What the Hell are the "other" intelligent forms of life out there going to think

What the Hell are the "other" intelligent forms of life out there going to think

When they finally receive and reconstruct the faded television and radio signals we've sent spiralling throughout the galaxy - rather, when they piece together those SAME inane signals OVER, AND OVER, AND over

I mean, what kind of a retarded species would find need in watching Homer Simpson get cranked over the head with a bag of screws (or whatever) a collective four hundred thousand times?

Will they laugh and ignore us until we become fruitfull? Perhaps send a mission to help us do so? Or will this provoke contempt, and more sinister plans for our doomed little collection of pink Monkeys...

This is like asking...

Would aliens prefer coke or pepsi?

Silly.

You're right... it would be Coke

Pepsi is a sugar whore and reminds me of being at Grandma's for those surreal Sunday skirmishes between family members

of course coke.
you'd have to be an alien or something to prefer pepsi.

^^^This man makes more sense than BL in its entirety. I demand he be given SuperModship at once

I'm sure they are already watching and they think we are pretty silly.

I bet those Aliens were just as silly at some point in their history. That is to say if they even understand what they would be looking at. They even could be recieving it as electromagnetic signals, and have no way to decipher what it is...

So if they are out there, and are watching, they are probably just studying us, like we would study primates.

Several responses:
1.) If intelligent life in the universe is very rare--as I think it is--then the chance of a technologically-advanced civilization residing close enough to pick up our strongest leaked signals (50 l.y. >) is extremely low.

2.) Even if they were nearby, receiving the signals at all would be very difficult. Currently, with our most sensitive instruments, we couldn't pick up the radio wattage the Earth puts out even from the distance of the nearest star, let alone from dozens or hundreds of l.y. away--keep in mind that beam strength weakens with the square of the distance...

3.) Finally, they would probably care not a whit for things we consider stupid or simple. For us, porn is entertainment. What would it mean to a creature with a completely different evolutionary history and body plan? Probably no more than the the division of amoebae means to us. What of our movies and sitcoms? Just behavior that would probably mean nothing to them--do we fret over the wanton display of the mating calls of frogs? Or of ants fighting? Or caterpillars eating?

Really, I think we give ourselves way too much credit.

Addendum: My caveats only apply to leaked signals; a narrow, beamed signal would be detectable much farther; and indeed this is what SETI is looking for.

A technical note:

They even could be recieving it as electromagnetic signals, and have no way to decipher what it is...

Click to expand...

A north american broadcast television signal is extremely easy to figure out. Anybody listening would immediately spot the fact that the information, what ever it is, is clearly organized into frames, thanks to extremely clear dividers (vertical retrace signals). Once that realization is made, determining where lines are divided is easy thanks to blanking periods (horizontal retrace).

So you have a series of grids of information, differing slightly from grid to grid.

The only glitch might come with interlacing, but that would be trivial too.

But yeah - it's very unlikely anybody else would receive it. Even a highly coherent laser pointed into space would eventually diffuse too much to be detectable.

Thin of all the violence and shit on tv, if they see that and haven't studied us some bad shit could happen!

Personally I already think that they're here, because they couldn't just come down it'd fuck alot of people up and you's have the US Govt' spouting bullshit about them invading even if they 'come in peace'!

Also they'd have to learn a shit load of languages, cultures, traditions, laws, practices. And even when it comes to language you have tone, some one can say "Hey arse hole!" joking around and someone can say it meaning it! Imagine some alien race taking it the wrong way and thinking "Fuck these bald smelly apes!" and then blowing our little rock it!

If they found our signals, I think they'd regard us first with great curiosity -- and then with great disgust. If they wanted anything from us, it wouldn't be contact.

To prevent any possibility of invasion...

.. I propose that we send as many Jerry Springer Broadcasts, DVD's, Merchandise and the like into space as we can.
Not only will we rid ourselves of this <insert most disgusted adjective you can think of here>, but no one in their right (left or middle) minds would want to invade a planet like ours.

I think one of my TAFE teachers (ecology) summed it up quite nicely "The fact that no intelligent life forms have contacted us, proves their existence"... He was just joking but kinda makes you think...

If they found our signals, I think they'd regard us first with great curiosity -- and then with great disgust. If they wanted anything from us, it wouldn't be contact.

Click to expand...

And why is that? Lacking cultural references, how would they interpret the signals as worthy of disgust?

Interpreting a signal is a technical puzzle, solvable by the fact that it has rigorous structure.

Figuring out exactly why Jerry Springer is disgusting? Now that is a feat that would require alien anthropologists spending a whole lot of time figuring out how we think.

What can be gleaned from our television transmissions alone? Very little.

"I think one of my TAFE teachers (ecology) summed it up quite nicely "The fact that no intelligent life forms have contacted us, proves their existence"... He was just joking but kinda makes you think...

Click to expand...

He was quoting Calvin and Hobbes.

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

I believe he and Hobbes were standing around a huge, freshly cut tree stump at the time.

Thanks, Petersko, for taking my comments seriously.
The stupid Australian government didn't.

Here's footage from my disasterous proposal

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If they found our signals, I think they'd regard us first with great curiosity -- and then with great disgust. If they wanted anything from us, it wouldn't be contact.
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And why is that? Lacking cultural references, how would they interpret the signals as worthy of disgust?

Interpreting a signal is a technical puzzle, solvable by the fact that it has rigorous structure.

Figuring out exactly why Jerry Springer is disgusting? Now that is a feat that would require alien anthropologists spending a whole lot of time figuring out how we think.

What can be gleaned from our television transmissions alone? Very little.

Click to expand...

To re-state for the purposes of clarification: upon picking up our signals, they'd be curious. Upon checking us out, studying us -- which they'd undoubtedly do before considering direct, open contact -- they'd most likely be disgusted, in my opinion, and not find us worthy of direct, open contact.

from our television signals, it would most likely make us look like a very violent race. if not discusted, they'd at least be afraid.

Petersko said:

He was quoting Calvin and Hobbes.

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

I believe he and Hobbes were standing around a huge, freshly cut tree stump at the time.

Click to expand...

Ahh so he's not quite so infallible after all

To re-state for the purposes of clarification: upon picking up our signals, they'd be curious. Upon checking us out, studying us -- which they'd undoubtedly do before considering direct, open contact -- they'd most likely be disgusted, in my opinion, and not find us worthy of direct, open contact.

Click to expand...

You are making rather dramatic assumptions about other intelligent life forms.

What if their society is based on expansionism at the expense of all else? What if their race evolved by consuming the resources of their planet almost entirely before finding a way off? What if the concept of environmentalism is completely outside their way of thinking?

Your statements say a lot about how you view the world, but from an external viewpoint they are completely unsupportable.