Encoding Altruism

Altruism in the Universe?

Altruism amongst the intelligent creatures of other worlds in space is the focus of this month's issue of Science and Spirit.

Should altruism be expected, perhaps be ubiquitous, even universal? There seems to be an easy answer to this question - yes. As noted by many writers, altruism can be expected in intelligent creatures simply as a Darwinian imperative. Communities of mutually supportive individuals, practicing altruism, will possess greater potential for survival than the same individuals acting alone. Even greater survivability accrues when individuals have the will to endanger their own well being for the good of the community. Unfortunately, this fact of biological selection enables warfare as a modus vivendi for civilizations. Lone hermits, even in huge numbers, never defeated a Roman legion.

When it comes to discovering the radio or optical transmissions of other civilizations, or even spacecraft from other worlds, the answer is even clearer. The technology required to produce signals or spacecraft which can traverse interstellar distances requires highly developed altruistic societies. We must always keep in mind that even our most optimistic estimates of the numbers of technological civilizations in our galaxy, the Milky Way, suggest that the nearest civilizations are perhaps a thousand light years away. The formidable technology needed to communicate or travel over such distances can only be constructed by a highly organized civilization with much technological infrastructure. "Highly organized" requires altruism, because just the word "organized" implies that creatures are setting aside their own desires in order to support the society as a whole.

We should keep this in mind when we do discover other civilizations and almost surely discover that they are altruistic. We should not be surprised --these are the only ones we can find! If there are non-altruistic societies in space, they will be silent, very unlikely to produce a detectable sign of their existence.

Indeed, the additional argument was made by Carl Sagan that only altruistic societies would survive long enough to produce a detectable signal. He argued that it is realistic to believe that societies will nearly simultaneously in time arrive at the technologies for interstellar contact and nuclear and other technologies which can destroy the civilization. He then argued that most would quickly fall victim to such technological threats unless they were strongly altruistic. Only the "noble" civilizations will survive to be found.

We can expect all of our partners in space to be altruistic. But to what degree? This is where the enterprise becomes interesting. Simple altruism, in the sense of embracing war and warriors, will be certain. But what of love? What of allegiance to a belief in a higher, supernatural being? Belief in a moral code? Are these a curiosity of our civilization, or are they so powerful that we can expect them to be common?

My guess is that this higher level of altruism will be prevalent - you can read more about this in the other articles in this issue. There are two reasons for my guess. One is simply a hunch that higher altruism inspires and motivates creatures to design and construct ever greater machines for the benefit of their loved ones, and concomitantly they produce the technology necessary for SETI to succeed.

The second really derives from the first, in a way. The historical paradigm of SETI has been that our civilization will continue to build ever more powerful radio transmitters to enrich our culture with information, to protect us, and perhaps even to communicate with hypothetical space colonies. In SETI we would succeed in our search by eavesdropping on these civilizations. But what is happening, and almost instantly on the cosmic time scale? We have learned of ways to accomplish these goals far better at much less cost, and without wastefully throwing energy into space: television delivered from orbiting satellites, releasing into space perhaps a million times less energy than our traditional TV stations. Optical fiber networks releasing no energy at all. This is all good, except for SETI. Not long from now, perhaps in less than a hundred years, Earth will be very hard to find. Civilizations will know that such technologies leave the newcomers, like us, in the dark. But if they are altruistic, they may well decide to expend resources in transmissions for the benefit of other civilizations, fully realizing that they may receive no benefit at all. And even should there be a reply, it would not come for thousands of years. Thus there is a good case that any signal we will discover will not just reveal the existence of an altruistic civilization, but will be a direct product of altruism.

One final thought. Altruism may appear in forms which surprise and even disappoint us. A good example is the "altruistic" future society of Earth depicted in the classic science fiction movie "Logan's Run". Here there was a civilization that required all people over the age of 35 to be killed so that there would be lebensraum for more people. It raises a philosophical dilemma - is it more moral to grant more living time to a few creatures, or less time to each of many creatures, on a planet where resources can only support a certain population? There is no obvious or easy answer to this increasingly pertinent question. Most humans found the policies of the movie repugnant, but are they? We should have open minds. One world's altruism may be another world's barbarism.

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