Psychology of Alien Contact: Could Humanity Handle the “Otherness” of Extraterrestrials? By Dirk Schulze Makuch

[Manuel Tavares]

Psychology of Alien Contact: Could Humanity Handle the “Otherness” of Extraterrestrials?
By Dirk Schulze Makuch
https://rayviolet.blogspot.com/2022/08/psychology-of-alien-contact-could.html

Searching for extraterrestrial life is an important goal not only for NASA, but for many of us in the scientific community to address the ancient question of whether we are alone in the Universe. But what if we actually discover alien life? We can just as easily imagine a friendly encounter (E.T., The Day the Earth Stood Still) as a fight to the death (War of the Worlds, Independence Day). Either way, we expect the extraterrestrials to be very different from us. It is implicit in the word we use to describe them: aliens.

Examining these conflicting views is one of the goals of a new initiative called Exploring Otherness on Earth and Beyond, funded by the Einstein Foundation in Germany, which held its first workshop earlier this month at the German Aerospace Center in Berlin. By including perspectives from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, the initiative hopes to build on ideas discussed during a symposium on Astrobiology and Society held in 2015 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The fact that this can even be a topic of serious discussion suggests...+
https://rayviolet.blogspot.com/2022/08/psychology-of-alien-contact-could.html