Official disclosure of UFOs by the US Government in recent months unshackled me to entertain possibilities I felt were premature before, pending better evidence than cell phone videos and conspiracy blogs. For example, what we can infer about the motives of aliens, if indeed that's what UFOs are.
I'd now like to explore the issue of how the usual rules of diplomacy change when you're engaging a significantly more intelligent and technologically advanced species. Many mainstays of human diplomacy no longer apply, many strategies that are very effective on human diplomats may become a liability when applied to non-human diplomats.
We cannot deceive them. There's nothing embarrassing we might wish to conceal about humanity which they could not investigate for themselves, and we haven't the means to prevent them from doing so. They will have long since had access to the internet, which paints a grisly but mostly accurate picture of the full spectrum of human behavior and thinking. Attempts at deceit are also less effective the smarter your intended target is. If you have small children, think about times they've attempted to deceive you. Not effective, and not a good look.
The primary diplomats chosen to engage their own representatives probably should not be American Evangelicals. There's a conspiracy theory gaining traction among that group that aliens are just demons in disguise, and government disclosure of UFOs is just setting the stage for a holographically faked alien invasion that will be used to explain away mass disappearances that will actually be a result of the rapture. This is known as the "Project Blue Beam" conspiracy as recounted in "The Coming Alien Deception", the Facade series of novels by Michael Heiser and a variety of similar writings by the Evangelical conspiracy theory community. We cannot hide these people or their ideas from alien diplomats, but we can ensure whoever we send to represent us doesn't call them demons to their faces.
The primary diplomats chosen to engage the alien representatives probably should also not be Scientologists, Mormons, Raelians, "Ancient Aliens" advocates or members of the Nation of Islam, all of whom have very detailed, specific mythologies concerning past interactions of aliens with humanity. If these accounts are not grounded in fact, but we send representatives who believe these accounts are factual and present them as such, it would likely not make a positive impression.
Nevertheless in the interests of transparency and inclusiveness, the leadership of major world religions (or representatives chosen democratically in the case of religions with no centralized leadsership) should be present in some capacity and have their voices heard. Excluding them completely would come off as an attempt to conceal them out of embarrassment, and the visitors will by this time already be well aware of their existence and the popularity of religious thought on Earth.
We should expect them to also have some sort of spiritual tradition, but not religions structured the same way as the currently popular religions on Earth. This is because the dominant religions of Earth are Abrahamic and adhere to the same viral formula designed to entice belief with a bribe, deter apostasy with a threat (both unfalsifiable) pre-empt skepticism with an invisible trickster responsible for all contrary evidence, etc. etc. which is not obvious to all humans, but would be obvious to something with substantially improved reasoning abilities for the same reason the story of Santa Claus convinces children, but not adults.
They will likely be very selective about sharing technology, or outright unwilling: With increasing energy density the potential for weaponization also increases. This is another way of saying that even many medicinal or entertainment technologies not intended to inflict harm could, if shared with humans, be adapted into weapons. As an example consider the impact it would've had on World War Two if German scientists had somehow come into possession of a smartphone.
Likewise, they would not be interested in any of our technologies as they are all applications of physics they were probably teaching to their middle schoolers a thousand years ago. For this reason and the preceding one we probably should not anticipate an exchange of technology as it doesn't make sense to in either direction.
We may nevertheless be able to negotiate a one time use of their technology to correct environmental problems in a way that does not furnish us with any clues as to how it was accomplished. The rapid elimination of coronavirus is another one-off solid they might do for us, but they would not share the means they used to achieve this for fear of possible bioweapons applications. This line of reasoning suggests some ideas of what we might ask for in return for whatever we have to offer that is of value to them. That brings us to...
They don't want our resources. I went over this in the other article as well but as a brief recap, you can get all the metals on Earth almost anywhere in space, without having to go down gravity wells. You can get water in space. If you have the technology to cross interstellar distances you probably also have the technology needed for molecular printers or similar, which means there's no element on the periodic table you couldn't manufacture as much as you want of at the cost of energy and dissociated atoms.
There are no unique objects of special value to a species which has molecular printers, but this doesn't mean they wouldn't be interested in cultural artifacts. "Historicity" is an immaterial, non-replicable quality, as is authenticity. Historically important objects like sculptures, paintings, first editions of notable literature and so on would retain their value for aliens despite the ease of copying them for the same reason they retain their value to human collectors, even though replicas are easy to come by.
As an extension of the prior argument, subjective human experiences and feelings would be of great interest to their equivalent of anthropologists, sociologists, exobiologists and historians. The information content of human religious texts, re-enactments of human religious rituals, historically important human religious artifacts and so on are examples of non-replicable cultural wealth we could trade with.
The genetic information of Earth life is also something we could reasonably claim as human intellectual property. That genetic information would be novel to them as a product of an independent abiogenesis and evolutionary process from their own. They have the means to take it, we don't have the means to stop them, but if they are ethically upright they will have laws against plundering and may be receptive to offering compensation of some sort in exchange for the rights.
As a corollary to number one, besides humans being unable to deceive more intelligent aliens, we should also be wary that they would have an easy time deceiving us. The sophistication of a deceit able to fool them would very likely be too much for human minds to see through. Nevertheless there are a few dozen extremely common, recurring varieties of scam which continue to be in circulation because they never stop working. The complexity of the obfuscatory wrapping used to conceal these scams can be scaled up to fool different levels of intelligence but are nevertheless possible to reliably unravel if one identifies their fundamental anatomical structure via heuristic analysis.
We should expect them to have politics, but not to vindicate ours. Many optimistic depictions of first contact basically amount to glowing ethereal alien visitors landing on the whitehouse lawn, getting out, wagging their finger at the military which gathered to contain them and basically saying "social democrats are right about everything, you should all be social democrats" before flying off into the sunset. While this is a gratifying fantasy for the left leaning script writers of such films, it may yet turn out that the most common form of government among space faring species is fascism, or communism, or libertarianism, or something not yet dreamt of by human minds.
Hard power, which is to say military action/threats of military action, is off the table as a means of persuasion. Without assuming anything about their level of technology except that they're able to cross interstellar distances and survive the trip, the offensive and defensive capabilities that level of technological sophistication implies put them beyond our ability to harm. The historical efficacy of asymmetric warfare / insurgency tactics afford some hope that if they were determined to occupy Earth without destroying it, we could survive in sufficient numbers and make it a sufficient pain in their ass that the cost/benefit analysis would no longer make sense for them. However that is about the extent to which we might meaningfully fight them, should it come to that.
We might want to think about how to contextualize for them the various minstrelized depictions of ETs in popular films, literature and videogames as products of our protracted isolation as a species and the many anxieties and neuroses which spring from that. This may not be an issue as they likely had the same experience themselves in the distant past prior to their discovery of other independently evolved intelligent life, but many of those depictions either deify them or use sinister paper tiger caricatures of aliens as props to be knocked down by the human protagonists as a means of flattering our collective ego. Even understanding the psychology behind stuff like that may not diminish its power to offend, and to reflect on us poorly, as is the case with racial caricatures commonly depicted in premodern popular media.
If there's anything I missed I'd love to hear about this in the comments, but what's here so far seems like a pretty good jumping off point to me. I should hope whoever chooses our representation (because we likely won't get to vote on it) will remember that first impressions are everything, and that the best strategy when making new friends is to be yourself.
If aliens exist, and if they are visiting Earth (two points on which I remain unconvinced), I hope they have the sense to see governments don't actually represent any of the rest of us Earthlings. Otherwise, when they see the lies and corruption emanating from the world's assorted capitol cities, they'll just go full Vogon to rid the galaxy of such a stain.
American evangelicals...
I think that starting off that way really shut down what you're trying to achieve.
How's the van coming along? Last I saw you, there were plans for solar panels
My dog died and sold the van however now I have two different solar panel systems!
Yeah man where you been?
Doing Twitch streaming mostly, building up an audience there as well as preparing some of my novels for sale in the Chinese ebook market, and getting other novels of mine tradpubbed here in the US. I've got my fingers in a lot of different pies lately. Sorry to hear about your dog, my cat of 15 years died in november, I know how brutally, miserably awful losing a beloved pet can be.
His first puppy pictures...
And this is Wooda.
My replacement German Shepherd service dog.
And awesome job with your writing!
Thank you! What a cute doggo
Some days he is..