Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Is it dangerous to send messages to aliens?

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Daniel and Jorge talk about whether attempts to communicate with extra terrestrial civilizations are worth the risk. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, Jorge, how do you feel when you get an unexpected piece of mail? Hmm. Like a letter to my house? It's usually either good news or bad news. Exactly. But do you get a feeling about it before you open it, about whether it's good or bad? Sure. Like if it looks like a check, it's probably good news. If it comes from the IRS, probably not good news. Yeah, and anything handwritten is probably also not bad news. What if the IRS sends you a handwritten note? It's probably extra bad news, actually. Well, it could be a fan from the IRS.

You could have a fan letter, unless it's cut up from little pieces of magazine font. I don't want anybody at the IRS to be impressed by the creativity of my tax return. I am Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of P.H. the comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, where my mailbox is usually filled with people sending me their theories of the universe and letters from prisoners. Is that true? You get letters from prison, like physical letters? I do. I get handwritten letters from prison from folks who have found our book in their prison library. Wow, that's pretty

interesting. That's pretty cool. Yeah, a little window out into the universe. I thought you were going to say they're from your friends in prison. Although I guess now you have friends. in prison? They are my friends now. I actually used to teach in prison. When I was at Berkeley, I used to go up and be a TA at San Quentin. They had a class there in mathematics for prisoners. So I would go and help teach arithmetic to prisoners.

Oh, that's pretty cool. Until the day I discovered that one of the prisoners there used to be a grad student working for my advisor also at Berkeley. No way. So you were, you thought because they knew more than you or it sort of scared you about your potential future. I thought, wow, there are more career paths from grad school than I realized. Creative ones at that.

But welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I-Hard Radio. In which we try to unlock your mind and release you from the prison of our human ignorance. We want to set everybody's brains free and we want to understand everything that's out there in the universe. From the true nature of the fundamental elements of the universe, our space and time fundamental, or do they emerge from some crazy frothing quantum? reality, all the way up to the largest, most dramatic structures in the universe, to the very edges of the known universe and beyond. We aim to explain all of it to you. Yeah, because it is a pretty amazing universe. It's vast and full of interesting and crazy mysteries, but we seem to be sort of maybe stuck and maybe sort of also prisoners in one little tiny corner of it, sort of

blocked off by the huge walls of space around us that make it really hard for us to go visit other places. It does sort of seem like we are in solitary confinement. We don't know if there are other intelligent beings out there in the galaxy, also wondering about the same questions that we are, proving the nature of matter and wondering if they are also alone. Yeah, we're like in a cosmological timeout, maybe? Do we misbehave? We've definitely been misbehaving, but I don't know if we deserve to be in isolation for thousands and thousands of years. Seems a bit extreme. We can't play with the rest of the kids. kid species in the universe.

Maybe we're just waiting for the day we get let out into the yard and we get to meet all the other prisoners. Although it's not a bad prison, metaphorically speaking. I mean, the earth is pretty comfortable. It's like home confinement. That's right. I got no complaints. I love the earth.

And we got a pretty good view out of our window. We can see really far into the universe across billions and billions of light ears and are witnessing cataclysmic cosmic events that give us clues into the nature of reality. One thing we haven't seen yet, however, is evidence that there's somebody else out there. Yeah, it kind of makes you wonder if there are other alien species sort of looking at the universe like we are and maybe looking at the same events at the same time as we are and asking the same questions we're asking about the universe. I think it's even more interesting if there are alien astronomers looking at the same events, but before we are. Like some photons that have taken 500 million years to get to Earth, aliens might have seen photons from that same event 100 million years. years ago. They might have been like working on this and writing papers and scooped us by a hundred

million years. Are you saying the science we have right now is old news? Like it's based on stale data? That's right. It's time to go out there and get some fresh results. But depending on where you are in the universe, you may see something a lot sooner than somebody else. So it could be that there's something amazing that happened in the universe and the light from it is still getting here, but it's already hit alien astronomers, and they have received this incredible insight from this one-of-a-kind

cosmic event. Right, but I guess in a relative universe, there's not just thing as sort of instantaneity, right? Like, maybe they saw it before we did, but by the time they tell us they saw it, we have already seen this discovery. That's true. Photons from the event will arrive here before their paper

on it arrives here. So we'll have a narrow window to claim that we came up with the ideas ourselves. Unless their paper is about wormholes and somehow they get a before we see the light, in which case, it's like maybe getting a preview or something. Maybe, or maybe the first interstellar war will be started by physicists arguing about who came up with an idea first. Yeah, it'll be fought on the wormhole internet, probably.

Or maybe their first paper will be like, hey, Earth, watch out. There's a giant gamma ray birth coming your way that will kill you. That would be very kind to them. I hope that aliens are out there looking out for us. But it is a pretty big question of whether or not we are alone in the year. universe. You know, it's a vast universe and we are able to sort of see and look out there. And we're also able to send messages, but it's a little bit of a debate about whether we should be sending out messages or not. That's right. Some folks are desperately curious to contact aliens or even

just to know about their existence. And other folks are wondering, is it a good idea for aliens to know that we are here? Yeah, because you might be alerting dangerous aliens to our presence, right? You might be telling them, hey, there's a whole bunch of delicious looking meat running around here in this blue planet where you can also get a nice drink of water. Come get it. That's right. Or you might accidentally say something offensive to spark an interstellar war. Sometimes just staying quiet is the best approach. You're saying the aliens could have thin skin. Maybe they don't even have skin. Maybe they just take offense to everything instantly. That's right. Who knows? They're aliens, right? They could just be like a cloud of goop or something. Who knows? I guess it's sort of the idea that maybe our quest to, like, reach out and contact other civilization is maybe naive, right?

Because it could be leading us into a potentially dangerous situation. Exactly. And it's a question we often are confronted by in physics, not just whether we can, but whether we should. So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question. Is it dangerous to try to communicate with aliens? that question sounds dangerous. I mean, anytime you say sort of aliens, you got to step back for a second. You and I often joke about this on the podcast.

I'm looking forward to the day the aliens arrive because I hope I can ask them physics questions about like what is the true nature of reality and quantum gravity and how did the universe begin, et cetera. But sometimes I get the impression that you're a little bit more concerned about whether or not the aliens will just fry us from orbit. Yeah, well, you know, you can look at it from all sides, I guess. But, you know, first of all, I guess you're assuming that the aliens know the answer to these questions. Maybe they're just as clueless as we are and hungrier.

That's a great point. It depends a lot on how we actually get in touch with these aliens. If aliens come to Earth, then it's likely that they have traveled through space in a way that we haven't been able to. So it's very likely they are more advanced than we are. And so probably they have some answers or at least different perspectives on these questions. But if we just get a message from them, then there's no guarantee that they have developed anything that we haven't developed. And if they all they do is hear our message, they might not have very sophisticated technology at all. I think it's just kind of dangerous to have those expectations, you know?

Like, what if you hail the aliens, they come all the way here. And then you ask them like, hey, what are the secrets to the universe? And they're like, we don't know. What are you going to do? It's going to be really awkward to it. I'm going to be like, I made all this guacamole just to have this party with you to celebrate this, you know, solutions to the universe. And now it's just going to go bad? Yeah.

And then what are you going to do? Are you going to disinvite them? What are you going to talk about for the next, you know, billion years with them in your house? I'm definitely not great at keeping conversation going, especially with strangers. So it'll be a tricky situation. But I think it's worth the risk because they could have incredible answers. Or at least, you know, maybe they even just ask different questions. Questions we haven't thought to ask.

I think, joking aside, the greatest thing we would learn from communicating intellectually with another species is just learning from all the differences in our approaches. not even necessarily the answers. Interesting. Yeah. Wouldn't it be easier just to try a different approach ourselves? You know, sit down,

brainstorm other ways we could think about things. What do you need to outsource it? Sometimes I think the human thought is sort of trapped in a rut, and we don't even realize all the time the decisions we've made and the arbitrary choices that have influenced us. And just like the path of human thought, you know, who thought of what, when,

and who had time to go into science and influence the direction of human science. So I think if you ran the Earth as an experiment a thousand times, you would probably get lots of different ideas about science. But we only have this one experiment. So it's a little frustrating. All right. Well, as usual, we were wondering how people thought about this idea of contacting aliens or looking for aliens,

whether they thought it was a good idea or a risky one. So Daniel went out there this time in person out into the campus of UC Irvine to ask people this question. That's right. UCI opened up again after the pandemic and so I was able to walk around campus and make people feel weird by asking them about aliens. So thank you to all the UCI students who answered this question. Wow, was it extra weird being back and asking questions of strangers? Like I imagine it was weird before to have this, you know, scurphy-looking physicists approach you and ask questions about the universe. But now you're doing it with a mask and there's a pandemic going on.

Was that weird? Well, I think I'm a little less scruffy because of the mask. It hides some of the scruff. So maybe it makes me look a little more professional. But it was nice. It's good to be out there again. It's good to see people. It's good to have the campus be alive. So I think people are a little hungry for some interaction. I was surprised everybody was very receptive. All right. Well, think about it for a second. If someone asked you whether it's a good idea to look for aliens or is it risky, what would you answer? Here's what people had to say. I don't really know. I mean, I think it's pretty cool, I guess. I think it's like more interesting rather than like dangerous if you were to try to communicate so yeah there is always a risk but

there's also a lot of opportunity so i feel yeah i feel it's actually not necessarily good it's hard for me to say it's good or bad but it's also hard for me to say it's necessarily bad i think it's incredibly risky i think that the prospect of an extraterrestrial civilization showing up on earth is very scary you don't know what they what their intentions might be and I think that history kind of shows us that when people who are outsiders show up in a place where they don't really think of the other inhabitants is so much like them or you know the equivalent of them then things don't usually turn out so well it's a great idea because we could advance our knowledge about how life is

formed and how it functions in ways we cannot even begin to comprehend right And what about the risks? Worth it? Every new idea brings risks and everything we do depends on who we are and how we go about it. So based on that, we could never do anything if we don't trust the people that does it. They could bring us diseases that we couldn't fight. Well, I think it's a good idea for a multitude of reasons. I think first and foremost it's just in to know whether or not we're alone or not. And then that just opens up a whole new line of questioning,

which is, you know, how do they develop differently from us? Where did we diverge? Do we look at the universe in the same way? You know, I think in much the same way that it's informative to get other cultures, experiences on certain things. It can be interesting to get an entirely different species perspective on something. What about the risks? There are risks, but there are risks inherent in anything, right? the Manhattan project and building the new, the risk was, are we going to ignite the atmosphere?

We're just going to wipe out the human race right now? Probably not, but the risk is there, right? And if we go out into space looking for extraterrestrials, the same risk is inherent. But I think the benefits outweigh the risks. But then if it potentially wiping out the human race? Well, some might argue that there is a benefit to wiping out the human race. I wouldn't go that far, but some people would make that argument that is actually a benefit. I definitely think it's a good idea. Of course we should.

I guess it does have to be balanced with other needs for resources. So, for example, should we educate our children or do biomedical research versus for all our resources into the hope of maybe finding alien life? I guess I'd still vote for keeping our planet working right here at home. I think it would be a good idea. I could see how it would be dangerous, but I would choose to believe that they would be just as curious as we are and not aggressive. If we're hostile in any way, and then it would be a mutual communication between both of us. All right, we have a pretty wide range of opinions here from people.

Some people think it's super risky. Some people think it's super cool. Yeah, and some people think it's risky, but worth the risk. I guess I wonder if they're thinking about the full range of risk potential here, you know? There was somebody who argued that the human race itself getting wiped out might be a benefit, not necessarily a risk. Oh, my goodness. There was some pretty dark thoughts going on there. Yeah, some pretty dark people who go to UCI, apparently.

But yeah, it's an interesting question of whether it's worth the risk, right? Because the risk could be pretty bad. It could wipe out the whole maybe human race, potentially. Yeah, we're talking about alien technology with unknown capabilities. So definitely, like, sterilizing the entire planet is in the realm of possibility. And so it seems like a weird balance to strike the right. Like, on the one hand, we could be destroyed and wipe out our species. The other hand, we might satisfy Daniel Whiteson's curiosity.

I don't know, man. That's a tough call. That is a tough call. Yeah, it's a tough call for the rest of us, to be honest. Well, I promise to share some of the insights if they do come. How about that? Does that change the balance a little bit? Well, of course you're going to share that, Daniel.

I mean, were you thinking that you're going to keep it to yourself? I might. I might just build a prison of solitude and sit there knowing all these answers on my own. I see. You're going to put the entire human race at risk. and then keep all of the reward to yourself. Yeah, I'll just dribble out of paper every 10 years or so, blowing everything out of the water.

From the alien prison, you'll be writing us, and then the rest of us will get it through the prison newsletter? Is that the idea? And then we're going to think, oh, wow, that was totally worth it. Yeah, well, jokes aside, there are some really interesting questions there about how to communicate with aliens if they do come or if they do send us a message.

How to speak for Earth? You know, like who gets to speak for Earth? It's a difficult question. We actually talked to Jill Tartar, head of SETI about that, about how to get a community together, a multicultural, multi-perspective community to think about how to respond potentially to an alien message.

It's a hard question. Interesting. All right, but before I guess we get into those details, let's maybe take a step back here and think about this larger question of are we alone? What have we learned about that question? What have we done to answer that question, Daniel? It's a really interesting question.

And obviously, we all want to know the answer, Are we alone? But it's sort of puzzling that we don't know the answer already. It's famously said by Fermi that he was wondering like, where is everybody? Because the galaxy is pretty big. I mean, stars are far away, but it's also really, really old and filled with planets. And so if you think that life is not like totally unlikely, not like one and a trillion, then the number of planets means there should be a lot of life out there, which is a lot of opportunity for intelligent aliens. And because, Because the galaxy is really old compared to how big it is, it's totally possible for an intelligent civilization to have sent us messages or to have explored the universe. So it's sort of puzzling like why we haven't been contacted yet, why aliens haven't found us or sent us messages yet. Right. That's the famous Fermi paradox, right? Like we look around, there's so many stars, so many potential habitable planets. There must be other, we can't be like the only ones. that would be sort of a crazy coincidence.

And so you got to wonder why haven't we made contact? Though you sort of also think that, you know, being an old universe, it also makes it harder to contact people if it's an old universe, right? Because maybe there was an alien species nearby, but they lived billions of years ago. And so maybe they did send out messages, but we weren't around or listening to, to hear them. Yeah, there's lots of potential solutions to this paradox. And that's why I love about the paradox. It's not really like a contradiction necessarily.

It makes you question your assumptions. And you say, if all these things I think are true, then we should have been contacted. So let's go back and examine those assumptions. And one of the important ones is the one you just mentioned, which has to do with how long civilizations survive. Like, if intelligent civilizations only last for a few thousand years before they blow themselves up or, you know, ruin their environments or something, then it would be very difficult to have them line up in time so that they could discover each other and maybe even communicate with each other. This is sometimes called the great filter that maybe most civilization, are extinguished before they can become long-lasting civilizations. Yeah, like it's inevitable, sort of.

Yeah, and then the question is like, well, did we already survive the great filter? Are we through it? Or is it ahead of us? You know, are we about to extinguish ourselves? All signs point to yes, to be honest. It depends on whether those planets have a Daniel Whiteson, whose crazy curiosity leads them down the wrong path. I see.

So you're the filter. Is that what you're saying? The thing that filters us from longevity. All I'm saying is that we have one of me and we've survived so far. You know, that's what the data says. It's probably been 46 years, Daniel. You're barely getting started. Look, I have destroyed the earth and extinguished humanity exactly zero times in my life.

So that's all I can say. In fact, the trend is going the wrong way. Like, recently you got a microphone and you've been reaching more people. That's true. And so the filters is getting more clogged up, I think. That's true. But there's lots of ways to attack this problem. You know, one is to say, well, maybe life just is much more rare than we ever imagined.

Maybe we really are alone out there in the universe. And that's certainly possible. You know, we don't know how many times life got started. We've only ever seen this one example. Though if you look at the history of life on Earth, we see that it started pretty quickly after the conditions were favorable. And we think those conditions are not that rare. So it'd be pretty strange if life itself, at least, you know, tiny microbial life started somewhere else. what do you mean it started early like as soon as the earth formed we had sort of self-assembling molecules in our primordial soup

after we had reasonable conditions and liquid water it only took a few hundred million years at most before we had very simple forms of life you know on the time scale of the earth billions of years that's not that long and it might have started sooner that's just like the oldest evidence that we have for life it's very difficult to find very very ancient signs of life in old rocks So it could have started even sooner. Wow. So I guess the fact that we got it early means it must have been easy, right? I guess. Is that the reasoning? Like, oh, we got it pretty quick. It must not be that hard.

That's the reasoning, although we only have one example. It could be that we got super duper crazy lucky, right? We just don't know. We need to find life somewhere else to get a clear view of that situation. But, you know, intelligence arrived fairly late on Earth. And so that makes the opposite suggestion. Maybe life is fairly common in the universe, but mostly it's not very small. smart and intelligence is very rare or maybe the earth is unusual right we just can't draw a lot

of conclusions from one example right that's why i'm always late making things and turning things in because if you do it too early people are going to think it's too easy that's right Jorge must be really intelligent because he's always very late that's exactly exactly yes yes or what he's doing must be really hard it's taking him so long another argument for procrastination and there are also of course questions about the nature of intelligence, you know, would we even recognize intelligent life if it sent us a message or if it flew by? Are we trapped into a box of thinking about intelligent life as sort of variations on the human experience and the human example, unable to even imagine the crazy forms that life or intelligence might take out there in the universe?

Yeah, you mean like they could have been sending us message all this time. There could be messages from aliens washing over us right now, but maybe in a totally different way. than what we're expecting, right? Like, we're listening the way we send signals, but maybe they're sending signals in a totally different way. Exactly. We're sending signals in ways that seem obvious to us and like anybody would do it this way, right?

But that's exactly what we want to learn when we talk to aliens. We want to learn how they might think differently. So when we start by assuming that they're doing things the same way, we trap ourselves and only being able to find aliens that are basically like us, you know, with maybe wrinkly foreheads or pointy ears. Right. Right. But to be honest, that seems like a very human thing to do.

It does. Like, let's only talk to people who are exactly like us. I try to only talk to physicists, except twice a week when I talk to you. Oh, good. I'm your alien. Exactly. You're taking a risk here, a big risk that I might destroy you. But you get so much out of our conversations. That's exactly. It's worth the risk, as I always say.

That's right. Yeah. Well, thank you, Daniel. I appreciate that. Thank you for not frying me with your death race so far. Yet. Well, there are other possibilities, and it also raises a question, why should we be looking for aliens out there? These are interesting and big questions that we are going to talk about. But first, let's take a quick break. December 29, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush. Parents hauling luggage. Kids grip. their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed.

There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order criminal. criminal justice system is back.

In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Oh, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.

This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating.

He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him, because, because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance, bro, tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown ambition.

This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate. the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt when it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the

Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it, and in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories.

I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're talking about whether it's a good idea or a bad idea to look for aliens out there in the universe. And it's a tricky balance, Daniel, I guess, maybe what are some of the arguments for looking for aliens? The arguments for are easy to make. I mean, we just want to know.

It's one of the deepest questions in modern science. Are we alone in the universe? It tells us so much about the nature of our existence. You know, I'm always saying that the reason we do science is not just to have spin-offs and technology and faster phones, but to understand the very context of our lives. What is this universe we're living in? How did it come to be? because it changes how we live our lives and knowing that we are alone in the universe or knowing

that we are not, both of those totally change the context of our lives. And so I think it's just one of the deepest questions and we're desperate to know. Yeah, I totally agree. Although I also have to kind of say that we sort of have that answer in a way, right? Like at this point, we know so much about the universe that we think that the answer is probably, right? Like probably there's life out there or most likely there's life out there. Isn't that sort of good enough? Yeah, I'd say the answer is 50% plus or minus 50%. You know, but we basically don't know anything. You know, we have this one example.

We can make estimates, but until you know, you don't really know anything. That's why we do experiments, right? We think we figured out how this works and we go out there and then the universe surprises us. Every time we open up new eyeballs or new ears into the universe, we learn something surprising and shocking that changes the very way we think about the universe. So it's definitely worth looking because I bet the answer is pretty deep. different from what we expect. Well, I guess, you know, we expect it to be yes. So you're saying maybe the answer is no.

The answers vary so much. It depends on who you ask. Like, personally, I think it's very likely that there's life all over the universe in lots of ways we can't even imagine and that intelligence takes such varied forms that would be very difficult for us to recognize it, not to mention, communicate with it or understand a message. I think aliens are probably more alien than we can even imagine. Interesting. And so you just want to kind of find them and just to see how weird they can be.

Yeah, absolutely. The same reason I like to go traveling. Like, wow, look what people put on their French fries in this country. I never even thought of that. Oh, my gosh. It just, you know, expands the horizons of your brain. It makes you think in new and different ways. Right. But would you still eat it, though? Do you always try that? I try every condiment once. I see. You just want to sample the aliens. You just want to take a picture. picture of them. Exactly.

Maybe these aliens are delicious. Also, you never know. Oh, geez. Well, I guess now the question is, how are we looking for these aliens? Are we actively listening? I know there's a SETI program out there. What else is out there? And SETI means search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

They're the biggest deal out there in terms of trying to identify messages from space. And so this is very different from like questions about whether alien craft are in the skies and these alien UFO videos, said he's like, let's just listen for messages from across the universe trying to see if somebody out there is similar enough to us

in intelligence and technology that they're sending us messages. At least we should be listening. They got about 100 million bucks from eccentric billionaires about five years ago and they've been using it to buy telescope time,

like the Green Bank Observatory and the Parks Observatory to try to listen for these messages. But I guess they're listening in the electromagnetic spectrum, right? like looking for radio signals, just like we use radio signals. And so that's assuming the aliens use radio signals

and within a certain frequency range. They are doing that. They also have some visible light observations and they also look for just weird stuff. Jill Tarter was on the podcast a few weeks ago and she was telling us about how they're trying to imagine other ways aliens might communicate. Like what if they're changing the frequency of pulsars

through some crazy engineering project? And so not just like listening for messages in the way that we might format them, they're out there trying to think about other ways aliens might be affecting the cosmos that we could discover. Right. We talked once on the podcast about,

like, are aliens building a giant, a Dyson sphere, or are they, you know, moving galaxies around or something? Yeah, and so they're being actually very thoughtful about this and involving philosophers and cultural historians

and trying to think really carefully about the assumptions they are making when they are searching for these signals. But in the end, it's limited to our imagination. Right. It's possible that there are signals, already out there in our data that we just haven't interpreted in the right way. Interesting. So listen to that episode if you have a chance.

But there are other things we're doing, not just listening for messages or strange things in the universe. We're also sending stuff out there. That's right. There's another program called Meti, M-E-T-I, which is messaging extraterrestrial intelligence. And this is a community of people who think that we should not just be listening for these messages. We should be broadcasting our location into space and letting other civilizations know. that we are here. Interesting. Like a group of people who think we should be more proactive about contacting aliens. Yeah, absolutely. And this has actually a long history. It's not just a recent

effort. There's some really fun stories. There's an Austrian astronomer who wanted to dig massive trenches in the Sahara Desert, fill them with water, top them with kerosene, and then set them on fire to communicate with people who might be living on Mars. What? This was recent or a long time ago. This is a long time ago. This is like more than 100 years ago back when we didn't know are there civilizations on Mars. And people thought, well, here's a way we could send a message because we saw what looked like canals on Mars. And so for a while, people thought maybe there was a civilization on Mars. So it's like writing help in the sand on your desert island, you know. Yeah, it seems a little desperate if you ask me. It's like you might as well stand outside their

driveway holding a boom box or something. And there was a French guy who asked for money from the French government because he wanted to build a giant mirror, which would focus sunlight and write messages onto the surface of Mars. Like, wouldn't that piss people off? That might send the wrong message, don't you think? So sorry about frying your elementary school filled with alien children. We just really wanted to get in touch. Oh, boy.

Well, it also doesn't make a lot of sense because if there were Mars Martians looking at us, they would already see us, right? They would look at our, you know, lights at night and stuff, right? Because you can see those from space. Yeah, you could, but this is a long time ago before I think the Earth was as electrified. So people were thinking about this kind of stuff. But more recently, you know, people like Carl Sagan have thought about how somebody might respond to seeing one of our space probes.

And so like on the Voyager, we sent this golden record that has transmissions from Earth, you know, whale songs and people singing and there's information on there about like how to find the planet, done it in a way that's supposed to be sort of. self-explanatory that anybody with a mathematical and astronomical understanding might be able to decode. Right. Yeah. And you can find images of that plaque online, right? Yeah, that's right. And more aggressively, we actually sent a dedicated message to space from the Erosivo Observatory, this huge radio dish that used to be operating in Puerto Rico. We sent a message out into space specifically for aliens. And designed in a way we thought maybe they would be able to decode.

It's sort of a pictogram. Interesting. Now, is it a this group of people, Medi, is this like an actual institution? Or is it just sort of like what you call people who want to send messages out? It's an actual institution. There's a longer history here of this sort of movement of people sending messages out. But there is a group actually based in San Francisco called Medi and they are sending messages. Like in 2017, they sent a message consisting of a scientific and mathematical tutorial to one particular star that's located 12 light years from Earth, you know, hoping that the aliens would get it and learn about our math and science.

Is there a shorter version of this group called the IMETI, instant messaging, extraterrestrial intelligence? Somebody wants to text to other planets. Yeah, it seems like it might be a little more efficient and, you know, casual, cash. Maybe that's the problem, you know, their inboxes are so overflowing with interstellar spam that they're not reading our emails. That's right. We're in their spam folder.

Oh, no. Yeah. That's the nightmare, isn't it? It's the nightmare. You're like, hey, we're here. We're desperate to connect with other people. people. Spam. Delete. Exactly. They get so many offers.

That's the great filter that I think, really. It's the great spam filter of the Google of the universe. Oh, no. You see, spam really does have costs. Well, despite this idea of sending messages to aliens, some people think it's a bad idea and something that maybe the reason it's a bad idea could be maybe an explanation for why we haven't contacted other aliens. Like, maybe it's a bad idea. That's why nobody else in the universe is sending signals out.

Yeah, that's right. Such famous physicist as Michi Okaku said, trying to contact aliens is, quote, the biggest mistake in human history. So there are definitely some people who think this is not a good plan. Yeah, I think the picture they're trying to paint is like maybe the universe is kind of like a dark forest. And there could be predators out there. And so we're sort of like a vulnerable species.

We maybe don't want to advertise our presence. Exactly. The same way that if you're in a. a horror movie and you're walking through a dark woods, you don't start singing a loud song, right? You tiptoe very carefully because you don't want to announce your presence. And that's why everybody else is being quiet. So the lesson is like, if the universe seems quiet, maybe there's a reason. That's right. And if you're a cheerleader or a football player, you're probably toast in this forest. Exactly. And we are alone, right? We have separated. We decided to go out

into this forest by ourselves. And so maybe we should think twice before announcing our location. So it's sort of an interesting scenario and a potentially dangerous idea to contact other aliens. And so to get more perspective, Daniel went out there to interview an expert on this topic. That's right. I found a really interesting paper from Dr. Karim Jabari, a professor of philosophy, who wrote a paper about the dangers of communicating with aliens.

I reached out to him and he was kind enough to spend a few minutes explaining the ideas to me. So here is Daniel's interview with Dr. Karim Javari. Jabari on whether it's a good idea or a bad idea to contact aliens. All right, so then it's by great pleasure to introduce to the program, Dr. Karim Jabari, who has a PhD in philosophy and is a researcher at the Institute for Future Studies. Karim, thank you very much for joining us today. Thanks for the invitation. So you wrote this fascinating paper about the dangers of communicating with extraterrestrials.

Tell me a little bit how you got interested in this topic. Is this something people discuss a lot at the Institute for Future Studies? Not at all, actually. It's more focused around the future of child poverty and those kind of more mundane issues. But I've always been a huge fan of science fiction, and I made a stab at trying to write a short science fiction story. It turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated, but I did a lot of research for that story,

and that research led me to this idea. And so how was it received by your colleagues? Do they see this as like, wow, what a fascinating discussion of this important topic? Or do they think of you as like, oh, my gosh, is Kareem been contacted by aliens? No, no. I think my colleagues really appreciate it, although a lot of the ideas that I present in this paper are not especially novel for other philosophers. So when I talk to them, they go like, yeah, this is interesting, but yeah, we know this already. But I thought that the added value was trying to reach out and try to share these ideas with the non-philosophical community.

Right. Well, as a non-philosopher or an amateur philosopher of science, I found it very interesting. So I want to begin by speculating with you about what level of technology or civilization we might be able to guess that extraterrestrial intelligences have. I mean, if they arrive on Earth, obviously they have some technology that we don't. have. But in the case that we're communicating with distant civilizations around other stars, do we know anything or can we guess anything about what level of technology or civilization they might have? Sure. If we got a signal from them, for example, by radio waves, we could infer that they have some machine, some apparatus to produce that signal. Because I think that most people in the

field assume that biological systems could not produce a signal that is strong. enough and accurate enough to convey through many light years so so I think we could we could conclude that and if the signal allows us to know where the planet is we can pinpoint it then we could direct our telescopes there and and maybe that would help us to find out other things about about these creatures maybe if their star is a yellow star like ours then that makes it more likely, for example, that they would have a visual system that is similar to ours, because eyes are really good to have, and we see that a lot of different animals on Earth have developed eyes independently of each other. So if they have a sun-like star, then the odds are pretty good

that they would have eyes. Other than that, is kind of difficult. Can we guess anything based on the fact that many stars out there are older than our sun? So it might be that other civilizations have had, you know, a billion year head start in terms of evolution and developing technology? Yes. Well, I mean, it's certainly possible that they could be really advanced. On the other hand, if they're so advanced, how come they have not changed more stuff? So one of the ideas out there is that if a civilization is very advanced, they will have great energy needs. And if a civilization has all this need for energy, they would construct the Dyson swarm or they would cover their sun or their star in solar cells or something like that.

And that would be visible for us because we would see stars disappearing. That suggests that if we don't see it, then we can assume that they're maybe not that advanced. But of course, it's also possible that they are very advanced. They just don't care about energy or they get their energy in some other way. Well, I think the prospect of receiving a message from an alien civilization and then trying to figure out what they're like and what that message means and what they're trying to communicate to us and how we might communicate with them is certainly a very fascinating one. In your paper, you make the argument that this problem might be harder than people anticipate. In fact, you write in the paper, no entity can translate any message that humans could send with nothing but electromagnetic transmission. Essentially, you're saying that it's impossible for us to send something which could be decoded by aliens,

which I guess means in converse that there's no way we could understand any message aliens send with just electromagnetic transmissions. Can you sketch out that argument for us? Why do you believe that it's impossible for us to understand an alien message? I can also add that this would be true even if the aliens were very similar to us. So just as a thought experiment, imagine that the aliens are. actually biologically identical to us. They just look like humans. According to this argument,

it would be impossible for us to translate that message. But of course, it's very unlikely that they would be identical to us. So that would make it even more difficult. So the argument basically goes a theory that is fairly prominent in the philosophy of language that was articulated by William Van Orman Quine, and that builds on some very interesting insights that were form. by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. And the idea is that utterances in a language

do not contain the meaning that they are trying to convey. Rather, meaning is something that exists entirely in our heads and that we derive from observing the behaviors of other people. And to illustrate this, Quine has this thought experiment where he imagines a person going into a jungle and this person is a linguist. So he tries to communicate with the people who are living in the jungle. They don't know his language and he doesn't know their language. And the way you start to communicate or start to learn another people's language is by observing their behavior

in their environment. And with the help of different hypotheses of how these people work and what they do, you can slowly but surely construct a translation menu. So let's say that you have this person in the jungle and he points at a rabbit and he says, Gavagai. And then you make a hypothesis here that Gava guy can mean rabbit. But Gavagai could also mean food and or maybe Gavagai could be, I mean rabbitness or being very fast because this rabbit happened to be very fast. And all these hypotheses are consistent with your observation. So what you need to do is to make more observations. For example, if the people that you're trying to talk to, they point at a potato and they say have a guy, then we can start discarding some of the hypotheses because a potato is not fast, right? But the potato is food, or so you

assume. So then you say that, yeah, it's more likely that gavagai means food because that's what is common with these two things. But this is just a tentative hypothesis right but at some point after a long period of interaction you will be good enough in understanding them that you will be able to ask them so you you will be able to ask them by rabbit do you mean this or that but this is not something you can do initially initially the only thing you can do is to observe behavior and from your understanding of how humans work for example you you know that humans eat rabbit sometimes and they also eat potatoes and that's why you can kind of make this hypothesis. But with the help of this knowledge, this background knowledge about

how humans work, you can start producing these hypotheses. The problem is that when we're dealing with a string of digits that an extraterrestrial might send to us, then we have, first of all, we don't have any information or very little information about, you know, if they like potatoes or not. Or if they call them French fries or if they call them something else. Or if potatoes are like some ritual object in their everyday lives. Or maybe potatoes do move fast on their planet. But let me back you up and ask you a question just to make sure I understand the points you're making. You're saying that even just pointing to things and saying the words requires some sort of common context. You have to have some common experience, some common

culture, some common inherent understanding to make those connections that you can't truly translate an alien language because you don't have the context to understand that, the framework to fit those things into. So what Quine actually says is that you can never truly translate anything. So think about it. We learn language by observing human behavior and inferring and observing utterances and inferring what those utterances can mean by then observing their behavior. For example, if you say pass me the salt and then I give you the salt and you seem satisfied with that, then I infer that, you know, I was in the ballpark of what you meant. But we can never have a complete total understanding of what you meant by the different utterances that you make.

All right, but sometimes we can accomplish what we need to, right? I don't really know if you have like a deep, you know, philosophical understanding of salt, but I know that you passed me to salt. Just like, you know, we are speaking English, which is not a perfect language to convey all of our ideas as well. In that sense, you know, you could say no language is perfect, but that's not the sense that we're grasping for, right? We're trying to develop some basic understanding. So it was this argument saying you could never have a perfect translation of an alien language or you could never have any translation. So Quine's theory would allow for a good enough translation of an alien language if we had

those two preconditions. If you had the interaction and if that interaction was in a context where we can observe the behavior. So imagine you get these people coming here from Proxima Centauri. with their embassy, their alien embassy, and then we can look at their behavior, and then we can see like, aha, they seem to be absorbing substances from that orifice.

Let us postulate that they're eating now. And they seem to be eating this kind of, I don't know, looks like porridge, and then we can do a chemical analysis of that and realize that, yeah, it's pretty similar to porridge. And then that would allow us to slowly but surely construct and translation manual over many interactions. But when we just get the string, we can't make much of it. I see.

So if we could spend some time with the aliens and develop some common context, then we could have the framework for developing some sort of effective but imperfect translation. But you're saying if all we get are their messages, even if they're actually biologically humans and think the same way we do, it would be impossible for us to translate because we don't have a context or what their lives are like and what they're. they might mean.

Exactly. That's really interesting. And you make this comment in your paper about Chomsky's analysis of language, is universal grammar, this claim that all human languages are based on the same sort of mathematical structure. And you write in the paper that Chomsky never claimed that universal grammar was universal in the sense that it would be shared across all possible species able to use language. That is, you know, is universal grammar, universal in the sense that it might also apply to structures of alien languages, which is a really cool concept.

And Chomsky was here on our podcast a couple of weeks ago. I actually asked him about this, whether he thought that it was possible that alien languages might be constructed in the same way as human languages. And he made some argument that the development of language and symbolic thought might be due to evolutionary pressure. And so it might be some sort of like optimum solution

to this problem. And therefore, it might be or could be likely, or you could argue at least, alien languages might have a similar structure. If that were true, are you saying that that still doesn't help us? Like, even if we have human biological aliens with minds similar to ours that have a universal grammar,

in that case, we still couldn't develop enough common understanding just by sending signals to effectively communicate? I'm not exactly sure what Chomsky means by that. But it's certainly true that we can see convergent evolution across many traits, right? But for example, the wings of bad. are similar to the wings of birds, but they're not identical, right?

So they're similar in some respects and different in other respects. And I think that a language that emerges some, say, Proxima Centauri, is probably going to emerge under, you know, some evolutionary pressure. And I think it's sensible to assume that it would be similar in some respects to human languages and different in other respects. The crucial point here is that would it be similar in the sense that would allow this innate language sense or innate language grammar to allow us to pick out the right translation from a whole range of potential translations? And I think that it might be possible, but I think then you would be committed to some fairly controversial views in the philosophy of language. And I think that, I mean, I have the utmost respect for Chomsky and his work,

but I think that his view of universal grammar remains quite controversial to this name. Yeah, I agree. I think it's interesting also to wonder why we haven't been able to cross the species barrier. I mean, if we're going to solve the puzzle of speaking with another intelligent species from another planet, we might first want to tackle the question of like speaking to dolphins or to other intelligent mammals. Do you have thoughts about why we have not yet been able to crack the dolphin language? Well, it's controversial as to whether dolphins have a language. I mean, we know that they communicate.

And I think this is what Chomsky says, too, that dolphins and other clever mammals, they have advanced communication, but they don't have this ability to generate an infinite amount of sentences from a finite set of words. So they don't have grammar, basically. And that makes their communication fundamentally different from what we call language. But if we think about, if we bracket that, so to speak, we think that we are actually pretty good at communicating with some animals,

especially animals who we have bred to be attentive to our utterances. For example, dogs. I don't have a dog myself, but I find it amazing of the things that people can do when they train their dogs. And I think it shows a very high level of communication, of ability to communicate. I mean, you can't understand the language of dogs because they don't have a language on that kind of more precise notion of what language is. I understand that you also have a pet one that you've named after Chomsky. Yeah, she's a rabbit. Her name is Chomska and she's not as eloquent as Chomsky, but she's very charismatic. I hope that you have a shared emotional context with your Chomska, at least.

So a lot of people speculate that it might be impossible to have a common cultural context with aliens and therefore these questions of language are always going to be impossible. But many folks argue that mathematics and physics and the sort of physical rules about the universe might be that context, that we might be able to communicate with aliens by first starting with simple mathematics and building up from there. You make a reference in your paper to Prudenthal's self-explanning message in his language, the lingua cosmica, which is built up from these mathematical primitives. Do you think it's not possible to start from just mathematics and develop some way to

discuss with each other, some way to communicate and transfer information? I think that would run into similar problems. So first of all, if we just talk about science, and this is, this goes also back to a theory articulated by Quine and others in that philosophical movement. But what Quine says is that science is underdetermined by observation. So imagine that you have a theory and you make an observation that seems inconsistent with that theory. That means that as a good scientist, we need to revise something, right? But the observation doesn't tell you what to revise.

So, for example, according to Nietzionian mechanics, the behavior of the planet Mercury was rather odd. But one of the suggested solutions to this problem was to postulate that there was a planet there that we couldn't see, that they named Vulcan, which I think is a pretty awesome name for a planet. It's a very logical choice, yes. But, yeah, I don't think it was a bad hypothesis, but it just shows you that making the observation that Mercury behaves in another way doesn't tell you what is the truth. It just tells you that something needs revising. So the idea that Quine has is that you could imagine two distinct scientific worlds or scientific systems with coherent theories about everything, about evolution and physics and chemistry, and that you can do the same things with these theories, but that these theories imply very deep. different views about the world. And in the paper, I have an example,

and I don't think it's mine, actually. It's also from Quine, where you can imagine a civilization, perhaps in Alpha Centauri, that develop general relativity and special relativity without first having developed Newtonian mechanics. It might be unlikely, but it's certainly possible. And that means that if they had this,

then they could make the same predictions, and, you know, they could be as a Newtonian civilization like we could in the 19th century. But they would have very different views about the world because Newtonian physics implies one set of beliefs about the worlds, about the universe, and general and special relativity implies a very different set of beliefs. So you're saying that even though we exist in the same physical universe and observe the same things about the universe, we might come to different internal mental explanations of that universe, two different theories of science that both work, and therefore just being

in the same physical universe doesn't give us enough of a shared mental context to develop communication. Is that the argument? I would like to say that this is different from, because sometimes this view is conflated with relativism, for example, Kuhn's view about, you know, scientific revolutions and so on. But this is different. This is not relativism, because here, we would say that both scientific theories or scientific systems are true in the relevant sense. So let's say that you have a scientific system that can make correct predictions about the universe and about physical systems and so on. And it also gives an adequate explanation of how things work. I think in many respects, we would say that that is sufficient for us to say that this is true. The fact that there are other

descriptions of the universe and other ways of making the same predictions that is also true but different does not make our view less true. Right. I think that that would blow the minds of most practicing scientists, especially particle physicist, to imagine that the description we're building of the universe, you know, whether it be tiny strings or bouncing particles or wiggling fields, that these are not necessarily unique, that even if it's true and it works perfectly, it might just reflect mathematical models in our minds rather than the actual structure of the universe in every. any sort of objective way.

That's the argument, isn't it? Yeah, well, almost. Because I would say that what makes a theory true is our ability to understand and manipulate the world around us. So if a theory is good at that, then it's true in the relevant sense. I see. So you're saying my theory could be true and your theory could be true and they could have basically nothing in common, other than that they both work.

Yes. But it's also true that a theory could be better than the other, even though both are true. So, for example, we would say that special and general relativity as a theory is better than Newtonian mechanics. But Newtonian mechanics is true for predicting the behavior of small objects moving at non-relativistic speeds. All right. Well, this is a really fascinating dive into how to communicate with aliens. I have a lot more questions for you, but first, we have to take a short break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys.

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In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.

This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now hold up, isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them.

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All right, we're back and we're talking with Dr. Kareem Jibari about how to communicate with aliens and especially how to stave off interstellar war. So the reason that we're talking about how to communicate with aliens is that we're wondering about the question of how to get along with aliens or why aliens haven't contacted us. And the hypothesis that the universe out there is like a dark forest where everybody is being quiet to avoid being wiped out by some sort of predator race. So in your paper, you build on this argument that we can't understand aliens to suggest that we might essentially stumble our way into an interstellar war because we have no good way to communicate with them.

So walk me through the argument there. You use some game theory to suggest that we'll end up in a situation where it seems logical to us to essentially first strike against these aliens. How do we get there from, we got a message and we don't understand it to now we're sending a nuke to Alpha Centauri? Yeah, that would really suck. Yeah. So the idea comes from a game theorist called Thomas Schelling that in turn got the idea from Thomas Hobbes.

And the idea is that we can think about our interactions with this extraterrestrial as a coordination game. And in a coordination, and there are many classical coordination games, but basically in a coordination game, you have two alternatives. One is to cooperate, and the other is to play it safe and don't cooperate. And the idea is that when you cooperate, then you take a small risk, or you take a risk, but if I also cooperate, then there will be a great advantage for both of us. But if you play it safe and don't cooperate, then you're not taking as much risk. On the other hand, you're not getting a chance to get a big payoff. And a classical example to illustrate this is to imagine two people walking in the forest and

deciding as to whether or not to chase a stag or to chase a rabbit. And to chase a stag, we need to cooperate. So if we both choose to chase a stag, then we'll get the stag and we'll get a lot of food and we'll be very happy. But if you choose to chase the stag, and I go for the rabbit, then you won't get the stag and you'll be very hungry. Whereas to get the rabbit, you can do it by yourself. So I'll get the rabbit. I'll get one piece of food, not as much as the stag, but I would get enough. You know, I have to say, you talk a lot about eating rabbits for somebody who has a pet rabbit.

You know, isn't there a little bit of a mental tension there for you? Well, yes, sometimes. But it's just because they appear so much in the philosophical literature. Well, I hope you cover her ears when you talk about this in front of her. All right, you're explaining why you need to communicate in order to cooperate and take risks together. So if we trust each other, then of course we'll cooperate, right? Because I know that you're a good guy that cooperates with people and then we'll go and we'll get a stag and we'll be very happy.

But if I am suspicious about you, then I will try to go for the rabbit. So you would say that the rabbit is a risk-dominant equilibrium, whereas this is. tag is a payoff dominant equilibrium and both of these strategies are rational or none of the strategies is more rational than the other if we don't know anything but the problem here is that if we can't communicate then there will be and we also have this opportunity to defect to not be cooperative then Hobbes and Schelling and others argue that the option to defect or to be non-cooperative becomes the focal point. So we get both attracted to that option because I start thinking that, oh my God, he's really going to go for the rabbit. And he also probably

thinks that I think that he's going to go for the rabbit. But that means that he's more inclined to go for the rabbit himself. And he knows that I know that he knows that I think this way. So that means that he will be even more inclined to go after the rabbit, which makes me more inclined to go after the rabbit and so on. And in the context of interstellar war, going for the rabbit or being non-cooperative could imply a first strike. Right. So if our options, instead of hunting for a stag or hunting for a rabbit, if our choices are, A, share all of our theories of physics and all of our knowledge and the beauty that we developed as humanity and B, send a nuclear weapon to avoid being wiped out by their nuclear weapon, then you're saying that a rational choice would be

to fire first to avoid being wiped out by their nuke rather than just like dumping the Encyclopedia Britannica into a message and sending it to Alpha Centauri. Yeah, that's our conclusion in this paper. But I was always very dissatisfied with this conclusion. So I wrote another paper where I argue that we are wrong. But that's another kind of discussion. But yeah, Basically, if we assume that there's only one other player there, then the rational strategy should be to attack first. I think this game theory approach is really fascinating because you're thinking carefully about the risks you want to take. And obviously, we have a lot at stake here. We're just on one planet. And it goes to the heart of understanding what the other player might do, you know, the choices that the other player might make and the risks we are taking.

And I think, you know, we see that, of course, a lot on Earth. And game theory developed in the context, you know, human warfare and the prisoners deletons. and all this kind of stuff. But isn't that also a case of projection? I mean, aren't we assuming in that case that the aliens would be thinking in a game theoretical way that they would be rational in a way

according to our definition of rationality? You know, if we don't understand these aliens and we can't communicate with them, shouldn't we just assume that we may never even understand their motives, that they might operate essentially randomly? Yes. No, that's certainly true. So it's a pretty big assumption that we're making here that game theory is

a plausible tool to understand or predict alien behavior. I can add that game theory has with some success actually been used in many non-human contexts. So we've used to game theory to understand how pathogens emerge and behave and evolve, but also how animal populations interact with each other in complex ecological systems. So there seems to be some fundamental aspect of game theory that allows us to predict these systems where we're dealing with utterly alien life forms. So that is one reason to believe that perhaps this tool can be used in this context. But yeah, it's certainly an assumption that needs to be made. Well, it would be a fascinating problem to have. I think that a more likely scenario,

if we do meet aliens or get messages from aliens, is that we sort of, hilariously misunderstand them or that we send them a message of friendship, which is interpreted to be offensive in their context. You know, we send them a picture of our rabbit and then, you know, to them, rabbits are terrifying or... Yeah. Yeah. The paper that I wrote was in the context of this idea that some astronomers have that we should send out signals to nearby solar systems even though we don't know if somebody is there. And just to see what happens. And we argue that this could be very dangerous

because it would alert the aliens of our presence. Perhaps, I mean, it's not certain that they know where we are. But if we do this, then that chance increases. If they contact us first, that means that we're not certain that they know where we are. Maybe they have these kind of equivalent of the setting people who just want to send out some random signals. So answering could also be very dangerous because it could reveal our location. But as a philosopher of science and somebody who's desperately curious about the world,

if we get a message from a distant star and it clearly has information in it and we spend time decoding it, are you saying that we shouldn't respond, for example, that we should stay silent, that we should, you know, ignore a message from an alien world? I don't think we should ignore it, but I don't think we should respond. and we should instead invest every effort that we can spare to gather more information about them. So that would be my first option. But of course, if I'm correct in the article that I'm writing at the moment,

then it would be fine to answer them. But I think that we would rather want to collect as much information as possible before we do it in any case. I mean, if it's going to go, if the message is going to travel for 50 or 60 years, it wouldn't hurt to, you know, take five years, build some cool space-based telescopes and try to gather as much information about that sort of planetary system before. And then we discovered that they all look like rabbits. And then we think, oh, how could they possibly be dangerous?

So one last question is you suggested that you're writing an article currently, which disagrees with the previous article and suggests it might be fine to talk to aliens. What's the essential argument there what evolved in your thinking to make you think it might be fine to talk to distant aliens? So let's assume that we stumble upon some aliens in a nearby planetary system, let's say in Taosciati or Trappist. So that means that either alien's extraterrestrial intelligence are extremely common. That's one possibility. That would explain why we find aliens so close. or it would be a fantastic coincidence

that two intelligent beings evolved independently of each other in such proximity. And the second alternative is, of course, not very plausible. So the idea is that upon finding one alien species on, say, Tauciati, then that would mean that we should make a Bayesian update on our subjective probability on the average density of extraterrestrial intelligences in the galaxy. And at the moment, we don't know.

We don't have any information about that. So we have a uniform prior. We, you know, the closest, we might be alone in the galaxy or there might be aliens in almost every solar system. We don't know. But if we will find some aliens at Taositi, that's about 12 light years from here. Then we should expect that there to be lots of them

and lots of them nearby. The next step is that in that case, we should ask ourselves, like, how come we're still here? You know, if there are so many aliens out there and it's very unlikely that nobody is aggressive, you get a conundrum, like how come we're still here? And the only way to explain that

would be to postulate that there must be some reason for why aliens don't attack each other. And that could be many different reasons, but there must be some reason for why that explains our existence, so to speak. I see. So it's sort of like an inverse Fermi paradox. Firmia paradox saying, why is nobody out there? The answer is maybe there is somebody out there squashing anybody who raises their head. But you're saying if we go out there and find that actually the galaxy is

filled with aliens, and that suggests that there isn't anybody out there hunting species that speak up and make themselves known. Exactly. Because otherwise, we would be dead. Or we would have an evasion already on our way or something like that. So for some reason, aliens seem peaceful, or an observation of that kind would suggest that aliens are peaceful. And that means that if the Cthetians see us, then they would think the same thing. If we both have this assumption, then we can move ourselves in the coordination game to the other equilibrium, to the pay of dominant equilibrium, because we are not concerned about them attacking, because we assume that it's uncommon for aliens to attack each other.

And that makes us more confident that they think that we are not going to attack them. And that makes us even more confident that we shouldn't attack them, which makes us even more confident that they shouldn't attack us. All right. So I guess the message is, if we discover aliens, we hope that they are nearby because that suggests that there's lots more aliens out there and maybe they're all peaceful. Yeah. Or another possibility, of course, would be that imagine that we would find an alien civilization,

but they were not very advanced, let's say that they're in the Bronze Age or the Iron Age. Then that would not rule out the possibility that aliens in general are aggressive. Because if we would find a primitive civilization, that would rather suggest that we just happen to be lucky to be first in our neighborhood or very early. So if we would find a civilization like that, then we couldn't draw the same inference. On the other hand, a Bronze Age civilization is not going to be a threat. to us, not for some time. So yeah, that's also a consideration. All right. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast and talking about these amazing and super fun and mind-bending ideas with us.

Very grateful for your time and your energy and give our regards to your rabbit. I will. Thank you. All right. Pretty interesting interview. And I'm sort of getting the general message that he thinks it's a bad idea because of the potential for miscommunication or misunderstandings. Yeah, or just lack of ability to communicate at all. And so if they misinterpret our message and they don't know what we mean, they might be worried about our intentions. And then who knows what they would do? If they're run by some generals that have their fingers on a button, they might get nervous and launch a first strike when they get our message. You mean like they're going to get a message and they're going to interpret the message as like a first strike or something? Like who gets a message that

you can't understand and then assumes that they're insulting you? Well, you don't know, like the Daniel on that planet is probably like, yay, we heard from aliens. Let's send them all of our physics textbooks, you know, but everybody else in that planet is like, hold on a second. Do we really want to let those folks know we're here? Maybe it's a trap. And the risks, as you say, are large. And so if you put yourself in the minds of those aliens, they might have the same worries. And so they might be aggressive in response.

I see. But then he said sort of said that, you know, if there are a lot of aliens out there, the fact that nobody has attacked us, maybe means that maybe that's not a realistic scenario, perhaps. There aren't a lot of trigger-happy aliens out there. Yeah, I like that he ended on a hopeful note there. If there are a lot of civilizations out there, they've somehow learned to live together, and that gives us hope that we can join that community.

I guess either way, you're sort of projecting our own human bias onto these scenarios, right? Like, maybe we would react a certain way, but that doesn't mean other aliens would react the same way. Exactly. And I put that same question to him, and maybe you heard his answer. thinks that this game theory analysis might be universal, that it goes just beyond humans, that it's useful in understanding, like even microbes and all sorts of systems. And so there's some arguments made there that it might be universal. But in the end, you're right. We don't

know what motivates an alien. So we definitely don't have a basis for speculating about their choices. Right. And then I know you brought something up before, which is like, it doesn't make a lot of sense for aliens to come here for our resources or to eat us, right? Like, that's what the alien movies and TV shows always show, but I'm always like you, I think, thinking in the back of my head, like, why would you come all this way just for like a little bit of water or just to eat like, you know, a few billion humans? Like, it's like traveling across the country to eat a hamburger, you know? I know you want some water. Neptune is basically all water. Help yourself, right? You want platinum? We got asteroids filled with platinum. We don't even know how to get to.

Take some, please. Nobody would come here just for those resources. Or you like meat? Hey, we have this great animal thing called the impossible burger. That's just as good. I'm sure with your advanced civilization, you can figure it out too. Exactly. And so I agree with you that it's unlikely

to have interstellar war for resources because they seem essentially infinite. But this is another angle. You know, we might have an interstellar war due to a misunderstanding. If those aliens are worried that we're aggressive, they might be aggressive in response,

even if it doesn't make any sense for anybody to be aggressive. And so there is the potential there for misunderstanding. Like maybe the aliens are just doing it for support, you mean? Like, they just maybe like going to war.

Maybe they're just not as curious about the universe. They don't really care about everything we figured out. We need to Daniel them, Daniel. We need to, like, implant the Daniel in their, amongst their ranks. Now you got it. We need to spread Daniel across the universe. And that's what this podcast is all about. So maybe if they hear this podcast, they'll realize, hey, we're just kind of goofy and curious.

We pose no harm. That would be hilarious if, like, in a thousand years, and come, and they say, hey, we're going to wipe you out. But then we picked up this podcast that you're transmitting and this famous prophet that Daniel Whiteson, the chosen one, illuminated us into what it means to be curious about the universe. We were slightly offended at Jorge's jokes, but we decided for giving you. That's right.

All the banana jokes were terrible. We wish Jorge would just go away. Bring on those other guest hose. They were much more interesting. Anyways, can we be a guest on your show? Yeah, exactly. Aliens, you are welcome to come and be a guest on the show. Please do come and tell us all about the secrets of the universe. That is my scientific fantasy.

That's right. Just don't eat Jorge. Or anybody. Don't eat anybody. Have some impossible burgers. Have some impossible humans. All right. Well, I guess it's something to think about, you know, whether or not we want to contact aliens out there, whether it would be worth the risk. You know, how would our lives change if we knew the precise answer to that question? Yeah. It is an important question. and it's a question that no individual person can or should make on behalf of humanity. That's what scares me a little bit about this rogue group that's just sending messages out there.

They're making decisions for the entire human race, and it's not a small decision to make. Right. Well, I have bad news for you, Daniel. The fate of humankind is already in the hands of like four people. That's true. So it sounds like you have a little deeper problem with the way humans organize themselves. That's true, but out of scope, I think, for today's podcast. That's right. Stay tuned for our next episode. Daniel and Jorge overthrow the global elite.

That's right, yes. Talked by global politics and other political leanings. All right, well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. Thanks for listening. And remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeart radio. For more podcasts,

from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. toys. Then everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged. Terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend should.

just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back-to-school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the powerful stories I'll be mining on our upcoming 12th season of Family Secrets. We continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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