Dangerous Illegal Aliens

[Grim Reaper]

Actually, radio and TV waves, at most are discernible from the edge of our solar system, or maybe for a few light years but they break up like other radiation in deep space.

I'm wondering what our output looks like now that we have stuff like the internet, satellite radio, and digital TV.

[Gob]

108 channels of soaps, reality TV, sports, and TV evengelists.

Or "shite" as it is better known.

[Sub Human]

Sorry for the necro-post but as a Necro Submitter I suppose I am entitled to resurrect long dead topics.
Currently reading David Brin "Existence" Not yet finished. The idea so far is that other intelligent life cannot reach us in time or in space but can leave messages, on "bulletin boards" (memory crystals)

Isn't that kind of like what we here do now? Not connecting to each other IRL except through time stuck digital ephemera?

Also, alien motives would likely be similar to ours, don't you agree? Speculating in the other direction I don't see how the basic motives of a worm or a mouse differ from our own: (Eat, avoid negative stimuli, seek positive stimuli etc.) Alien desires that we can't fathom probably involve processes we can't (yet?) access. Perhaps a worm can't access the desire to care for its offspring and a mouse and human can but there still is a common base set of motives, eh?

[Sue U]

I don't mean to be a buzzkill, Sub, but to me these ideas make no sense.

The idea so far is that other intelligent life cannot reach us in time or in space but can leave messages, on "bulletin boards" (memory crystals)

Why ever would they? Would you leave messages for ants, or even dolphins? And of the billions and billions of planets with potential for life --of unimaginable forms and highly variable "intelligence" -- how would any alien race know which planets to leave messages for and in what form? And how would they get them there? Or do they just leave objects in intergalactic space so as to prompt others to say "Hey, what's that doing there?" (Obvious problem is, there's lots of intergalactic space.)

Isn't that kind of like what we here do now? Not connecting to each other IRL except through time stuck digital ephemera?

Kind of, but here we at least have some response from the creatures "on the other side," and the real potential to meet them. I think the story you describe is more like carvng a message on a rock and throwing it over your shoulder, hoping that someone a) wanders by, b) actually notices it, c) understands that it is in fact some form of communication and d) can decipher the message.

Also, alien motives would likely be similar to ours, don't you agree? Speculating in the other direction I don't see how the basic motives of a worm or a mouse differ from our own: (Eat, avoid negative stimuli, seek positive stimuli etc.) Alien desires that we can't fathom probably involve processes we can't (yet?) access. Perhaps a worm can't access the desire to care for its offspring and a mouse and human can but there still is a common base set of motives, eh?

I don't necessarily agree. I will presume that in order to be "living," an alien would have to produce and/or consume some form of energy, and that it would have to have some way of separating itself from all other atoms and molecules as a discrete entity. But beyond that, the possibilities are infinite. I would say there is a better chance of a worm comprehending human motivations than humans comprehending the motives and desires of some life form that arises under totally different conditions. It may be that biology elsewhere in the universe does not depend on amino acids.

[Sub Human]

If the "messages" are actually encoded intelligences or copies of existing entities this may be all that a sentient race can do, on a Galactic scale, before destroying itself. If your species had the choice of facing extinction alone and leaving little to no mark on the Galaxy/Universe or making a copy of a representative ego and adding it to a memory crystal (along with all the other alien ego who share the crystal, making billions of copies to distribute (like dandelion seeds) throughout the universe, what would you choose? I think this is the main question of the book. Do you send this crystal on to ten friends? Or do yo break the chain?

[Rick]

Or do yo break the chain?

This crowd? I imagine we're all chain breakers, or I can't think of one here that wouldn't be...

[Lord Jim]

I imagine we're all chain breakers,

Actually, some are chain yankers....