Proposal Title

1.B. Odds and Ends I

Location

Student Union 323-B

Start Date

7-3-2022 9:00 AM

End Date

7-3-2022 10:30 AM

Description

  1. METI and DMDU: Deciding Whether to Message Extraterrestrial Intelligence When Our Ignorance Is Vast / William Alba
    The benefits and costs associated with messaging extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) are indeterminable yet potentially enormous. While one can attempt to forecast the outcome of actions (or inaction) from analogous situations, ultimately the question of whether to pursue active communication with ETI is peppered with unknown unknowns. Accordingly, I describe the level of uncertainty with METI from the perspective of decision making under deep uncertainty (DMDU).
    I apply the DMDU methodology of Dynamic Adaptive Planning (DAP) to METI. Although the actual decision process would include planners and stakeholders, I anticipate issues that should arise as anyone progresses through the steps of the DAP framework: setting the stage, assembling an initial plan, increasing the robustness of the initial plan, setting up the monitoring system, and preparing trigger responses.
    I conclude by proposing a set of characteristics for societal structures that could be sustained over long time periods while remaining responsive to changing conditions with regard to METI. I compare those characteristics to organizations from historical precedent, contemporary practice, and speculative fiction. Based on this critical examination, I offer novel recommendations for what to do about METI in the face of our vast ignorance.
  2. The detectability of humanity and why it matters / Chelsea Haramia and Julia DeMarines
    One notable feature of the activity of Messaging ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (METI) is that the messages sent into space cannot be taken back or revised. These signals are irreversible. Yet, insofar as irreversibility generates moral concern regarding METI, it generates similar concerns for our background radio leakage and for powerful, targeted signaling not related to searches for ETI. These too are irreversible. However, these activities lack other features possessed by METI—namely, the features of independence and intentionality. Because METI is independent of everyday human functioning, and because communication with ETI is an intended outcome of messaging, it has moral dimensions that are not shared by other searches or activities. At the same time, the shared feature of irreversibility raises moral issues concerning everyday human broadcasting that are not commonly voiced or addressed. In this paper, we present current scientific data regarding trends in human radio activity, we explore reasons to reduce our detectability regardless of the nature of the broadcast, and we question whether METI’s distinct features make a moral difference when compared to similar broadcasting activities.
  3. The right to know / Tony Milligan
    Is there a right to knowledge about our origins? Knowledge of a sort that astrobiology can supply, and a right of a sort that might be appealed to by international declarations and in UN treaties. As a case in point, we might think of knowledge about whether the emergence of life was sheerly contingent (in the way proposed by Jacques Monod), or whether we have emerged as the result of some inbuilt tendency of nature itself (in the way claimed by Simon Conway Morris). This paper will argue that the strongest case for such a right to knowledge will proceed through an interest- based approach towards rights, an approach which hold that agents have rights when they have sufficiently strong interests to ground a duty on the part of others. But how should we run an argument for such a right without ‘proving too much’? The paper will go on to tackle the problem of meeting two requirements: (1) the approach should avoid overpopulating the world with rights; and (2) it should make sure that the argument about certain kinds of knowledge generated by astrobiology does not apply to the kinds of knowledge built into indigenous creation stories, given that the latter are often associated with special rules for transmission, and entitlements to non-disclosure.

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Mar 7th, 9:00 AM Mar 7th, 10:30 AM

1.B. Odds and Ends I

Student Union 323-B

  1. METI and DMDU: Deciding Whether to Message Extraterrestrial Intelligence When Our Ignorance Is Vast / William Alba
    The benefits and costs associated with messaging extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) are indeterminable yet potentially enormous. While one can attempt to forecast the outcome of actions (or inaction) from analogous situations, ultimately the question of whether to pursue active communication with ETI is peppered with unknown unknowns. Accordingly, I describe the level of uncertainty with METI from the perspective of decision making under deep uncertainty (DMDU).
    I apply the DMDU methodology of Dynamic Adaptive Planning (DAP) to METI. Although the actual decision process would include planners and stakeholders, I anticipate issues that should arise as anyone progresses through the steps of the DAP framework: setting the stage, assembling an initial plan, increasing the robustness of the initial plan, setting up the monitoring system, and preparing trigger responses.
    I conclude by proposing a set of characteristics for societal structures that could be sustained over long time periods while remaining responsive to changing conditions with regard to METI. I compare those characteristics to organizations from historical precedent, contemporary practice, and speculative fiction. Based on this critical examination, I offer novel recommendations for what to do about METI in the face of our vast ignorance.
  2. The detectability of humanity and why it matters / Chelsea Haramia and Julia DeMarines
    One notable feature of the activity of Messaging ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (METI) is that the messages sent into space cannot be taken back or revised. These signals are irreversible. Yet, insofar as irreversibility generates moral concern regarding METI, it generates similar concerns for our background radio leakage and for powerful, targeted signaling not related to searches for ETI. These too are irreversible. However, these activities lack other features possessed by METI—namely, the features of independence and intentionality. Because METI is independent of everyday human functioning, and because communication with ETI is an intended outcome of messaging, it has moral dimensions that are not shared by other searches or activities. At the same time, the shared feature of irreversibility raises moral issues concerning everyday human broadcasting that are not commonly voiced or addressed. In this paper, we present current scientific data regarding trends in human radio activity, we explore reasons to reduce our detectability regardless of the nature of the broadcast, and we question whether METI’s distinct features make a moral difference when compared to similar broadcasting activities.
  3. The right to know / Tony Milligan
    Is there a right to knowledge about our origins? Knowledge of a sort that astrobiology can supply, and a right of a sort that might be appealed to by international declarations and in UN treaties. As a case in point, we might think of knowledge about whether the emergence of life was sheerly contingent (in the way proposed by Jacques Monod), or whether we have emerged as the result of some inbuilt tendency of nature itself (in the way claimed by Simon Conway Morris). This paper will argue that the strongest case for such a right to knowledge will proceed through an interest- based approach towards rights, an approach which hold that agents have rights when they have sufficiently strong interests to ground a duty on the part of others. But how should we run an argument for such a right without ‘proving too much’? The paper will go on to tackle the problem of meeting two requirements: (1) the approach should avoid overpopulating the world with rights; and (2) it should make sure that the argument about certain kinds of knowledge generated by astrobiology does not apply to the kinds of knowledge built into indigenous creation stories, given that the latter are often associated with special rules for transmission, and entitlements to non-disclosure.