No, But Really. Should We Contact Aliens?

Matter of Opinion

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Ross Douthat, News, New York Times, Journalism

4.2 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2021

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With the U.S. government puzzling over U.F.O.s, and potentially habitable exoplanets in our telescopes, earthlings are closer than ever to finding other intelligent life in the universe. So the existential question is: Should we try to communicate with whatever we think might be out there? That’s the argument this week between Douglas Vakoch and Michio Kaku. Vakoch, the president of the research and educational nonprofit METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) International, has dedicated his life’s work to intentionally broadcasting messages beyond our solar system. Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York and a co-founder of string field theory, thinks reaching out to unknown aliens is a catastrophically bad idea and “would be the biggest mistake in human history.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today on the argument, will humanity's fascination with aliens lead us to our doom?
0:12.2	Are we truly alone in the universe?
0:14.4	Or report on UFOs by the Department of Defense has many asking that same question?
0:18.8	The US government's grudging acknowledgement of unidentified aerial phenomena.
0:24.2	After decades of public denial, the Pentagon now admits there's something out there.
0:29.7	We have things flying over military installations and we don't know what it is.
0:33.5	It is an ours and in many cases exhibits attributes of kinds of technology we haven't seen before.
0:38.2	We can't explain how they moved their trajectory.
0:42.5	They did not have an easily explainable panel.
0:51.3	In June, the Pentagon released a much anticipated report on, quote, unidentified aerial phenomena.
0:58.9	Or what you and I might call UFOs.
1:04.3	They looked at scores of reports of unknown sightings and found 18 cases that might have shown technology beyond what are enemies and ourselves for that matter are capable of.
1:14.7	So the government finally admitted that there really are unidentified flying objects in our skies moving in ways they can't explain.
1:23.1	So does that mean aliens?
1:27.3	I'm Jane Kostin and sometimes I come to a debate from a point of view of a blank slate.
1:32.7	Anyone could convince me.
1:34.5	But I feel like I should be up front with you here.
1:37.3	I do not like thinking about aliens.
1:40.5	Just watching Sigourney Weaver wake up out of her sleeping pod and alien was enough to chase me out of the room.
1:46.3	But it does feel like we've all been thrust into this new paradigm shift.
1:50.5	UFOs are real and the government admitted it and reality didn't break hysteria hasn't broken out.
1:56.3	In fact, you may have heard the news with a huh or that checks out.
	...

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