The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...

PJH

Experts Worry How Aliens Would React If We Send Them A Computer Virus

Depends on if they run Windows I suppose...

loose

An article worthy of nomination for the Ig Nobel Award.

That aside, I am reasonably certain that any Alien Civilisation would have Independance Day close to to the top of their list of required watching when it comes to dealing with anything concerning the offerings of this planet. If not they would only have themselves to blame.

Note to self: How can you tell the difference between a Gift and Trojan Horse? and Should you violate the tenets of one aphorism in order to test the other?

Besides, if we do send something that can adversely affect them at such a basic level, I think we would have some far more fundamental concerns and worries than their hurt feelings. Unless, of course, the whole Stargate thing is really a "fly on the wall" documentary...

dkf

@loose said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

How can you tell the difference between a Gift and Trojan Horse?

That's a question that has been asked and puzzled over before, many times. Sometimes the answer might be difficult to determine…

Arantor

@dkf That depends. Is it a large wooden rabbit? If it is, it's a gift that will be returned.

DCRoss

"We're receiving a signal. It's... it's a reply to one of our old broadcasts!"

"What does it say?"

"Working on that... I have Deep Blue, Watson, Siri and Tay running comparisons against all known Earth languages, mathematical patterns, and Welsh. Ah hah! There's a message in there."

"Well, what does it say?"

"Fetchez la vache."

blakeyrat

@PJH In one of the weird sequels to Ender's Game, they find some alien that communicates via sending DNA strands (somehow? the book's kind of vague on how you send DNA strands through space) and the aliens try to kill them by sending a virus, but the magical computer runs them in a simulation first so they aren't affected.

Then that (slightly) interesting plotline is completely and utterly dropped and never revisited in favor of a bunch of dull stuff you don't give a shit about. Most of it involving the magical computer. Then you realize Orson Scott Card is a total hack who got lucky, not a science fiction writer. Then later you realize he's a racist nazi as well.

... true story.

Lorne Kates

@PJH said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

Experts Worry How Aliens Would React If We Send Them A Computer Virus

Depends on if they run Windows I suppose...

One "way out there" concern with SETI dumping signals into world-wide connected computers. A sufficiently advanced alien species could use it as an attack vector. They'd have to send signals that basically buffer overflowed into executable code, and taking over Earth's computers.

That theory was invented before computers got stupid-complex, of course. It's unlikely that an alien civilization, who has had no prior contact with Earth, could reverse-engineer the computer systems that are involved in processing SETI data to engineer the overflow AND create executable code.

On the other hand, it might not be a bad attack vector for someone from Earth. Start bouncing a signal back to Earth, get it processed by SETI, take over everyone's Folding@Home computers == botnet!

anonymous234

There's an actual "programming language for aliens" if anyone is interested:

CosmicOS: a next-generation Contact message

But to send malware to aliens... it's kind of a difficult thing. You'd have to send something like CosmicOS, a message that teaches how to run itself, then build an AI in it that can somehow probe any possible implementation of a computer for security vulnerabilities, then figure out how to exploit them, then figure out how to compile and run itself in any alien computer, then take over the world or whatever you want it to do.

And then you send your several GBs of code to random stars and hope someone somewhere runs it.

Kuro

@anonymous234 said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

But to send malware to aliens... it's kind of a difficult thing. You'd have to send something like CosmicOS, a message that teaches how to run itself, then build an AI in it that can somehow probe any possible implementation of a computer for security vulnerabilities, then figure out how to exploit them, then figure out how to compile and run itself in any alien computer, then take over the world or whatever you want it to do. Discourse
And then you send your several GBs of code to random stars and hope someone somewhere runs it.

Filed Under: FTFY
Also Filed Under: I wonder when the whole "Replace bad X with Discourse"-thing is gonna get old... probably already is and I missed the memo

dkf

@blakeyrat said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

Then that (slightly) interesting plotline is completely and utterly dropped and never revisited in favor of a bunch of dull stuff you don't give a shit about.

My impression was that he ran out of book, and that plotline was always something that was off to the side of what he was really talking about (souls and AI and the moral consequences of killing an entire intelligent species). I quite liked how he left some things unresolved rather than leaving everything tied up neatly.

And it's not like the plotline received little attention; it was just that it was something that was only partially resolved. Communication was established, but what the characters were going to do about it was an open problem.

blakeyrat

@dkf By that point if I had to read ANOTHER FUCKING WORD about that Mary Sue magical computer I would have thrown that fucking book into the firepit, doused it in kerosene, and done by best Nazi Rally impression.

Seriously fuck that book.

MathNerdCNU

@blakeyrat said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

I would have thrown that fucking book into the firepit, doused it in kerosene, and done by best Nazi Rally impression.

Seriously fuck that book.

That's a bad Nazi impression. Kerosene the book, then into the fire pit. The order you outlined is how you end up as Florida-man.

boomzilla

@blakeyrat said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

Then later you realize he's a racist nazi as well.

The Trump threads are

CoyneTheDup

@Lorne-Kates said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

That theory was invented before computers got stupid-complex, of course. It's unlikely that an alien civilization, who has had no prior contact with Earth, could reverse-engineer the computer systems that are involved in processing SETI data to engineer the overflow AND create executable code.

They did it on Threshold with no problems.

Not exactly the most realistic TV series. Or the most successful. Or the most likely. Or...
And as for sending viruses? Those aliens would have thought we were making kiddie jokes.

Scarlet_Manuka

There's a better related story on that site: Scientists Want To Send Modern Messages To Aliens In Space
A relevant quote:

At a recent conference in Leeds, members of the UKSRN decided to send out an updated version of the Pioneer 10's pictorial message, this time to reflect the diversity of life and gender equality on Earth.
[...]
She pointed out that the pictorial message portrays an image of a man with his hand raised in a manly fashion while an image of a woman is depicted as standing behind him, seemingly meek and submissive.
Stuart added that the messages featured on pictorial messages should be carefully thought out before deploying into space. She said that the attitudes of people have significantly changed over the past 40 years.
As for the human figures featured in the Pioneer 10 plaques being depicted as white, Stuart said that she does not favor sending out messages or images that depict material dominated by Western ideals.

Apart from anything else, you'd think that someone who was concerned about this would be aware that the images on Pioneer 10 are etched into the material and therefore do not depict the human figures as being of any particular colour. Except possibly gold.

cartman82

All these alien contact articles are hand-wavey about whether we can even send anything that far away. We're certainly not gonna live to see the results, so who cares.

PJH

@Scarlet_Manuka said:

reflect the diversity of life and gender equality on Earth.

Yay - was wondering when we'd get to the SJW parts of the article. Especially since I used one of them as the topic name...

gordonjcp

@anonymous234 There was also a Klingon programming language, called Var'aq.

Yes, really.

The idea was that such a Spartan people as the Klingons would probably not use faster and faster computers but instead go for small simple machines that can be clustered easily, running a Forth-like language because RPN is similar to Klingon language syntax. Or something. There was a Yahoo! group for it that appears to have been buried in spam around 2005.

http://www.oocities.org/connorbd/varaq/

lucas1

Considering how most of our films involving aliens are basically propaganda saying how we will always find a way to destroy them, maybe that is why none have bothered visiting or only visit rednecks.

anonymous234

@Scarlet_Manuka And on the other side of the stupid spectrum we have

Pioneer plaque - Wikipedia

Carl Sagan said that the decision to not include the vertical line on the woman's genitalia (pudendal cleft) which would be caused by the intersection of the labia majora was due to two reasons. First, Greek sculptures of women do not include that line. Second, Carl Sagan believed that a design with such an explicit depiction of a woman's genitalia would be considered too obscene to be approved by NASA.[3] However, according to the memoirs of Robert S. Kraemer, the original design which was presented to NASA headquarters included a line which indicated the woman's vulva.[5] The line which indicated the woman's vulva was erased as condition for approval of the design by John Naugle, former head of NASA's Office of Space Science and the agency's former chief scientist.

According to astronomer Frank Drake, there were many negative reactions to the plaque because the human beings were displayed naked.[11] When images of the final design were published in American newspapers, one newspaper published the image with the man's genitalia removed and another newspaper published the image with both the man's genitalia and the woman's nipples removed.[3] In one letter to a newspaper, a person angrily wrote that they felt that the nudity of the images made the images obscene

Won't somebody please think of the extraterrestrial children!

gleemonk

Hubris and antropomorphism (the tendency to assume human traits in other entities) are great drivers for these absurd discussions. The assumption that there are other carbon-based predators out there using radio for interstellar communication appears logical to us only because we evolved that way and because our technology currently is limited to radio. Any entity advanced enough to overcome the limitations of our physics would laugh at these silly fears. They would just run us over without noticing.

DogsB

@gleemonk said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

Any entity advanced enough to overcome the limitations of our physics would laugh at these silly fears. They would just run us over without noticing.

This thought use to give me the shivers especially after remembering I put a hose into an ants nest and turned on the water. I've also killed a lot of spiders in my time.

Lorne Kates

@CoyneTheDup said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

They did it on Threshold with no problems.

Not exactly the most realistic TV series. Or the most successful. Or the most likely. Or...
And as for sending viruses? Those aliens would have thought we were making kiddie jokes.

I forgot that series even existed.

It was also a plot point in the book The Killing Star. Aliens first-strike Earth by taking out all early-warning systems by signal-hacking SETI.

And then blow up the entire solar system with relativistic ordinance.

And that's the first part of the first act.

Onyx

@gleemonk said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

The assumption that there are other carbon-based predators out there using radio for interstellar communication appears logical to us only because we evolved that way and because our technology currently is limited to radio.

Indeed. Any potential alien race might as well "see" the radio spectrum and using it for communication would be an equivalent of us using halogen lights to transmit speech. I think I read somewhere that SETI recently started looking for stuff in IR and visible spectrum though.

DogsB

@Onyx said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

@gleemonk said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

The assumption that there are other carbon-based predators out there using radio for interstellar communication appears logical to us only because we evolved that way and because our technology currently is limited to radio.

Indeed. Any potential alien race might as well "see" the radio spectrum and using it for communication would be an equivalent of us using halogen lights to transmit speech. I think I read somewhere that SETI recently started looking for stuff in IR and visible spectrum though.

@Onyx said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

@gleemonk said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

The assumption that there are other carbon-based predators out there using radio for interstellar communication appears logical to us only because we evolved that way and because our technology currently is limited to radio.

Indeed. Any potential alien race might as well "see" the radio spectrum and using it for communication would be an equivalent of us using halogen lights to transmit speech. I think I read somewhere that SETI recently started looking for stuff in IR and visible spectrum though.

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

i thought of this for some reason.

Onyx

@DogsB Looks like something I should read. Only one problem:

Omigod

WTF is it with that word being actually used? I saw it in Marvel or DC comics too. Nobody is using "omigod" seriously, are they?

blakeyrat

PJH's new icon is sending offensive signals to terrestrials.

dcon

@Onyx said in The importance of making sure we do not send offensive signals to extraterrestrials...:

WTF is it with that word being actually used? I saw it in Marvel or DC comics too. Nobody is using "omigod" seriously, are they?

What??? You mean OMG is being spelled out now??? The world is ending!!! Kids will have to type more letters on their phones!!! Too bad they still can't spell. (Yeah, get off my lawn.)