The Visitors: God, the Devil, Or Little Green Men?
- ISBN-10
- 1492761729
- ISBN-13
- 9781492761723
- Series
- The Visitors
- Pages
- 560
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2013-12-08
- Author
- J. Frederick
Description
The Visitors is a book that asks: What should humans do if a face-to-face encounter with aliens were to actually take place? There have been numerous efforts to answer this question -- a U.S. Government entity even developed a protocol - but with little agreement.For example, Carl Sagan believed aliens capable of interstellar travel must be considered "advanced" and would have moved far beyond war and conflict and would bestow upon humanity the wisdom of their peaceful ways. Stephen Hawking, on the other hand, suggested experience pointed to the unfortunate demise of less technologically "advanced" cultures when confronted with their more advanced counterparts. The fate of indigenous peoples in the New World following the arrival of Europeans is a primary example. Helen Neumann is a seventeen-year-old mathematics prodigy whose science project algorithm for improving digital imagery leads to discovery of an alien spacecraft orbiting the moons of Pluto. Astronomers are soon able to model the itinerary of the spaceship and conclude it is on a systematic "tour" of the Solar System. Helen's discovery makes her universally well-known and her intellect coupled with the internet provide her the means to develop a framework for analysis of first contact options. As conflict and chaos envelop governments and institutions, Helen emerges as a focal point of reasoned, objective and insightful analysis. This in turn provides her with a large public following and commensurate political influence. The Visitors takes the reader on Helen's journey from discovery to her final recommendation for first contact action. Along the way she considers questions related to: (1) Science and Technology, (2) Society and Religion, (3) Economics and Finance, and (4) Politics. In addition, Helen addresses many possible assumptions about aliens related to anthropomorphism, communication, size, origin environment, purpose of visit, and an umbrella of behaviors related to motivation: joy, fear, love, and hate. The third element of Helen's intellectual odyssey involved a search for tools that could be useful for improving the decision-making process. Accordingly, she explored use of a Decision Tree model, a Bayesian Networks model, and Morphological Analysis. Related to her use of formal models to help structure difficult multi-variable problems with multi-attribute objective functions is the notion that subjective probabilities may be used along with statistically derived probabilities where good information is available. Unfortunately, the backdrop for almost everything Helen needed to deal with concerning the alien presence could be characterized as completely uncertain. About all that could be said with confidence was a large spaceship with interstellar capability was making its way on a planet-by-planet basis toward the inner planets and the Sun. And that the existence of a spaceship capable of interstellar travel implies its alien creators are in possession of technology superior to that of humans. Whether the spacecraft is a crewed vessel or an "unmanned" probe, however, will not be known prior to first contact and perhaps will remain unknown even after human first contact actions are taken. In fact, all decisions made by humans prior to and including first contact efforts must be made knowing nothing whatsoever about aliens or their spacecraft. Helen's quest for an optimal approach to dealing with the alien presence ends following her participation in a PBS panel discussion and debate focused on ethical issues related to first contact options. Her co-participants are six prominent individuals each from one of the world's major ethical traditions. Last, Helen provides her recommendation for action and explains her reasoning. Readers are invited to agree or disagree and to post comments at HELEN'SFIRSTCONTACTBLOG.com where they can also see the comments of others, and continue discussion of topical threads.
