show up with guns blazing, as in War of the Worlds or Attack the Block or Battle: Los Angeles or Skyline. If they’ve landed in distress, they also likely wouldn’t bother concealing themselves, as in District 9.

Anyway, I’ve always been fascinated by imagining what would actually happen if some fairly anthropomorphic aliens really did show up tomorrow, on a diplomatic mission (not guns blazing). Portrayals in fiction are fascinating, where world religions try to explain it (or view it eschatologically), governments debate whether to preemptively attempt to annihilate them, etc. How would I react?

Re: What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

#60

Post by baddox »

baddox wrote: post #59
zamalek wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiction is great because it's compelling. I see no reason for the actual first contact to be more sublime.

I agree. I think the more anthropomorphic (socially) the aliens are, the more it makes sense that they would go along with our own social constructs and thus make contact through governments. An alien species that’s extremely similar to humans would be expected to contact government leaders, in the same way that a group of humans would likely pursue diplomacy when contacting another group of humans. In popular fictio…

Of course, I’d guess it’s more likely that our first evidence of extraterrestrial life would be of primitive microscopic life in our solar system. That would still have some major implications for science, religion, philosophy, etc., but probably not much more so than discoveries we’ve already experienced (like the age of the Earth/Universe, biological evolution, or quantum mechanics).
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