Photo by NASA on Unsplash.

The law of large numbers tells of a scary future about cosmic sociology. The universe is incomprehensibly vast. With certain inputs, the Drake Equation tells us that there should exist boundless numbers of extraterrestrial civilizations beyond our Solar System. This number can grow so large as to make nearly all probabilistic events occur with certainty.

What's scary about this? Almost all of our actions that propagate beyond our Solar System carries inherent existential risk. Sending the Golden Record on the Voyager probes, for instance, involved risk, albeit miniscule. Failing to regulate radio waves that get lost into deep space is also a risk, far more substantial. That we don't have any laws or deterrence systems against anyone from sending signals revealing Earth's location, is an enormous risk.

While we've been familiar with understanding risk levels as probabilistic events, we're not prepared to consider them as deterministic events. Suppose we evaluate the risk that any extraterrestrial civilization which detects our rogue radio waves will then exhibit evil warmongering intentions as 0.001%. This number may seem small, but with the law of large numbers combined with the sheer magnitude of numbers from the Drake Equation, we can effectively assume this is 100%. While any one civilization is unlikely to respond in a threatening manner, that the billions of civilizations out there will all remain neutral is a near-zero possibility.

Therefore, for Earth to survive this new interstellar era, we must treat all risk as certainties and gamble nothing.