Someone at work today mentioned a game to me, Ingress. It’s an enhanced reality game played using a smartphone. It sounds pretty sophisticated and interesting, but I waste enough time on games as it is.
The game, though, forces each player to choose a side. The premise is that portals exist between our world and another. They are hidden and only certain smartphones can see them and influence them. Some ‘aliens’ (for lack of a better term) want to use the portals to come through into our world.
One side thinks that the aliens are bringing enlightenment, new technology and other goodies. The other side wants to prevent the aliens from coming in. Probably thinking that their must be a not so benevolent reason.
So my question is which side to play (if I should choose to do this, which I’m not… really… I promise I’m not downloading it as we speak)?
My first immediate thought was ‘aliens, cool!’ If they aren’t obviously evil, then I’ll be on that side (if I was playing). But then I got to thinking… Is that the skeptical course of action?
Without some kind of solid evidence, how can we know an alien’s motivation. Further how can we know if we’re even communicating correctly? [I am reminded of the book and Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man“.] Even further, we know of human organizations that appear to be quite helpful, but are ultimately nothing more than ruling parasites.
As flawed as human kind is, I think that a skeptic must side with the Resistance until there is a significant amount of evidence to support a claim of benevolent aliens.
Like with religions, alternative medicine, and other varieties of woo, there will be no end of humans who think nothing but the best of any invaders, no matter what the evidence tells them.
The one thing that I almost never see in the alien invasion scenario is that of religion. We always think that a highly advanced species must be atheistic (at least in films and books). Can you imagine the alien equivalent of the Puritans or the Spanish, coming not to take our water or our gold (all of which is much easier to find in deep space), but our souls? Now, that would make an invasion story that makes sense.
Back to the skeptic’s response. What information would be needed to support a claim from a benevolent alien species?
Merely doing good works isn’t enough. I’m sure the lamb feels very happy that he gets lots of rich food and doesn’t have to pull a load like the ox… until, that is, the humans kill and eat him. Of course, the same applies to religions. Merely doing good works isn’t enough to validate the claim of benevolence.
What is the motivation? Why are good works being done? To truly help, to give an appearance of help in order to mask a deeper evil, or just fattening us up?
As much as I would want to meet aliens and have be the tech-rich benevolent species that I dream of… the skeptic in me realizes that one of the fundamental constants of the universe must be evolution.
There is not an infinite amount of resources in the universe (or a single part of it). All individuals must compete to survive, even with their own relatives. I would submit that any (every) species in the universe will have developed under the same conditions. The aspects that make up the processes of evolution are not unique to Earth.
So, the implication is that any/all species intelligent species in the universe will have developed under conditions that render them much like humanity… which is, in general, selfish, egotistical, and arrogant. Even an advanced culture must deal with the evolutionary underpinnings of their history.
Can there come a point in which a massively advanced culture can ignore it’s evolutionary past? With sufficient technology… maybe. But they would have to almost remove biology from themselves.
Humans are the way we are not because of our culture and society. Our society and culture are the way they are because of humans. Cities, nations, internet communities are all based on the same tribal mentality that we can see in gorilla and chimpanzee tribes. Humans are not good because we have religion, we are good because sometimes, being good, is a survival advantage.
You can even see this in the culture war between creationism and science. Each side is a community. Each side vilifies the other. each side tries to exert influence over non-aligned individuals to swell their ranks. The fact that one side has evidence and the other does not is almost incidental. We can see the same patterns in clashes between religious groups and in clashes between proponents of one hypothesis over another.
To be fair, scientists will generally follow the evidence, once sufficient amounts have been gathered and analyzed. And generally, no amount of evidence will sway those with religious motivations. But that’s just in general and there are always holdouts on both sides.
I think that even in a human invasion of another human group, the skeptic must really consider the evidence before committing to one side or the other. Further, the skeptic is much more likely to change sides when certain things come to light.
