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337 proposed James Christian, to philosophize again, to theologize again, to take another look at our laws, our ethics, our minds, our knowledge." Our speculations about other civilizations are a way of looking into our own future. They can suggest either the future we wish for ourselves or the future that we fear will come if we do not change our ways. When we expect extraterrestrials to be morally superior and altruistic, we are hoping that we will be more moral and altruistic in the future. As Achenbach put it, the great moment of contact may simply remind us that what we most want is to find a better version of ourselves.'” Our speculations also are warnings. Predicting that other societies may have succumbed to war, runaway population growth, environmental damage, or disastrous experiments is a way of warning ourselves of how we might derail the human adventure. When we imagine aliens to be vicious conquerors, we are projecting fears about human conflicts. Our speculations are platforms for moral lessons, as they have been for centuries. We still exploit the idea of alien intelligence to advance social, political, and ideological agendas through the imagined views and prac- tices of advanced extraterrestrials. Theories about aliens often are intended to support other beliefs. Our speculations suggest opportunities for collective self-improvement. Many of us want to change the future, not just let it happen to us. We want to rise above our current condition. The quest for other and better forms of life, society, technology, ethics, and law may not reveal that they are actual elsewhere, suggested Beck, but it may in the long run help us to make some of them actual on Earth.'* Imagining other worlds also can be an approach to science. Nobel Prize- winning medical researcher Peter Medawar observed that scientific inves- tigation begins by the invention of a possible world or of a tiny fraction of that world. Another Nobel Prize winner, geneticist Francois Jacob, noted that mystical thought begins the same way.'* The debate opens our minds to what might be possible. Our speculations have another practical dimension. They help to prepare us for contact. We are far more likely to detect evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization than we are to receive long, detailed messages full of valuable information deliberately communicated to us. The most probable scenario, at least ini- tially, is one of low-information contact. The evidence could take many different forms, from an intercepted message between other civilizations to an eroded chunk of alien metal in our solar system. That evidence may be too exotic to fit within conventional categories. The first detection may not be taken seriously, particularly if it A Probable Scenario A Probable Scenario