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What do we do if SETI is successful?

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174 points leephillips | 2 comments | 20 Oct 25 17:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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theletterf ◴[21 Oct 25 20:50 UTC] No.45661520[source]▶
For a somber, deeply intellectual view of what could happen, I can't recommend enough Stanislaw Lem's His Master's Voice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice_%28novel%...

"Given that our civilization is unable to assimilate well even those concepts that originate in human heads when they appear outside its main current, although the creators of those concepts are, after all, children of the same age—how could we have assumed that we would be capable of understanding a civilization totally unlike ours, if it addressed us across the cosmic gulf?"

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themafia ◴[21 Oct 25 22:34 UTC] No.45662589[source]▶
Me and my dog cannot talk.

I understand my dog and he understands me.

If they experience death then we have massive common ground already.

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1. manquer ◴[21 Oct 25 22:44 UTC] No.45662679[source]▶
Hardly a fair or realistic comparison.

Domesticated mammalian[1] pet which share 80+% of our DNA and bred and naturally self-selected over few ten thousand generations for their obedience and take fair amount of training from birth is not the same as anything else on earth let alone from another planet.

[1] Domesticating of non mammalian animals is already quite hard with limited true successes, some birds probably come the closest.

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2. typeofhuman ◴[21 Oct 25 23:44 UTC] No.45663207[source]▶
Maybe the author should add this exception to their quote.