If ever I were visited by aliens and they wanted to gift me some advanced technology, I’d ask for a device, which would allow me to unfuck up any situation. I realize that would be a large undertaking, at least to my Earthly intellect, but there are challenges that cannot be solved by 3D printing solutions.
How would that even work? On a very small scale, if you dropped your cell phone, causing the screen to crack, then the alien technology could simply reorder the molecules, restoring the screen back to its original wholeness. According to quantum physics, that could happen spontaneously, but the amount of energy it takes for broken material to become unbroken is so great that it doesn’t happen—outside of this alien technology, that is. Also, spontaneously unbreaking a cell phone screen violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which my fellow science geeks know as Entropy.
Entropy is the reason why it takes so much energy to clean up or organize anything, but making a mess is so easy to do! Some would even argue that you’re being one with the universe when you revel in disorganization since that’s the direction the universe tends toward naturally. Going from highly organized or low entropy to greatly disorganized or high entropy is the way of the universe.
Here’s an easier example. Take a standard 500-piece jigsaw puzzle freshly dumped out of the box. Just a pile of pieces. Some are stacked on top of the others. Some are facing downward while others are facing upward and some incredible pieces are propped up on their skinny edges by other pieces. This symbolizes the highest entropy because it is the most random and disorganized.
And what do we humans do? Smooth out the pile into a single layer. Ensure all the pieces are turned upward. If we’re really good, we separate out the edges while we’re putting nonedges with similar pictures together. Then we get the edges all together and fill in the rest from the edges inward, more or less. Some of the most satisfying things about putting a jigsaw puzzle together is not merely the thrill of organizing something, but also the comfort of knowing that there’s one solution and we have the skill set to reach the goal. Absolutely no confusion.
Plus, jigsaw puzzle pieces, unlike human beings, don’t refuse to join together because they all look different. If those pieces had existential awareness, they’d know they’re meant to join together and make a picture. And they’d also know that no two pieces look exactly the same and yet they all have value in the solution of creating the overall puzzle.
But even with alien technology where would I begin? Mind control or mind erase? Would unfucking up the world start with taking all the pain that people have caused others and reversing the polarity? Would the world become a better place if all the pain that we caused one another instead directed itself back onto ourselves? Suddenly, the perpetrators would suffer for their own actions rather than their victims. Imagine THAT power dynamic. Valuing mutual cooperation to make the best world we could instead of trying to exclude one another as if we’re not all part of the same puzzle.
From the perspective of the aliens, viewing us from afar, how ridiculous does the Earthly jigsaw puzzle, which actively fights against itself, appear? A picture is never completed by a jigsaw puzzle that destroys other pieces. Would aliens reach out to the most empathetic among us and gift us with humanity-saving technology or would they instead just start by smoothing out the pieces?