Thanks to Henson Shaving for sponsoring today’s video.
Throughout human history, much thought has gone into what alien life might look like.
Sometimes they are depicted as grey-skinned humanoids with large eyes, sometimes as strange,
tentacle monsters.
But ultimately, while this is an interesting question to consider, it’s not really the
most important one.
For there is a far more pressing consideration we need to talk about if aliens actually do
exist.
Namely, if we encounter aliens tomorrow, what might we expect them to do?
While this may seem like an idle question, our survival as a species might depend on
us knowing the answer, because if aliens do exist, by the time they find us it will be
too late to consider it.
By then, it might be too late to do anything at all.
This is a question that determines our species’ destruction, or maybe our salvation.
I’m Alex McColgan, and you’re watching Astrum.
Join with me today as we see what we should do when approaching the search for alien life.
Because depending on the answer to this question, we have some vitally significant choices ahead
of us as a species.
And seeing as this is a question that scientists and political leaders are not yet considering
seriously, let’s have a go at it on this platform.
For this video, I will draw on some of the ideas and knowledge that we’ve explored
so far in the other videos in this series, so if you haven’t seen them then you might
want to check them out using the link above.
If our speculations on the behaviour of hypothetical aliens are to be useful to us, they need to
be grounded in real observations as much as possible.
For instance, we know that life can arise in the universe, because it did at least once
– with us.
We know that we can see no signs of any other alien life – an idea we have considered
with the Fermi Paradox.
So, any behaviour we look at has to line up with this fact.
And we have considered how when species evolve, form follows function.
The same evolutionary imperatives that drive us likely would drive other species too.
In all probability, everyone needs to eat, or reproduce one way or another, or they would
likely all die out.
So, although we don’t know for certain that alien life is even out there, let’s bring
these ideas together.
In doing so, we gain some revealing insights.
To begin with, though, let’s hold up the mirror to ourselves.
We are the only instance of life arising in the universe that we know of.
The great human experiment of civilisation has been going on for thousands of years,
and has produced many different types of society – socialist, capitalist, hunter-gatherer,
nomadic, and theocratical, to name just a few.
If we want to understand the behaviour of alien civilisations, we need to consider societies.
We thus have quite a few ideas to compare when considering how aliens might behave.
Broadly speaking, though, let’s examine two great extremes, and see how they might
influence alien civilisation.
These two extremes are altruism, and aggression.
Love and violence.
We’ll start with violence.
While this may be a pessimistic starting point, it is sadly one we must consider, because
as human civilisation has developed throughout eras, different groups of humans have almost
always clashed violently.
This ties into the evolutionary idea that competition always occurs when there are more
organisms than there are resources.
Humans are organisms, and we need resources to live.
And so, all too often, war throughout the ages has been fought over resources.
Agricultural land.
People, and all the labour power and industry they can produce.
Oil.
Gold.
Even when a civilisation develops space travel and reaches for the stars, this issue will
still likely exist.
After all, we are nearly at the stars ourselves, and there certainly seems to be no shortage
of violent conflict amongst us today.
So, with a sample size of exactly 1, we have to at least consider the possibility that
other alien races are the same as us.
Driven by a need for resources to support an ever-growing population.
Of course, when it comes to societies, there are even more reasons why clashes might occur.
For instance, religious or ideological differences.
The cold war was largely fought between countries that espoused different political ideologies,
capitalism and communism, that threatened each other.
Alien civilisation might equally differ from us ideologically (in fact, it would be surprising
if they didn’t), and so it’s possible they might feel their ideology is threatened
in some way by ours.
This could lead to conflict too.
This is not even to mention the fact that some cultures idolise violence itself, deeming
themselves of worth only when they are winning victories, such as Viking raiders or Spartan
hoplites.
Others seek to build empires, recognising that it’s much easier to take wealth from
others than it is to build it yourself.
All these reasons are perfectly plausible for an intelligent race that has mastered
its planet, outcompeted other lifeforms there, and likely feels good about doing so.
Survival feels good.
We enjoy feeling strong.
But if this leads to conflict, what might an alien conflict look like?
Technology raises the stakes.
We currently lack the technology to move objects to other solar systems.
Given the vast distances throughout space, unless we intend to just throw insulting messages
at each other through the void, actual fighting cannot be achieved until we manage to solve
speed of light travel, and probably something faster than that.
But it is possible that one day we might get around this problem.
And this instantly opens a dangerous possibility.
It is theoretically impossible to move something up to the speed of light, because of the link
between mass and energy.
The more energy something has, the more “mass” it has, because the two are linked, and thus
the more energy you need to increase its speed further.
This is only noticeable at relativistic speeds, but it does mean that you’d theoretically
need infinite energy to move mass up to the speed of light.
But if you throw an asteroid-sized object at a planet at near light speed, then all
that energy gets released in one go.
This kind of strike can easily wipe out all life on a planet, and the people on it wouldn’t
even see it coming.
Any intelligent race would be very aware of the impact potential of objects such as this.
For us, we only need to look at the dinosaurs.
You don’t need nukes, or soldiers on the ground, to fight an alien war.
Just rocks thrown really, really fast.
This opens up one possible answer to the Fermi paradox.
If alien civilisations exist, and any of them proved to be willing to do this, maybe the
other aliens realised that it was simply safer not to communicate.
Letting other races know that you are there would simply place a target on your back.
After all, if you could both do this, and they wouldn’t see it coming, could they
really trust you not to strike first?
They could see us as a risk that they are not willing to take.
Known as the Dark Forest theory, this possible answer to the Fermi paradox says that the
only aliens out there are silent simply because they don’t wish to be on the possible receiving
end of these kinds of planet-buster weapons.
Like hunters travelling cautiously through a dark forest, they are all either quiet,
or dead.
They have been subject to this selective pressure.
However, this is not the only plausible model of behaviour that might still prevent us from
seeing aliens.
The second option is simply indifference: With billions of years of history at play,
it might not be the case that we are on technological parity with all the other forms of life that
might be out there.
Alien life might simply be so far beyond us, they regard us as dispassionately as we might
an ant.
They might not be talking to us because we have nothing interesting to say.
Why do you not try to talk to the insects in your garden?
The gap is too great.
You understand what they want perfectly, and they have no hope of understanding you.
Communication would be frankly, pointless.
That said, life might be rare in the universe.
If they desire resources, and are that far beyond us, they probably don’t need to mine
our planet specifically.
We may have value as a curiosity, something to be left alone to flourish simply because
they have decided we have some value as a specimen in some kind of grand, cosmic zoo.
And as any zookeeper will tell you, the closer you can get an enclosure to look like an animal’s
natural habitat, the happier that animal normally is.
While they may not care about us, perhaps they do not wish to alarm us by stepping into
our natural habitat.
In fairness, this is a valid line of reasoning.
Humanity would likely find it very distressing to learn that we are in fact not at the top
of the food-chain, and that our very existence depends on the mild indifference of a vastly
superior alien race.
Of course, if this was true, we would need to be careful.
In my home, I was perfectly willing to live and let live when I found ants in my garden,
but when ants came into my kitchen, I quickly got out the ant-killer.
We would do well not to provoke them.
Both of these ideas about alien behaviour are bleak, so you’ll be glad to know there
is one alternative to hatred and indifference.
And in fact, it may prove to be the most realistic for higher-levels of society.
Cooperation.
Cooperation exists within nature.
Not all life competes.
Within species, packs of wolves can cooperate to achieve their goals, protecting those within
the group even as they attack those outside it.
There are giant super-colonies of ants that do this, working together and spanning entire
countries, with each hill all considering themselves as part of the same colony.
Aggressive to those outside of it, but supportive and even self-sacrificing towards those within.
There are advantages to this, as we humans are well aware.
We would not have gotten anywhere if we hadn’t learned how to work together.
Knowledge pooled allows the creation of all kinds of technology.
Ironically, no-one really knows how to build a computer from scratch.
But there are some people who know how to build a motherboard, other people who know
how to build a screen, and other people that know how to mine the resources.
And all these people know that the other people exist, and so can work together.
Historically speaking, there is compelling evidence that as time has gone on, we humans
have become better at this kind of cooperative thinking too.
It used to be that groups of humans were localised into small tribes, fighting other small tribes.
However, that’s elevated to small kingdoms, then big ones, then whole countries and alliances
spanning across national borders.
Following that to its natural conclusion, at some point, a nation may exist that all
humans in the world feel a part of.
A unified planet Earth.
But why is this a more likely outcome than violence?
Simply put, technology forces it.
Not only do we remove barriers to communication the more advanced our communication gets,
but as our ability to destroy ourselves increases, there simply isn’t an alternative except
learning how to get along.
Other than total annihilation, of course, but that’s a pretty unappealing alternative...
one would hope.
And so, it’s possible that aliens developed the same way.
If they did, how might they behave towards the universe at large?
While they might still be aggressive to outsiders initially, ultimately, they may have attempted
to take this to the next level, embracing new alien races as brothers and sisters, part
of a great galactic whole.
It’s just a continuation of the trend.
With potentially millions of years of history drilling the dangers of violence into them,
they may actually abhor fighting, and there may be millions of aliens of many different
races, all cooperating peacefully under one banner.
Then, why don’t we see them?
Well, perhaps they prefer to let us learn our own historical lessons about the value
of cooperation before speaking to us.
An aggressive race would not benefit the galactic community as a whole, so until we learn to
get along, advanced alien races might not want to share with us their ideas and technology.
Particularly if such toys could then be used by us as weapons.
Perhaps they believe that we will either figure out how to get along, or else we’ll wipe
ourselves out.
Either way, in the meantime it is better they stay hands-off.
As any parent will tell you, sometimes telling a child something is not enough for a lesson
to sink in.
Sometimes experience is the only effective teacher.
There might be a galactic community out there, just waiting to welcome us.
Violence.
Indifference.
Benevolence.
In theory, any of these or all of these in some combination might be the reasons why
we don’t hear from alien life.
Ultimately, we would be wise to tread carefully.
Meeting alien civilisations might sound exciting.
But it would inevitably come with terrible risks… and possibly fantastic rewards.
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Thanks for watching!
Check out the rest of this series in this playlist here.
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All the best, and see you next time.