Open Thread: January 2010

Kaj_Sotala

And happy new year to everyone.

Human goals aren't going to sync up exactly with alien goals

Why not, as long as I'm making things up?

(or why even call them aliens?)

Because they are from another planet.

I do not know enough science to address the rest of your complaints.

Why not, as long as I'm making things up?

I'm worried that some of my concepts here are a little be shaky and confused in a way that I can't articulate, but my provisional answer is: because their planet would have to be virtually a duplicate of Earth to get that kind of match. Suppose that my deepest heart's desire, my lifework, is for me to write a grand romance novel about an actuary who lives in New York and her unusually tall boyfriend. That's a necessary condition for my ideal universe: it has to contain me writing this beautiful, beautiful novel.

I... (read more)

6orthonormal16y

OK, I sense cross-purposes here. You're asking "what would be the most interesting and intelligible form of positive alien contact (in human terms)", and Zack is asking "what would be the most probable form of positive alien contact"? (By "positive alien contact", I mean contact with aliens who have some goal that causes them to care about human values and preferences (think of the Superhappies), as opposed to a Paperclipper that only cares about us as potential resources for or obstacles to making paperclips.) Keep in mind that what we think of as good sci-fi is generally an example of positing human problems (or allegories for them) in inventive settings, not of describing what might most likely happen in such a setting...

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Open Thread: January 2010

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Open Thread: January 2010

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