Are you prepared for "First Contact"?

Note: the link page contains some raw language and moderate amounts of heresy.

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2010/04/first-contact-alien.png

Sounds like good, and well considered advice. A good start. Good for a laugh but also an interesting thought problem.

Blatantly and gratuitously stolen from:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/first_contact.php

Great "article" Interesting things to consider!

Lol, I'm guessing if anyone want to make contact with us, they probably know how to communicate with us already, so that's taken care of.

As long as it doesn't involve any probes, it would be interesting.

If I make first contact then I'll whip out the Universal Translator that I keep in my ETPSK.

Then I'll say something worthy of history, such as:

"Klatu barada nikto!"

That hilarious. If they can make it here though, we're probably toast. Why come all that way to share a planet? I suppose if we're lucky it'll be quick and painless. "Look, its an alien space......."

"Klaatu barada nikto"

"Klaatu... verata... n... Necktie. Nectar. Nickel. Noodle." Don't blow it Army of Darkness, great movie LOL

I always have a sweeping soundtrack at the ready, just in case.

Should we be stocking up on Reese's Pieces? It was supposed to be M&Ms but the Mars Company said no - now there is a conspiracy theory in the making.

Quatermass Conclusion TV series was certainly a antidote to Spielberg's Close Encounter of the Third Kind in the late 1970s.

Under the humor, that's actually pretty good advice.

I don't know. Lots of people want alien contact for some reason, but people have different ideas about it.

Some think they'll be friendly, but not as good-looking as us.

Some people think they'll just be coming to mine another planet, and all those crawly/walky things (us) will just be in the way.

Personally, if they're out there, they've probably already been here, and when they come by, they stop and look for a while with their invisibility shield on, pointing and laughing and shaking their heads.

Sue

Look what happened to Arthur Dent. Chances are anyway it will most likely be an encounter with a piece of intelligent alien technology rather than the alien whateverself. Hopefully it will be more amiable than this unless of course it has previous orders to make way for the alien interstellar highway.

There's a similar one about going back in time.

They're probably wondering why the otherwise seemingly superior bi-peds spend so much time picking up dog poop.

Twilight Zone, 1961:

http://www.answers.com/topic/will-the-real-martian-please-stand-up-1

LEAVE. NOW.






THIS PLANET IS TAKEN.

A lot depends on how any visitors view us. As with anything else if you're invited to dinner a lot depends on your role in the event. The experiences of honored guest, waiter, and main course tend to differ.

It also matters as to how any visitors characterize themselves. Interplanetary scientists will want to study you. Biologists might be into dissection. Anthropologists into seeing your society function. Better the later than the former.

Interplanetary preachers will want to convert you. Failing that, kill you.

Interplanetary capitalists will want to exploit you and the planet. We might hope they find us cute and entertaining. As a pet don't be surprised if you get neutered, muzzled and put on a leash. We might be trained to perform tricks. Or relegated to a zoo.

I suspect our value as labor would be minimal. Robots are cheaper, stronger and far less demanding. We might be tasty. Which isn't all bad. We have far more chickens on planet earth than the species justifies on its own merits outside it being food for humans. Farmers spend a lot of time and effort keeping their livestock healthy and productive, if not entirely comfortable. We might be bred to have more meat and smaller brains.

That assumes they don't have some way of generating food outside growing it. I suspect that there would be some exploitation of humans as food if they eat meat at all. The desire to try a new species as food is pretty strong. It is like the old joke about whooping crane tasting a lot like bald eagle.

Then again we might not come up to that level. Humans might just be 'something they step on'. As they use the Eiffel tower to scrape humans off his giant boot. They might find this a lovely planet except for the unfortunate infestation of humans. Nothing a good fumigation won't make right.

I think the piece gets it about right. Stand still, practice radical humility, and work on getting them to recognize humans are intelligent. I would work on the cute and entertaining angle. With a lot of luck a pet human might be accepted as an alien's best friend. We will have to work hard on the 'sad eyes' and 'not crapping on the carpets'. So much for dignity.

Pulled this from my CD collection, haven't played it in years, inspired from the discussion. Ahhh the 1970s....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msS8otYxgSc

Much better than the Hollywood films and truer to the original novel.

Some more to think about:
http://scienceblogs.com/seed/2010/04/dont_talk_to_strangers_stephen.php

If our own immediate history of first contact encounters bears out, millions or billions of earthlings will be wiped out by some alien contagion.

And that's if they aren't armored leech-like bloodsuckers latching onto our brains for sustenance - which would be considered a congenial exchange on their world(s).

We'll just have to wait and see what first contact will be like. But we are probably the Aztecs in this exchange.

An ETI's "bugs" most likely won't affect us, nor ours them. Look how few diseases are trans-species here on Earth, where everything at least uses the same basic systems (DNA, proteins, etc.).

Odds are that life from another planet will have basic differences from Earth life that make cross-species contamination impossible.

I recognize, though, that "unlikely" is not the same as "impossible" and chance might deal us the Ace of Spades, and we get invaded by displaced ETIs looking for a new home, who have a devastating disease they are adapted to, but that wipes us out.

I just wouldn't bet on it.

Mebbe so - wish there was an emoticon that had its tongue firmly in cheek, I might have used it.

As far as the Aztec comment, I was thinking we would be at a definite disadvantage on all fronts. Earthlings overall seem fairly primitive on technological, social, economic, mythical/religious fronts. Aliens might be benevolent, or might not. No more than to Cortez, the fate of our civilization might not amount to a hill of beans to them.

Reading the pieces within the 'Don't talk to strangers' link they do point out that societies can be altered in unexpected ways by the emotional and conceptual alterations brought on by contact. The Japanese society was centered around them being special. Arrival of an army and fleet far superior militarily to their own was quite a shock. It shattered their political, military, even their religious, systems and brought down a dynasty. The changes to the Japanese society set up the invasion of China and Japanese involvement in WW2.

Arrival of vastly superior aliens would drastically change the context of all human existence. US standing as superpower, and the secondary and tertiary standing of all other nations, puts things in a completely different light. Presently the US is, within the real and profound limits of any power, the final word.

What would the existence of aliens do to religious belief. Or the idea that humans are special.

Like "Calvin and Hobbes" said, the surest sign that there's intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't tried to contact us.

I'm sure that Europe and China would be purely delighted to hear that -not. America is not the pre-eminent power in the 21st Century. Mighty? Yes. Final word? No. But that's politics.

I think that - returning to the subject of first contact - aliens who are xenophobic, perhaps rabidly so, arn't going to bother doing a Hollywood Invasion. Why bother? Half a dozen Dinosaur Killers delivered from the edge of the system, at about 0.01c will do the job very nicely.

Leigh, while the gist of your post has merit, I'd like to point out that Europe is NOT a country.... though they're sure (finally) starting to cooperate like one.