Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says I talk talk,
Speaker 1: I talked to you. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocal
Speaker 1: Bomb Hi, and I'm Joe. How y'all doing today? Not
Speaker 1: too bad? I'm sorry, But before we started rolling a
Speaker 1: little look behind the scenes here y'all, Jonathan apologized in
Speaker 1: advance for his lyric today. And so that was just
Speaker 1: my reaction to that one. Um, I feel I feel
Speaker 1: good about it, uh, and I feel good in general. Joe, Yes,
Speaker 1: But Joe, I think that you had something more serious
Speaker 1: and not nineties pop music related to ask us. No,
Speaker 1: I have something very fifty sci fi related. So the
Speaker 1: other day I was watching a great old classic called
Speaker 1: The Day the Earth Stood Still. Thank God. I thought
Speaker 1: you were going to say some other thing, attack the
Speaker 1: crab monster jam No, no, no, that wasn't from the fifties.
Speaker 1: I know, but he didn't start with okay, no, the
Speaker 1: Day the Earth Stood Still. So aliens arrived, Clatto comes
Speaker 1: out of the flying saucer addresses the ambassador from Earth.
Speaker 1: I think he gets shot almost immediately in peace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but here's how it almost always is in the old
Speaker 1: movies especially, Aliens are very easy to communicate with because
Speaker 1: they come down, they arrive at Earth, and they are
Speaker 1: bipedal primates who speak English with varying degrees of sliminess
Speaker 1: or tentacles on their heads. Occasionally they are not able
Speaker 1: to speak in English. However, they are able to use
Speaker 1: another human as a conduit through which it can speak English,
Speaker 1: for example, Independence Day. Sure, yeah, let us speak not
Speaker 1: of Dr Oakin. Uh, that's the same guy who played Data,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it. Well? Anyway, In reality, if there are aliens
Speaker 1: out there, we've got a few problems. They're not coming
Speaker 1: to Earth, or at least not yet, not that we
Speaker 1: know of, And so that means if we want to
Speaker 1: talk to them, we need to receive and transmit messages
Speaker 1: over long distances. And also in the real world, there's
Speaker 1: no reason to assume aliens already speak perfect American English
Speaker 1: or have any kind of universal translator. Yeah, let's let's
Speaker 1: first point out that there are a lot of Americans
Speaker 1: who cannot speak anything close to perfect American, like all
Speaker 1: three of us. Yeah, sure, all the time. There are
Speaker 1: even more basic assumptions than that we probably shouldn't make.
Speaker 1: So after that, you may be thinking, huh, well, if
Speaker 1: we can't assume that aliens can speak you know, English,
Speaker 1: or Chinese or any other Earth based language, why on
Speaker 1: Earth could we ever expect to have a converse station
Speaker 1: with them? How could we possibly set up communication between
Speaker 1: different solar systems? And I do want to impress upon
Speaker 1: you guys exactly how huge of a problem that is,
Speaker 1: because we humans have a really hard time understanding each
Speaker 1: other's languages a lot. I mean, I mean modern languages
Speaker 1: all right, right, and that's not even taking into account
Speaker 1: ancient languages. Yeah, yeah, I'm one of the things I
Speaker 1: wanted to point out. I had a quick aside in
Speaker 1: the notes. I love having my asides before we're even
Speaker 1: able to really dive into the topic. Is just the
Speaker 1: the proof that we would have some significant challenges being
Speaker 1: able to decipher any sort of alien language or be
Speaker 1: able to communicate meaningfully to aliens. Uh. In a way
Speaker 1: that I feel confident about that is, we just look
Speaker 1: at how we've treated ancient languages that we had lost
Speaker 1: practically all context around, so that we were unable to
Speaker 1: understand them for the longest time. So say, for example,
Speaker 1: you have a bunch of examples of ancient Egyptian script,
Speaker 1: got some some hieroglyphics, but there's no translation for them, right,
Speaker 1: You don't know you don't know that this symbol in
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian means this symbol or this s phonetic unit
Speaker 1: in another language. So on earth can you make sense
Speaker 1: of it? The way we made sense of it in
Speaker 1: the sense of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs was because we were
Speaker 1: lucky enough to come across the Rosetta Stone. Now, the
Speaker 1: Rosetta Stone is a stone that has UH generally the
Speaker 1: same passage with minor differences, written three times in three
Speaker 1: different languages. So there's uh. Egyptian hieroglyphs are one of
Speaker 1: the languages, Ancient Greek is another, and Demotic script, which
Speaker 1: was a later Egyptian language. Those are the three that
Speaker 1: are written. And by using those three texts and being
Speaker 1: able to make comparisons, linguists were able to say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this tells us what these different hieroglyphics symbols mean, what
Speaker 1: they represent, and that was how we began to understand
Speaker 1: the language of the hieroglyphic images. That we would find
Speaker 1: everywhere that you know, we're we're artifacts from the ancient Egyptians,
Speaker 1: but that all depends on a particular archaeological discovery. If
Speaker 1: we had never discovered the Rosetta Stone or I don't know,
Speaker 1: there may have been other archaeological discoveries since then that
Speaker 1: could have played the same role. I'm not sure, But
Speaker 1: if we didn't have those things at our disposal, what
Speaker 1: would we do? Basically, we would be completely unable to
Speaker 1: truly understand this language that that beings that were biologically
Speaker 1: identical to us more humans. Yeah yeah, wrote in what
Speaker 1: was that three to five thousand years ago? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about our own species and not being
Speaker 1: able except through on our own planets, right, except through
Speaker 1: fortuitous circumstance, being able to understand. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: you get to the pronunciation of ancient Egyptian. We aren't
Speaker 1: entirely certain exactly what it sounded like. So if someone
Speaker 1: were to speak ancient Egyptian like in a film like Stargate,
Speaker 1: it might be exactly what it actually sounded like way
Speaker 1: back when, because I mean, we still have scholars disagreeing
Speaker 1: on what the pronunciations were like. So, uh, you know
Speaker 1: when we point that out. The reason I point that
Speaker 1: out is to say, any message that we send that
Speaker 1: would be purely language based to an alien life form
Speaker 1: could be completely indecipherable. I mean, if we're having that
Speaker 1: much trouble with languages from our own species in our
Speaker 1: own history, imagine how much challenging, how much more challenging
Speaker 1: it would be when either an alien race receives something
Speaker 1: we send or we received something from an alien race.
Speaker 1: And understanding what that means, and that sort of brings
Speaker 1: us to the main thing we want to talk about today.
Speaker 1: So this month, on Monday and Tuesday, November tenth and eleven,
Speaker 1: the Seti Institute held a conference about communication with alien civilizations.
Speaker 1: And they brought together experts from a vast array of
Speaker 1: different dis to sort of combine their knowledge, put their
Speaker 1: heads together and and and see what they're different intuitions
Speaker 1: based on their different subject areas would come up with
Speaker 1: with reference to insights about and recommendations for communicating with
Speaker 1: alien civilizations. So it's called communicating across the Cosmos, And
Speaker 1: the central question was how can we make ourselves understood
Speaker 1: by other civilizations in the galaxy. So the conference had
Speaker 1: seventeen presentations over a couple of days, and we don't
Speaker 1: have time to talk about all of them here, but
Speaker 1: we wanted to discuss some of the ideas that were
Speaker 1: brought up at this conference and also just talk in general,
Speaker 1: have a discussion about what it means to try to
Speaker 1: communicate with aliens, how we could do it, what should
Speaker 1: we say, how should we say it, and is it
Speaker 1: a is it something that's possible to achieve? This is
Speaker 1: something that we've been thinking about for a while, We
Speaker 1: as a species have been thinking about for a while,
Speaker 1: not just steady but you know, pre steady days. And
Speaker 1: so I wanted to talk a little bit about some
Speaker 1: of the earlier ideas people have suggested and some of
Speaker 1: the actual things that we have done that could at
Speaker 1: least you know, in in theory be a communication with
Speaker 1: an alien presence um and and so it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: to kind of look at what we've done before. Also,
Speaker 1: before I forget, I should mention this reminds me a
Speaker 1: lot about the episode of how do you warn the
Speaker 1: people of the future about something like a nuclear waste
Speaker 1: disposal area? We talked about that, and I think in
Speaker 1: our second episode about dealing with nuclear waste for the future,
Speaker 1: the problem of communicating the fact that a very certain
Speaker 1: location has been made highly toxic for thousands of years. Right,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you create symbols that will
Speaker 1: last the test of time, knowing that things, even things
Speaker 1: that you would first ascribed to being dangerous, like skull
Speaker 1: and crossbones, today our fashion statements on like clothing and
Speaker 1: even kids toys. So it's you know, it's a legitimate issue. Well,
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing, except kind of magnified when
Speaker 1: you're talking about aliens. That doesn't mean that we haven't tried.
Speaker 1: So some of the some of the earlier attempts before
Speaker 1: we get into the actual conference details. Uh, there were
Speaker 1: some folks in the in the nineteenth century who thought, well,
Speaker 1: there might be life on the Moon or on Mars.
Speaker 1: We don't know, especially way back in the very early Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had no idea, So spell it out on a
Speaker 1: corn field, right, Actually one person did say, yes, one
Speaker 1: person suggested. One person suggested going into uh, something like
Speaker 1: a corn field, cutting pathways through it and planning wheat instead,
Speaker 1: so that through the contrast, you could create geometric patterns
Speaker 1: that could be seen from the moon, therefore being an
Speaker 1: indication of an intelligence that had put something there, because
Speaker 1: the thought process went no natural occurrence would create such
Speaker 1: perfect shapes. Okay, alright, that's cool, But but what about
Speaker 1: something further away from than the Moon. I mean, what
Speaker 1: if there are aliens on Mars Martians where That was
Speaker 1: a big one, right, because for a long time, even
Speaker 1: the patterns that could be seen with the telescopes, we
Speaker 1: had suggested things like possible canals. You guys have probably
Speaker 1: heard about canals on Mars Um. So this was an
Speaker 1: idea that was thrown around for a long time. And
Speaker 1: there are various people who are coming up with ideas
Speaker 1: of how we might be able to indicate to any
Speaker 1: source civilizations that might be on Mars that we are
Speaker 1: also here. And there was one guy, Joseph von Littrow,
Speaker 1: who said, why don't we just create these enormous channels
Speaker 1: of water and then pour kerosene on top of the water.
Speaker 1: It'll float on the top of the water. Then we
Speaker 1: set fire to the kerosene and so these flaming channels
Speaker 1: will create the same sort of shape. So I was
Speaker 1: talking about before, but on a massive scale. I'm talking
Speaker 1: like huge, so that they would be visible from the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars, especially if we're lighting it at night. Yeah, totally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so well you have to do it at night. That
Speaker 1: that ridiculous, right foresight to plan it when Mars would
Speaker 1: be in a position to see Earth on that side
Speaker 1: of Earth at night. I don't think they ever got
Speaker 1: to a point where any actual work was done. This
Speaker 1: was purely on the theoretical. It's probably good because that
Speaker 1: also sounds really quite dangerous where going to come from?
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, who needs light scale kerosene burning? I
Speaker 1: like it moving into the actual space age when we
Speaker 1: could do things more meaningful than setting stuff on fire. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in this case, we could set things on
Speaker 1: fire and make it fly up into space. But the
Speaker 1: Pioneer ten and Pioneer eleven spacecraft each had plaques on
Speaker 1: them that detailed the origin point for those spacecraft as
Speaker 1: well as when they were launched. So the plaques measure
Speaker 1: six by nine inches, which is fifteen by twenty three
Speaker 1: centimeters um. The plaques were bolted to the frames of
Speaker 1: the spacecraft and they show a naked man and a
Speaker 1: naked woman. The man is waving as if to say, hello,
Speaker 1: we have no clothes and we are probably good to eat.
Speaker 1: The plaque also has a symbolical layout of our solar
Speaker 1: system as well as our son's position relative to nearby pulsars,
Speaker 1: so that an alien craft, if it were to encounter
Speaker 1: one of these, would be able to triangulate the position
Speaker 1: of our solar system based upon the information um And
Speaker 1: so that's kind of interesting. Yeah, but that's essentially just
Speaker 1: like a like a giant postcard. Yeah, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: really a I mean it was more than just literally
Speaker 1: it was symbolic for a couple of different reasons. Sure, now,
Speaker 1: it was a lovely idea. And in nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: we had another one, which was to beam up a
Speaker 1: message using a radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory and uh,
Speaker 1: it was to the globular cluster M thirteen, Lovely Neighborhood,
Speaker 1: um gated community. This is a cluster of stars that's
Speaker 1: actually pretty dense. So it was thought, well, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of stars in this cluster, so if you know,
Speaker 1: it's just as good as any other potential target for
Speaker 1: possible intelligent life. And since there are more stars there
Speaker 1: than they're potential, Yeah, there's probably more planets in that
Speaker 1: general area, but it's about twenty five light years away,
Speaker 1: so that message would take years to get there. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're that message travels at the speed of light. So uh.
Speaker 1: The digital message was a twenty three pixel by seventy
Speaker 1: three pixel bit map image. Have you seen the pictures
Speaker 1: of this? It looks like it's a level from an
Speaker 1: Atari game. I'm wrong, I have seen it. It looks
Speaker 1: very interesting, yeah, very So what's what's in the image?
Speaker 1: There's a stick figure or a block figure if you prefer, uh,
Speaker 1: some chemical formulas, some numbers. There's also a very simplistic
Speaker 1: depiction of the radio telescope and the beam that was
Speaker 1: sent out. But here's the sad trombone moment of this message,
Speaker 1: which is that the way they aimed the message, they
Speaker 1: aimed at where the globular cluster in thirteen was at
Speaker 1: that moment, not where it will be in Now. You've
Speaker 1: always gotta lead it. Now they didn't lead it, so
Speaker 1: have taught me. Yeah, so in twenty five, in two years,
Speaker 1: that message will be where in thirteen was, not where
Speaker 1: in thirteen is. So even if there were some sort
Speaker 1: of intelligent life there, it's not going to be in
Speaker 1: line with the message by the time it actually gets
Speaker 1: to where it used to be. So the official response
Speaker 1: to that particular little stickling fact is that the message
Speaker 1: was really a technological demonstration rather than a sincere effort
Speaker 1: to make contact with alien life. Uh. And again, if
Speaker 1: you think, well, it would take fifty thou years for
Speaker 1: a message to go out and get back to us,
Speaker 1: assuming that there isn't some sort of trans hyper communication
Speaker 1: thing that we don't believe exists, and assuming that they're
Speaker 1: really prompt with answering their man right, they might they
Speaker 1: might be like, just let that's in the inbox for
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of millennia. We're talking about fifty
Speaker 1: thousand years before we would hear back. So I'm inclined
Speaker 1: to believe that, yes, this is really more of a
Speaker 1: symbolic show of look at what we're able to do.
Speaker 1: Um and fun side facts, since that radio telescope has
Speaker 1: gathered data for the City at Home project, which we've
Speaker 1: talked about, and distributed computing. What about those golden records
Speaker 1: we put on the Voyager spacecraft. They're pretty cool. Uh.
Speaker 1: First of all, they are actually copper discs that are
Speaker 1: gold plated, so they're not pure gold. So if you
Speaker 1: were thinking about leaving the solar system so that you
Speaker 1: could scavenge the gold records aboard the voyage of space. No,
Speaker 1: you you people salvage copper for scrap. Yeah, but but
Speaker 1: gold by weight is far more valuable than copper. Yes, really,
Speaker 1: you wanted me to pull up the buy ounce. Always
Speaker 1: go with gold at any rate. Uh. Actually, boys, both
Speaker 1: of your metal is precious. This whole conversation is precious.
Speaker 1: So the message was about our history as a species,
Speaker 1: leaving out some of the more grim details. The records themselves.
Speaker 1: They were twelve inches in diameter, which is a little
Speaker 1: more in thirties and meters. They had to be played
Speaker 1: I think at sixteen and two thirds repetition revolutions per minute,
Speaker 1: so not the same as what are typical records here
Speaker 1: on Earth, you know, the thirty threes. And this was
Speaker 1: but there. But there were instructions for how to play them,
Speaker 1: kind of symbolic instructions, yeah, yeah, kind of a pictionary
Speaker 1: type thing. They also included a needle and a cartridge
Speaker 1: inside the aluminum plated UHL that held the the discs
Speaker 1: and uh they had a committee that decided what went
Speaker 1: on this particular these pair of disks, and it was
Speaker 1: chaired by Carl Sagan, so there were billions and billions
Speaker 1: of submissions for that he went through. No, but I
Speaker 1: had to say billions and billions because so uh, it
Speaker 1: did include music from different cultures and different eras and
Speaker 1: greetings spoken in fifty five languages. And here are some
Speaker 1: of the music that you could find on the those disks.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take issue with one of these, but
Speaker 1: you can go ahead and read them. You're gonna take
Speaker 1: issue what that that it was included or that I
Speaker 1: put it? All right? So there's a box, Brandenburg Concerto
Speaker 1: number two, Mozart's Queen of the Night, Aria from the
Speaker 1: Magic Flute, Stravinsky's Sacrificial Dance from the Right of Spring,
Speaker 1: and Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Good. Is that the one
Speaker 1: you want to take issue with, No, it's the Right
Speaker 1: of Spring. We so we're deciding to set up a
Speaker 1: channel of communication via physical record with some future alien species,
Speaker 1: and what we give them is, I'm sure a very
Speaker 1: influential and great piece of music, but it's about human sacrifice.
Speaker 1: It's a ballet about a girl who dances herself to death.
Speaker 1: And also it's something that pretty much started a riot
Speaker 1: the first time it was performed. What's okay because none
Speaker 1: of that context is included with the records, so the
Speaker 1: aliens will have no way of knowing unless they you
Speaker 1: have a riot as soon as they hear it, in
Speaker 1: which case we realize that Stravinsky's effect is truly universal.
Speaker 1: There's also music from Japan, China, Bulgaria, from Native American tribes,
Speaker 1: from Aborigines, and more in fluded on those discs. There's
Speaker 1: also this is one of my favorite stories of all time.
Speaker 1: There's there's a soundtrack of the heartbeat and brain waves
Speaker 1: of andrew Ien that was taken over the course of
Speaker 1: an hour in ninety seven. And Drew In was Carl
Speaker 1: Sagan's wife until the time of his death. The two
Speaker 1: of them had fallen in love a couple of days
Speaker 1: before she went in to do this recording. They had
Speaker 1: been colleagues for years and years and years and uh
Speaker 1: or months and months at the very least, and and
Speaker 1: had been working very closely together, and over the course
Speaker 1: of a telephone conversation just a couple of days before
Speaker 1: these readings were taken, she and and Sagan had this
Speaker 1: revolutionary like like I love you, let's get married kind
Speaker 1: of moment and so so she she says that that
Speaker 1: while she was in this e G. Machine, Um, she
Speaker 1: was meditating on falling in love. Yeah, so there's so
Speaker 1: that is going out into the universe. And I mean
Speaker 1: and there were also there were also images that were
Speaker 1: converted into analog uh well a hug waves essentially and
Speaker 1: recorded onto these discs. So, um, it wasn't just sound,
Speaker 1: it was also pictures that you could get again you
Speaker 1: would have to follow the instructions on the plaque. Um.
Speaker 1: So these are all examples of previous symbolic attempts at
Speaker 1: least to send messages out to the universe that essentially
Speaker 1: say we are here and we are curious about out there.
Speaker 1: So this is some of the stuff we do that
Speaker 1: leads into the conference that about well, what if we
Speaker 1: took this the next step Instead of it being essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, we're just hurling a rock out into space
Speaker 1: that happens to have information about us on it, what
Speaker 1: if we wanted to take a more uh you know,
Speaker 1: a more serious and more concentrated effort to say we're here.
Speaker 1: What can that step be? Yeah, And so at this
Speaker 1: conference recently, there were I would say we could sort
Speaker 1: of group different discussions from the conference into sort of
Speaker 1: different categories. So one of the first ones I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about, because I think it's kind of fundamental
Speaker 1: to all the other approaches, is what kind of assumptions
Speaker 1: can we make about the nature of alien minds? Like
Speaker 1: what kinds of alien minds should we aspire to talk
Speaker 1: to and what kinds of organisms will be able to
Speaker 1: receive and understand messages that we send in principle. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting because there's a law of discussion on this
Speaker 1: right about all the different types of assumptions that we
Speaker 1: may or may not be able to make, uh, you know.
Speaker 1: And I'll withhold my own opinion about assumptions until we
Speaker 1: discussed the other ones, because obviously, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to. I don't want to end up adding my
Speaker 1: bias to all the conversation that follows. Well, so, so
Speaker 1: some a few of the people spoke very specifically about
Speaker 1: this kind of thing, right right Well there, So the
Speaker 1: idea is, Okay, if you assume there is a technologically
Speaker 1: intelligent species, maybe there are some assumptions we can necessarily
Speaker 1: make about their psychology that you could not be a
Speaker 1: technological civilization without certain things about your brain being a
Speaker 1: certain way or maybe not physically brain in the way
Speaker 1: we think of brain. Whatever your intelligence organ is. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps like an understanding of mathematics are you
Speaker 1: talking about or No, mathematics will be fundamental to when
Speaker 1: we talk about language, but I'm talking about even more
Speaker 1: fundamental psychological conditions. So for example, uh, David Dounair from
Speaker 1: Lundon University gave a presentation that was related to well,
Speaker 1: he wanted to say that, yes, we can probably expect
Speaker 1: to be able to communicate with an alien species, provided
Speaker 1: that a feature of that alien species is intersubjectivity, which
Speaker 1: he defines as quote, the sharing of experiences about objects
Speaker 1: and events. So it's sort of like the basis of
Speaker 1: all social behavior and and civilization. I would I would
Speaker 1: say it's just the basis of communication, which is almost
Speaker 1: a circular argument, saying we will almost certainly be able
Speaker 1: to communicate with an alien species is capable of communicating
Speaker 1: well well, but without the ability to communicate, we would
Speaker 1: not be able to communicate with that alien species, which well, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that's completely a valid point to make,
Speaker 1: because there is absolutely the chance that that a complex
Speaker 1: alien life doesn't have any any methods of communicating with
Speaker 1: anything outside of itself. Right, Well, he argues, actually that
Speaker 1: any alien species that has the technology to receive our
Speaker 1: radio messages will possess intersubjectivity. He says, quote intersubjectivity is
Speaker 1: a basic requisite for the emergence of intelligence, sociability, communication,
Speaker 1: and technology. And I can see the idea there. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't imagine, I really think that he really might
Speaker 1: be onto something that you can't come up with a
Speaker 1: scenario in which a species that can't communicate ideas or
Speaker 1: or experiences works together to create technology. Oh right, absolutely
Speaker 1: not so at least not one that has any form
Speaker 1: of individual is um right. So he argues that we
Speaker 1: should sort of expect some attributes that are likely present
Speaker 1: based on this. We we should assume intersubjectivity in alien minds,
Speaker 1: and we can expect quote a sustainable complex social system
Speaker 1: with a regulated system for collaborations such as ethics. So
Speaker 1: sort of social complexity and then complex communication for collaboration
Speaker 1: and abstract conceptualization makes sense to me. And then also
Speaker 1: a high degree of distributed cognition. And then there is
Speaker 1: another presentation that I thought was interesting about what we
Speaker 1: could assume about alien minds. And this was from Thomas
Speaker 1: love Yanovic, and this idea was the role of empathy. Okay,
Speaker 1: so people like us, we can try to empathize with
Speaker 1: and subsequently understand the intention of other minds. We can.
Speaker 1: We have a theory of mind. We can get inside
Speaker 1: other people's heads, and and we do that all the time,
Speaker 1: even with non human creatures like we as we assign
Speaker 1: feelings and thoughts and emotions to dogs and beetles and airplanes. Right. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: imagine you put yourself in a room, in a locked
Speaker 1: room with somebody who doesn't speak the same language as you,
Speaker 1: and you're working on a task together. You may very
Speaker 1: well be able to work together on a relatively simple
Speaker 1: task even without sharing any words in common whatsoever, because
Speaker 1: there are ways that humans can sort of derive intentionality.
Speaker 1: I can sort of figure out what you're trying to
Speaker 1: get me to feel, even without understanding what any of
Speaker 1: your words mean. So uh Yanovich proposes that empathy might
Speaker 1: be a psychological universal. In other words, it's a feature
Speaker 1: of almost any intelligent species that could evolve. From that,
Speaker 1: we get the following guideline quote. If our communicants are
Speaker 1: incapable of understanding the informative intention behind our message. They
Speaker 1: still might be able to understand our communicative intention, the
Speaker 1: intention to reveal our presence as intentional beings, for it's
Speaker 1: much more likely that they will be able to empathetically
Speaker 1: recognize such an intention than to interpret a signal embodying
Speaker 1: an explicit representational content, right right, that at the very
Speaker 1: least they would be able to go, hey, this was
Speaker 1: created by beings who want to say Hi, yes. So
Speaker 1: in both cases here, it's sort of saying that we
Speaker 1: can assume any technologically intelligent species will have these basic
Speaker 1: features of psychology, and what can we derive from that
Speaker 1: that will help us craft a message, or at least
Speaker 1: know that there's something worth crafting, even if they don't
Speaker 1: understand it. And I think that's really interesting. But I know, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: you're you're probably you don't like assumptions, and yeah, though
Speaker 1: I don't think these are just stupid assumptions. Think these
Speaker 1: are very logical and well, and I don't think they're stupid,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that they're illogical necessarily. However, I
Speaker 1: get a little antsy simply because you know, we have
Speaker 1: to draw our conclusions, we have to base our assumptions
Speaker 1: on on the most minuscule of sample sizes for intelligent
Speaker 1: a planet that houses intelligent life, Now there's no way
Speaker 1: to get around that. Oh sure, Sure, and Joe, you
Speaker 1: actually had a point about that, right right, Well, the
Speaker 1: point you make is something that the people at this
Speaker 1: conference were highly aware of and talked about it in
Speaker 1: uh in their reflections on it. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: offer up, for example, one way that I was just
Speaker 1: trying to imagine, how could it be that these assumptions
Speaker 1: might be violated, because I think maybe the two assumptions
Speaker 1: we just talked about do make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: For example, if you try to imagine any species evolving
Speaker 1: intelligence through natural selection. But I was wondering, well, maybe
Speaker 1: we could assume there's a different kind of species out
Speaker 1: there in the galaxy, and that species could be one
Speaker 1: that's based on design. Now, I'm not going to that
Speaker 1: kind of controversial thing here. I'm talking about. Imagine a
Speaker 1: planet populated by intelligent robots created by another alien species,
Speaker 1: and now the species that created them is extinct or
Speaker 1: or has gone away to another planet. Sure, Or imagine
Speaker 1: even genuine chemistry based organic life forms, except instead of
Speaker 1: bearing minds shaped by the way intelligence naturally grows out
Speaker 1: of self replication and natural selection. You've got minds designed
Speaker 1: to be one way or another by the hyper intelligent
Speaker 1: species that engineered them, or we encounter aliens that have
Speaker 1: re engineered themselves to depart from their natural psychologists. So
Speaker 1: like a singularity on an alien platform. Right when you
Speaker 1: introduce crazy scenarios like this, which who knows, might not
Speaker 1: be crazy given different assumptions about alien technology, whatever we
Speaker 1: can assume about psychology based on natural selection and biochemistry
Speaker 1: that we see here on Earth kind of go out
Speaker 1: the window. Who knows what the purpose of engineered minds
Speaker 1: might be created for? Anyway, My point is, well, I
Speaker 1: think the points they make are really interesting and good.
Speaker 1: We can't be sure that the only life we encounter
Speaker 1: will have arisen by the same forces we did. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: um I I do think that at a certain point
Speaker 1: the question is for for our intents and purposes, and
Speaker 1: not this podcast intents and purposes, but for humanities intents
Speaker 1: and purposes. Um. It's it's almost moot because that level
Speaker 1: of difference in society is going to be I think
Speaker 1: that that's going to push it into the impossibility of contact. Um.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Like, like, unless they show up
Speaker 1: um and fail to notice us, but we notice them,
Speaker 1: Like we're never going to talk to them because they
Speaker 1: don't understand talking. They would. Yeah, unless it's well, if
Speaker 1: it's a like you said, some sort of of artificial
Speaker 1: whether synthetic, robot, chemical, whatever. If it's some sort of
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence created by aliens, that it is was designed
Speaker 1: for a specific purpose by the aliens, but is not
Speaker 1: a reflection upon the actual thought processes however you wanted
Speaker 1: to find it of the aliens. Uh. But they have
Speaker 1: access to a radio tower, they could theoretically they could
Speaker 1: theoretically receive whatever message we send out, but we but
Speaker 1: they wouldn't care. Yeah, I guess maybe. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to say what they would or
Speaker 1: wouldn't do, right, sure, Sure, I just I think that
Speaker 1: it's pretty solid to to go forward. I like that
Speaker 1: they laid out the fact that what we need to
Speaker 1: communicate with aliens is essentially uh, empathy and communic ability
Speaker 1: or communicativeness. That's communic ability is what colds are. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, Okay, communic anyway. Uh So, so
Speaker 1: if we start with the assumption, because I think we
Speaker 1: basically have to in order to proceed with the discussion.
Speaker 1: If we start with the assumption that that aliens can
Speaker 1: understand what intermined communication is and understand intentionality, they can
Speaker 1: perceive that there are other minds with intentions. What do
Speaker 1: we do from there? And how can we use language?
Speaker 1: What kind of tools would we use to get a
Speaker 1: message in those alien minds? Yeah, One of the messages
Speaker 1: that was included, or one of the ideas that was
Speaker 1: included within this this conference, was one that was proposed
Speaker 1: by Dr kim Binstead that any message sent must be
Speaker 1: by necessity self contained because it will take many thousands
Speaker 1: of years for it to get to wherever that intelligent
Speaker 1: life might be. Right, So it can't be like, hey,
Speaker 1: what's up. It needs to be the whole message at once. Right.
Speaker 1: It can't be a text message because whoever owns the
Speaker 1: phone now is not going to be owning the phone
Speaker 1: by the time the message gets responded to. Right, So
Speaker 1: it would just be like humans fifty thousand years from now,
Speaker 1: like who is this that's contacted us? And what what
Speaker 1: do they want? Did one of you guys ask if
Speaker 1: you left your keys somewhere what's what is this about?
Speaker 1: So it needs not the start of a conversation actical way. No,
Speaker 1: it's essentially saying we are here, this is us, we
Speaker 1: are here, and like that. Very similar to the the
Speaker 1: attempts we talked about in the previous uh UM section.
Speaker 1: But another was that if we want the aliens to
Speaker 1: understand what we're trying to say, it beholds us to
Speaker 1: make as few assumptions about that alien's knowledge, cognitive abilities,
Speaker 1: and even physiology as possible. So, in other words, we
Speaker 1: can't we can't put all of our eggs into a
Speaker 1: basket of based on lots of different assumptions on the aliens.
Speaker 1: We should try and make it as open as possible,
Speaker 1: with as many different UM avenues as possible, in order
Speaker 1: to make UH at least some attempt of understandability to
Speaker 1: an alien intelligence. And also stated that was unlikely that
Speaker 1: an alien intelligence would be able to decode natural language text,
Speaker 1: no matter how large the sample size. So we talked
Speaker 1: about this in artificial intelligence quite a few times, that
Speaker 1: by feeding enough data into a machine, the machine can
Speaker 1: eventually learn if it's designed a specific way and the
Speaker 1: software supports it. She argues that that might not be
Speaker 1: the best way to UM to send a message to
Speaker 1: alien life. That may not matter that we send. For example,
Speaker 1: if we were to send UH a library of books
Speaker 1: in in every language on Earth to an alien species,
Speaker 1: they might not be able to you know, that might
Speaker 1: not be able to do anything like the volume might
Speaker 1: not help them. Well, here here's the analogy. I think
Speaker 1: if you were to give more and more and more
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian writing samples to the pre Rosetta Stone archaeologists,
Speaker 1: they still wouldn't have anything to go on. It wouldn't
Speaker 1: be it wouldn't necessarily be helpful. Then you have a
Speaker 1: doctor Carl de Vito, who held to talk about whether
Speaker 1: or not mathematics can really be considered a universal language.
Speaker 1: And that's really interesting question because I think this idea
Speaker 1: is one of the best things we have going in
Speaker 1: terms of finding a universal constant to communicate. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The presupposition is that anyone who's intelligent enough to look
Speaker 1: at a message and say this came from people who
Speaker 1: want to communicate UM is going to have the basis
Speaker 1: in mathematics that's similar that to to to what we
Speaker 1: have that that mathematics is the universal Yeah, that's it's
Speaker 1: a scene in the Day the Earth Stood Still actually
Speaker 1: where the clattoo goes into the professor's office and writes
Speaker 1: a mathematical equation on the chalkboard that helps the professor
Speaker 1: solve his problem, and in the idea is well, math
Speaker 1: underlies all of the science of the universe and the ideas.
Speaker 1: You can't do science or build a radio telescope without
Speaker 1: understanding things like natural numbers and exponential ation and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. It's just it's necessary. It's interesting because he
Speaker 1: actually says, you know, we can't really be entirely sure
Speaker 1: that math as we communicate about it here on Earth
Speaker 1: is not essentially a human construct that allows us to
Speaker 1: deal with this. You know, it's a it's a concept
Speaker 1: we have created so that we can deal with this
Speaker 1: natural thing. So not that there isn't an underlying universal
Speaker 1: element here, but just the way that we describe it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the way we deal with it is in fact a
Speaker 1: construct that we humans have made. Now, he he argues,
Speaker 1: or at least he says that he believes that natural
Speaker 1: numbers are distinct, that those are those are uni platonic ideals.
Speaker 1: He believes there are things that exist in the world,
Speaker 1: but that the way we deal with those to express
Speaker 1: mathematical concepts is probably to some extent that human construction construction,
Speaker 1: and therefore may not make any sense to an alien
Speaker 1: intelligence in that form. Not that the alien intelligence wouldn't
Speaker 1: have their own methods of conveying similar concepts, but it
Speaker 1: may be in a fundamentally different way than we humans do.
Speaker 1: At which point I said I needed to get an
Speaker 1: ice cream sandwich and left my computer, and then I
Speaker 1: had a nice tasty treat. Um. Yeah, well, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So we we think that math might be useful to
Speaker 1: some extent, but the question is in what what's the
Speaker 1: best way to present math in such a way that
Speaker 1: it will be understood. Um, here's another problem with language,
Speaker 1: especially written language. Our whole concept of communication is influenced
Speaker 1: by the presence of language. In other words, language isn't
Speaker 1: just the tool we use to communicate, but it actually
Speaker 1: changes how our brains work when we're trying to send
Speaker 1: and receive messages. So, in what ways is an earth
Speaker 1: language centrism shaping the assumptions we make about alien communication?
Speaker 1: And what ways is the way we use language blinding
Speaker 1: us to how best to talk to aliens? This is
Speaker 1: a question that came up in another presentation. Dr Sherry
Speaker 1: Well Jensen and a presentation called Extraterrestrial Linguistics discusses the
Speaker 1: possibility of studying all about seven thousand existing human languages
Speaker 1: to look for universal features. What do they all have
Speaker 1: in common? And what do they all lack? What are
Speaker 1: they all not have in common? Uh? And she points
Speaker 1: out that while this is still a very limited starting
Speaker 1: point because all languages on Earth are still based on
Speaker 1: Earth conditions and human biology and all that. In the
Speaker 1: words of the presentation abstract quote, we can't think outside
Speaker 1: the box until we've identified the box, right, And I
Speaker 1: totally I agree with that. That's kind of where I
Speaker 1: was coming from with the idea of Earth as our
Speaker 1: single sample sizes that we don't even have a full
Speaker 1: idea of what that sample size entails like big picture wise, right,
Speaker 1: And and so her idea is we need to do
Speaker 1: a full sort of look at all of human language
Speaker 1: and the way human language shapes the assumptions we make
Speaker 1: about communication. There may be things that we don't even
Speaker 1: realize we're getting wrong about how to communicate with aliens
Speaker 1: because we don't realize the way language is blinding us
Speaker 1: to some aspects of communication we don't understand. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And obviously our physiology does have a big part to
Speaker 1: play with that, because a lot of you know, language
Speaker 1: is are are essentially, especially when you get down to
Speaker 1: the written part, are a way of translating the sounds
Speaker 1: we make into meaningful thoughts, and in spoken language, a
Speaker 1: lot of our communication actually occurs nonverbally. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: gets really complicated. She she said that that we need
Speaker 1: to ask, and I love this quote. Um, she said,
Speaker 1: she said about the languages, all of the languages of Earth,
Speaker 1: what presuppositions do they all make? What things are unsaid
Speaker 1: or even unsayable because these things are too obvious, to
Speaker 1: obscure or somehow foreign to human cognition. Yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: These are big, heavy questions. The thing I love about this,
Speaker 1: by the way, is that even if we get to
Speaker 1: a point where we say, alright, communicating with aliens is
Speaker 1: is uh. You know, that's a super far reaching goal,
Speaker 1: and we more likely than not will not achieve it,
Speaker 1: or if we do achieve it, there's no way of
Speaker 1: us knowing that we succeeded, because we will all be
Speaker 1: gone long before it ever happens. Even if you accept
Speaker 1: all that is true. We're gonna learn so much about
Speaker 1: ourselves as a species just through the process of self
Speaker 1: reflection that there is genuine use out of this. So
Speaker 1: even for people like me who who get a little
Speaker 1: grouchy towards the end and say, oh, what's the years
Speaker 1: I can't even communicate with the kids that come around
Speaker 1: with the bogo sticks in the scoodas all over my
Speaker 1: front yard. What just happened in here? I get a
Speaker 1: little grouchy. Okay, I'm just saying saying, yes, yes, there's
Speaker 1: there's always learning to be had, even from those kids
Speaker 1: with their new fangled internet. Stay and me nothing. Okay, okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: enough talk. Let's get down to the real deal. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've talked about theory, We've talked about what what can
Speaker 1: we expect about alien minds? What can we expect about
Speaker 1: the nature of communication? What could possibly be understood? Let's
Speaker 1: just get to some real propose those what should we send?
Speaker 1: So it's going to be data of some kind? Well,
Speaker 1: but what what do we want to tell them about us?
Speaker 1: I mean, what do we not want to tell them
Speaker 1: about us? In some cases it's not just data. Some
Speaker 1: people have suggested actually sending stuff. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: if you're already talking about it, taking forever in a
Speaker 1: day for the message to get there, then what's a
Speaker 1: few thousand more millennia between friends? So one idea is
Speaker 1: to send earthly artifacts or images of those artifacts. Of course,
Speaker 1: that assumes that the alien life will be able to
Speaker 1: perceive such things, which you know, granted again, if we
Speaker 1: get too far out from the human concept of perception,
Speaker 1: then communication is meaningless anyway. So it does end up
Speaker 1: becoming a moot point. So eventually we can say, like,
Speaker 1: all right, fine, those people won't or aliens won't pay
Speaker 1: attention to it, but maybe the next step will. Uh.
Speaker 1: Kerrie Patterson, who is an artist, had an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: She suggested we send smells as part of our message,
Speaker 1: so sort of like chemical signatures that kind of give
Speaker 1: an idea of what life on Earth is like. And
Speaker 1: she included you know everything among that, like including things
Speaker 1: like you know, an orange blossom or the smell of
Speaker 1: car exhaust, you know, um, so that yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: and maybe they don't have noses per se, but if
Speaker 1: they can, if they can interpret chemicals in a way,
Speaker 1: it all similar to the way that we do I mean,
Speaker 1: we we can scientifically define what the smell of of
Speaker 1: orange blossom is. So sorry, I have to say her
Speaker 1: presentation was called making Sense of Life on Earth. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's that's worthy of us. Good job, good job carry patters.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I would have titled that. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: long as whatever alien species doesn't immediately get poisoned by
Speaker 1: said chemical signatures, I think they would be a pretty
Speaker 1: good Yeah, we weren't really trying to do that. Um now, personally,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I think that worrying about what des send
Speaker 1: is almost as moot as the consideration of whether or
Speaker 1: not the aliens are going to be able to understand us,
Speaker 1: because if the aliens, if the aliens can and understand us,
Speaker 1: then it almost doesn't matter what we send anyway, because
Speaker 1: whatever people will be around by the time the aliens
Speaker 1: receive the message will be so different from what we
Speaker 1: are today that we can't even anticipate what's going to
Speaker 1: be alien to humans of the future, much less to
Speaker 1: a species living off on another planet. So so you're
Speaker 1: getting into the kind of moral decision of whether to
Speaker 1: whether to send, for example, the car exhaust as a sample,
Speaker 1: or or only the beautiful orange blossom, or you know,
Speaker 1: whether to if we're sending them an encyclopedia, if we're
Speaker 1: going to cut out all the parts about war and
Speaker 1: terrible stuff, right right. I mean, there are some people
Speaker 1: who say, you know, they the messages they want are
Speaker 1: all very positive messages of peace and greeting and uh
Speaker 1: and friendship, that kind of thing. And there are others
Speaker 1: who say, well, we maybe we should send a more
Speaker 1: complete picture of what we humans are with all complete
Speaker 1: with our frailties, are failings, the dark side as well
Speaker 1: as the light that, and and there's there's debate back
Speaker 1: and forth, and I ultimately think it doesn't really matter. Oh,
Speaker 1: I just I think it's such an interesting question though.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such a huge difference between saying like, hey, y'all,
Speaker 1: we exist and saying, hey, y'all, here's the sum of
Speaker 1: all of our knowledge, here's our weaknesses, um, and here's
Speaker 1: the really terrible stuff that we've done to each other
Speaker 1: a whole bunch over the course of history. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it depends on how you what kind of information you
Speaker 1: decided to send. If you're trying to send something about
Speaker 1: the history of humanity, it's not necessarily at the zoomed
Speaker 1: out view a very pretty picture. Well, in a large
Speaker 1: law census, it's not. But I mean, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of things that you could include about just general
Speaker 1: progress that are pretty amazing. The the the strength of
Speaker 1: the human intellect is a really incredible story. But the
Speaker 1: the ultimate thing I keep coming back to is that
Speaker 1: you're talking about tens of thousands of years into the
Speaker 1: future before the message is even received. The people. The people,
Speaker 1: if there are people, so if there are humans at
Speaker 1: that at that time, are going to be fundamentally different
Speaker 1: from the way you and I are right now. We're
Speaker 1: talking about more time than has been in the recorded
Speaker 1: history of humans, and with things changing as as quickly
Speaker 1: as they do, I don't think that it will be
Speaker 1: pertinent to whatever people are alive at that point, much
Speaker 1: less any point when an alien species decides to respond back. Right.
Speaker 1: This is touched on by Albert A. Harrison of U. C.
Speaker 1: Davis in the presentation he gives, which is about the
Speaker 1: fact that when you're when you're sending a message to
Speaker 1: an alien species, you're sending a time capsule. You know,
Speaker 1: when it reaches them, it's not going to be about
Speaker 1: Earth's present it's about Earth's past. It's it's almost a
Speaker 1: point of vanity, I would say, of whether or not
Speaker 1: we're including the bad stuff along with the good, because
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's the equivalent of intergalactically speaking, creating
Speaker 1: a an okay Cupid profile and and just deciding what
Speaker 1: you want to put on it. This one picture makes
Speaker 1: me look awesome, I'd say. For that reason, I'm definitely
Speaker 1: on the side of of let's be real. I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't want to start a conversation spanning perhaps hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of years on a note of deception. Well, again,
Speaker 1: it might be a moot thing by the time the
Speaker 1: message gets there. Sure, Sure, I mean I mean that
Speaker 1: that too. I mean, you know, the humans who would
Speaker 1: possibly receive a message back at least fifty thousand years
Speaker 1: in the future, whatever it happens to be, um would
Speaker 1: probably think that we're just as gross as those aliens.
Speaker 1: They might, they might. They might not even know what
Speaker 1: the aliens are referring to, because we have no way
Speaker 1: of knowing if there if their history is going to
Speaker 1: be at all accurate totally, But here's the question, what
Speaker 1: do we send? I mean, we're talking about sort of
Speaker 1: the tonal approach of the say what is the actual thing?
Speaker 1: Do you send them the Encyclopedia Britannica, What is the thing?
Speaker 1: I really liked? Um Dr Seth show stack Dr I'm
Speaker 1: going to go with that pronunciation. Yes, who is the
Speaker 1: senior astronomer and director of the Center for Seti Research.
Speaker 1: Um suggested that we send everything the whole Internet actually
Speaker 1: UM or or a very large part of it at
Speaker 1: the very least. He He argues that since it's that
Speaker 1: the Internet is so wide ranging and also redundant at
Speaker 1: the same time, UM, that it would be the most
Speaker 1: likely thing to help aliens understand us. I do think
Speaker 1: that it's a tragedy that fifty years into the future
Speaker 1: humans and aliens are going to go to war because
Speaker 1: four chan I would declare war on us for fortuneably.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, fortune I. I don't really mean that. I
Speaker 1: love you. No, No, I mean it's I think it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful idea, honestly, because it's such a sum and
Speaker 1: a breadth of humanity. I agree with it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, practicality aside the idea of whether or not
Speaker 1: this is actually ever going to have any any practical outcome. Um,
Speaker 1: and it may not. I think it's a worthy endeavor,
Speaker 1: and I also think that if you're gonna do it,
Speaker 1: you go whole hog. I agree with both of you
Speaker 1: that that all this information needs to be conveyed because
Speaker 1: that is who we are. And if if the purpose
Speaker 1: of this is to say we are here, this is
Speaker 1: who we are, and this is what we're all about,
Speaker 1: then you've got to include everything. You can't just do
Speaker 1: the the pretty roses and everything what happens in You
Speaker 1: don't want to get to the first state and have
Speaker 1: them say you're not what you look like. What if
Speaker 1: they were to show up? What if they were to
Speaker 1: show up. Let's say let's say this. I'm going to
Speaker 1: take this semi positively. Let's say that the aliens show
Speaker 1: up many hundreds of thousands of years from now, and
Speaker 1: by then we as a species have left Earth and
Speaker 1: what is left behind is a shell of what was there.
Speaker 1: They're going to wonder, how did this happen based upon
Speaker 1: this picture we received where everything was really awesome. It's
Speaker 1: some other alien species get here before us and wipe
Speaker 1: them out. No, we pretty much to ourselves. We just
Speaker 1: left that out of the profile, in which case they
Speaker 1: would create a new species of intelligent robots to populate
Speaker 1: our shell of planet, turn it back into a nice place,
Speaker 1: and then create a new human race that was never
Speaker 1: aware of the one that came before. And there's the
Speaker 1: premise for your new movies. And they leave behind one
Speaker 1: Rosetta stone and they Okay, Well, I wanted to finish
Speaker 1: on one last note, which is that after the conference,
Speaker 1: Dr Seth show Stack wrote a peace in the Huffington
Speaker 1: Post that had some sort of post conference reflections that
Speaker 1: I thought were interesting, and the main one he said
Speaker 1: it was sort of emerged as a late motif of
Speaker 1: the conference, which was avoid anthropocentrism. It's tough to do
Speaker 1: because it's the only thing we have. Humanity is the
Speaker 1: only intelligence we we know about, and it's it's the
Speaker 1: hardest thing, but we also recognize it's the most important thing.
Speaker 1: You've got to rem ember to think these are not humans,
Speaker 1: these are not humans. But how do you do that? Yeah? Now,
Speaker 1: how do you do that and still do any meaningful action? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's it's, by its very nature a very difficult thing.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, but it's cool to have these
Speaker 1: thought experiments because, like I said, if nothing else, we
Speaker 1: start to push forward everything from our own understanding of
Speaker 1: us as a species to technology as well. Obviously, what
Speaker 1: we should send is the movie Space Jam. You want
Speaker 1: to declare hostilities towards an alien race, I think the
Speaker 1: best way to give the the aliens a sense of
Speaker 1: what humanity is like would be to send them Space
Speaker 1: Jam and Cop and a half. I look, I've seen
Speaker 1: Star Trek the Next Generation, and I'm perfectly aware that
Speaker 1: sending aliens our media is not the best way to
Speaker 1: introduce us to them, because it will all end in
Speaker 1: some bizarre holiday experiment where they think that pulp novels
Speaker 1: were real. But they didn't send Space Jam. We send
Speaker 1: the wrong thing. Whereas I've seen Galaxy Quest, and I
Speaker 1: know that by sending aliens are pop culture, we can
Speaker 1: to invade us because of our basketball prowess. I think
Speaker 1: we need to send them Theodore Rex starring Whoopi Goldberg.
Speaker 1: That's my own personal opinion. I think that this is
Speaker 1: precisely why neither of you are in charge of this
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Very likely so so, this has been
Speaker 1: largely a philosophical discussion and in some cases of debate,
Speaker 1: which is awesome. That's one of the reasons why. I
Speaker 1: like that we have multiple hosts for the show so
Speaker 1: that we can actually have a discussion and not just
Speaker 1: a This is the part where I recite the things
Speaker 1: that we have researched. Um, it's good and and I
Speaker 1: really have enjoyed it. It was also a real mind
Speaker 1: bender of a topic because it forces you to sit
Speaker 1: there and say, well, how do I think about not
Speaker 1: being human? But it's it's the sort of thing we
Speaker 1: love to tackle. So guys, if you out there have
Speaker 1: suggestions for other topics that are also real mind benders,
Speaker 1: you should let us know. Send us a message our
Speaker 1: email addresses fw Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop us a line on Twitter, Google Plus or Facebook.
Speaker 1: Twitter and Google Plus we are f W Thinking. Just
Speaker 1: search f W Thinking and Facebook will pop right up.
Speaker 1: Leave your message, let's know what you think. Maybe you
Speaker 1: have you want to weigh in on this alien communication topic.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Tell us
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you again really soon. For
Speaker 1: more on this topic in the future of technology, I'll
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