The central theoretical move is to treat cosmic status as common knowledge that changes the selection environment for narratives and institutions, not as a direct cause of predetermined outcomes. Solitude constrains extraterrestrial-pluralist claims but leaves supernatural, cryptoterrestrial, simulation, and other metaphysical narratives logically available. Uncertainty preserves a large unresolved question space. Plurality constrains strict species-solitude claims but does not determine how humanity interprets the other intelligence, its moral status, or humanity’s own significance.

This narrow treatment is necessary because nonhuman-intelligence hypotheses differ in their relationship to humanity. Masters’s extratempestrial model, for example, interprets at least some anomalous entities as future human descendants rather than independently evolved extraterrestrials ([13]). The model developed here does not adjudicate that hypothesis. It isolates independently evolved extraterrestrial technological intelligence so that later studies can vary whether the other intelligence is extraterrestrial, cryptoterrestrial, artificial, transcendent, or genealogically related to humanity.

Contemporary social-scientific research also shows why extraterrestrial confirmation should not be represented as a single undifferentiated event. In an online survey of 130 respondents, [4] found no confident, consistent relationship between loneliness or need for closure and belief in extraterrestrial life or intelligence. However, frequent religious activity was negatively associated with belief in extraterrestrial life. [18] analysis of 272 German news articles identified three distinct frames—beneficial space exploration, UAP/ETI, and SETI risk—demonstrating that public meaning depends in part on the communication context. [1] develop differentiated first-contact scenarios, while [20] and [21] disagree about how strongly geopolitical monopoly and conflict risks should guide SETI policy after successful detection. Together, this literature supports treating remote, noncommunicating plurality separately from signal interpretation, direct contact, media framing, technology transfer, hostility, and state competition.

Awe research suggests one plausible but non-deterministic pathway from a cosmic perspective to social behavior. Awe can reduce the salience of the individual self and increase prosocial behavior ([16]); cross-cultural experiments have also linked the small-self experience with collective engagement ([2]). Accounts of the overview effect similarly connect perceptions of planetary smallness with self-transcendence and global identification ([22]). Yet awe is generally a temporary state rather than a permanent civilizational trait. Accordingly, the model allows plurality-associated awe to decay unless educational, ritual, scientific, or philosophical institutions reinforce it.

Human exceptionalism is treated as a variable basis of identity rather than a binary belief. Research on mind perception shows that people attribute mental capacities unevenly across human and nonhuman targets ([6]). Knowledge of extraterrestrial intelligence may reduce claims of species uniqueness while preserving moral, spiritual, civilizational, or relational forms of exceptionalism. Persistent uncertainty likewise need not produce one response. Uncertainty-identity theory predicts that uncertainty can motivate stronger group identification and adherence to meaning-providing systems, particularly when identity-relevant ambiguity is salient ([10]). The model, therefore, assigns agents heterogeneous needs for meaning, evidence sensitivity, conformity, and cognitive flexibility.

Religious and philosophical institutions serve explanatory, moral, coordinating, and identity functions. Empirical work has linked beliefs in moralizing supernatural agents to increased cooperation in some settings ([17]), but the causal sequence remains contested. Updated analyses using the Seshat Databank indicate that moralizing religions did not drive the rise of social complexity and instead developed alongside intergroup warfare and resource conditions ([19]), while cross-cultural studies report substantial contextual variation in relationships between religious belief and cooperation ([12]). The model therefore rejects a one-way assumption that cosmology creates social complexity. Narratives and institutions coevolve with material conditions, conflict, population structure, and institutional performance.

Agent-based modeling is appropriate when macro-level patterns emerge from heterogeneous agents interacting under explicit rules. Generative social science emphasizes explaining a collective outcome by demonstrating how plausible local mechanisms can produce it ([5]). Cultural evolution research likewise models transmission, selection, drift, mutation, and institutional inheritance across generations ([3]; [9]; [14]). The model follows the Overview, Design Concepts, and Details logic for transparent agent-based documentation ([7]) and uses matched worlds, repeated runs, and global sensitivity analysis rather than a single illustrative trajectory.

The mechanism corpus was assembled through searches in Elicit, Crossref, Google Scholar, and publisher databases. Searches combined the terms extraterrestrial life discovery, extraterrestrial intelligence and religion, cosmic awe and small self, human exceptionalism, uncertainty and worldview defense, moralizing gods and social complexity, cultural evolution, and agent-based social simulation. During revision, targeted searches were added for SETI societal response, technosignature detection, first-contact scenarios, SETI media framing, and the geopolitical consequences of successful detection. The primary window was 2000-2026, with older foundational works retained when they defined a theory or modeling method. Sources were included when they provided empirical findings, causal mechanisms, historical sequences, or reproducible computational methods relevant to at least one modeled process. Popular commentary, unsupported disclosure claims, and sources that could not be verified through a publisher or bibliographic record were excluded. The synthesis informed the mechanism direction and sensitivity ranges; it did not provide point estimates for forecasting actual civilizations. Table 1 summarizes the evidence domains and their roles in the model.

Table 1. Evidence domains and their roles in the model.

The model contains five matched worlds, summarized in Table 2. Solitude, uncertainty, and plurality are genesis worlds. The two resolution worlds remain uncertain through generation 44 and receive incontrovertible common knowledge at generation 45. The plurality condition specifies at least one independently evolved, remote technological civilization that is unmistakably real but not communicating, intervening, transferring technology, or displaying hostility. This isolates cosmic plurality from contact, threat, and competition for resources.

Table 2.Cosmic genesis and resolution worlds.

The modeled world set is:

Each world contains 1500 agents distributed across 20 communities. Agents vary in evidence sensitivity, need for meaning, conformity, inheritance weight, curiosity, cognitive flexibility, institutional trust, exceptionalism preference, moral openness, threat sensitivity, and agency attribution. Traits are initialized from beta distributions and transmitted imperfectly to replacement cohorts with Gaussian mutation. All matched worlds in a replication use the same synthetic population, initial narratives, communities, environmental shocks, and pseudo-random stream.

Five narrative archetypes compete: empirical inquiry, human uniqueness, cosmic pluralism, transcendent agency, and pragmatic agnosticism. They are analytical bundles rather than labels for existing religions or philosophies. Each carries normalized attributes for meaning, coordination, inquiry, exceptionalism, moral-circle radius, and adaptability. A separate evidence-fit matrix specifies compatibility with solitude, uncertainty, or plurality. Religious or metaphysical narratives remain possible in all worlds; only claims directly contradicting the common-knowledge condition receive a fit penalty. The complete numerical narrative-attribute matrix is provided in Supplementary Table S1, and the complete solitude-uncertainty-plurality evidence-fit matrix is provided in Supplementary Table S2. The executable model loads these values directly as NARR_ATTR and EVIDENCE_FIT.

Narrative institutions accumulate support from adherent share, coordination performance, and evidential alignment. The institutional layer represents the coevolution of scientific, philosophical/religious, educational, and political authority without assuming a fixed modern institutional structure. Institution support changes gradually, introducing path dependence and permitting late-resolution worlds to retain structures formed under uncertainty.

Figure 1 summarizes the model architecture and the reciprocal relationships among genesis conditions, agent traits, cultural narratives, institutions, social dynamics, and civilizational outcomes.

Figure 1. Architecture of the Cosmic Priors agent-based model. Cosmic knowledge constrains narrative evidence fit, while agents, narratives, institutions, and social dynamics coevolve.

For agent i, narrative n, world w, and generation t, narrative utility combines evidential fit, meaning utility, local social prevalence, inherited attachment, institutional support, inquiry return, identity compatibility, and idiosyncratic noise:

The probability of adopting narrative n follows a multinomial logit rule:

Institutional support is updated through inertia and a softmax transformation of adherent share, coordination performance, and evidential alignment:

During resolution generation, agents incur a contradiction cost proportional to the decline in the fit of their inherited narrative and inversely proportional to cognitive flexibility. The cost decays over subsequent generations. Plurality-associated awe is modeled as a temporary state and as a culturally reinforced state proportional to support for empirical inquiry and cosmic pluralist institutions.

Each generation proceeds in a fixed sequence documented in Supplementary Table S7. The world condition first selects the appropriate evidence-fit vector. Each matched replication also receives one environmental-scarcity sequence drawn from a lognormal distribution (meanlog = −2.0, σ = 0.55), clipped to [0, 0.65], and reused across all five matched worlds. This scalar scarcity state enters the conflict function but does not alter the narrative evidence fit. The shared draw ensures that counterfactual differences do not arise from different external scarcity histories.

Local social influence relies on community block mixing rather than on an explicit dyadic network. At the start of each generation, narrative shares are calculated separately in 20 communities, and each agent’s social utility depends on the share of each narrative in that agent’s community. Replacement agents copy a randomly selected parent’s traits with Gaussian mutation (SD = 0.035); 90% inherit the parent’s community, and 10% migrate uniformly. The model therefore represents local clustering and migration but does not represent degree distributions, hubs, tie strengths, or network rewiring.

After condition-specific contradiction and awe are updated, agents propose narratives through the multinomial-logit rule in Equations (2) and (3), selectively switch, reproduce culturally, and experience worldview-shock decay. Outcomes are then calculated, followed by the institutional update. For narrative n, coordination performance is the mean normalized coordination attribute among its current adherents, and institutional performance equals 0.55 times the adherent share plus 0.25 times the mean coordination plus 0.20 times the mean evidence alignment. Target support is softmax (3.3 times performance), and new support equals 0.84 times prior support plus 0.16 times target support, renormalized to sum to one. The only modeled resource-allocation variable is inquiry investment: a normalized propensity to allocate attention to inquiry, not a finite economic resource stock, budget, or production function.

Let s_n(t) denote the global share of narrative n, I_n(t) institutional support before the current-generation update, q_gn(t) narrative n’s share in community g, z_i(t) agent i’s current narrative, A(t) the common awe state, W_i(t) agent i’s recorded post-decay worldview shock, clip(x) truncation to [0, 1], and logistic(x) = 1/(1 + exp(-x)). Narrative diversity is − ∑ n s n ( t ) ln [ s n ( t ) ] / ln ( 5 ) . Institutional diversity uses the same normalized Shannon formula over I_n(t), and epistemic concentration is ∑ n I n ( t ) 2 . These definitions and all coefficients are also provided in machine-readable Supplementary Table S6.

Species-uniqueness exceptionalism is clip{mean_i[0.72E_z(i, t) + 0.28e_i] − 0.08A(t)}, where E_z is the adopted narrative’s exceptionalism attribute and e_i is the agent’s exceptionalism preference. Moral-circle radius is clip{mean_i[0.72M_z(i, t) + 0.28m_i] + 0.10A(t)}, where M_z is the adopted narrative’s moral-circle attribute and m_i is moral openness. Species-level identity is clip[0.48 moral-circle + 0.34(1 − exceptionalism) + 0.18A(t)]. Inquiry investment is clip{mean_i[curiosity_i × narrative-inquiry_z(i, t)] × R_c}, with R_c = 0.66 under solitude, 1.00 under uncertainty, and 0.86 under plurality.

Community fragmentation is F ( t ) = mean g { 0.5 ∑ n | q g n ( t ) − s n ( t ) | } . With scarcity R(t), exceptionalism X(t), and moral-circle radius M(t), conflict is logistic[−2.2 + 2.8(0.82)F(t) + 2.2(0.62)R(t) + 1.4(0.42)X(t) − 1.15M(t)]. Cooperation is clip[0.43C(t) + 0.31M(t) + 0.18(1 − conflict) + 0.08(1 - epistemic concentration)], where C(t) is the mean coordination attribute of agents’ adopted narratives.

Existential coherence is clip{mean_i[0.54 meaning-need_i × narrative-meaning_z(i, t) + 0.46 evidence-sensitivity_i × evidence-fit_z(i, t), c(t)] - mean_i[W_i(t)]}. At a late-resolution generation, W_i receives 0.80 × max(old fit − new fit, 0) × (1 − 0.55 flexibility_i) before multiplicative decay; the reported worldview-shock outcome is its post-decay population mean. Consequently, coherence responds to both current meaning/evidential alignment and residual transition shock rather than to certainty alone.

The persistent-uncertainty effect is:

The path-dependent resolution cost compares a late-resolution world with the genesis world that possesses the same final knowledge:

The primary experiment used 160 matched replications across all five worlds, 90 generations, and 1,500 agents per world, resulting in 108,000,000 agent-generation updates. NumPy’s PCG64 generator used the arbitrary, non-date seed 271828; the sensitivity analysis used seed 271829. Within each replication, common random numbers ensured that world differences were attributable to the cosmic condition rather than different external shocks or initial populations. Terminal world means use normal-approximation 95% confidence intervals across independent matched replications. Late-versus-genesis contrasts and the H8 acute-shock comparison use 95% t intervals over within-replication paired differences; a paired t test, paired standardized effect d_z, and Wilcoxon signed-rank check are supplied for H8 in Supplementary Table S3. The primary acute-shock window is generations 45 - 50 inclusive. For exact reproducibility, the original reduced-sensitivity experiment retains its five-generation window, inclusive of generations 33 - 37.

Table 3 lists the principal baseline parameters and the ranges used for robustness testing.

Table 3. Principal simulation parameters.

The global sensitivity experiment used 96 Latin-hypercube parameter sets over eight theoretically important parameters. Each set used eight paired replications with a reduced population of 600 agents and 65 generations. Spearman rank correlations were calculated between parameters and five contrasts: uncertainty’s entropy advantage, plurality’s exceptionalism difference, plurality’s species-identity difference, plurality-resolution shock, and shock asymmetry. Source code, parameter files, full trajectories, terminal outcomes, narrative shares, and sensitivity results are supplied as supplementary materials.

The study did not involve human participants, private records, or live interventions. Ethical review was therefore not required.

As shown in Figure 2, persistent uncertainty maintained the highest narrative diversity throughout most of the modeled history, ending at 0.971 [0.970, 0.971], compared with 0.948 [0.947, 0.950] under solitude and 0.929 [0.928, 0.930] under plurality. This result supported H1 in the baseline model. The uncertainty world preserved evidential space for mutually incompatible narratives, whereas both certainty conditions imposed stronger selection against claims contradicting common knowledge.

Figure 2. Mean narrative diversity across matched worlds. Shaded bands show 95% confidence intervals; the dashed line marks late resolution.

Figure 3 shows that inquiry investment was also highest under persistent uncertainty, ending at 0.395 [0.392, 0.398]. The plurality world ended at 0.341 [0.338, 0.343], and solitude at 0.235 [0.233, 0.237]. H2 was therefore supported under the baseline parameterization. The model distinguishes inquiry into whether another intelligence exists from inquiry into the consequences of a known answer; certainty redirects rather than eliminates curiosity.

Figure 3. Mean normalized inquiry investment across generations. The dashed line marks the resolution generation for the two transition worlds.

Terminal outcomes are summarized in Table 4 and Figure 4. Plurality from genesis produced lower species-uniqueness exceptionalism than solitude (0.445 [0.444, 0.447] versus 0.567 [0.565, 0.568]) and higher species-level identity (0.589 [0.588, 0.590] versus 0.444 [0.443, 0.445]). These results supported H3 and H4 under the baseline mechanism set. The change did not eliminate exceptionalism; human-uniqueness narratives lost evidential fit while moral, civilizational, and transcendent narratives remained viable.

Table 4.Terminal outcomes by world, mean [95% confidence interval].

Figure 4. Selected terminal outcomes by world. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals across matched replications.

Differences in cooperation were smaller than differences in cosmological diversity or identity. Cooperation at the terminal generation ranged from 0.734 to 0.769, while conflict remained above zero in every world (0.091 - 0.107). H5 was therefore supported: common knowledge about cosmic status altered the cultural landscape but did not remove scarcity, community fragmentation, or status competition. Existential coherence was similarly produced by the interaction of meaning utility, evidential fit, institutional reinforcement, and transition shock rather than by certainty alone.

Late resolution generated a short-term disruption absent from genesis worlds. Across the first six post-resolution generations, mean worldview shock was 0.04539 [0.04499, 0.04579] for uncertainty-to-plurality and 0.05522 [0.05480, 0.05564] for uncertainty-to-solitude. The paired difference (late plurality minus late solitude) was -0.00983, 95% CI [-0.01012, -0.00954], t(159) = -66.03, p < 0.001, d_z = -5.22; all 160 matched replications were negative. The Wilcoxon check reached the same directional conclusion (W = 0, p < 0.001). Figure 5 compares existential coherence in each resolution world to that of the corresponding genesis world. H6 and H7 were supported, whereas H8 was not merely unsupported: its predicted plurality-greater-than-solitude direction was reversed in the baseline model. Complete statistics are reported in Supplementary Table S3.

Figure 5. Difference in existential coherence between each late-resolution world and the genesis world with the same final cosmic knowledge. Zero indicates convergence.

The late-resolution rows in Table 4 appear identical to their corresponding genesis rows because the table rounds the means to 3 decimal places. No terminal value is copied from a genesis world. At full precision, the maximum absolute mean late-versus-genesis difference among the outcomes reported in Table 4 is 0.000248. The near-convergence is an emergent result strongly induced by the update rules: after generation 45, each late world uses the same final evidence-fit condition as its matching genesis world; contradiction shock and acute awe decay; and the baseline model contains no permanent historical-memory state. Common random numbers also allow narrative arrays to resynchronize, while small institutional and state residues can persist. Supplementary Table S4 reports every full-precision paired terminal difference and interval. The current model, therefore, represents transient hysteresis, not guaranteed permanent path dependence.

The global sensitivity analysis showed that several directly tested directions were fully stable across the 96 Latin-hypercube parameter sets, although their magnitudes varied. Uncertainty’s terminal entropy advantage was positive in 96/96 sets (100%; range 0.00210 - 0.04568); plurality’s exceptionalism difference was negative in 96/96 (range −0.16111 to −0.07689); and plurality’s species-identity difference was positive in 96/96 (range 0.06192 - 0.23569). Acute shock was positive in 96/96 sets for both late plurality (0.02212 - 0.08359) and late solitude (0.02699 - 0.09988). H8’s predicted positive asymmetry occurred in 0/96 sets; the reverse direction occurred in 96/96, with late-plurality-minus-late-solitude shock ranging from −0.02002 to −0.00461. Figure 6 presents the Spearman correlation matrix; Table 5 lists the strongest parameter associations for each principal contrast; and Supplementary Table S5 provides exact counts and proportions. The sensitivity design did not directly test H2 inquiry dominance, H5 conflict persistence, or the direction of terminal cooperation and existential coherence; no full-sensitivity robustness claim is made for those outcomes.

Table 6 reports the baseline-model evaluation of all eight preregistered hypotheses.

Figure 6. Spearman rank correlations between varied model parameters and selected counterfactual contrasts across 96 Latin-hypercube parameter sets.

Table 5.Strongest global sensitivity associations.

Table 6.Baseline hypothesis evaluation.

The primary finding is that cosmic knowledge acts as a constraint and incentive structure for cultural evolution rather than a deterministic script. Uncertainty favored a broader ecology of narratives because no empirical answer could decisively exclude solitude, plurality, or agnosticism. Solitude and plurality narrowed some explanatory possibilities but left meaning, moral regulation, transcendence, and institutional authority as persistent social functions. The model, therefore, does not predict the disappearance of religion or philosophy under extraterrestrial certainty; it predicts pressure to reinterpret claims directly contradicted by common knowledge.

A civilization born into plurality did not experience the acute transition cost observed when an uncertainty-based civilization received the same answer later. This supports a crucial distinction: disruption associated with disclosure may reflect the replacement of inherited narratives and institutions rather than the final cosmic condition alone. In the current finite-memory model, however, that path dependence is transient. Once the contradiction and acute-awe states decay, late-resolution worlds approach the matching genesis attractor and differ only slightly at full precision. The finding supports short-run hysteresis rather than irreversible civilizational lock-in. Models with durable institutional memory, intergenerational trauma, constitutional constraints, or non-ergodic identity commitments are needed to test permanent divergence.

Plurality reduced species-uniqueness exceptionalism but did not create a non-exceptionalist civilization. Narrative competition shifted toward claims that humanity is morally distinctive, developmentally young, spiritually significant, or uniquely responsible for terrestrial life. This is consistent with the broader observation that evidence can change the content of identity without removing the social need for identity. Future models should distinguish biological uniqueness, moral status, civilizational rank, spiritual importance, and perceived destiny.

The model’s narrow extraterrestrial treatment is a starting point, not a claim that all anomalous-intelligence hypotheses are equivalent. The extratempestrial model ([13]), cryptoterrestrial hypotheses, artificial-intelligence hypotheses, and supernatural interpretations imply different genealogical, moral, and temporal relationships between humanity and the other intelligence. A future factorial model could vary origin, kinship, proximity, agency, technological asymmetry, contact, and intervention. Such extensions would reveal whether the strongest civilizational effects arise from nonhuman intelligence as such or from the relationship between that intelligence and human identity.

The results caution against transferring modern survey reactions directly into claims about civilizational development. Current respondents have been socialized under uncertainty and within existing scientific, religious, political, and media institutions. Their reactions are therefore most relevant to late-resolution worlds. The contemporary literature added in revision further shows that belief correlates, media frames, first-contact scenarios, and geopolitical risk assessments vary with the form and institutional handling of evidence ([4]; [18]; [1]; [20]; [21]). Genesis-world analysis instead requires cultural transmission and institutional emergence. The approaches are complementary: empirical and post-detection studies can calibrate short-term transition mechanisms, while generative models can test whether the same factual condition produces different societies when present from the beginning.