And now finally something on extraterrestrials – a friend alerted me to this article in today’s Times:

“Personally, I think this concern is overwrought. Any society that can pick up our radio messages will be at a level of development at least centuries beyond our own. They would be no more incensed by our bad behavior than historians who learned that Babylonians attacked one another with spears. It seems naïve to imagine that, by shielding aliens from the less flattering aspects of humanity, we would somehow lessen any incentive to do us harm. If there’s a danger, mincing words is unlikely to eliminate it.
A better approach is to note that the nearest intelligent extraterrestrials are likely to be at least dozens of light-years away. Even assuming that active SETI provokes a reply, it won’t be breezy conversation. Simple back-and-forth exchanges would take decades. This suggests that we should abandon the “greeting card” format of previous signaling schemes, and offer the aliens Big Data.”

Read the article here.

I for one would bet on intelligent extraterrestrials for our economic growth. Not only should we advertise our existence, we should inform the intelligent extraterrestrials that they can buy dollars and euros with a discount, all depending on their currency of course.

The extraterrestrials may be highly intelligent, but a decent human salesman will be able to sell them a few dozen of Boeing’s dreamliner. Of course completely adjusted to the needs and wishes of intelligent extraterrestrials.