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comment by alpha0
alpha0  ·  4961 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What do you say to an alien?
According to an alternative point of view, we should say as little as possible. Per this speculative line of reasoning, highly advanced species would not view intergalactic encounters in the romantic light that we seem to view it.

We must also consider the possibility that the "aliens" in question may potentially be "reasoning" and "self aware" machines who have already struggled against and overcome their organic creators. Its quite hard to win the argument for "sanctity of life" with a self-aware machine.

(In that light, the voyageur message, complete with return address, is a potentially grave error that future generations will dearly regret, with the silver lining that it was sent before we had the tech to nano-encode our genome on the far too revealing message ;)

I think central to these thoughts is the consideration of the correlation between advancement in technology and (for a lack of a better word) enlightenment.





mike  ·  4960 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Steven Hawking posited a similar view. When we think about the big scary universe 'out there', we're kind of like primitive creatures hiding under a rock. Perhaps it would be unwise to alert strangers to our presence until we are sure of and have tested our own powers.

Then again, it's probably safe to assume any civilization capable of reaching us would not want to destroy or enslave us -- why would they need to? What power would they gain that they wouldn't already have? True that there is not necessarily a correlation between tech advancement and enlightenment, but what we're talking about here, traveling between stars, is a nearly unimaginable leap in technology. So the correlation is perhaps better posited as immense advancement in technology and lack of interest in destroying a primitive culture.