Hypothetical question. If you learned a world changing secret.

[Wolfnox]

Depends on what is considered "world-changing". Also depends on the nature of a particular "secret". Some secrets are secrets for some very profound reasons. Contrary to anyone discussing them in an open forum- for better or worse.

Then again, some secrets remain in plain sight, but cannot be comprehensively identified as they appear a complex puzzle to assemble.

Or is this actually just an exercise in assessing one's character, in determining whether or not they can keep a secret ?

All good points. Second one is more accurate than not.

 

[Wolfnox]

I don't know what you mean by what would it be? If I 'learnt a world changing secret' how did I learn it? Through study and discovering? or via somebody else?

Would I tell, well yes. But depending on said secret would depend on how to best do that. Is it controversial and would cause lots of dispute? Is it something that needs scientific data to accurately represent what you're trying to tell?

I feel the question is far too broad.

All of the above.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Mum's the word.

 

[Misery]

Well, here's a question...

What is an example of this?

 

[Fino]

Are the works of Jesus an example of this?

 

[Au Naturel]

World-changing secret? Secrets can only "change the world" if someone listens and then actually cares and that cascades into many people listening and caring. Most secrets get ignored and discarded when revealed. And there's the issue that if something is "secret," why so? Maybe it needs to be a secret for very good reasons.

OTOH every secret can be thought of as changing the world if revealed. It isn't a secret anymore and that is a change in the world with some kind of consequence, even if minor.

If you broaden the definition of "secret" enough, it could simply mean undiscovered knowledge. Einstein did change the world with general and special relativity. You could think of that as a "secret of the universe" that he revealed.

 

[Thinx]

Sorry, I just find it amusing to ponder...whether in terms of one species or the other. Where hostility seems manifested by both of them. Making "first contact" a precarious notion for either of them.

With government more often than not running a peculiar form of interference as to whether such things happen or not. Let's see just how transparent NASA is willing to go based on some recent policy shifts in such issues. And that if they have any "secrets", whether they are now prepared to share what they may already know.

I doubt if aliens would choose the US to reveal themselves to. Your gun culture and dysfunctional government for examples. Sorry if that's unwelcome news. The aliens would most likely try the most enlightened government they could find. Netherlands maybe? Or Sweden.

 

[Wolfnox]

Well, here's a question...

What is an example of this?

New type of power source would be one example.

 

[SpiltPaint]

New type of power source would be one example.

A new power source would require scientific data, analysis and testing to be accepted. Since a power source would be energy, and energy is neither created or destroyed, but can be converted.

Is it possible there are energy's we haven't discovered or can't currently comprehend? It's not unlikely, nuclear energy is only around 100 years old.

 

[Judge]

I doubt if aliens would choose the US to reveal themselves to. Your gun culture and dysfunctional government for examples. Sorry if that's unwelcome news. The aliens would most likely try the most enlightened government they could find. Netherlands maybe? Or Sweden.

Doubtful. Europeans have a ghastly history of continual warfare that far outpaces any civilization one might encounter in the western hemisphere. Plus I don't see aliens parsing Earth history to be all that discriminating towards one European nation than another. That they'd likely consider all human nations with the same sense of trepidation- for good reason.

That over the span of time it's our species which remains warlike- and not any one nation. I just don't see such an advanced civilization parsing one group of paranoid, warlike humans from another. Assuming of course, aliens have the ability and choose to "underwrite" our species beyond merely its present, with the ability to analyze its past as well.

Perhaps you misunderstood one of my comments. While NASA might be helpful in better exposing an alien existence, forget any notion of them coordinating "first contact". I don't see aliens specifically cooperating with NASA or any other space agency- whether international or not. Again for the reasons already stated.

Thus it would seem far more logical for an advanced and hopefully peaceful civilization to covertly observe us from a chosen distance than make any form of direct and formal contact. More so perhaps if they have an agenda with our species or planet that we might fundamentally object to.

However all that said, we can only truly assess beings we know nothing about from our own flawed frame of reference. Ironically indicative of the film "Arrival", aliens making first contact would be just that. -Aliens. Beings whose very existence could be so contrary to our understanding of life, time and space that we have a very difficult experience in trying to communicate with them with the best of our intentions, only to fall back on the worst of who and what we are as a species.

Interesting that Amy Adam's character in "Arrival" ultimately told a secret to an adversary that ultimately changed the precarious circumstances of a first contact. Resulting in being able to convince the rest of the world that the aliens meant no harm in the first place.

 

[Luca]

I have to agree with SpiltPaint.

Yet we have world-changing truths going routinely ignored. There is a war in Ukraine ignored in favor of Depp trial coverage, climate change ignored because people want more, more more, and at least in the USA a rising tolerance for fascist sympathizers that goes ignored because people think fascism is cute as long as it is not overrunning and consuming small countries. If I knew something world-changing I'd trade it in on 300 acres of rural land and start living off of that.

Thank you. I came to this thread to say basically the same thing.