Technosignatures: The Search For Alien Technologies - 2
Observer Bias & Cosmic Gorilla Effect
“The first person you should be careful not to fool is yourself. Because you are the easiest person to fool.”
― Richard Feynman, theoretical physicist
The search for life beyond earth, or alien intelligence, necessitates an intricate understanding of human thinking. Behind every radio telescope, computer terminal, and direct observation is a human mind. We can only know the alien other through ourselves, filtered through the desires, feelings, biases and computations that compose our minds.
Engraved in stone at the entrance to the ancient Greek temple of Apollo was the command, “know thyself”. To better understand the weight placed on these two words, consider the more extended panel writing in the chamber of the wise women known as sibyls:
“I warn you, whoever you are, Oh! You who want to probe the “Arcana of Nature”, that if you do not find “within yourself” that which you are looking for, you shall not find it outside either! If you ignore the excellences of your own house, how do you pretend to find other excellences? Within you is hidden the treasure of treasures! “Know Thyself”, and you will know the Universe and the Gods.”
Any who wishes to seek out and know alien minds would do well to heed the cryptic wisdom of the ancient sybilline mystics. We take into this endeavour all that we are, our neurology, emotions and all of our psychological baggage, for good or ill. The history of scientific research is littered with blinkered fools, primarily men, who were unable or unwilling to recognise absurdities in the ideas they clung to and championed. People commonly see the world as a reflection of their internal constructions projected outwards and imposed upon the fabric of reality. The version of the world we perceive is modified by our own potentially warped or limited thinking. While none are so blind as those who do not wish to see, perceptual problems are more widespread.
Some of you may be familiar with the psychological experiment in which viewers are asked to count the passes in a video showing a group of people passing a basketball. At one stage during the video, a man wearing a gorilla suit walks through the scene. The participants in the experiment tend to do perfectly well at the instructed task, counting the passes. Still, many fail to notice the man in the gorilla suit walking across the middle of the screen. As ludicrous as this sounds, this ‘gorilla effect’ really occurs.
Cognitive and perceptual blind spots could have severe implications for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. As part of a study by neuropsychologists Gabriel de la Torre and Manuel García from the University of Cádiz, a potential cosmic gorilla effect was investigated. The scientists conducted an experiment involving 137 people asked to distinguish between aerial photographs with artificial structures and natural elements. A gorilla was included in one of the images, and around half of the subjects failed to notice this highly irregular inclusion. While it is fascinating to see how our psychology and neural processes can limit perceptions, the experiment also revealed something just as important, if not more so.
“In addition, our surprise was greater. Since before doing the test to see the inattentional blindness, we assessed the participants with a series of questions to determine their cognitive style. Whether they were more intuitive or rational. And it turned out that the intuitive individuals identified the gorilla in our photo more often than those more rational and methodical subjects,” said De la Torre.
This finding is concerning because scientists have more rational cognitive profiles and are trained to use more methodical thinking than laypeople. Could this finding have implications for the scientific effort to identify alien technosignatures? Might evidence of non-human intelligence be straight in front of a researcher’s face and yet be missed?
It is well known that people often experience pareidolia, falsely seeing order in random patterns. De la Torre suspects that there may be a kind of reverse-pareidolia negatively impacting the search for alien life. “We can have the signal in front of us and not perceive it or be unable to identify it. If this happened, it would be an example of the cosmic gorilla effect. In fact, it could have happened in the past, or it could be happening right now”, explains De la Torre.
The University of Cádiz team also had additional concerns about the widespread focus on detecting cosmic civilisations through radio astronomy. They focussed their consideration on two types of extraterrestrial civilisation described in the Kardavez scale. A type 2 civilisation is characterised by the longevity of its members, who would be in control of quantum and gravitational energy, managing space-time and exploring other galaxies. A type 3 civilisation would comprise exotic immortal beings capable of creating at the level of multidimensional phenomena. Entities holding dominion over dark energy and matter.
The psychologists suggest that astronomers are overly focused on detecting intelligent extraterrestrials through non-earthly radio signals. Such a preoccupation with radio SETI might cause scientists to miss signs of intelligence manifesting through mediums that typically evade our perception. For example, an alien intelligence might show itself through quantum phenomena, higher dimensional physics or even dark energy. Furthermore, any civilisations beyond our technology level won’t utilise radio signals. Might these god-like beings hack the quantum processes of human brains and present themselves directly? Could they modify our reality in some observable way without leaving their home star systems?
The director of the Columbia Astrobiology Center, Caleb Scharf, has also speculated that sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial life might be confused with the laws of physics. What we think of as the effects of mysterious forces such as dark energy and dark matter could be the influence of alien intelligence or possibly even the aliens themselves.
A growing number of scientists in the SETI field have expressed concerns over this potential for signatures of alien life or their technologies to go unrecognised. For example, the associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, Jason T. Wright, wonders whether alien technology on the surface of a solar system planet might go overlooked. In one interview, Wright offered his concerns about the question, “how long would something last on the surface before we would not recognise it as technological?”
Professor Paul Davies is both an astrophysicist at Arizona State University and the long-time SETI post-detection task force director. Davies has often been indicated as the first scientist to call if aliens were discovered, having spent much of his career tackling the topic. Davies vocally supports looking close to home, perhaps the lunar surface, but shares the concerns over technosignature recognition. “I am a fan of searching nearby because we are doing that anyway for other reasons. However, there is a risk that we might not even recognise alien life or technology if we encountered it,” offers Davies.
Many of the most respected SETI scientists share concerns over the human ability to recognise alien life, markers of intelligence or signatures of exotic technologies. So we must ask this question, could we already have overlooked evidence of alien visitation?
My answer to the above question is that not only could scientists miss alien technosignatures, but they have almost certainly already done so. It does not require any conspiracy or stupidity on their part; it can simply be the result of fundamental human failings. A product of biases within the scientific paradigm and limitations in the brains of researchers. We will be exploring the small number of cases where this failure appears to have happened, including the findings of my two SETI projects.
Have we already detected alien intelligence?
That will be for you to decide.
Be mindful of your biases and assumptions, emotional desires or cognitive blindspots as you cross the boundary of the current paradigm.