One question that came to me as I was doing the reading and watching the interviews was how do we search for extraterrestrial life and should we even be searching for it? The reading brought up a number of interesting points that I had never really considered in relation to the search for extraterrestrial life, such as how do we define life? Additionally, the author described a number of possibilities for what this life could look like, many of which were amorphous or very unlike humans. Additionally, in the interviews, Avi Loeb raised the concern that if we encountered extraterrestrial life, they would like have technology far superior to ours, which made me concerned about danger and how that could completely upend our economy, religion, and science.
This question is difficult for me to answer because on one hand we should always keep searching for answers and knowledge. This is how we discover great new things such as technology, medicine, history, and many other great fields. But at the same time, a discovery of extraterrestrial life could bring such danger and uncertainty. The existence of extraterrestrial life could bring about the end of the world, not only through the possibility of simply being outgunned by their superior technology, but also the fact that their mere existence could completely upend all our beliefs and everything we hold true, ultimately leading to the demise of our whole society.