# Science Fiction Debate: Ethics and best practices of contacting other, less-developed civilizations **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 17, 2019, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573 "2019-11-17T13:44:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/41 "2019-11-20T15:56:00Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Would ‘Bronze Age’ be enough, though. > > Seems to me there’d be a ‘before and after’ level of development that would work for. > > Early enough - essentially hunter-gatherer - contact with a technologically advanced spacefaring species would be fairly straightforward. The early culture would just adopt that of the more developed culture and move forward, essentially being subsumed into the larger world in a gulp. Yeah, but in that situation, you’re really just picking up exotic pets. All very well and good if that’s your thing, but hardly worth the effort, to me. > [@](#): > > On the flip side, though, a more developed culture with technology but no real spaceflight, might be able to handle and adapt to the news that another, more tech-advanced culture is out there and begin learning as fast as they can while maintaining their own unique culture. Sure. I didn’t say Bronze Age-equivalent was also an upper limit, I think the more advanced is definitely the better. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/42 "2019-11-20T19:41:09Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Even if it turns out that evolved intelligence all has similar human-like values, the history of colonialism, the history of modern wars, and the extreme difficulty of communication with the aliens and finding appropriate solutions to our perception of their problems all argue for leaving them alone. Maybe they’re happier just the way they are, as indeed perhaps we were in simpler times before technology overwhelmed us. > > There’s an interesting earth-based version of this very question right here: > [North Sentinel Island and the Right to Be Left Alone](https://www.sapiens.org/culture/sentinelese/) > > The official position adopted by the UN – which some don’t agree with – is this: > The once-common opinion that their best option is to modernize and integrate with the dominant society has lost legitimacy. Thanks to the efforts of Indigenous advocates there is now an agreement, enshrined in the 2007 U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), that they have a right to self-determination and autonomy. > > In the case of uncontacted peoples, this is interpreted to entail the right to be left alone. Based on this consensus, it is generally understood that governments, researchers, and other actors, no matter how well-intentioned, should respect such tribes’ apparent unwillingness to engage with the outside world and refrain from making contact. I was going to bring up uncontacted peoples as well. The base ethical issue isn’t science fiction, and current consensus is to leave them alone. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/43 "2019-11-20T20:06:04Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > I was going to bring up uncontacted peoples as well. The base ethical issue isn’t science fiction, and current consensus is to leave them alone. That’s people where contact has been attempted, and have indicated by behaviour (and arrows) an unwillingness to proceed. Obviously, if we get that from our hypothetical aliens, we should respect that too. But we should nonetheless make the initial attempt (as has been done with “uncontacted” peoples) ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/44 "2019-11-20T21:11:59Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > That’s people where contact has been attempted, and have indicated by behaviour (and arrows) an unwillingness to proceed. Obviously, if we get that from our hypothetical aliens, we should respect that too. But we should nonetheless make the initial attempt (as has been done with “uncontacted” peoples) That may appear to be the case on Sentinel Island, but it does not undermine the argument that those people have the right to self-determination. Uncontacted peoples include peoples without a first contact. If you make that first contact, the choice is gone. They can’t just decide to forget about us. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/45 "2019-11-20T21:51:16Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > That may appear to be the case on Sentinel Island, but it does not undermine the argument that those people have the right to self-determination. Uncontacted peoples include peoples without a first contact. If you make that first contact, the choice is gone. They can’t just decide to forget about us. I take it you don’t say “hi” to your neighbours when you move into a new building? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/46 "2019-11-20T22:09:47Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I take it you don’t say “hi” to your neighbours when you move into a new building? I don’t knock on their doors to introduce myself. I realize some people do and that may be a difference between me and others. I will introduce myself if I see them though. But that’s much less of a grave thing than introducing some culture to modern society. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/47 "2019-11-20T23:48:41Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Early enough - essentially hunter-gatherer - contact with a technologically advanced spacefaring species would be fairly straightforward. The early culture would just adopt that of the more developed culture and move forward, essentially being subsumed into the larger world in a gulp. > > On the flip side, though, a more developed culture with technology but no real spaceflight, might be able to handle and adapt to the news that another, more tech-advanced culture is out there and begin learning as fast as they can while maintaining their own unique culture. Again, you appear to be flat out assuming that a) we would be the “more tech-advanced culture” because we’d have specifically space flight, no matter what sort of technology the other culture had in other areas and b) that being “technologically advanced” by our definition of technology is the same thing as “more developed” and that the “early” culture would agree with us about that and move “forward”. I mean, they might. It’s a really big universe, and there might well be people out there who’d agree with you; and/or people who we’d just run over like a steamroller (and not have them pop back up behind the steamroller, either right away or generations later, with defenses and/or attacks which we hadn’t thought of). But maybe they’d have developed in a different direction, think that we were an “early” culture for not having done so, think they were the “more developed culture”, and think that we should “just adopt” their culture, instead of us adopting theirs. Or maybe they’d think we should each keep developing in our own fashions; with or without trading some specific bits of goods or info that each of us thought particularly useful or amusing, but that each society could take without turning into the other. They might still in any of those cases want to learn about us; though it might be in order to present us as a bad example to their equivalent (if they had such) of teenagers. Or it might be in the same way as I read the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog – ‘wow, can you imagine that there are people who want _that_!’ ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/48 "2019-11-21T01:56:31Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I take it you don’t say “hi” to your neighbours when you move into a new building? When I moved into a new house many years ago I went over to the immediate neighbors and introduced myself. I heard years later that my proactive introduction had been much appreciated. But: I am in favor of an isolationist policy with respect to less-developed alien civilizations who we may perceive as benefiting from our “help” – I am in favor of leaving them alone for all the reasons that I and others have stated. So obviously your analogy is flawed. If you think saying “hi” to a new neighbor is equivalent to a first encounter with undeveloped aliens, or the first Europeans saying “hi” to the Native Americans, you are greatly mistaken. So were those Native Americans who mistook these early hellos to mean “hey, you live on one side of the ocean, and there we were living on the other side. We’re neighbors! How about that!” ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/49 "2019-11-21T02:19:23Z")
> [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > Contact with a lesser developed civilization, no matter how benign or well meaning, will destroy the culture of the lesser developed one. Well, sometimes, it just accelerates the contacted culture’s development to a fantastic, hyper-energized degree, to the point where they become a legitimate threat to the contacting culture within a couple of generations… Luckily, as field tests indicate, you just need to drop a couple of fission bombs, and things will just as quickly quiet back down, and all you’ll have to worry about is a trade imbalance and contactee cartoon tentacle porn. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/50 "2019-11-21T02:22:46Z")
Dear aliens: Please allow me to introduce myself; I’m a man of wealth and taste. Yours, Earthman ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/51 "2019-11-21T06:13:40Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > That may appear to be the case on Sentinel Island It is also the case in the Amazon. > [@](#): > > , but it does not undermine the argument that those people have the right to self-determination. Self-determination is not synonymous with ignorance. > [@](#): > > Uncontacted peoples include peoples without a first contact. If you make that first contact, the choice is gone. They can’t just decide to forget about us. Sure. But they \*could \*also want to be contacted, and even fault us for not contacting them, and desperately be trying to reach out but in some way we can’t perceive (see: SETI) So basically, they’re Schroedinger’s Aliens, and I say their right to self-determination only manifests after the box is opened. They’re not helpless animals to be protected, they’re intelligent beings who deserve to be offered an \*informed \*choice. And if they have post-contact regrets, we can Neuralize them, we’re the Space Gods after all. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/52 "2019-11-21T14:19:41Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Again, you appear to be flat out assuming that a) we would be the “more tech-advanced culture” because we’d have specifically space flight, no matter what sort of technology the other culture had in other areas and b) that being “technologically advanced” by our definition of technology is the same thing as “more developed” and that the “early” culture would agree with us about that and move “forward”. > > I mean, they might. It’s a really big universe, and there might well be people out there who’d agree with you; and/or people who we’d just run over like a steamroller (and not have them pop back up behind the steamroller, either right away or generations later, with defenses and/or attacks which we hadn’t thought of). But maybe they’d have developed in a different direction, think that we were an “early” culture for not having done so, think they were the “more developed culture”, and think that we should “just adopt” their culture, instead of us adopting theirs. > > Or maybe they’d think we should each keep developing in our own fashions; with or without trading some specific bits of goods or info that each of us thought particularly useful or amusing, but that each society could take without turning into the other. > > They might still in any of those cases want to learn about us; though it might be in order to present us as a bad example to their equivalent (if they had such) of teenagers. Or it might be in the same way as I read the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog – ‘wow, can you imagine that there are people who want _that_!’ A thought provoking post to me. The discovered civilization could be relatively primitive in technology but vastly superior culturally or politically. Maybe their anatomies never required them to develop sophisticated medical technologies and so they never developed the affiliated drive for computers and space travel. Maybe their political systems developed without violent competition and they never had the need for advanced weaponry. I wonder if we’d be smart enough to recognize the learning possibilities from study and contact with them or are we too far down the rabbit hole to turn ourselves around in? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/53 "2019-11-21T16:59:01Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Sure. But they \*could \*also want to be contacted, and even fault us for not contacting them, and desperately be trying to reach out but in some way we can’t perceive (see: SETI) They could, or they could not. It’s a wash and I think tie goes to non-contact. > [@MrDibble](#): > > They’re not helpless animals to be protected, they’re intelligent beings who deserve to be offered an \*informed \*choice. I recognize no such right. > [@MrDibble](#): > > And if they have post-contact regrets, we can Neuralize them, we’re the Space Gods after all. Admittedly, if we can do _that_, go ahead and contact whoever you want. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/54 "2019-11-21T20:53:58Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > They could, or they could not. It’s a wash and I think tie goes to non-contact. Naah, tie goes to doing what \*we \*want. > [@](#): > > I recognize no such right. Who said anything about _rights_? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/55 "2019-11-21T21:56:23Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Naah, tie goes to doing what \*we \*want. You may want to contact isolated tribes and less-developed alien civilizations, but I don’t. If they reach out, by all means let’s greet them with open arms. But if they do not, why bother them? > [@MrDibble](#): > > Who said anything about _rights_? I had interpreted you as saying intelligent beings have the right to be offered an informed choice. I don’t differentiate between deserving and having a right to. Maybe I misread you - I have a habit of doing that. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/56 "2019-11-22T04:53:33Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > You may want to contact isolated tribes and less-developed alien civilizations, but I don’t. And you’re free to \*not \*contact as many aliens as you’d like. But \*my \*spaceship will be doing so. > [@](#): > > If they reach out, by all means let’s greet them with open arms. But if they do not, why bother them? Several reasons have already been given in this thread. My primary ones are because it’s truer to the IDIC principle and because it’s what I’d want for humans if the situations were reversed. > [@](#): > > I had interpreted you as saying intelligent beings have the right to be offered an informed choice. No. It would just be shitty not to. Rights indicate some sort of legalistic moral framework, I’m just talking about empathy. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/57 "2019-11-22T12:03:08Z")
A strategy some advanced civilisations might follow is to select certain members of a more primitive culture for special contact, and introduce those individuals to aspects of their own (more advanced) culture. So you could take an individual, or select group of individuals, into your spacecraft/landing craft and show them some of the advantages of your technology. Basically a kind of benign abduction. Eventually it might be possible to allow these privileged individuals the choice about whether full contact should be made. Captain Cook had a well-established procedure for exchanging gifts with local populations, donating small artifacts such as iron nails, knives, fabrics and lenses. He would often get interesting artifacts in return, and sometimes he’d trade these local artifacts at the next island, as a demonstration of his capacity for local trade. He would also take selected individuals back to England to show them European culture; often this would encourage those individuals to adopt European cultural traits, and take these traits back to their compatriots when they returned. Sometimes with mixed results. I’m particularly interested in the contact strategy suggested by Ursula Le Guin; her ‘mobiles’ are the exact opposite of an abductee, in that they are members of an advanced civilisation that ‘go native’ and live among the locals, adopting their customs and appearance while still responding to questions about their own culture. This approach allows the ‘mobile’ to appreciate the local culture more completely, and often demonstrates that the local culture has strengths and characteristics that are intrinsically worth preserving and even worth adopting elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/58 "2019-11-22T21:00:44Z")
I’m guessing that if we do find a planet that has an earthlike or class M environment, we will want to put a colony there because those are probably very rare. So it probably wont go well. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/59 "2019-11-22T21:10:02Z")
I am not so sure. Most planets with an Earth-like environment will probably be covered in alien biology, which will quite likely be poisonous or at least indigestible to us. Any colony on such a world will be filled with biologists and behaviourists rather than farmers, hunters or miners. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2019, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573/60 "2019-11-23T02:24:43Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > Most planets with an Earth-like environment will probably be covered in alien biology, which will quite likely be poisonous or at least indigestible to us. I predict that hostile alien biologies will go extinct as fast as humans can manage to tame wild but usable planets. Of course, such biologies could leak Earthward and clobber humankind instead. We can stay SciFi-ish and posit that this has happened before. Will cockroaches supplant humanity yet again? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-debate-ethics-and-best-practices-of-contacting-other-less-developed-civilizations/843573.md?page=4)