Late_Cretaceous

Lets suppose that we made contact with an alien race - either we had clear evidence of an extra-terrestrial civilization, actually managed to communicate, or received a message from aliens. I am sure that at first there would be shock, people would weep openly in the streets, some might be paranoid or hysterical, others would say it was the answers to all our problems, religions would be rocked to the core. It would be called the most significant thing in human history. Newspapers would carry the headlines "We are not alone" in huge print, speculation about the aliens would be endless and people would attach all sorts of meaning to it. But then what. What would happen after the novelty wore off a year later. If is was nothing more then convincing evidence of an alien civilization. Would life return to normal after we realized the enlightenment was only temporary? Lets say there could be 2 way communication. What would we have to say to them? How much would we want to reveal about ourselves and our technology? Would a ho-hum attitude prevail in the years after making that elusive first contact?

tronvillain

Well, I'm sure things would calm down, but it seems extremely unlikely that things would be "ho-hum." Especially considering the huge difference in levels of science and technology that would probably exist.

MadMordigan

We'd have all sorts of crazy jesus freaks telling us that the bible predicted this sort of thing.

Myself, I'd recommend nuking the aliens at the earliest opportunity.

[ April 04, 2002: Message edited by: MadMordigan ]</p>

Abacus

I bet memebership in UFO cults would rise dramatically. Perhaps would would even become a mainstream religion.

Late_Cretaceous

What if we found that we didn't have much in common with the aliens. Or we didn't like them or visa versa? Would it be "Oh Chirst, not another message from those dorks from Tau Ceti. Why don't the just leave us alone." The aliens could be door to door salesmen, or interstellar JWs.

What if they wanted to terraform mars or venus to thier standards and choose to ignore our protests.

Peregrine

Okay, we get caller ID and form a Solar System homeowners association.

ohwilleke

No thanks on the HOA. Can you imagine the assessment we'd have to pay to make it a gated community?

echidna

Are you kidding ?

They come here every day & we mock and scorn them until they piss off again.

Friar Bellows

My gut feeling is that any intelligent message we'd receive would be indecipherable. Perhaps we'd get something useful from it, but the true and full meaning would be beyond us. I'm not so confident of our abilities at deciphering, nor am I so confident that two seperately evolved intelligent species would be mutually intelligible. One SF writer who posits this point of view in quite a few of his stories is Stanislaw Lem.

Marduk

I guess it would depend on the message. Is it "hi, how are you" or "We are the Borg, prepare to be assimilated, resistance is futile"
I think if it was just a message the excitement would settle down in a few weeks, any religious groups upset by this will simply write it off as another "anti-Christian Government Conspiracy"
However if the greeting is in person it would be an entirely different story. Especially if they have technology thousands of years beyond ours and we try and deal with them as equals.
They may write us off as a primitive fledgling civilization of violent talking apes who worship an invisible sky god, or worse. “Remove the ‘human’ infestation, and this will make a nice place for R&R”
Even if they were polite they may give us a massive inferiority complex and all of Earth will experience the dreaded erectile dysfunction of the poor “Stone axe tribe” you may have read about in anthro 101. (some well meaning Peace Corps workers handed out steel axes to a primitive tribe without knowing the manmade stone axe was the tribal way of forming its hierarchy, the social structure of the tribe collapsed)
When a more advanced civilization come into contact with a lesser one it’s the latter that always suffers.
We may want to show off all our cool stuff and they may be thinking “Christ on a stick, only retards do that anymore”
It may be like finding an ancient marker saying: “Earth, property of Nibiru Heavy Industries, genetic experiments in progress! Do not feed the talking apes! Substantial Penalty Involved!”

Or they may think like dolphins or something and we may not be able to talk at all.