Will first contact with extraterrestrial life be initiated by Earthlings?
17
82
280
2100
39%
chance

Earthlings include humans, any other species that evolved on Earth, and Earth-originating AI.

YES examples:

- Earthlings explore Mars and find non-Earth-originating life.

- Earthlings send an interstellar transmission to which aliens reply.

NO examples:

- Aliens invade Earth.

- Aliens transmit a signal towards Earth without having received a transmission from Earth, which is then received and interpreted by Earthlings.

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predicts NO

Given the grabby alien paper and the dissolving the Fermi paradox paper, then:

  • Either no aliens in the light come or a lot (but still rare in a galaxy) (rarely a few civilisations only in a light cone).

  • Non grabby civilisation may be much more frequent than grabby civilisations.

  • Each grabby civilisations meet a lot of non grabby civ

  • The early grabby civ meet a lot more other grabby civ than the late grabby civ

  • Earth civ seems to be quite late or in the middle

  • Because of looking at the first contact only, then a random civ is more likely to be contacted by another one (which is making first contact with a lot of civ)

  • => No

  • Issue remaining: Panspermia

Summary: Some civ make contact with many other civ, there is an asymmetry. The most likely event is we are contacted by a civ which already made contact with many other civs.

NA if there's no aliens by 2100?

predicts YES

@Mira No, this market will remain open until first contact. 2100 is a placeholder.

I see no reason this should deviate from 50%

predicts YES

@ShadowyZephyr I think that, since we have no idea what the first extraterrestrial life we contact will be like, we can't assume that it would even want to/care about initiating contact. Whereas we already know that humans want to initiate contact. So that makes the probability higher than 50% that we'll be the ones who end up doing it.

predicts YES

"Will first contact with extraterrestrial life be initiated by Earthlings?"

Will first contact with extraterrestrial life be initiated by Earthlings?