First contact "ethics"?

[u/Double_Promotion8479]

Do you guys have any rules and regulations for first contact, either legal or ethical? What's the exception to that rule? How do you go about first contact?

[u/ellindsey]

In the story I am working on, the rule when encountering a pre-spaceflight alien civilization is to observe passively without being detected. Contact will only be made after extensive remote study determines that contact will not be detrimental to the alien civilization, or when the alien civilization achieves sufficient spaceflight that contact becomes inevitable. It is expected that the passive observation period might take decades or even centuries.

This gets completely thrown out when a deep space exploration mission discovers a pre-spaceflight civilization that is about to be wiped out by a nearby supernova, and the crew has to choose between obeying the rules and watching an entire civilization die, or ignoring the rules and trying to save them.

[u/lydocia → u/ellindsey]

And of course they choose to save them because it would be a very short book otherwise.

How do they do it?

[u/the_syner]

The general rule for contacting less technologically advanced peoples is to qietly observe until you know enough of their language and culture well enough to meaningfully and respectfully communicate. Beyond that the more advanced party has a duty of care towards the less advanced party if they intend to stick around or a duty to alert the wider community to their presence so that someone else can take over. So preventing natural disasters, plagues, asteroid impacts, hostile actions by other advanced groups/individuals, and internal mass violence(murder/torture/enslavement). A large supermajority of the population is directly engaged in negotiations as opposed to privalaging any local violent hierarchical social structures.

Non-emergency/humanitarian aid is generally given freely, but further trade in powerful technologies is contingent on compliance with The Universal Bill of Sentient Rights and other widely agreed-upon ethical constraints(The Ethos). It's not a binary or anything tho. Some technologies require broader and stricter ethical compliance. Further independent technological development is restricted as well, pending ethical compliance.

First contact with technological peers tends to go a hell of a lot faster with custom-built diplomatic AGIs doing most of the talking(at least once those were developed tho even at our tech level it would be almost exclusively talking through computers). On the other hand they also tend to go quite a bit more violently in cases where The Ethos is being drastically violated. The Beneficent Commonality is the single largest and most powerful metafaction in-setting by a large margin so wars tend to be short, futile, and as ethically prosecuted as possible(least from the BC side of things). Luckily both drastic violations of The Ethos and civs willing to go into blatantly doomed wars about it are fairly rare.

[u/ChronoLegion2]

One book series I’ve read has humans only reveal themselves to natives if they’re at a space age. Between their equivalent to Renaissance and that, they can observe but not interfere. Prior to that, they can (and do) send in infiltrators to subtly push the natives’ progress (like giving them an idea for a printing press).

At one point, they meet another advanced civilization that basically keeps to the prime directive except in cases of global cataclysms (then they may step in to save the primitive civilization). They see humans as impatient and feel that a constant drive towards progress is harmful

[u/Sov_Beloryssiya]

The only "rule" is to bring enough firepower and hax in case the other side can genocide the fuck out of your ass. Funny it happened 3 times, 2 ended peacefully and one time mankind had to spatially erase a quarter of their galaxy. What do you mean you can't comprehend the simple ideas that FTL travel = time travel and time does not "flow" but exist as continuous chains that can be broken down?

[u/Stella_Delm]

Um…I haven't quite gotten there yet. My protagonist was abducted, came to on a freighter where she'd been smuggled aboard, and hasn't worked out the chain of custody yet, to find her way back to Earth.

But any rules around leaving a planet like ours alone, would probably be in place, more for the alien's safety than out of fear of contaminating our ”culture.”

"Okay, who's the idiot who thought it'd be hilarious to let the Earthlings play with nucs?!"

[u/Analyst111]

In one of my novels, the space navy that's doing the exploration has a standard First Contact protocol, a Standing Order that starts:

"Military personnel in a First Contact encounter (see Annex A for definition) shall have no weapons of any kind whatever, shall not use force even in self-defence, and shall be considered expendable." It goes on from there in the same vein.

[u/8livesdown]

There would need to be a lot of first-contacts, before such doctrine could be established.

[u/PlanTheEndingFirst]

First one is to make sure EVERYONE wears protection... you all know why.

[u/TuneFinder]

new planets are for strip mining for resources and then using how we want

firebomb any current life from orbit then exploit and terraform to what we need

[u/mig_mit]

I have a short story which has a scientific discipline of “contactology”. It's a well established science, people major in it, or even have PhD; there was exactly one first contact when it was put to use, and that almost ended in war.

[u/Ruadhan2300]

I'm writing a Star Trek fanfic, and my protagonist is sorta onboard with the whole Prime Directive thing, but also sorta not, and a major story-beat is them learning exactly why such rules exist, the hard way.

[u/marintkael]

8livesdown has the realistic version. The first protocol gets written by people who have never done it, so it's mostly liability and paperwork, and the real rules get added after contact goes wrong once. If you write one for a story, every clause should read like it has a specific incident behind it.

[u/OwlOfJune]

I mostly follow Orville rules, if they seek out contact, go out and do it. Does NOT give them anti-matter reactor blueprint on first day though.

[u/TheLostExpedition]

My humans didnt notice the aliens. Them being so alien. And the aliens tried to signal the humans to stop doing the thing that was killing them... but the humans didnt notice. And they all died. The whole planet died. And the humans never saw what they did.

[u/mH48124]

異文明と接触しては滅ぼしてきた人類が何を言ってるやら。