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Reading Kelsey Johnson’s work raised a question that I can’t shake: If we do discover extraterrestrial life—especially radically different or more intelligent life—how will that rupture our Earth-bound hierarchies and systems of value, especially those built on colonialism, capitalism, and human exceptionalism? As someone who deeply values community, justice, and curiosity, I’m struck by how many of our economies, religions, and sciences are built on the illusion that humans are the apex of creation: rational, chosen, and central. The question is difficult to answer because it challenges everything; not just our institutions, but our sense of self, our stories of origin, and even our right to dominate Earth and its resources—let alone the universe. If life elsewhere exists and doesn’t fit neatly into our definitions, can our systems evolve to recognize it without exploiting or fearing it? Or will we try to colonize the stars the way we did each other? If I were being totally honest with myself, the most interesting ideas from the chapter are the ones that challenge our (or let me be even more honest and say my own) human-centered assumptions. Especially the idea that life doesn’t have to look anything like us, and might not even meet our rigid criteria for being “alive.” I’m fascinated by how quickly life appeared on Earth after the Late Heavy Bombardment, which suggests that life might be more inevitable than exceptional—and that maybe Earth isn’t as special as we like to think. I’m also really drawn to the way Johnson questions the ethics of terraforming or creating synthetic life, and how those questions expose the limits of modern capitalism’s “can we” logic, reminding me that just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should, especially if we’re still operating from a mindset of extraction, domination, and narrow definitions of value. I think the word alien already carries a weight that feels inherently derogatory. It implies otherness, exclusion, and even threat. Will we even be able to “discover” and interact with life beyond Earth if we can’t even engage with the concept without projecting our fears onto what we don’t yet know? Will we be able to “discover” life beyond Earth if we can’t admit that we don’t know what we don’t know?

Into the Unknown delves into the profound implications that the discovery of extraterrestrial life could have on human society, particularly in areas like religion, economics, and science. Johnson emphasizes that such a discovery would not only challenge our understanding of the universe but also compel us to reevaluate our place within it, potentially leading to significant shifts in cultural and philosophical paradigms. This raises a compelling question: how would different societies, with their diverse belief systems and economic structures, reconcile the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life? The difficulty in answering this lies in the unpredictable nature of human reactions and the vast array of cultural contexts that would interpret such a discovery in myriad ways. Moreover, historical instances like the 1977 "Wow!" signal, which was initially thought to be a potential extraterrestrial communication but later attributed to natural phenomena, highlight the challenges in distinguishing genuine signals from false positives, further complicating our preparedness for actual contact. The Drake Equation, while providing a framework to estimate the number of communicative civilizations, underscores the uncertainties involved in such calculations, reminding us of the vast unknowns that still pervade our quest to understand our place in the cosmos.

https://www.labxchange.org/library/items/lb:HarvardX:68789c56:lx_simulation:1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKWkbWUn71s What new question does the reading and interviews raise for you about the ways in which the discovery of extraterrestrial life could affect human economies, religions, and science? What makes this question difficult to answer? These readings and interviews raised a somewhat sinister question for me: should we trust scientists to be the ones to properly consider "the ways in which the discovery of extraterrestrial life could affect human economies, religions, and science," as the prompt for this question raises? This question seems difficult to answer, because the very qualities that make someone an effective scientific mind — skeptical humility, modesty, single-minded devotion to their vocation — also leave them open to a kind of anti-humanistic suspension of judgement, easily tipping over into nihilism. Avi Loeb exemplified this tendency in his interview with professor Goodman. He rehashed the idea of technological replacement: "It's quite likely that biological creatures like ourselves will be replaced by things that are much more durable like robots with artificial intelligence, 3D printers." His interlocutor, professor Goodman, asked whether this prospect bothered him. His answer simultaneously evinced the noble selflessness, and the monstrous anti-humanism of the scientific worldview: "Not at all, I'm not attached to myself whatsoever. In fact, I would be happy to go into a black hole to learn what's inside. I don't care about myself so much. I would be happy to board a spacecraft led by aliens even though I would not come back." He brought up the comparison of human insignificance and cosmic magnitude that traces back to Lucretius' De Natura Rerum: the universe "gives you some perspective, gives you modesty. You are not so important in the grand scheme of things."  Perhaps this mindset is necessary to become a scientist. Yet I find it concerning that a group with disproportionate influence over the future of the human race, seems so apathetic about the fate of humanity, on principle. Kelsey Johnson puts it well in her book, specifically addressing the possibility of creating artificial life: "There is, however, a big fat chasm between the 'can we' and 'should we' questions. It is easy to get caught up in how cool it would be to see living cells form out of basic materials and everything that might teach us about our origins. I would argue that we should consider taking a step back from time to time and genuinely question whether we should" (ebook, 89-91). I hope scientists take her ethical injunction seriously. In her interview with professor Goodman, Jill Tarter dismissed these domains of life as primitive and polluted by irrational myth. Describing her experience reading the "Cyclops Report" on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence at the beginning of her career, she said, "After thousands of years of asking the priest and the philosophers what we should believe, there were suddenly some tools, computers and radio telescopes, that could allow scientist to try and figure out what is, rather than what somebody told us to believe." But contrary to her framing, scientists also have to make the kind of moral and even religious value judgements she consigns to the barbarous past of "the priest and the philosophers," when they decide whether or not certain experiments are worth conducting in the first place.