Eliciting Altruism While Avoiding Xenophobia: A Thought Experiment

Abstract

How do we convey our own altruism to extraterrestrials and how do we trigger altruism from them while avoiding their possible ethnocentrism or even xenophobia? The answer depends on the evolutionary processes that produced a species with which we can communicate. Only a social, internally cooperative, culture-bearing species is likely to have the necessary high technology. Many species use tools but this does not guarantee them a capacity for advanced technology without an evolutionary amplification process. The three candidate processes are: (1) self-predation; (2) co-predation, that is, rivalry with one or more other tool-using species; and (3) sexual selection. Self-predation, in which competing bands cull one another of the dull and uncooperative, likely featured in our own evolutionary history. It leads to a species capable of altruism, alliance, and ethnocentrism and which is likely to share our ideas of social exchange and fairness. Co-predation, in which competing species engage in comparable culling of one another, could lead to a tendency towards xenophobia. These extraterrestrials may be scanning for enemies rather than looking for friends. In sexual selection, males and females mate preferentially with the most intelligent, cooperative, and successful. In such sexually selected species, art functions as a display of superior health and genes in a potential mate. Species with a history of sexual selection are likely to produce art and to recognize and respect our own. The practical implication of this analysis is that, though the risk is no doubt very low, it could be unwise to communicate information that would demonstrate to xenophobes that we are an alien species. Instead, we could communicate our art and music, along with scientific knowledge, because doing so is safe, conveys similarity, and is likely to elicit an altruistic response from any species whose intelligence was produced by either self-predation or by sexual selection.