Talk:Potential cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact

"However, as the nature of extraterrestrial civilizations is unknown"
This should really say "However, as the nature (OR EVEN EXISTENCE OF) of extraterrestrial civilizations is unknown", shouldn't it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ultan42 (talk • contribs) 23:49, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
 * It says exactly that in the last sentence of the last paragraph of the lead section. Please read it. Viriditas (talk) 02:37, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Would ET Pray?
There has been a recent spate of articles on whether or not extraterrestrial life would be religious. I have the feeling that most of those articles are based off of the sources in this article or perhaps even the article itself, since our exotheology section long predates those articles. We should not add anything to that section based on the new articles unless it is verifiably from a new and original source, since we do not want to engage in citogenesis. Wer902 (talk) 23:34, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Removed "Retributive" section
I removed this text on a supposed "Retributive" response. It is original research and not neutrally worded: While the impact of contact is conventionally treated largely, as here, in the speculative realms of theoretical academia, one neglected psychological and cultural dimension would be that the inescapable effects of coexistence would likely include the vindication of those who have for years claimed contact has gone on for decades if not millennia and have been deliberately marginalized if not (depending on the effects in historiography) violently silenced, a conviction shared at times by a majority of the US domestic population. In the realm of ufology the claim has been made for years that the clock was not set at zero, and that related information, including black budget technologies such as might have averted many decades of severe environmental degradation have been suppressed by existing corporate, intelligence, and political power structures. Revelations of this order of magnitude, putatively thus vindicating scholars and political activists historically ridiculed and abused over many decades as mere conspiracy theorists would also tend—in manner possibly akin to radical political destabilizations or reversals—to lead to forms of corrective justice, as well as associated conventional human psychological behaviors such as evasion and minimization. Such processes would necessarily entail at very minimum truth and reconciliation commissions and almost certainly extensive criminal convictions as part of the social upheaval and political re-equilibrization.

A section like this might be feasible, but it needs to be properly based in reliable sources and not framed as so pro-Ufologist. Fences &amp;  Windows  13:10, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Minimal intervention hypothesis (MIH)
Hi, it occurs to me that if aliens did decide to contact us they might well decide that approaching those only in the scientific community already working on subjects of interest may in fact not violate the non-interference directive

This may have happened already and account for some of the anomalies such as people coming up with the same idea at multiple locations simultaneously aka convergent cognition. In this case what may happen is that information is installed in the subconscious mind via REM sleep and a good example would be the discovery of Benzene aka "snake eating its own tail" or the discovery of the DNA double helix, HTSCs, transistor, OLED etc via incremental improvements.

This might ironically prove that the cause of many abductees similar experiences is due to a common data set, only those susceptible to this sort of effect seem to remember whereas most people either ignore it or filter it out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.3.100.0 (talk) 02:29, 5 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Firstly, please sign any contribution you may make. Your view is not backed-up by any reliable, secondary, source(s) and appears to be a WP:FRINGE view and WP:OR. David J Johnson (talk) 11:26, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
 * This may belong under UFO conspiracy theories if it can be considered a notable view in the subculture and can be supported with citations. — Paleo  Neonate  – 01:22, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

AI image
The current image (since 24/12/2023) is AI-generated and contains some illogical features (e.g. the alien wearing a UK badge) as well as a few graphical imperfections (like the text). I've added "(AI-generated image)" to avoid potential confusion about this, but it might be better to replace the image. C. Scheler (talk) 16:20, 3 January 2024 (UTC)


 * The alien is a very obvious alien, I wouldn't think the badge is much of an issue. Cambalachero (talk) 17:52, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but I think the image is comically silly. Surely, someone can engineer some better prompts that doesn't make people laugh at the topic? Viriditas (talk) 20:20, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I removed it. This was astonishingly bad.  Please do not add it back. Viriditas (talk) 20:29, 3 January 2024 (UTC)