
What do you say to an alien? - robdoherty2
http://earthspeaks.seti.org/
======
ericdykstra
"The fact that you can understand this is terrifying; please don't kill us."

~~~
rsanchez1
Is that the message they send us once we decrypt their communications?

------
reddit_clone
Sooo what do you think? Vim or Emacs?

------
readme
Doesn't matter what we say, they can already read our thoughts.

~~~
bradleyland
Far more concerning, they've probably read the comments at YouTube or
overheard the conversation that occurs on XBox Live during a round of Call of
Duty.

------
geuis
What's the favorite color of the entity communicating with us?

This may seem silly, but there are a lot of interesting implications to the
answer.

Does the alien have a concept of color? We learn about biology. If we know
about their star and habitable zone, we can surmise a lot about not just them
but their environment.

We learn something about their aesthetics. Maybe we can't understand them or
they are relatable to us.

The point is, ask a question which can provide lots of other info.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Aesthetics might be more appropriate. Ascetics are likely to not care much
about colors ;-)

------
laichzeit0
Why is there an overwhelming assumption that alien life is going to be in any
way more remotely intelligent than say, the average earth cockroach? I've
always assumed that if we meet alien life, it's going to be smaller and dumber
than humans. Perhaps I'm just pessimistic, but this seems a legitimate
assumption.

~~~
eichin
Because if we meet them, it's because they _got here_ thus they're a lot more
technologically advanced than we are?

(Though there's a fun short story from way back that ends with aliens who have
FTL travel wanting to buy our high-reliability computing/robotics tech,
because they've never developed any for themselves :-)

------
chewxy
∙ ∙ ∙∙

∙

∙∙

Hopefully said aliens are visual in nature and understand spacing.

If they do, this works also: ○

------
lojack
...---...

------
rsanchez1
One thing that struck me was how pessimistic many messages were. They were
somewhere along the lines of "don't land!", "save me!", and "please save me!".

------
batista
_What do you say to an alien?_

"I figured you'd be an alien, babe, because your ass it out of this world".

~~~
rsanchez1
Nerdy pickup lines never work.

~~~
batista
Worked with every alien I've met!

~~~
bwarp
I've used similar lines and had to play dodge the beer bottle. Good for you :)

~~~
batista
OK, I'll venture more into the OT, but I think the "pickup lines don't work"
misses the point.

The point is, if you are a stud and the girl is attracted to you, almost
anything works, even borderline sexist stuff.

If not, then yeah, you need a lot more work that some pickup line. But it's
not like they rejected you because you used a lame line.

------
tux1968
"Hello Mr. Gingrich"

