PD breaking individuals, SoD spoilers...

[BrotherBenny]

If an advanced alien race/culture were to contact us today, having done at least rudimentary scans of our world and technology and what have you, their best approach would be to contact the United Nations, the closest we have to a United Earth at this moment in time.

 

[DimesDan]

that'd be MI6 not MI5, FYI... 6 is the Secret Intelligence Service doing all the James Bond guff. MI5 are the Security Service, doing all the spy-catching, terrorist-tracking stuff that the FBI do.

You're only 50% right with that comment.

MI5 is for internal security affairs regarding the United Kingdom where as MI6 is external security affairs. They both do the same thing, but one is in the country and the other is in other countries.

 

[Christopher]

You obviously think that the "duck blind" approach is not only morally questionable, but also completely ineffective - because the contacting civilization won't be able to interpret correctly the information it gathered.

My opinion is that an advanced civilization, one that had hundreds of previous first contacts, will have the experience to correctly interpret the data - in most situations. You said it yourself: such a civilization should be able to moderate even the so-called "dangerous potentials" - again, in most cases.

Each culture is unique. If you make assumptions based on precedents and analogies from other cultures -- whether your own or someone else's -- then you're just setting yourself up for making overconfident mistakes, assuming you understand what you're seeing and then getting a rude awakening when it turns out to be something different.

Bottom line, the best way to learn something about how a culture thinks is to ask them. Communication is not a one-sided undertaking. As long as you keep yourself separate from them, you're not really learning to communicate with them. At most, you're learning how to talk at them.

As for the "trade" and "tread carefully" approach - this is, obviously, a good ideea. If the contacting civilization discovers that the other civilization is not the "mad dog" variety. If a peaceful relation is possible at that point.
You will never be able to avoid the "mad dog" societies if you bypass the "duck blind" approach.

I think "mad dog" is a very condescending and judgmental label. I reject it as a valid category.

Besides, how do you define "avoid?" With the tentative, step-by-step approach I'm talking about, it's not like you just march in and offer them starships and nuclear weapons on day one. You drop in on a small village, let them know you exist, let them come to you and investigate, maybe leave some innocuous trade items lying outside your ship as a friendly gesture. If they still react violently after several more tentative steps leading to direct contact, and if you can't communicate with them enough to learn the reason for their violence and how to resolve it, you just leave the area and come down in some other part of the planet with a different, unrelated civilization and try again. If, for some reason, the whole planet proves hostile, you just go away and leave them alone. There are plenty of other worlds in the galaxy -- there's no obligation to establish a lasting relationship with every single one.

Of course, humanity doesn't have any experience with first contact situations - the first contact between human cultures (or a romantic relationship) can't really compare with the first contact between two alien civilizations. The aliens from Star Trek are ridiculously human. I beleive that a true alien civilization will be so strange, as to defy comprehension.

If so, that just underlines my point that you can never understand them by remote observation, because you'll only be filtering your observations through your own assumptions and those won't give you the grounding to interpret them meaningfully. If both sides are trying to communicate, if both sides are aware that the other side doesn't know things about them, then they will both make an effort to find common ground and explain themselves to each other, and that's a meaningful foundation.

Of course, it may take years or longer to establish meaningful communication. We actually do have ongoing experience with the effort to communicate with an alien intelligence: the dolphins. And even after decades of intensive scientific study, communication is highly limited. They live in a different environment, have a different perceptual emphasis than we do, they don't think the way we do. Sometimes there may be no way to achieve more than limited communication.

But I think the really alien societies would have little to fight over, because they don't set off each other's triggers and aren't competing for the same things. Humans and dolphins are both predatory species that fight among themselves, but historically we've been extremely kind and protective toward each other (well, they have toward us -- we have that whole fishing-net business to live down).

And I think that if you're talking about technological civilizations, they'd tend to have a lot in common with us in terms of their environment, their way of thinking, their social organization, etc. Not an exact correspondence, of course, but enough common ground for meaningful communication. But also enough common ground to allow for conflict. It's a double-sided coin.

What should we do, then? I think there are only two options.

First choice. We stay at home, in our own solar system. Basically, this is the "Star Trek" approach - only without the plot inconsistencies and with a different motivation: we fear that the alien civilization will become our enemy, not that it will be overwhelmed by our civilization.

Second choice. We travel to the stars. Beginnings are always hard. Nonetheless, they must be made. A civilization can only advance or regress. There is no third option. Stagnation is regress.

That's actually not true. If you look at the whole sweep of human history, periods of rapid progress and change are the exception rather than the rule. Many human societies have managed just fine without major change for hundreds or thousands of years -- even tens of thousands if you go back to prehistory. It's not stagnation, just stability. We just assume it's stagnation because we're a society defined by rapid change and we ethnocentrically assume our way is the only right way.

Civilization works like evolution: it advances by punctuated equilibrium. When it's well-adapted to its conditions and its environment remains stable, it has no need for major change; indeed, major change would be counterproductive. But when its circumstances change so as to create a need, then rapid progress kicks into gear while it develops solutions to that need. But eventually equilibrium is restored again. We just haven't gotten there yet, and it's hard for us to look at things on a multimillennial scale, so it looks to us as though progress is a universal necessity.

And there are other options. A society could explore the galaxy entirely by sending out self-replicating AI probes. Indeed, in the likely event that FTL travel is impossible, this is pretty much the only practical way to go.

Or civilizations could go into space and just leave each other alone. Space is huge -- plenty of room for mutual avoidance. If you want to colonize, don't colonize inhabited worlds; terraform uninhabited worlds to suit your needs, or build artificial megastructures in unpopulated star systems. A society could thrive for billions of years (in theory) on the energy from a red dwarf or brown dwarf, and those are by far the most abundant stars in the galaxy, a couple of orders of magnitude more common than the stars we can see with the naked eye. And there's little likelihood that a civilization would need any kind of rare element only found on an inhabited world; as long as you have stars, you have unlimited free energy, and as long as you have access to comets and asteroids, you have carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and silicon, and the technologies of tomorrow will probably rely more on those than on imaginary metals.

You said that the "duck blind" approach is morally problematic.

The variety we see on TNG: Who watches the watchers, TNG: First contact or TNG: Insurrection surely is.

But what if you only listen to their Tv/Radio(or equivalent) transmissions?

Easier said than done. To decipher a coherent signal, you'd either have to come right to the edge of their system and monitor from there or cover nearly an entire continent with receiving antennas in order to pick up enough of the attenuated signal. I suppose it wouldn't be as bad, since they know the signals are going out, so they're essentially public. It's like with cops -- you don't need a search warrant for something that's in plain sight, because the suspect has no reasonable expectation of privacy.

But you'd still have the problem of getting societal information only at second hand -- and it would be even more distorted if your info came solely through the media. Also, it would limit you to societies advanced enough to achieve radio broadcasts. That's as arbitrary a dividing line as the warp-drive requirement in Trek.

But what if you can be relatively sure that the observed civilization has no such taboo? In this case, you can even use the Star Trek "duck blind" methods. But you should only use them if it's absolutely necessary. And, obviously, you shouldn't lie to them about these actions.

I can't see a circumstance where it would be absolutely necessary. And it's certainly not the best way to learn about a society. Plus, I still think it's just rude.

We have discussed another issue: when you discover a world inhabited by an intelligent species, which culture from this world should you contact first?

In my opinion, the response is: you must contact all the cultures from that world simultaneously.
In any other case chaos will ensue....
Imagine if an alien species contacted only The European Union. All the other states would jump at its throat like a pack of rabid dogs. And U.S.A. would lead the pack.
Only afterwards can you make your trade offers and begin the political games - or, as you said it, only afterwards can you start "offering incentives for peaceful interraction".

That's what I meant all along. I wasn't proposing keeping your existence secret from anyone -- like, say, Stargate's Asgard contacting the American SGC but keeping the other nations in the dark.

What is this "subtle" and "complex" magic first contact solution? Can you at least describe it summarily? Did you read about it in a book? If so, whitch book? I'm interested to know.

I've been describing aspects of it all along -- and I still resent your facetious dismissal of it as a "magic solution." I never once claimed there was a perfect solution -- just that there's a healthier, more viable solution than the one shown on ST, and that the Starfleet approach is based on a lot of grossly erroneous assumptions. There are never any guarantees -- a first contact always carries risks. Heck, even cultures that have known each other for centuries can always come into conflict. So I'm not spouting any nonsense about magic or perfect solutions, so I'll thank you to stop suggesting such a thing. Every approach carries risks, but there are ways to reduce the risks.

Again, I'll analogize civilizations to individuals, because I think the ground rules aren't that different. Trying to start a relationship with someone new always carries the risk of misunderstandings and mutual hurt. But if you don't start out with an honest, equal approach and open, mutual communication, then the relationship is in bad shape from the beginning.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

What should we do, then? I think there are only two options.

First choice. We stay at home, in our own solar system. Basically, this is the "Star Trek" approach - only without the plot inconsistencies and with a different motivation: we fear that the alien civilization will become our enemy, not that it will be overwhelmed by our civilization.

Second choice. We travel to the stars. Beginnings are always hard. Nonetheless, they must be made.

And there are other options. A society could explore the galaxy entirely by sending out self-replicating AI probes. Indeed, in the likely event that FTL travel is impossible, this is pretty much the only practical way to go.

Or civilizations could go into space and just leave each other alone. Space is huge -- plenty of room for mutual avoidance. If you want to colonize, don't colonize inhabited worlds; terraform uninhabited worlds to suit your needs, or build artificial megastructures in unpopulated star systems. A society could thrive for billions of years (in theory) on the energy from a red dwarf or brown dwarf, and those are by far the most abundant stars in the galaxy, a couple of orders of magnitude more common than the stars we can see with the naked eye. And there's little likelihood that a civilization would need any kind of rare element only found on an inhabited world; as long as you have stars, you have unlimited free energy, and as long as you have access to comets and asteroids, you have carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and silicon, and the technologies of tomorrow will probably rely more on those than on imaginary metals.

I disagree.

Using Von Neumann probes to explore the galaxy and exploring the galaxy personally are practically the same thing. You will make first contact with other civilizations through the probes' AI - which you programmed.

And the self-replicating probes are the best way to explore the galaxy even if you have FTL. The Von Neumann method becomes more efficient than the "Star Trek" way when a von Neumann probe can build a replica of itself in less time than it would take a FTL spaceship to reach the probe's location, starting from Earth (or the location where the first Von Neumann craft was built). The self-replicating probes, of course, will also have FTL engines.

Leaving alien civilizations alone also implies first contacts. Pretty successful ones, too. Contacts with alien civilizations could have better results - trade, friendship - but also worse ones - skirmishes, interstellar war.
A first contact doesn't necessarily imply a conversation with the alien species. It only means that you are aware of the alien's existence and the alien species knows of your existence.

So these two examples are included in my second choice.

You obviously think that the "duck blind" approach is not only morally questionable, but also completely ineffective - because the contacting civilization won't be able to interpret correctly the information it gathered.

My opinion is that an advanced civilization, one that had hundreds of previous first contacts, will have the experience to correctly interpret the data - in most situations. You said it yourself: such a civilization should be able to moderate even the so-called "dangerous potentials" - again, in most cases.

As for the "trade" and "tread carefully" approach - this is, obviously, a good ideea. If the contacting civilization discovers that the other civilization is not the "mad dog" variety. If a peaceful relation is possible at that point.
You will never be able to avoid the "mad dog" societies if you bypass the "duck blind" approach.

Each culture is unique. If you make assumptions based on precedents and analogies from other cultures -- whether your own or someone else's -- then you're just setting yourself up for making overconfident mistakes, assuming you understand what you're seeing and then getting a rude awakening when it turns out to be something different.

Experience does't breed overconfidence. On the contrary, an experienced civilization knows exactly how different alien species can be. Such a civilization knows exactly how much it can learn from observation without interaction.

We actually do have ongoing experience with the effort to communicate with an alien intelligence: the dolphins. And even after decades of intensive scientific study, communication is highly limited. They live in a different environment, have a different perceptual emphasis than we do, they don't think the way we do. Sometimes there may be no way to achieve more than limited communication.

You are proving my point. Most of what we know about the dolphins, we know not because of communication, but because of observation.
Obviously, humanity's experience indicates that observing an alien species generates more data than trying to communicate with this species. At least sometimes.

I think "mad dog" is a very condescending and judgmental label. I reject it as a valid category.

"Mad dog" is a nickname: nicknames are often condescending and judgmental. Let's be politically correct and call them societies with whom a peacefull first contact is improbable.

And they do exist; you yourself admitted their existence:

For instance, the militant Islamist radical subculture today is too embittered and hardened by centuries of historical motives for their anger to be diverted from it; if an alien species came along and tried to make contact with them, they probably wouldn't be able to avoid a violent outcome.

With the tentative, step-by-step approach I'm talking about, it's not like you just march in and offer them starships and nuclear weapons on day one. You drop in on a small village, let them know you exist, let them come to you and investigate, maybe leave some innocuous trade items lying outside your ship as a friendly gesture. If they still react violently after several more tentative steps leading to direct contact, and if you can't communicate with them enough to learn the reason for their violence and how to resolve it, you just leave the area and come down in some other part of the planet with a different, unrelated civilization and try again. If, for some reason, the whole planet proves hostile, you just go away and leave them alone. There are plenty of other worlds in the galaxy -- there's no obligation to establish a lasting relationship with every single one.

This first contact method is not feasible if you try to make contact with a culture that has near instantaneous global communication (something akin to Internet, to TV, to radio etc). If you try to make contact with a "small village" the news will spread like wildfire. In a few hours, all the major powers from that world will have representatives (read military) in that small village. And all will ask: why did you contact only this minor village? What are you trying to hide from us? And God help the inhabitants of that village! Add to that the fact that you don't understand what these aliens are saying and that these aliens don't understand you and the result will not be future peaceful relations with that world. On the contrary. You'll need the equivalent of a miracle to explain yourself - and even then, the aliens won't completely trust you.

If you try to make contact with a species that doesn't yet have an alien Internet, once you make contact with that village, you are commited to making contact with that entire species. Information about you will reach all cultures on that world. Only slower. If you leave that world because you didn't like how your first contact with the village went, you'll only exacerbate the trust issues. And in a few thousand years, when these aliens will have interstellar travel, they'll come after you - and they will not be inclined to trust you. If the aliens' cultures are like the medieval european one or the radical islamist one (this is likey - you left for a reason, after all) my scenario is even more likely.

I think the really alien societies would have little to fight over, because they don't set off each other's triggers and aren't competing for the same things. Humans and dolphins are both predatory species that fight among themselves, but historically we've been extremely kind and protective toward each other (well, they have toward us -- we have that whole fishing-net business to live down).

And I think that if you're talking about technological civilizations, they'd tend to have a lot in common with us in terms of their environment, their way of thinking, their social organization, etc. Not an exact correspondence, of course, but enough common ground for meaningful communication. But also enough common ground to allow for conflict. It's a double-sided coin.

Alien civilizations have little to fight over. Period.

They don't fight for resources - there is enough for everyone.

They might fight for religious or ideologic reasons. Or because they are afraid of the other alien civilization and want to destroy it before they are destroyed by it. Or because they are aggressive, pure and simple - this requires a particularly nasty alien species; perhaps too nasty to develop space travel.

I never once claimed there was a perfect solution -- just that there's a healthier, more viable solution than the one shown on ST, and that the Starfleet approach is based on a lot of grossly erroneous assumptions.

I agree. Star Trek's first contact policy is a mess full of preconceptions and absurd assumptions.
Add there doesn't exist a perfect solution.

In fact, when it comes to first contact policy, I think we agree on most issues - exept for the "duck blind" approach.

I said "I think" because your position is not entirely self-consistent.

You say:

there needs to be a blanket policy for your space explorers defining some basic guidelines, e.g. err on the side of caution and get as much info as you can before deciding how to proceed.

and then you say

I dispute the Trek assumption that you can learn useful things about a culture via a "duck blind" or secret-infiltration approach.

You claim:

For instance, the militant Islamist radical subculture today is too embittered and hardened by centuries of historical motives for their anger to be diverted from it; if an alien species came along and tried to make contact with them, they probably wouldn't be able to avoid a violent outcome.

and then

I think "mad dog" is a very condescending and judgmental label. I reject it as a valid category.

Or:

Each culture is unique. If you make assumptions based on precedents and analogies from other cultures -- whether your own or someone else's -- then you're just setting yourself up for making overconfident mistakes, assuming you understand what you're seeing and then getting a rude awakening when it turns out to be something different.

and

I'll analogize civilizations to individuals, because I think the ground rules aren't that different. Trying to start a relationship with someone new always carries the risk of misunderstandings and mutual hurt. But if you don't start out with an honest, equal approach and open, mutual communication, then the relationship is in bad shape from the beginning.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

If an advanced alien race/culture were to contact us today, having done at least rudimentary scans of our world and technology and what have you, their best approach would be to contact the United Nations, the closest we have to a United Earth at this moment in time.

I agree. Of course, the aliens will only know about the U.N. if they do their homework. If they observe us for a while.

 

[Christopher]

So these two examples are included in my second choice.

Technically, yes. But the point is, the consequences and dynamics of the process wouldn't be the same in those various different approaches to travelling in space, so it's not the simple, dualistic choice you imply. There's a big difference between sending probes to make contact and coming in person to establish a lasting relationship. A probe may come and go and never return. It's more an expression of curiosity than something that could lead to cultural imperialism or direct political conflict. The point is that contact takes many forms, some less disruptive or intrusive than others.

Experience does't breed overconfidence. On the contrary, an experienced civilization knows exactly how different alien species can be. Such a civilization knows exactly how much it can learn from observation without interaction.

And would therefore know that it can't learn the things it really needs to learn if it doesn't interact directly. Hell, any present-day anthropologist could tell you that, so a more advanced civilization would accept it as an axiom.

You are proving my point. Most of what we know about the dolphins, we know not because of communication, but because of observation.
Obviously, humanity's experience indicates that observing an alien species generates more data than trying to communicate with this species. At least sometimes.

That's completely untrue. Humans haven't been watching dolphins from duck blinds. There have been active efforts at mutual communication going on for decades -- not to mention millennia of mutual interaction preceding that. Dolphins have been taken from the sea and raised in captivity, for Pete's sake, so obviously they're thoroughly aware that we're observing and studying them. Most of the progress we've made in studying dolphin communication has come through direct interaction with them, interaction in which they've been active participants. We wouldn't know a fraction as much as we know about them if we'd relied solely on passive observation without their knowledge.

"Mad dog" is a nickname: nicknames are often condescending and judgmental. Let's be politically correct and call them societies with whom a peacefull first contact is improbable.

And they do exist; you yourself admitted their existence:

Don't you dare. Don't you bloody well dare equate your insulting label "mad dog" with my comments about radical Islamism. I would NEVER imply that any group of humans, even hardcore militants, are nothing but crazed animals needing to be put down. That kind of dehumanizing rhetoric just feeds hatred and conflict. Even our worst enemies need to be understood as people who have what in their minds are legitimate motives for their choices.

What I overtly said was that radical Islamists have been hardened and embittered by their historical experiences to the point that they are unwilling to trust outsiders' motives or points of view. That doesn't make them animals; it doesn't make them an intrinsically irredeemable culture; it makes them people who've been screwed over by history, who've fallen from greatness into chaos and desperation, and who feel compelled to fight back against the forces that hold them down, unwilling or unable to believe that outsiders don't mean them harm. I don't like what they do, but I can understand them as fellow human beings. So don't you dare put your disgusting "mad dog" label in my mouth.

This first contact method is not feasible if you try to make contact with a culture that has near instantaneous global communication (something akin to Internet, to TV, to radio etc). If you try to make contact with a "small village" the news will spread like wildfire.

When did I ever specify a culture that had instant global communication? Stop imposing your own preconceptions on what I'm saying.

Assuming there is a practical method of interstellar travel, then on the cosmic scale of things, the interval between the time a species discovers electricity and radio and the time it discovers stardrive will probably be a tiny fraction of the lifespan of that species. (We've been around as a distinct species for maybe 40,000 years, and we've gone from the light bulb to a man on the moon in a fraction of one percent of that.) The vast majority of contacts will be either with preindustrial societies or with societies that are already spacegoing. Naturally, obviously, a smart contact policy will have provisions for a planetbound society with global communication, but that wasn't the specific example I was offering. Don't be so narrow-minded as to assume that a single example represents the entire unwavering model. I explicitly stated more than once that the policy would have to be adaptable, so you're being grossly disingenuous to assume that I'm proposing a single rigid protocol.

If you try to make contact with a species that doesn't yet have an alien Internet, once you make contact with that village, you are commited to making contact with that entire species. Information about you will reach all cultures on that world. Only slower.

Well, obviously. That's the whole idea. The goal is contact, but a contact that's gradual enough that the knowledge of your existence is eased into the society through their own initiative, filtered through their own perceptions and worldviews and social networks, rather than being something you push on them. You ease yourself in, give them time to get used to you and decide for themselves how much or how little contact they want to make with you. If the news spreads to other cultures, then if they want to send emissaries, that's fine, and if they don't, that's fine too. The point is that you leave it up to them. Let yourself become a part of the existing flow of their communication, trade, etc. rather than forcing the contact to run on your schedule.

Where there's an interaction between a stronger entity and a weaker entity, the safest approach is for the stronger entity to yield to the weaker entity's wishes, to let it define the limits and the parameters of the interaction. That way it doesn't get overwhelmed by the other's potential power.

If you leave that world because you didn't like how your first contact with the village went, you'll only exacerbate the trust issues.

You're dumbing it down. I spoke of the first step in a lengthy process of gradual contact and mutual discovery, and you're twisting it, claiming I intended that single first step to be the entire contact. You're totally missing my whole point -- again.

And in a few thousand years, when these aliens will have interstellar travel, they'll come after you - and they will not be inclined to trust you.

You're still treating an entire planet as though it's a single monolithic civilization. Come on. Even one single civilization on that planet wouldn't remain unchanged for millennia. If one generation's ideology was built on "mistrust" toward aliens, then the next generation would be just as likely to question that and rebel against it and generate a conflicting ideology that looks to the aliens as a force of good.

Besides, why in the seven hells of Mongo would a culture "mistrust" you, let alone institutionalize that mistrust for generations thereafter, just because you engaged in a little trade once and then went away? Come on, cultures have been interacting on and off like that for millennia. There's nothing the least bit unusual about it. Most any culture on any planet would have experience with making contact with foreign cultures and then losing contact with them later on. Europe and China had contact through Silk Road trade in the days of the Roman Empire and Han Dynasty, but then the trade network collapsed and those sides of Eurasia were isolated for over a millennium before contact was renewed. The indigenes of the northeast portion of North America encountered Leif Erickssen and traded with his people for a while, and then the Vinland colony failed and over five centuries went by before people in that region encountered Europeans again, and they didn't even remember the earlier contact except maybe as a faded legend. There wasn't any deep-rooted mistrust; there was hardly even any recollection of the earlier contacts. I have no idea where you're even getting that.

They might fight for religious or ideologic reasons. Or because they are afraid of the other alien civilization and want to destroy it before they are destroyed by it. Or because they are aggressive, pure and simple - this requires a particularly nasty alien species; perhaps too nasty to develop space travel.

No species is ever "aggressive, pure and simple," except in sci-fi caricatures. Aggression is one drive out of the entire range of behaviors an organism needs to function. It is always going to exist in the context of a whole psychology, one that sometimes promotes aggression and other times promotes caution or generosity. Even the fiercest predatory animals are very cautious about when they strike and quick to retreat from the first sign of danger (since a predator depends on its physical mobility and can't risk injury).

I said "I think" because your position is not entirely self-consistent.

No, it's just complex. Your problem is that you keep trying to oversimplify every point I make, so you see contradictions where I'm merely acknowledging that the issue is multifaceted, that there has to be a balance drawn between opposing factors. And you keep taking my individual points out of context and acting as though a single point is meant to represent my entire philosophy. And I'm getting damn sick of it.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Forgive my little sideline into politics, but unfortunately I have to disagree with you on seeing the Islamist militants/extremists as irredeemable. Numerous attempts have been made by both the Islamist community and other cultures to bring them back into the mainstream fold but for the most part they're not interested. It is their mission - in their eyes - to bring death to the infidels and then head up to heaven for their 72 virgins.

I'm Jewish and heaven knows that I would dearly love to have peace in the middle-east but the extremists aren't interested, because of historial experiences or plain blind faith. I don't denigrate their cultural identity, nor do I stand for it when others do, but there are times when I think that removing them from society as a whole would be beneficial.

However, I'm an idealist and I believe that once certain countries, the US and my own UK are prime examples, stop sticking their noses in, in violation of basic human rights to self-govern no matter how good or bad we believe it is, then and only then can we begin the cultural healing process.

The middle-east have enjoyed their own forms of government longer than the west has and yet our governments still see them as backwards. perhaps our leaders should spend some time there, and live like they do, in order to fully appreciate them. This also works rather well in your arguments for first contacts. As you have said, the only way to know a culture is to immerse yourself within it.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Humans and human society are being studied by anthropology and sociology. Both sciences are using a vaiety of methods - the observation being the arguably most important one.

The observational method has two forms: participant observation and naturalistic observation.
During participant observation, the researcher interacts with the field and his subjects.
In the case of naturalistic observation, the researcher hides himself from contact with subjects and events in the field.
Today, both the participant observation and the naturalistic observation are widely used, although participant observationis is increasingly the main form of observational method used by social researchers.

http://books.google.ro/books?id=X2H...tion&sig=kcVJ1my33lEFENdPkxW3HcK9l0I#PPA41,M1

Experience does't breed overconfidence. On the contrary, an experienced civilization knows exactly how different alien species can be. Such a civilization knows exactly how much it can learn from observation without interaction.

And would therefore know that it can't learn the things it really needs to learn if it doesn't interact directly. Hell, any present-day anthropologist could tell you that, so a more advanced civilization would accept it as an axiom.

The notion that only participant observation can tell you the things you need to know is an oversimplification. Any present-day anthropologist knows that each method used in anthropology - and sociology - yelds useful information.

Any experienced civilization will use a synergy of such methods to learn as much as possible about an alien species. Logic and prudence dictates the use of naturalistic observation before first contact is made and before the use of participant observation.

As for dolphins: there exist two different types of sciences that are studying dolphin behaviour (and animal behaviour, in general). One discipline (ethology) studies what dolphins do in their natural environment - hunting, foraging, sexual displays, etc. The other discipline studies how animals and people learn and it's called behavior analysis (or behaviorism).

Ethologysts watch dolphins in their natural enviranment. The observers very rarely interact with the dolphins. Why? Due to the extremly limited man-dolphin communication, such methods are nearly useless.

Behaviorists teach dolphins (usually dolphins who live in captivity) how to perform a certain action, or how to solve a specific problem, by using operant conditioning (the process of changing an animal's response to a certain stimulus by manipulating the consequences that immediately follow the response). For example, you're giving the dolphin a fish if he acts as you want him to act.

http://www.clickertraining.com/node/75

Humans haven't been watching dolphins from duck blinds. There have been active efforts at mutual communication going on for decades -- not to mention millennia of mutual interaction preceding that. Dolphins have been taken from the sea and raised in captivity, for Pete's sake, so obviously they're thoroughly aware that we're observing and studying them. Most of the progress we've made in studying dolphin communication has come through direct interaction with them, interaction in which they've been active participants. We wouldn't know a fraction as much as we know about them if we'd relied solely on passive observation without their knowledge.

If you want to call the dolphin equivalent of putting a rat in a maze "active efforts at mutual communication", than yes, such efforts are underway.

I don't recommend doing this with an alien species, though. If the alien's worldview is anything like ours, peaceful relations are out of the question.

Mad dog" is a nickname: nicknames are often condescending and judgmental. Let's be politically correct and call them societies with whom a peacefull first contact is improbable.

And they do exist; you yourself admitted their existence:

Don't you dare. Don't you bloody well dare equate your insulting label "mad dog" with my comments about radical Islamism.

For the last time!"Mad dog" is a joke, a nickname! It must not be taken seriously any more than a Bush caricature!
You are exagrerating!

This first contact method is not feasible if you try to make contact with a culture that has near instantaneous global communication (something akin to Internet, to TV, to radio etc). If you try to make contact with a "small village" the news will spread like wildfire.

When did I ever specify a culture that had instant global communication? Stop imposing your own preconceptions on what I'm saying.

You did not specify anything about the contacted culture - unless you assume that alien post-global communication cultures don't have small villages.

I analyzed both variants: pre and post-global communication culture.

If you try to make contact with a species that doesn't yet have an alien Internet, once you make contact with that village, you are commited to making contact with that entire species. Information about you will reach all cultures on that world. Only slower.

Well, obviously. That's the whole idea. The goal is contact, but a contact that's gradual enough that the knowledge of your existence is eased into the society through their own initiative, filtered through their own perceptions and worldviews and social networks, rather than being something you push on them.

And if you encounter a culture that is "hardened and embittered by their historical experiences to the point that they are unwilling to trust outsiders' motives or points of view" - because you haven't done your homework?
You just move to another village? What about the first one?

And if all the cultures on that planet respond unfavorable - a possibility you acknowledged? You just leave the planet?
Those aliens will remember you - if not through history, than through mythology; if not through science, than through religion.

They might fight for religious or ideologic reasons. Or because they are afraid of the other alien civilization and want to destroy it before they are destroyed by it. Or because they are aggressive, pure and simple - this requires a particularly nasty alien species; perhaps too nasty to develop space travel.

No species is ever "aggressive, pure and simple," except in sci-fi caricatures. Aggression is one drive out of the entire range of behaviors an organism needs to function. It is always going to exist in the context of a whole psychology, one that sometimes promotes aggression and other times promotes caution or generosity. Even the fiercest predatory animals are very cautious about when they strike and quick to retreat from the first sign of danger (since a predator depends on its physical mobility and can't risk injury).

You're anthropomorphising alien civilizatins.

For example, Fred Saberhagen's berserkers. They're intelligent, spacefaring machines. An civilization by most standards. And they want to kill all life in the universe. They don't have another motivation. They don't need another motivation. They are just aggressive.

I said "I think" because your position is not entirely self-consistent

.
No, it's just complex. Your problem is that you keep trying to oversimplify every point I make, so you see contradictions where I'm merely acknowledging that the issue is multifaceted, that there has to be a balance drawn between opposing factors.

No, you are oversimplifying matters. You are oversimplifying anthropology, by claming that it has only one effective investigative method. You are anthropomorphising alien species, by assuming they will have much in common with us.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Forgive my little sideline into politics, but unfortunately I have to disagree with you on seeing the Islamist militants/extremists as irredeemable. Numerous attempts have been made by both the Islamist community and other cultures to bring them back into the mainstream fold but for the most part they're not interested. It is their mission - in their eyes - to bring death to the infidels and then head up to heaven for their 72 virgins.

I'm Jewish and heaven knows that I would dearly love to have peace in the middle-east but the extremists aren't interested, because of historial experiences or plain blind faith. I don't denigrate their cultural identity, nor do I stand for it when others do, but there are times when I think that removing them from society as a whole would be beneficial.

However, I'm an idealist and I believe that once certain countries, the US and my own UK are prime examples, stop sticking their noses in, in violation of basic human rights to self-govern no matter how good or bad we believe it is, then and only then can we begin the cultural healing process.

But...I agree with you on this issue, too. However, the healing process will not be easy, and it will take time.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Forgive my little sideline into politics, but unfortunately I have to disagree with you on seeing the Islamist militants/extremists as irredeemable. Numerous attempts have been made by both the Islamist community and other cultures to bring them back into the mainstream fold but for the most part they're not interested. It is their mission - in their eyes - to bring death to the infidels and then head up to heaven for their 72 virgins.

I'm Jewish and heaven knows that I would dearly love to have peace in the middle-east but the extremists aren't interested, because of historial experiences or plain blind faith. I don't denigrate their cultural identity, nor do I stand for it when others do, but there are times when I think that removing them from society as a whole would be beneficial.

However, I'm an idealist and I believe that once certain countries, the US and my own UK are prime examples, stop sticking their noses in, in violation of basic human rights to self-govern no matter how good or bad we believe it is, then and only then can we begin the cultural healing process.

But...I agree with you on this issue, too. However, the healing process will not be easy, and it will take time.

Of course it will take time, all things worth doing take time. The only way humanity will ever achieve true unification is if we are able to create some kind of charter and get everyone to sign up and actively enforce its breaches. I believe that the most important is a 21st century equivalent of the Prime Directive. Do not interfere in the policies and politics of other cultures but by all means trade with and learn about them. Democracy is not the only form of workable government and we should not try to enforce our ideals onto those other forms of government.

 

[Geoff Thorne]

Forgive my little sideline into politics, but unfortunately I have to disagree with you on seeing the Islamist militants/extremists as irredeemable. Numerous attempts have been made by both the Islamist community and other cultures to bring them back into the mainstream fold but for the most part they're not interested. It is their mission - in their eyes - to bring death to the infidels and then head up to heaven for their 72 virgins.

I'm Jewish and heaven knows that I would dearly love to have peace in the middle-east but the extremists aren't interested, because of historial experiences or plain blind faith. I don't denigrate their cultural identity, nor do I stand for it when others do, but there are times when I think that removing them from society as a whole would be beneficial.

However, I'm an idealist and I believe that once certain countries, the US and my own UK are prime examples, stop sticking their noses in, in violation of basic human rights to self-govern no matter how good or bad we believe it is, then and only then can we begin the cultural healing process.

But...I agree with you on this issue, too. However, the healing process will not be easy, and it will take time.

Of course it will take time, all things worth doing take time. The only way humanity will ever achieve true unification is if we are able to create some kind of charter and get everyone to sign up and actively enforce its breaches. I believe that the most important is a 21st century equivalent of the Prime Directive. Do not interfere in the policies and politics of other cultures but by all means trade with and learn about them. Democracy is not the only form of workable government and we should not try to enforce our ideals onto those other forms of government.

I think that's a laudable goal but how do you propose we deal with states where segments of the population are treated brutally based upon gender, ethnicity or "race?" Should we trade with them? Should we allow them to sign the charter?

Should the rule be "as long as you don't try to expand, anything you do inside our own borders is fine?"

Because I'm not really fine with that.

 

[BrotherBenny]

But...I agree with you on this issue, too. However, the healing process will not be easy, and it will take time.

Of course it will take time, all things worth doing take time. The only way humanity will ever achieve true unification is if we are able to create some kind of charter and get everyone to sign up and actively enforce its breaches. I believe that the most important is a 21st century equivalent of the Prime Directive. Do not interfere in the policies and politics of other cultures but by all means trade with and learn about them. Democracy is not the only form of workable government and we should not try to enforce our ideals onto those other forms of government.

I think that's a laudable goal but how do you propose we deal with states where segments of the population are treated brutally based upon gender, ethnicity or "race?" Should we trade with them? Should we allow them to sign the charter?

Should the rule be "as long as you don't try to expand, anything you do inside our own borders is fine?"

Because I'm not really fine with that.

RedJack, part of this proposed charter would include human rights and you're right, certain countries have atrocious human rights records, but if these countries agree to sign up to the charter, then they are agreeing to abide by its stipulations. If they don't sign up, then they don't. I don't like the idea of discrimination any more than you do, but we should not impose our ideology on others and that is exactly what we would be doing if we told them not to do this or that.

For example, and I intend no disrespect to Islam, I don't believe stoning a woman to death for adultery is a good thing. My personal opinion is that it is barbaric, but it is their law. We would be violating the charter if we tried to stop them doing it. If a woman asks for asylum because of it, then we make a decision on whether to grant it or not based on our ideologies, since the woman specifically asked for help from us because she believes in those same ideologies.

Whether we like it or not, we cannot interfere in a culture's own laws because we would be the first to complain if someone did it to us. As for trading with countries/states that don't sign up, that would be our choice but the likelihood is that we would need something from them, just as they would from us. Although if we could get such items from a country that is signed up, then we'd probably go to them. This is exactly the problem that Nan Bacco had with the Aligar trade in Articles.... Interference is wrong, unless it is asked for by the ruling government, because then it becomes help.

 

[Geoff Thorne]

Of course it will take time, all things worth doing take time. The only way humanity will ever achieve true unification is if we are able to create some kind of charter and get everyone to sign up and actively enforce its breaches. I believe that the most important is a 21st century equivalent of the Prime Directive. Do not interfere in the policies and politics of other cultures but by all means trade with and learn about them. Democracy is not the only form of workable government and we should not try to enforce our ideals onto those other forms of government.

I think that's a laudable goal but how do you propose we deal with states where segments of the population are treated brutally based upon gender, ethnicity or "race?" Should we trade with them? Should we allow them to sign the charter?

Should the rule be "as long as you don't try to expand, anything you do inside our own borders is fine?"

Because I'm not really fine with that.

RedJack, part of this proposed charter would include human rights and you're right, certain countries have atrocious human rights records, but if these countries agree to sign up to the charter, then they are agreeing to abide by its stipulations. If they don't sign up, then they don't. I don't like the idea of discrimination any more than you do, but we should not impose our ideology on others and that is exactly what we would be doing if we told them not to do this or that.

For example, and I intend no disrespect to Islam, I don't believe stoning a woman to death for adultery is a good thing. My personal opinion is that it is barbaric, but it is their law. We would be violating the charter if we tried to stop them doing it. If a woman asks for asylum because of it, then we make a decision on whether to grant it or not based on our ideologies, since the woman specifically asked for help from us because she believes in those same ideologies.

Whether we like it or not, we cannot interfere in a culture's own laws because we would be the first to complain if someone did it to us. As for trading with countries/states that don't sign up, that would be our choice but the likelihood is that we would need something from them, just as they would from us. Although if we could get such items from a country that is signed up, then we'd probably go to them. This is exactly the problem that Nan Bacco had with the Aligar trade in Articles.... Interference is wrong, unless it is asked for by the ruling government, because then it becomes help.

Hm.

I disagree for a couple of reasons. One is that the Star Trek universe is necessarily less complex than the real world.

the other is that there are ideologies that are incompatible. Say Hitler had taken over Germany but not had any expansionist agenda? Everything was the same except he wasn't trying to conquer other nations. Should the rest of the world stand by when a dictator, elected in this case, begins to systematically exterminate those members of the society deemed "undesirable?" It's just how their country works, right? And the govenrment hasn't asked for help. So no one should interfere.

I don't think all ideologies are equal or are worthy of equal respect. If, as in your example, women living in what I consider to be horrible and repressive conditions under fundamentalist governments (religious or otherwise) aren't free to leave those nations when they disagree, then, again, the non-interference policy breaks down. The very nature of some cultures is so lethal when it coms to dissent that simply being "respectful" of them is the same as agreement.

Maybe military intervention isn't the first option but neither is a live-and-let-live policy. I like to think a decent nation state, witnessing horrible human suffering in another nation would end that suffering by any means necessary. Whether that suffering was due to Nature or bastardy "leaders."

The Prime Directive isn't about ideology in any case. It's about a healthy respect for evolution and the Law of Unintended Consequences. While it is natural for terrestrial civilizations to bump up against each other, willy nilly, the case for spacefaring civilizations doing so is less clear.

In fact, it's entirely a matter of choice in the Trek-verse, so introducing the Federation to a culture that isn't ready could have dire consequences regardless of how benign the initial contact might seem.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Hm.

I disagree for a couple of reasons. One is that the Star Trek universe is necessarily less complex than the rea world.

the other is that there are ideologies that are incompatible. Say Hitler had taken over Germany but not had any expansionist agenda? Everything was the same except he wasn't trying to conquer other nations. Should the rest of the world stand by when a dictator, elected in this case, begins to systematically exterminate those memebrs of the society deemed "undesirable?" It's just how their country works, right? And the govenrment hasn't asked for help. So no one should interfere.

It might be undesirable for us to see, but we can't interfere. I would hate to be in that position, watching so-called "undesirables" eliminated like animals, but you can't pick and choose non-interference. At what point would we interdict Hitler's regime? We would not! Could we remove him from power in an external coup d'etat? No! What we might do is foment rebellion from within or use a third party to assist the resistance, but much as we would hate it, we couldn't do anything overtly except maybe trade embargoes and cutting them off from the rest of the world until they have no choice but to change, but it's far more likely that someone would do something before then. Besides, that is a rather extreme example.

I don't think all ideologies are equal or are worthy of equal respect. If, as in your example, women living in what I consider to be horrible and repressive conditions under fundamentalist governments (religious or otherwise) aren't free to leave those nations when they disagree, then, again, the non-interference policy breaks down. The very nature of some cultures is so lethal when it coms to dissent that simply being "respectful" of them is the same as agreement.

I did not say we had to respect those cultures, but we can at least try to understand them. Islam in particular follow a legal tradition that is, by my understanding, almost entirely based on their religious beliefs. The Israeli legal system is similar in that regard, but recently the focus has been more on evolving the legal system to follow more Western lines. Our own judiciaries arose out religious beliefs as a base but rather quickly evolved into something else, possibly because the UK was conquered so many times and adopted legal systems from each conqueror. And the US, as an offshoot culture from the UK, now with its own identity, followed that legal system and modified it for its own use. The Islamic system seems not to have evolved because it hasn't needed to. Perhaps in the future it might.

Maybe military intervention isn't the first option but neither is a live-and-let-live policy. I like to think a decent nation state, witnessing horrible human suffering in another nation would end that suffering by any means necessary. Whether that suffering was due to Nature or bastardy "leaders."

I would agree in part, but what is the point of having a non-interference policy if you are going to abandon when you see a nation doing something undesirable to people within it? Would you have a Prime Directive, in that you don't interfere with democratic cultures, but you do it others?

The Prime Directive isn't about ideology in any case. It's about a healthy respect for evolution and the Law of Unintended Consequences. While it is natural for terrestrial civilizations to bump up against each other, willy nilly, the case for spacefaring civilizations doing so is less clear.

I can accept that, but I favour the more strict TNG-era interpretations of the PD since it would probably have come into force after the numerous incidents in which it was broken by Starfleet captains of the TOS-era. There will always be loopholes and it is those back doors which allow interference in a non-interference policy. I submit to you that lawyers/law-makers always include them for that reason.

In fact, it's entirely a matter of choice in the Trek-verse, so introducing the Federation to a culture that isn't ready could have dire consequences regardless of how benign the initial contact might seem.

I don't think that it's a matter of choice, but at times it has been somewhat bent to allow Our Heroes(TM) to work through the plot. All contacts are different but the two branches of the PD should never be mixed. One branch follows Leave prewarp civilisations alone (but duckblinds are ok? I disagree with that) and the second follows do not interfere with the internal politics of another spacefaring power. Which part are we really discussing here? since in SoD the aliens do actually have spacefaring technology, primitive though it may be. But you introduced time travel, so that shakes it up a little.

 

[Sci]

Of course it will take time, all things worth doing take time. The only way humanity will ever achieve true unification is if we are able to create some kind of charter and get everyone to sign up and actively enforce its breaches. I believe that the most important is a 21st century equivalent of the Prime Directive. Do not interfere in the policies and politics of other cultures but by all means trade with and learn about them. Democracy is not the only form of workable government and we should not try to enforce our ideals onto those other forms of government.

I think that's a laudable goal but how do you propose we deal with states where segments of the population are treated brutally based upon gender, ethnicity or "race?" Should we trade with them? Should we allow them to sign the charter?

Should the rule be "as long as you don't try to expand, anything you do inside our own borders is fine?"

Because I'm not really fine with that.

RedJack, part of this proposed charter would include human rights and you're right, certain countries have atrocious human rights records, but if these countries agree to sign up to the charter, then they are agreeing to abide by its stipulations. If they don't sign up, then they don't. I don't like the idea of discrimination any more than you do, but we should not impose our ideology on others and that is exactly what we would be doing if we told them not to do this or that.

For example, and I intend no disrespect to Islam, I don't believe stoning a woman to death for adultery is a good thing. My personal opinion is that it is barbaric, but it is their law. We would be violating the charter if we tried to stop them doing it. If a woman asks for asylum because of it, then we make a decision on whether to grant it or not based on our ideologies, since the woman specifically asked for help from us because she believes in those same ideologies.

Whether we like it or not, we cannot interfere in a culture's own laws because we would be the first to complain if someone did it to us. As for trading with countries/states that don't sign up, that would be our choice but the likelihood is that we would need something from them, just as they would from us. Although if we could get such items from a country that is signed up, then we'd probably go to them. This is exactly the problem that Nan Bacco had with the Aligar trade in Articles.... Interference is wrong, unless it is asked for by the ruling government, because then it becomes help.

So... if the Greater German Empire had not been engaging in expansionist warfare but had still been engaging in a deliberate, systematic attempt to kill every single Jew within its borders -- it would have been wrong to interfere with their internal affairs?

Really?

Humanity won't achieve genuine political unification until the fundamental political cultures of its various societies adopt the same cultural values of peace, respect for human rights, civil libertarianism, and constitutional liberal democracy. And that takes more than signing an international human rights charter.

ETA:

After coming back and re-reading it, I see that my same objections have already been raised. But I want to point something out to you, Xeris: The international order -- such as it is -- is already built around a charter to defend human rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter, and it already has a "Prime Directive" you're talking about: National sovereignty. We already have a system in place whereby states are not supposed to interfere with one-another's internal affairs. (Acts of preemptive war like the US invasion of Iraq are major breeches of international law because of that.) But the problem is, that system doesn't really work, either. All it does is enable dictators and tyrants; it grants enormous power to multi-national corporations who are able to trade with and in states that engage in horrific human rights violations, it makes it incredibly difficult to pursuade or force human rights abusers to stop (they claim national sovereignty), it creates huge refugee problems for neighboring states. On the other hand, as the US's little adventure in Baghdad has proven, morally-motivated neo-imperialism -- invading another country to install a liberal democratic government in the hope of creating a state that will respect human rights -- often doesn't work, either.

Neither principle -- absolute national soveriegnty (noninterference) nor absolute moral neo-imperialism -- addresses the needs of the international situation, and both actually have the effect of placing enormous burdens upon other states in the form of refugees, economic problems resulting from disruptions in trade, etc. No one ideological principle is particularly workable.

 

[Trent Roman]

To say nothing, of course, of the fact that news stories in just these last few weeks, such as the FARC's straddling of Colombia and Ecuador, Turkish operations against Kurdish seperatists in northern Iraq, ongoing violence in the tribal regions overlapping Afghanistan and Pakistan, or the partially recognized, partially condemned independance of Kosovo, remind us that any system dependant on the nation-state as the nuclear unit of organization fails to recognize that these are all artificial entities, and in some areas of the world little more than lines drawn on a map by colonial authorities, with no basis in the reality on the ground. As long as people feel their allegiance belongs to pre-existing definitions of society rather than contemporary structures, like Kurdistan or Baluchistan or the tribal divides in Kenya that came to the fore recently, there will be what State Department people like to call 'non-state actors' who hold equal if not greater power than the actual state in terms of governance over large swathes of territory. National borders, in such situation, are viewed as illegimate, foreign impositions, to be disregarded if not actively dismantled. And politics doesn't even have to factor in: natural disasters or long-term climatic change on its own can trigger massive population migrations across country lines. Really, even setting aside the ethical issues of non-intervention, I'm not sure that 'internal affairs' are a viable political concept in much of the world. What happens in one place will affect another, whether the respective governments want it or not.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[BrotherBenny]

So, Trent, are you saying that there's no hope for a truly united Earth?

As an academic exercise, to all who post, what could we do to remove tyrants, dictators, and corrupt democracies from world states without overtly violating the UN Charter or the Human Rights Charter?

 

[Trent Roman]

^ If I thought I had a good answer for that question, I'd been standing outside the United Nations building, trying to speak to and hand out my proposals to any diplomat I could snag. There are no easy, simple answers in a complex and thoroughly interrelated world.

As for a 'truly united Earth'... unfortunately, I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell of that occuring anytime soon. Whenever there is a dearth of resources, people will fall back on whatever patterns of grouping they can in order to deny the other person access to assure their own survival. This can be anything from the inter-ethnic violence in defavoured Third World areas over land use to anti-immigrant hysteria in First World areas over job access whenever their economies struggle. And a post-scarcity economy is only a pre-requisite for a truly united humanity (IMHO, of course), not a guarantee, because even in times of plenty we find ideological divisions to invest in and clash over. So, no, I personally have no hope.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Triskelion]

What if...

The title "Emissary" were called "The Sisko", and that position actually referenced Captain Benjamin Sisko in that role based upon, say, certain extratemporal knowledge of the Prophets inserted into Bajor's temporal universe and called "prophecy"? Who is the Federation to believe themselves aloof of that "quaint little cultural belief"? In my view the Fed comes off a bit pretentious in that regard.

But then, assuming one's culture is objective while all other cultures are to be studied in their natural state, is frankly a pretension, which also denies its own cultural values and their historical costs--and biases.

Today I went to a restaurant. I'm a caucasian US American but I ordered in stilted Chinese. The Chinese server confirmed my order in stilted English. It's a funny picture, and I'm not convinced it's a necessary charade.

 

[BrotherBenny]

As stated before, I'm an idealist, and I like to believe that one day lines drawn on maps will be meaningless and that everyone will be treated equally.

I'm also fully aware that the odds of this happening are negligible to say the least. IMHO, the biggest threat a united planetary government today is the fundamentalists of all stripes. The only way for us to really combat them is not through retaliation, but through diplomacy.

We must convince world leaders to stop interfering in a wholesale way but to make baby steps instead. You put children of all cultural backgrounds (of about 3-5 yrs old) in a room and they will play together. It is only the parents who pick their children up that say "you can't play with him, he's x" or "He doesn't think like we do." To effectively remove this particular ideological barrier, we have to simply accept that just because we don't all think alike, it doesn't mean we are any different.

I have enjoyed my friend's Palestinian hospitality - and he knows I'm Jewish. We are good friends because we understand the rituals of our respective cultures. Yes, we disagree on ideological terms, but we haven't tried to kill each other because of it.