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[PanH]

Personally I think the easiest way to have aliens be able to understand us is to dump wikipedia on them. With thousands upon thousands of lines of text and some images for context (which they'll hopefully be able to interpret) seems like the most reliable way to give them something they can decode.

What if they can't see ? Wikipedia is pretty visual.


And well, afawk, DNA is universal, but we don't know aliens, so ...

[Pnx]

Personally I think the easiest way to have aliens be able to understand us is to dump wikipedia on them. With thousands upon thousands of lines of text and some images for context (which they'll hopefully be able to interpret) seems like the most reliable way to give them something they can decode.

What if they can't see ? Wikipedia is pretty visual.


And well, afawk, DNA is universal, but we don't know aliens, so ...

Then we include a screen reader?

[PanH]

But if they don't have eyes ? Maybe they're blind, or deaf, or whatever. Maybe they have other senses.

[Lightningfalcon]

But if they don't have eyes ? Maybe they're blind, or deaf, or whatever. Maybe they have other senses.

We bombard them with electromagnetic energy?

[Putnam]

But if they don't have eyes ? Maybe they're blind, or deaf, or whatever. Maybe they have other senses.

We bombard them with electromagnetic energy?

that's sight dube

[misko27]

So, they aren't capable of recieing any form of input, and yet they advanced from a simple primitive species to galaxy-traveller?
 
Remember, unless extensive genetic reconstruction has been done, all alien species started out like we did, as apes. What I mean is, they started where intelligience wasn't a given. They weren't designed to be weird. They are weird because it works. If it doesn't work, and not having tactile, electromagnetic, or protein based sensory is just evolutionarily stupid.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's stupid on Earth. You can't assume the conditions of an alien world.

[misko27]

But what would they be? We can't go and say that they just skip from simple unintelligient species to advanced power. Even if it is incredibly alien, how impossibly alien could it be that all senses are non-existant? I mean, physics has to remain the same, and that limits the possible alien-ness substanitatially. Atoms still bounce off each other. Thermo-dynamics is presumbably the same. Touch includes the basics of heat, friction, solids, liquids. If you think about it, sound is touch where it decodes vibrations. Only your tongue and your eyes are different, and they are almost simply specialized. tongue is reacting proteins, eyes react with passing waves.
 
If someone could visualize even a framework for sense that doesn't tie-in to something on earth, I will concede the point. All animals use the pretty basic senses, and they arrived in very, very different cocnditions. If you include taste, that actually expands into plants in reacting to enviromental chemicals.
 
The senses include cheemical reactions, Thermodynamics, and Energy/wave based sensations. That's pretty much everything. Sure, there are pobably novel forms, but they still tie-in.

[PanH]

It would be the same situation that of a born blind person. How can he imagine seeing ? Yet it exists. It doesn't need to be out of physics' laws to be completely alien to us.

[misko27]

But he can touch, he can hear, he can taste. He can sympathize with the deaf, (although, presumbably, conversation would be stunted.) Taking away everything we understand as a sense, and replacing it with... what? As long a they live in a medium as opposed to a empty void, touch is very useful. Why wouldn't one have it?

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, I can see things deviating pretty far from the norms, but if they evolved we can pretty reasonably expect certain things to come about.  Chemical sense is one of them, we know it as taste and smell.  That's an avenue for communication.

[PanH]

Why would he ? There may be some usefull thing doesn't mean I have it. I could use an extra pair of arms (or even only one).
I don't know any alien personnally, but what if at the encounter of alien, let's say all humans are deaf, while all aliens can only talk and hear ? We also have a poor smell sense. We don't know how to communicate by smell. They could use that sense as base sense.

What I mean is that senses are a poor way of communication. There's already some huges differences over our sight sense (color blindness, myopism, etc) which is our main sense in the human race (some animals don't see colors, and so on). We may be deaf to aliens by hearing different vibrations, we may be blind by seeing different wavelength, reacting to different proteins, etc. There's so much variations about known human senses (or even other use of sense like echolocation).

Now we're talking about another form of civilization that is based on a living intelligent form that evolved, maybe with the same LUCA. But why the hell ape ? If their world never evolved into one with the sight sense, but instead using echolocation, then so be it. Maybe their world never evolved apes, and they come from something else. Something happens on Earth doesn't mean everything will be the same on another life supporting planet.


There's nothing universal about senses. Which makes it an horrible way to communicate with very aliens forms of life.
It's not because it's so alien to you that you can't imagine it that it doesn't exist. Things exists (or will) that you can't imagine.

[Cthulhu]

But if we can't imagine them why speculate on them?  Conversations like this always get into that realm, and I'm not one to speculate by positing "it's something we can't even imagine.  Eyearms, dude."  Because that doesn't really get us anywhere.  If they're that alien, why even communicate with them.  Hell, we might not even realize they're things we could communicate with; maybe rocks are actually living organisms operating by mechanisms we don't yet understand.

Let's talk about the dudes we can find some common ground with, because that's what we can actually have a meaningful conversation about.

[PanH]

But things are still things outside of the realm of sense. Even if I perceive it in a different way than you, a dog would still be a dog.
Point being to communicate in a way that's not focused on senses.

[Putnam]

Simple way to show an intelligent alien your intelligence: carve a right triangle into something. Put 3 tally marks on the base, 4 on the arm and 5 on the hypotenuse. After proving your intelligence, give them your numbering so they understand that you're base 10. After that, get more complex. 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 etc., 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 etc., 1.6180339887, 3.1415926, all good things to show off. Make sure all of this is carved in something just in case they can't see.