A practical consideration

[GlennM]

We are consciously aware carbon based organisms. So are cats and octopi. Without the chemistry of carbon as a foundation for the anatomy, terrestrial consciousnes would not exist. Consciousness is a process dependant on a physical substrate. Consciousness does not exist in a vaccuum. Put differently, "Mind is what brain does". Brains are built on a foundation of carbon and of course water.

UFO aficionados make an assumption that LGM must also be carbon based beings. This way, their conscious processes could conceivably align with our own. The result of this similar chemistry is ultimately mutually understandable communication. Challenges abound. Do you know of anyone who converses in Dolphin?  Is organic chemistry the only consciousness matrix possibility?

Imagine that consciousness could evolve from a different chemical matrix, perhaps silicone and vinegar. No longer dumb as a rock 🤪.  Would such beings be capable of perceiving and communicating with carbon based life?  Would they even be aware of us, or we them? Would their science only probe their heavens for silicone based life forms which hopefully are capable of consciousness? Would they only want us for our sand? Right now, the general consensus is that alien life must be structured around water. Our planetary explorations prioritize water as a prerequisite of life. We can not define life, only describe it.  We  live in the Goldilocks zone from the Sun where liquid water abounds. Must an alien arise from a wet world and be carbon based to achieve consciousness? Is that a bit of human conceit? There are other possibilities.

One regular poster on the forum has criticized current science for not recognizing the possibility that LGM have a physics which allows them to explore in a way that we can not. That differences would perhaps also extend to anatomy and physiology. I wonder whether these different beings would be consciously aware of carbon based life in the first place and if so have any desire to communicate with it. The effort may not be worth the reward. The earthly hopefuls believe that if Little Green Men are so adept, English language translators should be in all their helmets.They should offer to sell us some LGM translators so we can speak Gleek or whatever they speak. Do these others wonder what mutilated beef taste like?

We have actually wrestled with this conscious communication problem. There is a mutilated beef free golden record attached to the Voyager space craft. The assumptions are that a conscious entity could retrieve and figuratively digest the messages. We've sent nothing encoded any other way because, besides expense and space requirements, we think our best shot at conscious extra terrestrial communication is with those who are constructed as we are.  We could be the carbon based exception, not the rule.

How could any alien in good conscience hurt the DP9?

[sarapuk]

What exactly is the practical consideration? Assuming that there are alien life forms or forms of some kind, how can we say what those aliens are up to?

[Ramsay]

Colleagues, I propose we approach hypothetical contact not through the lens of 'little green men,' but through two opposing trends—biological convergence on one hand, and technological divergence on the other, driven by the level of mastery over physical laws.
First, regarding the developmental gap. A civilization that has mastered interstellar travel is separated from us by a distance comparable to the chasm between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis—except that in our case, the gap is not primarily biological, but cognitive and technological. To them, we are not dialogue partners, but rather curious objects of observation, whose scientific worldview is fragmented and anthropocentric. Their physics would seem like magic to us; their logic, non-linear. Our understanding of causality would be to them what the four-element theory is to modern physics—quaint and utterly inadequate.
Second, regarding convergence and divergence. Here we must strictly distinguish between two levels: external morphology (phenotype, visible form) and internal operational content (working principles, energy and information architectures).
External morphology (form) will converge. This applies primarily to biological species. If intelligent life emerges under conditions similar to Earth's (gravity, atmosphere, liquid water), we are highly likely to observe signs of parallel evolution—bilateral symmetry, manipulative appendages, sensory organs concentrated at the front of the body. Their biological bodies will obey the same laws of hydrodynamics and biomechanics as ours. This is *convergence at the phenotypic level.
Internal operational content (principles), however, will diverge. This is precisely where the mastery of fundamental laws makes all the difference. If our technology still relies on chemical combustion, electromagnetic induction, and silicon-based logic, then a civilization capable of interstellar travel almost certainly operates on fundamentally different energy scales—for example, controlled vacuum phase transitions, gravitational field manipulation, or quantum entanglement as the basis of information transfer. Their "engine" would not work on the expansion of gases, but on the reweaving of spacetime itself. Their "computer" would not run on transistors, but on topological states of matter.*
So their spacecraft might look familiar (streamlined, radiation-shielded, compartmentalized), but it would be built in a way that we simply could not understand—what to measure, or even where to look. We would recognize the shape, but miss the function entirely. Like a Neanderthal looking at a smartphone: he would see a shiny flat stone, but would never grasp what it actually does.
In short: outwardly—convergence; inwardly—singular divergence. The form will deceive us; the content will remain forever beyond the horizon of our paradigms.