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The paper about the messages written by Dumas and Dutil: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228862784_The_Evpatoria_Messages https://www.researchgate.net

by acqq 6y ago

The paper about the messages written by Dumas and Dutil: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228862784_The_Evpatoria_Messages https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228862784_The_Evpat... As I was young, I watched Star Trek and listened to Carl Sagan's positive expectations about the "first contact." But that was before the modern Internet. Now I'm much more pessimistic. I'm almost sure that the biggest chance of anything outside of Earth responding would not be something we'd like: I would expect either cosmic spam, cosmic scammers or cosmic criminals to respond. And it can be even worse, to the point of some powers that do some planned destruction out of pure indifference to what the effects are, like Douglas Adams writes: just "to make room for a hyperspatial express route" and even if the Earth was not exactly there it was close enough that the "cleaning" from "risky" lifeforms will be performed and your time to file a complaint expired, thank you very much, we really care about your opinion, to return to main menu press 0. So I'm thinking more like Hawking: “Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn’t turn out so well.” (1) ... (to Native Americans). Some quite recent news, probably influencing me: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-46-000-year-old-aboriginal-site-was-just-deliberately-destroyed-in-australia https://www.sciencealert.com/a-46-000-year-old-aboriginal-si... 1) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/stephen-hawking-controversial-physics-black-holes-bets-science/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/stephen-hawk...

bee_rider 6y ago
An alien species would certainly be incompatible with our germs, possibly incompatible with the basic life-chemisty of our planet, and would likely be far enough away that we're restricted to swapping a message like once a generation assuming we're anywhere near right about the basic laws of physics. I wouldn't worry too much about it. The worst case is they will troll us.
- gryfft 6y ago
  Oh, good. Trolling. That's never been a serious problem before.
svachalek 6y ago
Yeah, I worked out some pretty depressing logic about the implications of the speed of technological progress vs light speed, and discovered that Liu Cixin had gone down the exact same path in the Dark Forest, which follows the Three Body Problem. Check it out, it's a good read despite the depressing implications.

by acqq 6y ago

bee_rider 6y ago

An alien species would certainly be incompatible with our germs, possibly incompatible with the basic life-chemisty of our planet, and would likely be far enough away that we're restricted to swapping a message like once a generation assuming we're anywhere near right about the basic laws of physics. I wouldn't worry too much about it. The worst case is they will troll us.

gryfft 6y ago
Oh, good. Trolling. That's never been a serious problem before.

svachalek 6y ago

Yeah, I worked out some pretty depressing logic about the implications of the speed of technological progress vs light speed, and discovered that Liu Cixin had gone down the exact same path in the Dark Forest, which follows the Three Body Problem. Check it out, it's a good read despite the depressing implications.