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BlahBlahILoveToast t1_j1v7t2x wrote

A lot of good ideas went into making Voyager but it was definitely the early days of Earth's space program. I suspect we'd do some of it differently if it happened today.

As others have mentioned, the biggest problem might be that any aliens close enough to find Voyager are probably going to have an easier time detecting our presence on Earth itself anyway.

I've heard it said that our focus switched from "CETI", the hope to "Contact" extraterrestrial intelligence, to "SETI", the Search for ETI, because we realized it might be dumb to reveal ourselves to unknown aliens without finding out their intentions first. I suspect that's just a myth though (or at least not the whole reason) because it's probably more that building tech to search for signals is much easier than trying to build tech to send them.

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PDT_FSU95 t1_j1v91xc wrote

I might be wrong in source idea, I think Carl Sagan? made mention of the ignorance of showing someone to your home who may actually be a serial killer or the like.

The other issue being that we may be advanced, but any civilization that makes its way here will be more so advanced and probably be easily able to enslave or destroy us. Without knowing their intent or ‘moral beliefs’ we probably should keep our whereabouts hidden from such beings until we also have the ability to travel to another system.

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BlahBlahILoveToast t1_j20d1r0 wrote

I hate to be a pessimist about aliens, but the only data we have to extrapolate from is our own planet.

Here on Earth, any time a more advanced civilization has come into contact with a less advanced one, things went poorly for the less advanced. Even if it's a relatively "civilized" culture that frowns on things like genocide and slavery the advanced culture tends to overwhelm, stunt growth, etc. for the less advanced.

And same with interspecies interactions. If a more successful species shows up in the same niche, the locals suffer, every time.

Our own culture does seem to be sliding more and more toward wanting to shield low-tech cultures from being forcefully modernized, to the point that we now try not to contact indigenous tribes at all if we find them. I suppose our best hope is that most alien cultures go the same direction over time.

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