Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis
نویسندگان
چکیده
Background: Extraterrestrial Encounter To date, humanity has not made any form of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). But we cannot rule out the possibility that one or more ETI exist in our galaxy, or that we could detect, communicate with, or in other ways have contact with them in the future. There have been many analyses of how contact would proceed, but these tend to focus narrowly on one possible contact scenario. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the broad range of possible ETI contact scenarios in terms of whether the contact would benefit or harm humanity. Such scenario analysis helps train our minds to recognize patterns in actual outcomes, which can be valuable in the event of an encounter.
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