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Re: How do you say 'Hello' to an alien?

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Saturday, August 2, 2003, 9:48
Quoting J Y S Czhang <czhang23@...>:

> In a message dated 2003:08:01 10:33:30 AM, jaspax@U.WASHINGTON.EDU writes: > > >Thinking that they'll understand the message is a whole different matter. > >Representational art is remarkably different even between human cultures, > >and thinking that aliens could understand the Arecibo message makes far > >too many assumptions about their cognitive and perceptive abilities. > > The aliens might think it is a music composition and try it out... > Probably decide whatever composed this kinda of music are pretty > uninteresting/primitive/potential threat. Or probably think it was the > aliens' equivalent of a > schoolkid's doodle ;)
One'd have to hope they'd try different ways of making sense of it.
> Or what if by mistake we just declared war on the aliens, who think > that's a bloody rich joke coming from Higher Primates?
While it would be mighty ironic if the Arecibo message constituted a declaration of war in some alien form of communication, I'd not give much for the intelligence of an alien who seriously believed that some unknown agency out in the galaxy would send a declaration of war in their (the alien's) language out into interstellar space. Andreas