Transformers and Philosophy

by Shook, John, Swan, Liz

  However, unless it’s really easy for intelligent life to spring up in lots of kinds of stellar systems, there probably isn’t a slightly more advanced civilization nearby right now. In fact, we might not currently have any advanced civilizations in our local neighborhood. Even if the Milky Way galaxy has been spawning an advanced civilization capable of galactic travel at the fast rate of once every million years for the last billion years, you’re only talking about one thousand civilizations that have had an opportunity to stumble across Earth during that vast stretch of time. Is it really so easy for ETs to discover us? The galaxy is pretty big (one hundred thousand light years across and three thousand light years thick), imposingly big even for aliens with faster-than-light engines. Let’s assume that each civilization lasts around a million years before it expires or evolves so far that it transcends petty galactic concerns (that’s a pretty optimistic duration, but let’s run with it). The precise odds of any of these one thousand civilizations running across Earth now, right when Homo sapiens has flashingly exposed itself for all to see, turns out to be pretty small. Just because they aren’t here right now, hardly means that they aren’t still out there.

  Sure, scientists get enthralled by the hypothesis that a fast-growing civilization could pretty much colonize the whole galaxy in a million years, more or less, all by itself. Well, since nobody has already accomplished such encroaching colonization here on Earth, we can rule out that hypothesis, and that does tell us something. It tells us either that it is really hard to colonize a whole galaxy, or that expanding civilizations sooner or later want to do something else, like enjoying the bliss of entering the state of pure energy, or something exalted like that. Just because we humans are obsessively compulsive about reproductive expansion, doesn’t mean everybody else is too.

  The odds are somewhat larger that aliens or their robotic probes have surveyed Earth in the past, noticing oceans full of fish and trilobites four hundred million years ago, or maybe mapping immense swamps replete with dinosaurs one hundred million years ago. The story line of the 1980s cartoons and comics tell how Transformers crashed into an Earth volcano four million years ago. Only the 2007 movie throws the Transformers First Contact into contemporary times, as the frozen Megatron is discovered by Captain Archibald Witwicky in the Arctic Circle, at the crash site dating from only a few centuries ago. The 2007 movie panders more to audience prejudices, and conforms less to reasonable scientific expectations.

  All the same, the Transformers scenario in general does not rashly assume that the Transformers civilization actively searches for Earth-like planets, or cares much about discovering any primitive societies on those planets. In fact, the Transformers scenario also upsets the third common assumption behind all this worry over First Contact: that we could even tell whether aliens have been here. Any alien visitations to the Earth in the deep past probably left no trace, unless artifacts were deliberately left behind to influence evolution or to give us something to discover (this is Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s scenario in their 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey). And since we don’t see any aliens now, any aliens currently on Earth would have to have considerably good disguises, especially if they are trying to pass themselves off as people.

  This paranoid fantasy that a friend or neighbor is really an alien has long been fodder for many B-movies and some mediocre TV series (remember My Favorite Martian or the reptilian aliens from V?) as well as the inspiration for some excellent classics (such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Men in Black). No question about it, aliens smart enough to arrive here could probably figure out how to look like us somehow. But could they just as easily behave and talk like us? Sure, they might be able to learn our languages and even penetrate our minds. But passing the Turing Test is another matter entirely. Building our own computers capable of ordinary conversation under all daily circumstances, so convincing that people can’t tell any difference, looks to be tremendously difficult—and we already understand our own psychology, language, and culture. Passing as human would present an enormous challenge to a highly advanced alien race, even if that alien race would want to bother with such effort.

  Fitting In

  If aliens wanted to watch us up close and personal, without having to actually talk to us (and I could hardly blame aliens if most human conversation would bore them out of their alien exoskeletons), wouldn’t it be easier to get some other sort of disguise besides a human body? The best disguise would be complete invisibility, but even invisibility isn’t enough, since they’d take up some volume and displace other things anyways. For close contact, hiding out in the open might make more sense. They could be disguised as trees, nice shrubbery, or lovely petunias. If the aliens are made of organic molecules like us, maybe they can shape-shift into other organisms. Actually, if they need to get up close and personal on a regular basis, what about disguises as machines?

  Hmmm . . ., there could be serious advantages to a non-organic strategy of disguise. A machine-disguised alien wouldn’t have to worry about getting chopped down, or mowed over, or eaten. Scurrying pine trees or flinching dandelions would get noticed after a while. But what about a machine? As long as a machine-disguised alien looked about right and did whatever that machine was supposed to do, it could easily fool us, such as driving around as a Chevy Camaro like the Autobot Bumblebee or playing music as a boombox like the Decepticon Frenzy. A useful machine-form could be as large as an entire apartment building, or as small as a tiny nanobot the size of a flea. Autobots haven’t chosen a dumb form by selecting our vehicles, since they can have easy mobility. We hardly pay any attention to cars or planes as they zoom around, as long as conventional traffic patterns are obeyed. All the same, the smaller the better, I’d guess. I keep finding and then losing my watch, come to think of it.

  While we’re pondering the ideal sort of alien disguise, we should seriously question whether a visiting alien would necessarily be organic in the first place. There are many good reasons to think that if there is life out there in the galaxy, then it evolved from simple organic molecules composed of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. But regardless of which organic compounds are the easiest way for life to get started, here we need to ponder a very different question. Would a highly advanced alien civilization, with enough technology and longevity to reach us first, still be mostly organic?

  Maybe First Contact will be with hard metallic aliens, not soft and squishy aliens. Seth Shostak has been publicly proclaiming that First Contact will most likely be with a fully robotic civilization possessing computer brains loaded with Artificial Intelligence (AI) programming. Shostak is Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and a prominent lecturer on the topics of alien life and First Contact. His prediction is based on the reasonable assumption that very advanced and long-lived civilizations will rely heavily on mechanical and computing technologies to overcome the inherent limitations and frailties of organic bodies and neuron brains. If any civilization approaches immortality, he argues, then it will have transformed itself into AI robots.

  Although this reasoning is persuasive but still pretty speculative (are the only alternatives for life just organic or mechanical?), Shostak’s view provokes another thought experiment. Perhaps First Contact would not be with an alien race directly, but rather with an alien race’s robotic AI emissaries. Sending out robot probes, especially reasoning and self-replicating robots, would provide far more efficient exploring, if what you want is lots of data as fast as possible from all around the galaxy. If a probe reached us, and came equipped with its own AI for smart conversation, then our First Contact would be with an alien race’s spokesperson.

  Indeed, following out this scenario to its logical conclusion, we might meet a robot probe but never speak with its master. In a way, this possibility still approximately tracks the Transformers scenario, since the Transformers were themselves created, according to the TV series, as robotic slaves to a master race called the Quintessons
. If probes take a long while to reach us, especially if the builder race originated in a different quadrant of the galaxy, then there’s no assurance that the builders still exist themselves, much less care about communicating directly. Maybe robot probes are programmed for this possibility, announcing messages from the alien master race which could never be personally delivered. A probe’s message might amount to, “By the time that you hear this, we will be dead . . .” And a probe might itself have developed its own agenda, perhaps its own autonomy. Could alien probes, originally programmed with good intentions, turn malevolent? Is that so improbable? Ask Captain Kirk, who confronted the mysteriously powerful V’ger invading our solar system only to discover our own Voyager craft at its heart, in the first Star Trek movie.

  Crashing In

  There are very few reasons, if we keep thinking about it, to keep supposing that our First Contact will be directly with a benevolent and peaceful alien race that looks anything like us and is quite happy to meet us. The Transformer scenario, or something fairly similar, is increasing in relative probability against the alternatives. Let’s keep going.

  We’ve now reached the fourth necessary assumption, that a disguised alien on Earth would be benign and peaceful, for clinching the grand argument that no ETs really exist. At first, this assumption seems plausible. After all, if they’re disguised, then they aren’t displaying themselves, which would terrorize or demoralize the human population. Only conquering aliens would display their true, terrifying form. But doesn’t this sound like wishful thinking, just another version of “advanced aliens are angels” fantasy? While we’re operating on that mythological level, recall some basic religious mythology: it’s usually the demons, and not the angels, who are masters of trickery, deceit, and deception.

  Let’s consider what’s going on within the Transformers scenario. The main reason why the Transformers race adopts the disguise of whatever mechanicals happen to be around has little to do with local native species. The point of the transforming disguise is entirely military, to gain an advantage over the enemy. The Autobots and the Decepticons are locked into a terrible civil war that has been going on for many millennia. Ever since the start of the civil war, they have developed their incredibly advanced technologies over that time mostly in order to win this war. In the second TV episode, Spike asks Trailbreaker about why the Autobots transform and Trailbreaker replies, “Simple. Disguise! Besides, it sure beats walking.” In a later episode of season three, it’s explained that transforming was a technological invention by the Autobots to use against Decepticons, who soon duplicated this ability for themselves.

  Not only might alien visitors use disguise for their own purposes rather than for anything having to do with concern for us, we cannot presume that alien visitors are even capable of concern for other species. There’s a curious built-in contradiction to the characterization of the Transformers. On the one hand, we have the movie poster for the 1986 cartoon film, The Transformers: The Movie, which includes the ominous headline: Beyond Good. Beyond Evil. Beyond Your Wildest Imagination. In what way could the Transformers be beyond good and evil? Maybe because their concerns so completely transcend our own that we couldn’t judge them by our human standards of morality. On the other hand, much of the cartoon and comics series is predicated on a degree of goodness attributed to the Autobots. Many Autobots develop positive and even protective relationships with some humans. The 2007 movie goes the farthest in this direction. Optimus Prime pronounces an ethical principle, something akin to Star Trek’s Prime Directive, to the effect that each species should be free to develop in its own way. Optimus Prime is even willing to commit suicide if that would end the war on Earth. At the movie’s conclusion, the Autobots assume a protective stance over Earth and its human inhabitants. This beneficence is starkly contrasted with the Decepticon’s evil disdain towards humans throughout the cartoons, comics, and movies. Taken as a whole, the Transformers race doesn’t care about us, although a few Autobots try. This pattern may be common among advanced alien civilizations.

  It can nevertheless be disappointing that the Transformers are so militaristic and bent on total war. How realistic is that aspect of the Transformers scenario? To listen to the scientists favoring their hypothesis that highly advanced civilizations roam the galaxy in peace and tranquility, we’d get the idea that war is so primitive and destructive for all species that advancement equals pacification. But this notion is probably wrong, too. It is definitely not consistent with what we know about the cultural evolution of our own species. Quick, name the single greatest source of technological inspiration for humans during the past two hundred thousand years! Okay, the right answer is the quest for enough food. Hunting, agriculture, food processing and storage. Well, then, what’s been the second most influential impulse behind technological innovation? That’s right—war. Tribes of humans fighting, conquering, and enslaving other humans. How did the pathetic Europeans of the late Dark Ages (say, A.D. 1000), so far behind several other civilizations of that time, accelerate ahead and dominate the entire planet just eight hundred years later? Many historians now credit such amazing success to the intense military competition between European nations during that period.

  War’s probably also a major driving force behind the evolution of any other civilization. Arnold Toynbee’s majestic account of all human civilizations in the ten volumes of A Study of History (1934–1961) even elevates war to supreme status, necessary for explaining the course of a civilization’s internal disintegration and its eventual destruction which provides essential materials for successor civilizations. Unless the human species as a whole is peculiarly perverse, rotten at its core, other alien species probably go through considerably long war-like phases, especially in the early millennia. The real question is whether war is compatible with very long term survival. Could war survive across the galaxy?

  It’s been argued that even if war is important for a while, at some point in any civilization’s progress all war must cease. After all, the invention of nuclear weapons, capable of planetary destruction, seems to dictate that a surviving species is a peaceful species. The Vulcans of Star Trek renounced violence and even all emotions, to prevent their extinction at their own hands. However, is all this worry over nuclear annihilation simply fostered by the temporary fact that we are presently trapped on just one planet? If our civilization starts colonizing other planets and deep space within the next ten thousand years, no longer will the fate of the entire species rest on a single round ball of rock. Intelligent species like ours, which reach this most dangerous stage, this worrisome bottleneck of development, must pass this test. Can these species resist suicide by war? If so, then the reward is potentially infinite expansion across this galaxy and maybe other galaxies too. After a species successfully passes through the planetary bottleneck, however, it is easy to imagine that war will again arise.

  In fact, if war is so devastatingly effective at inspiring fast technological development, we can infer that any very advanced race will probably have followed up its temporarily peaceful phase with even more intense warlike phases. And if there are several advanced civilizations engaged in competitive interaction, they may have every incentive to resort to war. Until a civilization gets so advanced that neither energy nor death is a problem, war is a solution. However, civilizations beyond energy and death are not going to be too interested in us, any more than we’d care to get intimate with bacteria-like organisms on other planets.

  Advanced civilizations roaming around the galaxy probably still know all about war. Nor should we suppose that advanced civilizations will have advanced religions that help keep the peace. Human religions are notoriously flexible about war. Even the Transformers have a religion of sorts, according to the comics, but it’s not much of a surprise. The primordial gods Unicron and Primus battle for supremacy over the universe, and Primus creates Cybertron and the Transformers along the way to aid in the fight (recalling the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastri
anism). It also seems obvious that a real militaristic civilization would have a really militaristic religion.

  We’ve looked inside a radical argument against ETs, and refuted every premise. We should keep anticipating that First Contact will eventually happen. First Contact will probably be with an expanding civilization farther ahead than us, but not so far as to be completely indifferent to us. They may not be looking for us, and they might be just as surprised by First Contact as we are. They won’t be angels, but simply absorbed in their own worries and conflicts. Hopefully, they have enough goodness among them to restrain them from annihilating us. In other words, we are assembling something similar to the Transformers scenario.

  When we ponder what First Contact will be like, too often we project our own mythologies, fantasies, worries, and even our own psychologies upon hypothetical alien civilizations. It’s understandable that we desperately hope that peaceful and benevolent alien races are just waiting and wanting to be contacted by such primitive species like ours. We gaze out into the vastness of space, feeling vulnerable and scared. We want angels, and dread devils. Sooner or later, the human species will have to realistically deal with whatever, and whoever, is already out there among the stars. Will we continue to play the role of conquerors, until our guilty conscience slows us down? Will we instead end up like the Aztecs, wiped out by superior firepower and deadly disease?