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286 extraterrestrials wish to accelerate the development of human technologi- cal capability. Even if they do help us, they are unlikely to delay their own further development while we catch up. We may always lag behind the Tan dnne leaders. The idea of interstellar communication actually revives anthropomor- phism because of the assumptions we must make, argued Beck. We must believe that a pattern of evolution like ours, from simple organisms to advanced civilization, has been repeated within signaling distance and synchronously with our own development. We must assume that extrater- restrials reciprocate our curiosity and take the same measures that we would take to signal to them, although we also assume that they are suffi- ciently unlike us to have managed a technological project that probably exceeds our resources of curiosity, patience, and stability. All of these assumptions are highly speculative, but we must make them or else give up the game.* The discovery of aliens will have the profound and weighty consequences it is claimed to have, Regis asserted, only if the extremely improbable occurs: contact with an extraterrestrial culture of just the right degree of similarity to and difference from ourselves. If they are virtually identical to us, we will learn nothing from them; if they are extremely different from us, we will learn nothing from them as well.*” These are extremes. We might indeed learn something if we encounter a society different from ours, if the differences are not too radical. We may have to find a civilization that is relatively close to our own level of development; as Bova put it, somewhere between Tarzan and the angels."° The classic SETI paradigm is based on the assumption that extraterres- trials will export information by radio. Morrison and others have claimed that, after search and acquisition, communication will consist of massive information transfer, because the purpose of their transmission would be to inform us.” The authors of Project Cyclops proposed that extraterrestrials would use transmissions to ensure the survival of the “galactic heritage” by attracting the attention of young races. Even more optimistically, they assumed that the senders would try to make the job of deciphering and understanding the messages as simple and foolproof as possible.* Assumptions: After Contact They Will Be Generous in Sharing Information Interstellar radio communication will not be a dialogue. It will be a mono- Dee Te Dice eee Lee eee tle ee ee ee logue. The dumb guys hear from the smart guys. —Carl Sagan, 1973"