I have been dreading the premiere of A Quiet Place: Day One, the just-released prequel to the movie franchise featuring blind but keen-hearing predatory aliens who invade Earth.
As a psychologist, I know that terrifying images from films and television shows can shape our judgements about real-world activities that seem superficially similar. As head of , a scientific organisation that transmits powerful messages to nearby stars with the goal of messaging extraterrestrial intelligence, I know these vivid images of marauding aliens can provoke anxiety about research projects, even when our deepest fears can be rationally refuted.
Advertisement
Cognitive psychologists have identified several techniques that people use to assess risks when critical information is lacking. When we try to imagine something we have never encountered in reality, we are guided by the availability heuristic, which says we rely on the images most immediately accessible to us 鈥� that is, the most vivid ones.
When trying to imagine what first contact with an alien civilisation would be like, what could be more vivid than portrayals from blockbuster sci-fi horror films? And at a time when television networks are struggling to survive, which kind of first-contact scenario will lead to dramatic cliffhangers that build dedicated followers: an invasion by aliens intent on annihilating humanity, or 鈥渨e come in peace鈥�?
And as I discussed in a talk at the American Astronomical Society conference last month, television can also amplify fears of aliens by featuring scientific luminaries making comparisons with horrifying historical events. The late cosmologist Stephen Hawking said that if humankind receives a signal from extraterrestrials, we should stay quiet. 鈥淢eeting an advanced civilisation could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn鈥檛 turn out so well,鈥� he said in a . If we let the aliens know we are here, he argued, we might be inviting an interstellar armada that could wipe out life on Earth.
But Hawking overlooked an essential point in all of this: Earth is anything but a hidden and quiet place. For 2 billion years, Earth鈥檚 microbial life has been making itself known to the universe through changes to our planet鈥檚 atmosphere.
In the next 20 years, humankind will have space-based observatories capable of spotting extraterrestrial life by studying the chemical composition of the atmospheres covering exoplanets. Advanced extraterrestrials would be likely to have even greater capacities.
Similarly, for the past century, Earth has been leaking radio and television signals into space, letting eavesdropping aliens know we have rudimentary technology. Broadcasts of I Love Lucy have been our interstellar emissaries since the 1950s.
Even though we might logically understand that it is too late to hide, one common cognitive bias leads to a nagging fear that it is somehow riskier to transmit than to remain quiet, so we should refrain. The omission bias makes us assume it is safer to do nothing than to do something; to continue with the status quo rather than try something different. The danger of giving in to this fallacy is apparent through the inaction of individuals who choose not to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, rather than to take action that benefits public health.
The most strident critique of METI International is that we threaten humanity by transmitting to other stars. But what critics must understand is that any aliens who can travel to Earth to annihilate us 鈥� like the fictional, sensitive-eared invaders of A Quiet Place 鈥� would already be able to tell that we are here.
Douglas Vakoch is president of METI International
