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[Creamcorn]

Or maybe we should send them a picture of goatse and see what we get back.

[Idiom]

We don't even need numbers. Do they even have a concept of math? Do they even interpret radiation into images? Do they even interpret vibrations into sound? For all we know they communicate by smell (I would make a very proficient diplomat) and don't even have a scientific method.

I think there are only two ways:
Remotely
and
Directly

Directly being mostly fool proof (What if they communicate telepathically, and can only detect others who can do the same? We'd be invisible) and costly, and for remote communication our best chance is to broadcast unnaturally strong signals on all known frequencies of all known forms of radiation in the most uncommon patterns we know of, and eventually somewhere there would be an alien SETI team member that writes "WOW!" on a recording somewhere of background radiation from areas of the galaxy. Screw fancy mathematical patterns. Nature follows mathematical patterns too. Just blow a giant radiation airhorn.

[Sowelu]

God, if only it was that easy.  The reason we see pulsars and novas and stuff is because, well, they have the entire energy of a star.  Way better is to beam very specifically at nearby stars, with an angle just wide enough to cover all the orbits we would expect to be habitable.  You might want to say "Signal everything in that star all the way out to Pluto!", but if you only make it as wide as Mars' orbit, that signal gets several orders of magnitude stronger, which is important if you want a 'wow' at all.  Also, broadcasting on all known frequencies?  Broadcasting on all kinds of different frequencies is not quite as trivial as you might think, if you want a wide range of the right frequencies...yeah, it's FM, but still.

What if they have no concept of math?  That's a silly thing to say.  First off, we have no reason to believe that someone with our level of tech would lack a concept of math--and SETI already presupposes some other civilizations with some form of radio, which means probably our tech level or higher.  And you might as well take the chance anyway.  Besides, SOMEone would notice primes or fibonnaci numbers...

[Vactor]

We don't even need numbers. Do they even have a concept of math? Do they even interpret radiation into images? Do they even interpret vibrations into sound? For all we know they communicate by smell (I would make a very proficient diplomat) and don't even have a scientific method.

I think there are only two ways:
Remotely
and
Directly

Directly being mostly fool proof (What if they communicate telepathically, and can only detect others who can do the same? We'd be invisible) and costly, and for remote communication our best chance is to broadcast unnaturally strong signals on all known frequencies of all known forms of radiation in the most uncommon patterns we know of, and eventually somewhere there would be an alien SETI team member that writes "WOW!" on a recording somewhere of background radiation from areas of the galaxy. Screw fancy mathematical patterns. Nature follows mathematical patterns too. Just blow a giant radiation airhorn.

Of course their sensory experience would be entirely different than ours, as there is no actual color green or red, greens and reds are artifacts of our mind, a mental placeholder for all light waves of a certain wavelength.  However that doesn't eliminate the possibility for other life to appreciate the properties of a wave in whatever way they have developed to parse the world around them.  The idea of broadcasting math is that it is the most straightforward declaration of intelligence, and the most basic test to see if co-understanding of concepts is going to be at all possible.

If there is other life in the universe we can communicate with it is very likely that they are more advanced than us, simply because we have only had the technology necessary for less than a century, so we will either be broadcasting to life that is either intelligent but currently in our 1500's level of tech and unable to communicate, or was at our current tech level back when dinosaurs were on earth.

What I consider interesting is the way other life might parse time, one poster said that he would split his pulses by half a second.  To another form of life this might be too fast to even be detectable by them.  Or conversely this could be much too slow for them to even notice a pattern being broadcast.

[Nilocy]

When contacting alien species regardless of their type or origin, we must use the age old, all-encompassing greeting that transcends all lingual and mental barriers:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

WAZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The noise of you shooting your super laser at them?

I'd say "Gerr off mah land" and shoot them with my sawn off laser shotgun.

[chaoticag]

We don't even need numbers. Do they even have a concept of math?

If they do not have a concept of math, I would hardly call them intelligent. You need maths to perform things such as feats of engineering, and listening in to radio waves.

The problem I see with sowelu is the problem of measurments and bases. What if the aliens did not use base 10, or didn't have prober atomic weights (Carbon-40, for example, might be a different element for them.)

What I say is that we broadcast unary, binary, trinary untill we get to base 10, then broadcast pi and repeat in order to keep it simple. Once we get a response, we can start to send different information. Who knows whether or not they will be more primitive than we are? They might still know some things we don't, so it does benifit us to help them anyway.

[Muz]

It's possible they have their own methods which don't rely on math. Our technology is highly dependent on it, though. Math is a tool.. like writing and speech. Psionics would not require writing or speech.. if they had some other weird method that lets them do feats of engineering without math, it would be pretty cool.

[Tormy]

Q: "What would you say first to an alien?"

Hm....I would say "Hello" for sure, just like most of the other people I guess? The alien wouldn't understand anything anyways probably...so it's logical that you would start the conversation with a greeting. Am I correct?

[Sergius]

Q: "What would you say first to an alien?"

Hm....I would say "Hello" for sure, just like most of the other people I guess? The alien wouldn't understand anything anyways probably...so it's logical that you would start the conversation with a greeting. Am I correct?

No, you are incorrect. The right thing to say to an alien is "Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong".

[umiman]

Would you like a shrubbery?

[Yanlin]

We are the aliens who say NI!