The aliens (part 2)

In yesterday’s blog post I described the basis of the Seti programme (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence), and outlined some of Seti chair Paul Davies’ ideas related to the programme and the idea of initial contact with alien life. Today I am going to go a little deeper and say why I believe that Davies is most likely wrong on several accounts. Most importantly, I’m going to outline the significance of this for the future of science and the future of possible human-alien interaction. Many of my critiques are founded upon my first-person exploration of the human mind, and working with other extraordinary individuals who have spent time doing the same. This gives me a rather different slant on the problem of human/alien interaction than Davies. All argument is only as valid as the soundness of the presuppositions upon which it is founded. In Davies case, there are certain givens which (by definition) he assumes to be true, but which are not.

Professor Davies argues that mathematics will be the only common language that we will have with the first alien civilisation we contact. His error is that there are cognitive processes which transcend language.

What would you say to ET? (and how?)

When the aliens contact us, what should the first communication to them be? This was the subject of an interesting article in The South China Morning Posts’ Post Magazine, today. The article consisted of an interview by the writer Jon Ronson, with famous physicist Paul Davies. Besides being a scientist and academic, Davies is the fairly famous author of many best-selling books, including The Mind of God. He also just happens to be chair of Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), which uses radio telescopes to scan the cosmos for signals from other worlds with intelligent life. Seti was instigated by Frank Drake some 50 years ago. Drake calculated what he thought to be the number of intelligent civilisations there are in the galaxy, given all the variables that might contribute to the development as life as we know it. He came up with an answer of 10 000. That’s an awful lot of ETs getting around up there.

Like most mainstream scientists, Davies dismisses popular UFO culture, and ridicules reports of cattle mutilations and alien abductions. He says that if there are aliens out there, it is statistically very unlikely that they are just a few years ahead of us in terms of technology. It’s an interesting point.

One of the ways we know that UFO witnesses are lying or delusional, Davies says, is that the descriptions of the aliens and their craft are so unimaginative. Here is where Davies shows some lack of understanding himself.