Alien contact

I was browsing around this morning and found a realy interesting report commissioned
by nasa concerning possible future contact with an alien intelligence.

Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis

Shawn Domagal-Goldman of Nasa's Planetary Science Division and his colleagues compiled a list of plausible outcomes that could unfold in the aftermath of a close encounter, to help humanity "prepare for actual contact".
In their report, Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis, the researchers divide alien contacts into three broad categories: beneficial, neutral or harmful.

Its a very comprehensive look at this fascinating subject, you can get the pdf here.
arxiv.org...

It's been posted here before.

What makes this different from any other "theoretical" thread topic on the subject? I see 5 tpics per hour about "what if aliens" and so on.

I've seen lights in the skies, aliens perhaps, didn't get their passports, but I can't support all these hypothetical threads about "what ifs"

We can debate all year on what ifs, so why post them when there are 1000000 threads per "what if" topic out there?

reply to post by JibbyJedi
The difference is it has been compiled by highly educated and respected scientists,
not some random stoner or people who have no idea what they are talking about.
I did a search for it by the way, and found nothing similar. At least it will give people
who missed it before a chance to take a look, it realy is an excellent read.

Thanks for posting this. I found it to be very comprehensive in the assessments of wildly different encounter scenarios without favouring any one over any other.

S&F

hello fellow humans.. I would like to start a new thread on e-pations for the UK government but I havnt yet posted 20 replies.. could someone ask a moderater to share this link epetitions.direct.gov.uk...


or reply to me on how to get a important subject like this to more uk citizens..

thanks.. sorry it not really a reply to the post.. i just thought id stick it in here because im crap on forums.

cheers

reply to post by takethat


do one more relpy
your 20th
well then reply then make it your first post

One thing that they have not considered is time realtive to communication. It may take several years for an alien to say even one word, or they may be able to read their encyclopedia to us in a millisecond.

oh yes of course

thank you

just an aside ; or an observation, but do you all notice how the pdf assumes that way the governments of the world are is a functional means to pursue contact? what i mean is, they assume that things are going status quo. was thinking while i was reading it about Ron Reagan and his 'wouldn't it be wonderful' dichotomy. it makes me question things.
like, are we that daft to assume that should green boys contact us we are going to unite ? the way the world is now? we had a oil spill that pretty much fubar the Atlantic for a considerable amount of time . leaving no question of some mucked up ecology . A nuclear horrific event , that although was not our conscious fault nonetheless should have put nuclear power and its usage into very survival question. (not that it wasn't already as any teen of the 80's such as myself would attest, just a different venue i guess). one would think, that we would unite about this stuff, see the folly of our ways and make good our deal on future generations. we cant even kick our dependency on fossil fuel...imagine if, a green boy excursion brings a new energy source. i don't think we would be intelligent enough to discard all cars, all machines all economy based stuff. everything. to use it. because as is apparent our own survival doesn't seem to warrant such change.
there is this assumption in the pdf's that the world is going kosher keen and that we would greet with non biased willingness. sure and the Christians will stop trying to place creationism into the science classroom. like that would never happen. unfortunately they have figured that scam out. with the all creatures made under our version of the cosmogony was made under the creator figure. i can only imagine what would happen.
look at the world as it is now. do you all think that Muslim would drop the warrior pact with their deity? they pretty much have been having a field day with the abstract use of the words in their text. i am pretty sure green boys from xenon would fall into a reference less then favorable.
see, these are sane ideas in the pdf for sure. but i don't think they take the real world into consideration. the incessant need of a common human to try and break the mold that has been set since industrialization came out is a never ending source of conflict. just think we were warned by the likes of mary shelley and blake .we were told what type of things would happen.
out of fear of seeming strange i wont go anymore into it.cause i am not exactly sure i am making sense. but, a more real synopsis would be just about any modern sci fiction that deals with this.