The thing is, though, that we’re smart enough to figure out pretty quickly if pointing doesn’t work and then we try something else. The communication issue reminds me a lot of discussion about whether people speaking certain languages can understand each other. Take Spanish and Italian, for instance. The answer depends to a large extent if the two people are trying to make themselves understood or if they insist on using slang or regional variants that make it harder to be understood. Assuming we were contacted, it would be reasonable to assume that the alien species was trying very hard to communicate with us, and we would try very hard to do the same.
As for the dolphin issue, we did a pretty good job of figuring out how bees communicate, and they are very, very different from us.
Yeah, we’re not ready for contact with each other, so we’re certainly not ready for contact from outside. Unless there’s any mileage in the rather common SF trope where external contact causes us to snap out of our petty bickering (either because we have to confront the visitors, or just because it gives us an immediate sense of perspective)
Yet dolphins are more like us and we still have no clue how they communicate. We know they make sounds and motions but study of those for years hasn’t revealed anything resembling a language or even enough information to convey the complex interactions between dolphins. They are enough like us and smart enough for some crude inter-species communication, but first contact may not be with any creatures that similar to us. As for bees, we did figure out how they communicate with each other, but we can’t communicate with them, and most people don’t like the way they communicate with us. Let’s hope that first contact doesn’t come from highly intelligent bees.
I like interstellar travel as the trigger, since instead of them popping in to visit the contact is a reward for our achievement. Also, interstellar travel is likely to be expensive and lengthy, so it indicates a relatively rich culture which can plan over a long period of time.
Of course the same thing goes for cathedrals.
Look, is three saber tooth tigers are stalking you, you had better be able to count to three when they vanish behind grass and disappear. Seeing two and thinking you’ve seen them all would not be good for your reproductive chances.
Now it is not clear if very primitive man could count much higher, but if there are ten tigers you’re screwed anyhow.
My late golden retriever was not trained as a pointer, but she pretty much pointed with her eyes and snout at bugs on the wall we were supposed to swat down for her to eat.
In any case, we’re talking intelligent beings here, so what apes do is not that relevant. I think anyone who can build a starship could figure out pointing pretty well. Counting also.
The notion is based on the observation of how incredibly fast human progress has been compared to the age of the universe.
Even if we constrain the period in which an intelligence can emerge (e.g. we assume it requires a third generation star) it’s still overwhelmingly likely that two random species meeting will be at least tens of millions of years separated in development.
And in the case of humans encountering a random species that’s come here, it’s obvious which side of that relationship humans are occupying.
In terms of specific “What-ifs”, sure there are an infinite number of them. Maybe they’ll come to earth and force us all to tap-dance until the end of time.
All we can do is speculate on what seems likely based on what we know.
Maybe there are multi-system civilizations out there interacting with each other all the time and we’re just a bit out of the way and not worth bothering with yet. Backwater Earth, the North Dakota of the galaxy.
I would suspect that our “readiness” for First Contact might be about as irrelevant as ants being “ready” for a new homeowner to move into the house whose yard they occupy. The best the ants can hope for is to coexist so long as the homeowner’s activities don’t conflict with their own.
Best case scenario, contact with an interstellar civilization millennia more advanced than ours causes tremendous social, economic and political upheaval.
Worse case the alien civilization is so different from us that we barely register while they are grinding up the solar system for Dyson sphere parts or to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
Being “advanced” doesn’t mean you can understand. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable that with some time and some trial and error (ah…DON’T blow up the Moon), some form of communication can be established.
They might not even have anything to “point” with.
Then again, it may turn out that by an extraordinarily implausible coincidence, Rygillian sounds exactly like English.
Actually, the year 500 billion could be half-way to the beginning of the End, if Wikipedia’s Timeline of the Far Future is correct, and 1 T years is the low estimate for the time until star formation ends.
But why focus on our failures only instead of our successes? We’ve deciphered the communication methods (or some of the methods) of quite a few species. Vervet monkey calls, meerkats, even the idea that social insects often communicate with odor trails. As for communicating with bees, if we really wanted to, we could make a bee drone (no pun intended) that could enter the hive, do a wiggle dance, and get them to fly off towards some place or other. Doing so would be an engineering problem, not a scientific one.
Because I’m pessimistic when it comes to human behavior. I’m sure we’ll screw it up even if first contact comes from benevolent humanoid contact from people who can speak our languages. Look how good we are at electing political leaders.
Perhaps the answer to the question is, “It depends upon the aliens.” Even a 200 year technological gap is overwhelming, never mind a 200,000 year gap.
111 Tauri has 3 robotic space bases in our asteroid belt, largely to keep up with the Groombridges. Through some monumental screwup, we notice one of them. First contact.
The 111 Tauri probe reacts with indifference. They don’t care. That sort of contact we could handle.
Depends. If we send signals at them and they don’t respond, or don’t respond in a manner that we can understand, then the next step would be competing probes from the USA, EU, China and Russia being sent out there to investigate.
If the alien bases detect the probes and send warning signals not to approach, we may not even understand the warnings or be able to do anything about it, as our probes don’t have science fiction abilities to turn on a dime and likely wouldn’t include the fuel to make such radical course corrections.
If the aliens then blow them up, how will we respond?
If the aliens do blow them up, will they consider the very approach of those small, primitive probes to be hostile? What happens next?
Chimera: If they have a 300 year technological edge, then it’s a highly dangerous situation, because they are smart enough to crush us, but still close enough to us to imagine a threat.
The tech gap would probably be larger though. Under those circumstances in the highly unlikely event that they want to colonize us, they win. More likely, I think they would be the equivalent of E.O. Wilson, who finds ants simply fascinating. They might self destruct their own ship so we don’t study it. Or they might shoot down any incoming ships. It’s possible that they could decide to nuke earth purely on the basis of our incoming space probes. But I find it unlikely that such a paranoid alien civilization wouldn’t destroy themselves before reaching us.
Another real possibility is that they have a number of probes studying us in the asteroid belt, and if we want to dismantle one of them, who cares? They could crush us (like ants!) any time they want to.
Summary: under most (not all) circumstances, first contact depends on the aliens, not on us. “Most” by a large margin I say. I can imagine exceptions where humans could make a right or wrong decision, but I’m guessing those circumstances are less likely.
Since first contact depends on the aliens, let me list some scenarios.
Von Newman machines which visit stars, build factories to create more machines, then send those out. That’s what Fermi had in mind.
Slower than light ships lugging alien meatsacks around. This sounds expensive.
FTL ships, like Star Trek.
Remote sensing with orbiting 300 km wide dish antennas and observatories, their star. First contact occurs when we build ours and observe them.
Well, I would hardly expect any alien race to have three ‘bases’ in our asteroid belt without being aware of our presence. That wouldn’t make any sense at all. If that was the case, then they would be expecting eventual discovery and contact.
If we discovered an alien probe moving through our system, we would likely be unable to intercept it and would only be able to send signals at it.
