Alien contact..

Magical Realist said:
How would you react if one day we made alien contact?
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I'd be excited, first and foremost.

Depending on the nature of the contact I might also be worried, or even scared. Or I might be very happy.
Magical Realist said:
Would you believe it?
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The premise of your hypothetical is that there is real alien contact between us and some aliens. I assume you mean proper, verified contact, not another youtube video about a guy filming a light in the sky.

I will believe anything, when there's sufficient evidence that it's true/real. I'm very open minded, in that way.
Magical Realist said:
How would your life change if at all?
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Again, it would be much depend on the nature of the contact. It would depend on what the aliens came here for, for instance. If they just landed their spaceship on the White House lawn, said a quick "hello" to the President and the world's media, and then got back in their spaceship and left permanently, my life probably wouldn't change very much.

On the other hand, if the aliens started dropping nukes on our cities, my life would change a lot, I expect.
 
Magical Realist said:
How would you react if one day we made alien contact? Would you believe it? How would your life change if at all?
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Well if we made contact then it's real isn't it?

Yes it would be amazing. Questions.

Are you hostile?
Would you tell us if you were?
What do you know about us?
Can you help us?
Here is our total scientific knowledge (I would need help there) can you fill in the blanks?
Do you have art, film, literature, music?
Listen to this (puts Bach, Beatles and Deep Purple on full blast)
 
Magical Realist said:
How would you react if one day we made alien contact?
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I don't know who "we" are. If NASA made contact, it would just be news - if and when they chose to share it - with no personal significance to me. Like that chocolate cake alien preemie featured in tabloids a while ago.
And what does "contact" mean? Subspace messages from 20 light-years away, or a handshake?
Does the alien make personal appearances in public venues? Or do I bump into him/her/them/it on the way to my mailbox? Could we communicate directly, or would we need to devise some labouriously elaborated system of musical notation?

I would believe it in some of those situations and be very skeptical in others.
My life could change only if it's an ET in my woodshed that needs my help evading detection.
As a long-time SF reader and watcher, I probably wouldn't be all that surprised.
 
If the encounter was of them landing their craft somewhere and meeting us, they would certainly be way more advanced than us to travel the distance, perhaps mastering massless travel. But there would then be cause for suspicion---why is a vastly superior race going out of its way to visit a planet of primitive primates at all? Is there some sort of secret agenda? Or is it all just to "help" us somehow? "To serve man"..:D
 
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Magical Realist said:
why is a vastly superior race going out of its way to visit a planet of primitive primates at all?
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Because it's the first planet they've come across that has a relatively developed technology? Or intelligent life of any kind? Habitable planets are not exactly thick in the firmament, and those that actually support life are all at different stages of evolution. You can't have much of conversation with plankton, but apes can learn sign language and dolphins have their own that can be learned by advanced aliens.
Yeah, I'd poke my nose in here, if I were cruising by. Maybe not offer us a federation membership just yet.
 
Magical Realist said:
How would you react if one day we made alien contact? Would you believe it? How would your life change if at all?

www.space.com

Is humanity prepared for contact with intelligent aliens?

The consequences of first contact strongly depend on the way it takes place.
www.space.com www.space.com
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I'd expect them to be something unsettling like the non-conscious aliens in Blindsight, or the enigmatic ocean entity in Solaris (if the latter could somehow travel across space and light-years).

So it would be a chilling form of contact with an Otherness we maybe can't even relate to or fathom its motivations -- we'd find more common ground with Earthly beetles.

If it departed without harming us, we'd probably go back to business as usual on Earth. But how we viewed space -- the night sky -- or what we projected upon it, might be radically different afterward.

VIDEO LINK: The Horrible Truth About Consciousness
 
C C said:
I'd expect them to be something unsettling like the non-conscious aliens in Blindsight, or the enigmatic ocean entity in Solaris (if the latter could somehow travel across space and light-years).
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Those life-forms wouldn't come here; we'd have to encounter them on their home turf.
C C said:
So it would be a chilling form of contact with an Otherness we maybe can't even relate to or fathom its motivations -- we'd find more common ground with Earthly beetles.
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That's certainly a possibility. Imagine their frustration, having come all this way, only to find more unresponsive natives. Still, if they have the technology to travel in space, they can recognize technology when they see it, so that's one thing we have in common. If they're clever, they can build on that, and I'm sure some of us would be eager to help.
 
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