How To Talk To Aliens

Frederic Friedel writes: "In their efforts to talk to alien civilizations human beings are currently engaged in sending pictures based on a rectangular array of dots, arranged from left to right and top to bottom. But is this stategy sound? For instance what if the aliens do not see in pictures at all, or if they think in vector graphics rather than bitmap? On ChessBase.com grandmaster John Nunn proposes sending them a trading machine instead."

Comments

maybe this is not so smart?

[Interfacer]

We seem to try very hard to draw some inter galactical attention to ourselves, just like any restaurant wanting to attract customers.

the only difference being: we do not sell the food, we are the food.

anyone who has the means of traveling here from outer space outclasses us by several orders of magnitude. thus we are in no bargaining position if we have (or are) something they want.

this raises the question: should we try to make ourselves heard, or should we try to detect others?

neither numbers nor math are universal, power is.

[Anonymous Coward]

Keeping other creatures captive is a sign of intelligence. I remember one SF story I read where 3 people were captured and put in basically an earth zoo. They tried everything to show the aliens they were an intelligent species but everything they tried failed. Finally, once they admitted defeat, they decided to at least make the zoo a bit like home so one of them created a basic cage and caught one of the mice in the zoo to keep as a pet. Once the aliens saw the mouse in the cage they promptly released the prisoners and opened the lines of communication.

The moral, any idiot can makes noises (speech) or tap out prime numbers (lots of animals can count, at least subconsciously) but only an intelligent species will imprison what they consider unintelligent.

If anyone knows the name of the short story let me know because I would love to read it again.