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Space
In a galaxy far, far away,
a scaly green hand plucks a disk from the smoldering rubble of an unidentified spacecraft, shot down after attempts to communicate failed.
Earthlings would recognize a Voyager Golden Record immediately, but Carrex isn’t sure what he’s found yet. He has his ship’s super computer scan the disk, and an image of human men running a track race flickers into view. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 fills the air. How Carrex feels about this is anyone’s guess.
John Traphagan, professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, isn’t too keen on the music selected for the Golden Records, but is much more concerned about the images chosen.
“The Voyager records are exceptionally biased toward presenting a picture of life on Earth as peaceful, devoted to the high arts (as defined by American intellectual elites) and engaged in noble activities such as space exploration,” he writes in a 2021 article for Space Policy. “They covertly express what I term the ‘Star Trek Imaginary’ or a frame of thinking about space exploration to a potential interstellar traveler who happens upon one of the spacecraft. The Voyager records do not represent an entirely honest representation of humanity or Earth; lying by omission is a form of dishonesty.”
The Voyager Golden Records, which were sent into space in 1977 in the hopes of communicating with extraterrestrial life, contain a wide variety of information about human civilization and culture, including music, images and spoken greetings in multiple languages.
Traphagan argues this is ethically questionable. If we were to deliberately transmit false information about ourselves or our planet, we would be intentionally misleading potential alien beings. This could be seen as a violation of the principle of honesty and integrity, and could lead to negative consequences for humanity if the extraterrestrials were to discover our deception.
“The disks paint an unequivocally rosy (at least from a human perspective) image of life on Earth — an exceptionally biased picture. The contents are at best quite misleading and at worst could be interpreted as intentionally deceptive. This is where the problem with the approach taken by the team that created the records becomes significant. I can imagine at least three possible outcomes: the good, the bad and the ugly.”
The good, in Traphagan’s view, is a nonchalance: He says it’s possible that a Carrex somewhere out there might explore the contents of the records, smile and move on. “It might even be the case that ET would not find it particularly important. If they have the technology necessary to travel between star systems, they might just look at Voyager much in the way we look at a beaver dam — a mildly interesting, if unsophisticated, piece of technology by a somewhat intelligent species rather limited in its intellectual and engineering abilities.
Any signal we send will contain at least two vitally important pieces of information: a) these guys are technologically backward, and b) they live right there
– Kelly Smith
“Perhaps there would be a little time spent looking over the spacecraft, but they might just shrug their shoulders (or whatever they have) and move on. It is always worth noting that it is a human conceit that members of non-human civilization will necessarily be interested in talking to us.”
However, if alien societies err to the imperialistic or belligerent, Traphagan worries the records send a very clear message: “There is easy prey on that planet situated here in relation to these 14 pulsars.” He reminds us there is nothing on the record that would suggest a military capability on our planet, let alone thermonuclear bombs.
This is where the nuance in the question of whether or not we should lie to extraterrestrials comes in. There is an argument that because nothing on the records suggests we could or even would defend ourselves, it opens the door to exploitation by an alien intelligence. But even the threat of alien invasion pales in comparison to Traphagan’s “ugly” outcome.
“Suppose our alien travelers find the contents of the record interesting and decide they would love to visit this lovely planet, where people listen to good music, greet each other in happy ways, and live in peace and harmony. What will they find when they arrive? Basically, all the stuff omitted from the record: the suffering, war, disease, pollution and exploitation that characterizes much of life on our planet. The message of the Golden Record would look like a big lie, and it is fairly easy to imagine a huge, collective WTF running through those alien minds as they contemplate the intentions of a society that would send out incredibly deceptive messages about themselves.”
IMAGE: Abjad DesignShould we have sent the Golden Records in the first place? Traphagan certainly believes we created and launched into space a flawed and misleading message about the people sending it. The next question: If we do think we should be contacting aliens, who should create the message?
The Voyager records do not represent an entirely honest representation of humanity or Earth.
– John Traphagan
Kelly Smith, associate professor at Clemson University, likes the term “METI or REGRETTI.” While SETI is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, METI describes messaging them. REGRETTI should be self-explanatory. Smith’s 2020 book, “Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology,” compiled articles exploring the “broader questions in astrobiology.”
In his own chapter, he says debate about precisely what content should go into a message is largely beside the point as far as risk is concerned since any message will reveal both the location of Earth and the relative state of our technology.
“Any signal we send will contain at least two vitally important pieces of information: a) these guys are technologically backward, and b) they live right there,” Smith says.
Perhaps attempts to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence should not be led by astronomers or engineers, but by social scientists who specialize in intercultural communication. Perhaps we need space diplomats.
“Since we know nothing about aliens, parties on both sides of the debate are forced to rely on speculation of one form or another,” Smith says. “For all we know, aliens might have motives that we have never encountered before. My argument is not that METI is a bad idea in general — I would personally love to push the transmit button and send a signal to every nearby system — just that we have not yet thought it through carefully and, until we do, we should err on the side of caution.”