Why Aren't Aliens Already Here? Some Ponderings on the Concept of Boldly Going.

If any and all extraterrestrial civilizations adopted a philosophy of “Why Bother” when it comes to boldly going throughout the cosmos, either in person and/or via announcing their existence via some form of electromagnetic communications, then each and every galactic civilization, including this here terrestrial civilization, would exist in total isolation. Such a scenario is unlikely in the extreme as I hope to point out.

Why Bother? The question is often asked as to “why would they bother?” ‘They’ in this case are extraterrestrials with an advanced enough of the astronautically required technologies to explore and colonize the galaxy. But even if they had the ways and the means, “why bother?” The best answer is summed up in that famous "Star Trek" preamble - "to seek out new life and new civilizations". Intelligence implies curiosity and the need or desire to explore and to, in "Star Trek" lingo, "boldly go". And your use of "they" implies each and every "they". Maybe some alien civilizations couldn't be bothered, but it's a long stretch to suggest each and every one couldn't be bothered. You may not wish to boldly go, but you must acknowledge that others might wish to boldly go. As long as others boldly go, that achieves the objective behind boldly going. Not everyone sees the world through the philosophy of "Why Bother".

Readers would be aware that governments come and governments go. Policies come and policies go. What isn't flavor-of-the-month today might be flavor-of-the-month tomorrow. But once a policy comes around to send a "Hi There" message to the cosmos, there's no getting it back. There's no undoing of what's been done. And once you boldly go and explore, there's no putting that gremlin back in the bottle. Once America was discovered, there was no un-discovering it. Can anyone name me one bit of boldly going we've done here on Earth that we abandoned? If Earthlings had adopted your philosophy of "Why Bother", we'd still all be roaming around Africa.

There is no such thing as a universal, this applies to everyone and every civilization; across-the-board philosophy of "Why Bother". That applies to boldly going. That applies to sending out cosmic messages in a bottle, the SETI's Holy Grail of "Hi There". The bottom line is that there have been, there are, and there will be humans who can be bothered. More likely as not, there will be "Hi There" and boldly going alien civilizations who can be bothered. Some people on the other hand, people who can't be bothered, are free to just sit at home and watch daytime TV. That your choice. Somehow I can't quite imagine such people as a crew member on Apollo 13 - they couldn't be bothered. They just don't appear to have The Right Stuff. People, and civilizations with The Right Stuff can be bothered.

I'll wrap this up with three quotes. The first is regarding SETI from the original journal article by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison (Nature; volume 184; page 844; 1959) that outlined the then hypothetical rational for SETI and deals with your "Why Bother" issue. "The probability of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search, the chance of success is zero."

The second is both from JFK and Robert Kennedy, attributed originally to George Bernard Shaw: "Some people see things as they are and say 'why'? I dream things that never were and say 'why not'?"

The third quote is one from Captain Picard of the Starship Enterprise - "Make it so".

Motivations & Why Here? Why would aliens travel HERE? Well they, maybe many aliens, probably no more made Planet Earth a deliberate destination any more than Columbus made a deliberate decision to discover America. If you boldly go and spread out throughout the galaxy, then sooner or later you stumble across the Sol system. Okay, having accepted that Planet Earth was noted and logged as a matter of just a plain routine survey; perhaps many times over by many separate and apart survey expeditions representing many differing alien civilizations, why would then Planet Earth be singled out for special attention? The answer to that is again wrapped up in that "Star Trek" preamble about seeking out new life forms and new civilizations. The number of biospheres in the cosmos are probably relatively few and far between - judging from our own local interplanetary real estate abodes assuming they represent a typical distribution. So, when you come across one, and Planet Earth has had a biosphere for nearly all of her cosmic existence, that's scientific pay-dirt. Planet Earth gets flagged for special attention. Note that all of this happened (probably several times over) way before the evolution of the human species.

Of course it came to pass that our biosphere got more and more interesting as the eons passed. Unicellular critters are interesting; multi-cellular critters more so. Invertebrates are interesting; fish more so. No doubt alien surveyors thought the dinosaurs were pretty interesting, although on their next check-up, the dinosaurs were gone. Eventually primates and primitive humans came on the scene. Now things really got interesting.

Okay, if you look at a parallel, our biologists are interested in bacteria (and Martian bacteria too if any). Our biologists study ants, and fish and reptiles and birds and mammals. So I see nothing anomalous in aliens being interested in studying terrestrial life forms, including, once we appeared, humans. As far as communication goes, you are assuming such attempts have been made; maybe yes, maybe no. But again there's a human parallel. We've tried communication experiments with marine mammals like dolphins (recall the work of John C. Lilly for example) and of course with primates. We communicate with our pets (as in cats and dogs) and our pets communicate with us. They tend to understand us; we tend to understand them, and that's a successful form of communication.

One has to get away from the notion that aliens would be determined to get here - here being Planet Earth. That implies that Planet Earth was from the get-go a goal; a destination. I've already noted that the Americas wasn't a goal or a predetermined destination when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Aliens were determined to boldly go and explore the galaxy or some part of it. If there is just one alien civilization that can be achieved in a tiny fraction of the galaxy's age. If there are many such alien civilizations, that makes galactic exploration all the more thorough.

Having discovered Planet Earth, like Columbus discovered the Americas, then, and only then, might aliens deliberately pick-and-choose Planet Earth for further scrutiny for reasons I've already gone into. I don't ever recall mentioning tourism or holidaying as a prime, be-all-and-end-all reason for ET to come out to our neck of the galactic woods. Planet Earth as a vacation spot is your scenario, not mine.

Now some people argue long and loud that we (presumably the Royal We) have not found aliens here on Earth, as tourists or otherwise. There would be those who would argue that we have indeed found them, well actually we found them after or because they found us first. So that entire premise that aliens aren't here, is a fallacy - according to many, actually multi-millions if you go by public opinion polls, who firmly believe that ET is alive and well and enjoying our terrestrial environment and hospitality.

There are no arguments that anyone can give that show that aliens aren't here. There are no arguments that I (and thousands of others) can't refute by giving equal and opposite counter arguments. But anyone is welcome to give it their best shot. IMHO there's no knuckle-ball on this issue that anyone can throw me that I can't hit out of the ballpark!

Problems with Time and Space: As to the issue of the time it takes to cross interstellar distances, well maybe aliens have very long life-spans; maybe aliens adapted themselves for interstellar spaceflight by means of genetically or biotechnologically enhancing themselves; maybe aliens have efficient hibernation technologies; maybe aliens use multi-generation starships; maybe there really can be faster-than-light technologies or interstellar travel via wormholes. But my solution is to download mind-into-machine and thus eliminate all of the life-support infrastructures required for interstellar flight and use the 'sleep' switch between point of departure and point of destination. The quasi-related scenario is that it's not biological intelligence that will boldly go, rather artificial intelligence.

Problems with Longevity: You can't say anything about how long civilizations can last based on a statistical sample of one. While it's true that specific terrestrial civilizations have come and gone, terrestrial CIVILIZATION in general has been to date on-going. As to the 'far, far future', many suggest our CIVILIZATION could last for a heck of a long time to come. In fact, one prime motivation to "boldly go" is for humanity to establish beachheads on other extraterrestrial worlds and on interstellar real estate. That scenario ensures that if anything bad happens to Planet Earth, humanity survives.

Problems with Economic & Resource Issues: Some people keep falling into the fallacy trap that EACH AND EVERY extraterrestrial civilization with advanced technologies, especially in aeronautics and astronautics, wouldn't be able to fund their boldly going desires. Now what if Planet Earth had a world government with no need for the trillions upon trillions upon trillions of dollars collectively required and spent by individual nations for defense purposes? What if all of those trillions had been funneled into peaceful cosmic exploration and boldly going enterprises? Okay, that takes care of the funding issue, apart from the possibility that the entire concept of money might be alien to an alien civilization. If they have the desire, they make it so.

Okay, the oceans are our last (now somewhat) terrestrially unexplored final frontier but some make it sound as if we haven't gotten more than our big toe wet. Have those people forgotten that Rome wasn't built in a day? Have they forgotten the rest of Planet Earth? From a tiny group of nomadic humans migrating out of Africa some 75,000 years ago (give or take), we've discovered, explored and for the most part colonized every continent, even every remote tiny island on Earth. We had the desire. We had the funds. We had the resources. We boldly went. We still do - it's usually called tourism nowadays. We've gone to the Moon. Plans are afoot for manned expeditions to Mars. We've have the desire, funds and resources to send unmanned probes out to all the planets - even Pluto is being approached as I write this. Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 are on the way into interstellar space. And 75,000 years when compared to cosmic time-scales is a tiny blink-of-an-eye. Perhaps in another 75,000 years the ocean bottom will be as well known to the human species as your backyard or local neighborhood is currently to you.

Lack of resources is really another non-issue. What resources are we lacking? Energy? Minerals? If these commodities aren't here, there is an abundance in nearby space - on the Moon and in the asteroid belt and points beyond. There are more energy and mineral resources out in space that could and would satisfy our needs for hundreds of thousands of years.

Any technological alien civilization who wants to boldly go will not be suffering from any shortage of natural resources - energy and minerals. There's more energy and resources available in any solar system than you (Royal You) could possibly use up in hundreds of thousands of years. So, insufficient resources are not an answer to boldly going aliens and thus "why aren't aliens already here".

By the way, stating the obvious, nobody is forcing anyone, here or there, to boldly go, to spend time and money and resources against their will, but if nobody here had boldly gone in the past, spent their time and their money and their resources, the rest of us in the here and now wouldn't be living the life and the lifestyle we're living now.

SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations: If everyone adopts a philosophy of "Why Bother", everyone, as in every alien civilization, wouldn't be listening (why bother) and wouldn't be sending (why bother) and probably wouldn't be doing much of anything (why bother). SETI, them or us, would be a worthless enterprise.

Conclusion: Why would aliens bother to boldly go – because they (even if it is only one they) have The Right Stuff a concept the stay-at-home-mob consistently fail to understand. By the way, what gives such people the authority to speak on behalf of any and all alien civilizations? Perhaps they are omniscient. In conclusion, IMHO, my non-omniscient self suggests that real extraterrestrial intelligences with The Right Stuff don’t say “Why Bother?” boldly going. They just boldly go and let the chips fall as they may.