[meowface]

>How long would you be excited?

Probably for at least a century. (If I lived that long.) I imagine when, for example, people living on small islands or other isolated places first encountered people from other places, they remained excited (and/or anxious) about that fact for the rest of their lives. And this would be greatly multiplied because the differences and advances would be much more stark.

>But how would it change your life?

Depends. Do they leave us any of their technology? Then probably all of our lives would drastically change forever. Do they consider us a threat and imprison us or blow up the planet? That'd probably also be a bit of a shake-up.

Otherwise, I'd probably consider switching careers to "non-human intelligent life communication studies" or other ET research or something like that. And I'd probably spend all day every day talking about it with friends and strangers, and maybe some of the ETs as well if they want to and can talk to people like me. I'd probably also start thinking about programming projects, or anything else I could offer, that could somehow help bridge the gap between our civilizations and increase the chance of a mutually beneficial and peaceful relationship.

I mean, I could ramble on about this for hours. But it's basically like asking me "why would you care if you found out some omnipotent deity exists? how would your life change? how long would you be excited for?" Same for "why would you care if you found out you live in a simulation?"

For one, there are way too many unknown unknowns there, so it's hard to imagine exactly how I might react. There are a lot of different ways those scenarios could play out.

Secondly, it's likely impossible or nearly impossible to ever know the truth about any of these things. And thirdly, it's just such a crazy hypothetical because I personally think the odds are extremely low that there are deities or that we live in a simulation or that ETs have visited or will ever visit us. So it's a bit moot to think too much about.

I think a better question to ask of the UFO researchers/ET visitation believers is why they seem to care so much when it seems very likely it's all so futile and just simply a big nothingburger. (I suppose most of them would just respond by saying they don't think it's futile or even that they're completely certain it's real.)

I get not caring given the status quo. But not caring if you and every other human on Earth hypothetically is shown undeniable proof and now knows with 100% confidence that there are ETs/deities/a simulation? That sounds pretty crazy to me. How could you not care? It'd be by far the most important and interesting thing in all of human history. And then if you consider what new things might be enabled for us with that contact or knowledge, it'd quite possibly be the most important thing to ever happen for all of future human history; even millions of years into the future.

[7thaccount]

Yeah. It's hard to downplay how big actually having intelligent alien life pop up would be.

If they're very similar to us (probably not, but let's just assume they have the same vocal and auditory capabilities) then everyone would want to learn their language. We'd want to know EVERYTHING about their history and that of any species they'd visited. Not to mention the technology, philosophy, literature, art, science, math, music (maybe)...etc.

A dozen new academic fields in the blink of an eye. Possibly interstellar commerce. More international co-operation than ever before (hopefully). What if they're religious and have similar or contradictory religions to us, or what if they're not. How do earth folk react?

[meowface]

Part of it's also just that the very fact they somehow managed to master physics to the point that they could visit us means they could potentially offer us like a 100k or 1 million year speed-up in technological advancement.

It's one thing if in a million years we manage to discover some non-intelligent or intelligent life somewhere.

If they come to us out of the blue in the next few years, that's a very different thing, since it implies not just intelligence but an intelligence far, far beyond our own.

It would likely imply they found a way to relatively cheaply attain faster-than-light travel, for example, perhaps by some kind of spacetime-manipulating mechanism like wormholes or Alcubierre/warp drives. (Which some scientists believe could maybe be theoretically plausible one day, given enough scarce resources.) And if they can do that, then they could probably teach and give us more than we could ever dream of, if they wanted to.

[avaldes]

> It would likely imply they found a way to relatively cheaply attain faster-than-light travel, for example, perhaps by some kind of spacetime-manipulating mechanism like wormholes or Alcubierre/warp drives. (Which some scientists believe could maybe be theoretically plausible one day, given enough scarce resources.)

Not necessarily though. It could be a generational ship with mundane propulsion technology.

[meowface]

It could be, but my blind guess is that if there are any intelligent lifeforms out there, they're so far away that conventional propulsion craft would have to fan out and run for so long that it's unlikely they'd happen to run into us at all, or if they do, not at a time when any of us exist. And if they were already doing that within a reasonable distance from us, I think we'd probably have already seen evidence of some of the swarms somewhere.

And it'd also probably have to be immortal autonomous machines rather than anything biological, which wouldn't necessarily be as useful, unless they fully merged with them or created ones that were much smarter than they are. (Which I suppose is pretty possible, given we might do the same within a century or two.)

My guess is we may unfortunately possibly be the only intelligent life throughout all of reality up until now (extremely speculative, I know), or that the few civilizations that do exist or have existed are so spaced apart from each other that it's very unlikely any will ever run into or observe any of the others without some kind of major FTL breakthrough.

[throwaway316943]

I think it makes much less sense for aliens arriving by conventional means to not contact us. If they did then they’re being extremely generous by not attempting to colonize Earth or any of the other planets. It’d be like European explorers discovering the New World is inhabited and deciding to stay off shore. It also wouldn’t explain the anomalous, physics defying video and accounts of UFOs. On the other hand, if interstellar travel is trivial then there is much more leeway for taking a hands off approach. In that case we’re just the North Sentinelese and they’re the yachts and airplanes staying out of bow and arrow range.

[7thaccount]

Yeah, it tells us that we're wronger than we thought. If FTL is possible, just knowing that will push research in that direction.