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Xachariah comments on Just One Sentence - Less Wrong
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"If you perform experiments to determine the physical laws of our universe, you will learn how to make powerful weapons."
It's all about incentives.
If you just want incentives then I'd go with - "In 500 years, a gamma ray burst will wipe out all humanity unless you colonize distant stars, so get to work."
Afterall, 'powerful weapons' presumably caused the problem in the first place. A burning, racially/religious/culturally rooted drive to reach the stars would be far more useful in the long run than a desire to conquer our enemies, even if it is based on a lie.
How would their perception of that claim differ from our perception of the mayans' claim about 12/21/12?
It would be no different than how "germs cause diseases" would be dismissed as not trusting in evil spirits, or the atomic hypothesis being the rantings of a madman. Presumably anything we tell them they'll have to take on faith until they can check for themselves.
And by the time they're putting up orbital telescopes to look for possible gamma ray burst candidates, I think humanity will be in a safe enough position.
There would BE a claim, for starters... Excellent point though, you'd need some additional evidence or stagecraft to impress them, which probably counts as increasing the size of the message.