Researchers have used UNU to tap public sentiment on topics as serious as the Presidential election and as silly as, well, the Presidential election. But in all this time, nobody has used Swarm Intelligence to explore one of the most divisive topics out there — the existence of life on other planets.
So, is there life on other planets?
To find out, researchers had 50 people form a swarm in UNU and asked them some of the most pressing questions concerning extra-terrestrial life. By thinking together as a swarm, the participants converged on answers that maximized the confidence and conviction of the group. First, the group was asked the quintessential question: how confident are you that life exists on other planets?
As you can see, the swarm has high confidence in the existence of alien life. This shouldn’t be too surprising, as Newsweek reported that the majority of people world-wide believe in aliens, but UNU reveals an even more confident result than that poll suggests. This confidence – perhaps bolstered by recent Matt Damon blockbusters like The Martian and Interstellar – prompted this question: if life exists on other planets, which is more likely to happen?
Here the swarm reveals with 79% confidence that aliens are more likely to find us than we are to find them. In chat during the session, UNU users expressed a wide range of reasons for aliens to reach us first, from their superior technology to our inability to explore very far past Earth. With that in mind, researchers wanted to know what our users would predict the most likely outcome of the discovery of another habitable planet.
Oh no. This result echoes the dystopian future depicted in 2013’s sci-fi thriller Elysium ( starring you guessed it, Matt Damon ) where the rich people leave earth for a luxury colony in the sky. Here’s hoping they save room for the rest of us.
Finally, we needed to know, does the UNU swarm believe humans have already been abducted by aliens?
At last, some good news for Matt Damon, because if anyone was going to be abducted, it was probably him.
If you want to be part of a swarm, just sign up to be a BETA USER below:
