Why the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) May Not Be a Good Idea

Last year, I read some kind of short story in a science fiction book, of which I forget the title right now. I remember that the author went into a whole discussion about what would happen if we met aliens and on what terms we should try to communicate. The author was looking at it from a logistics approach. I do not remember everything that was said but I want to talk about the parts that I agreed with and modified with my own thoughts.

The main issue if we ever made aliens is an issue of trust. We probably would not trust them and they would not trust us, so no communication would be done without a lot of compromise as to where and how we should communicate so that we both preserve our own buffer zones.

We would have to communicate under the assumption that the aliens might have evil motives and want to enslave or destroy us for a number of reasons. Maybe they wouldn't want competition to conquering other worlds. Maybe they would kill us just because we are weak or possibly because they think that we might grow too strong later for them to defeat us. After all, there is no sense tempting fate in case we would get too strong later. Of course, they might be thinking the same thing about us. Neither side would really know what the other is thinking or their motives, which is a very difficult position for either of our races to be in and would take a lot of work to overcome.

In the book that I read, the author came up with a good idea that would probably be the only one that is logical. That is that both of our races would need to find a neutral location apart from our own respective planets, so that neither side would know where the other's planet is located. This way both sides can communicate without the threat of having their planet attacked, if the other side really is evil and wants to destroy the other. This is the same kind of idea as meeting a new person for first time in a neutral location with lots of people around - in an effort to protect ourselves in case the person turns out to be a killer, rapist, stalker, or plain weirdo. The same idea and precaution should be used against alien races.