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Unless they're able to figure out how to communicate with us, the contact will be silent. We're not even able to figure out how to converse with the other mammals on this planet, despite sharing the same brain layouts. We'd almost certainly be mutually indigestible. Their microbes might pollute Earth, though, and could dominate certain niches. We'd be a curiosity, like discovering a new species of ant in the rainforest. We don't have anything to offer except study.
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Mar 20, 2016 23:22
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Who What Now posted:Are you unaware that dogs exist? Unless first contact is between a domesticated dog, and a nut who believes dogs carry on in conversation, then first contact will be quiet. Sorry!
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Mar 21, 2016 01:25
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Who What Now posted:How do you define a "conversation"? If my dog gets my attention, I ask her if she needs to go out, and she barks and runs to the door to wait for me, then we have undeniably communicated in a back and forth manner. Does only verbal English count? That's needlessly anthropocentric, don't you think? I mean, sure. I just think dog-level communication would be an extremely disappointing first contact, and also way better than we're likely to get. I'm basing that off of our inability to communicate with the vast majority of species on earth, despite intra-species communication being ubiquitous, despite our efforts, despite sharing communication hardware. Until we can hold court with cetaceans, I highly doubt we'll make headway with aliens. Have you read Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life?
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Mar 21, 2016 04:00
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Who What Now posted:Other animals are too "dumb" to be capable of talking on our level, not the other way around. I do think aliens, by virtue of their visit, would be smarter than dolphins and dogs. However, our superior intelligence has not allowed us to communicate with either species at the level of a native speaker. Similarly, wolves are smarter than prairie dogs. Yet, as far as we can tell, both species are mutually unintelligible. Prairie dogs, which have one of the most extensive vocabularies in the animal kingdom, are totally unintelligible to more intelligent species. Are horses smarter than cows? Is the smarter of the two able to communicate with the dumber? We're much smarter than ants, and we know that they have extensive communication capabilities, but we're far from fluent in ant. My point is, intelligence hasn't seemed to helped much in inter-species communication. And this is considering species with similar evolutionary backgrounds and communication hardware. Maybe we'll be figured out, but I think you're overestimating the comprehensibility of communication between species.
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Mar 21, 2016 05:36
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Potential BFF posted:I'm going to guess Contact got it right with mathematical, chemical, or physical constants serving as common concepts for communication. Yeah. I bet you're right and one of the first thing we try will be hydrogen's spectrum. The challenge is in making a sentence out of the signals. We tried that actually, with the Voyager Golden Record, and IIRC it was a real puzzle even for human scientists who knew what they were looking at. Potential BFF posted:It depends on the type of alien though, if they're space-folding whales or clouds of energy then it'd probably more difficult. If aliens show up in a ship and purposefully reveal themselves they probably want to communicate and since they managed to build a space ship they're probably sentient or a hive mind with a high level of sentience. There's plenty of arguments to be had over what sentience is but ants are basically little machines and I don't care to ask my coffee maker any questions. As for dolphins, while picking up and playing with a sponge is neat, I don't think they've made any breakthroughs in the field of hybrid rocketry lately so I don't see them offering any groundbreaking insights into much beyond balancing a ball on their nose in exchange for a fish. I mean yeah, I totally agree. But if we don't find ants/dolphins/coffee makers interesting enough to communicate with, why would space-folding whales care about us? Why put the effort in to understand our hydrogen spectrum pulse patterns? I mean it's all theoretical, but we're relying on the aliens both being able to solve the extremely difficult problem of inter-species communication, made even more difficult by not sharing evolutionary heritage, and hoping they find us more interesting than dolphins and ants. Obviously we would love to communicate, but I don't think it'll be up to us. I bet the bulk of "communication" would be in reverse-engineering. Love your av, btw.
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Mar 21, 2016 18:46
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