Normal_Anomaly comments on Rationality Quotes September 2011 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: dvasya 02 September 2011 07:38AM

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Comment author: Kingreaper 01 September 2011 11:55:47AM *  8 points [-]

Welcome to lesswrong.

I wouldn't consider anything you've said here stupid, in fact I would agree with it.

I, personally, see it as a failure of imagination on the part of Dawkin's, that he considers the issue he personally finds most important to be that which alien intelligences will find most important, but you are right to point out what his likely reasoning is.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 02 September 2011 11:37:41PM 2 points [-]

Another chain of reasoning I have seen people use to reach similar conclusions is that the aliens are looking for species that have outgrown their sense of their own special importance to the universe. Aliens checking for that would be likely to ask about evolution, or possibly about cosmologies that don't have the home planet at the center of the universe. However, I don't think a sense of specialness is one of the main things aliens will care about.