Alien message: "Invitation"

A message arrives from several light years away. It is a complete prepared document, not a two-way communication.

The document can contain line-drawings and diagrams, both 2D and 3D, plus movies (a time dimension) and overlays.

Now it's straightforward to teach the syntax and encoding through careful examples. It can talk about polygons and such that it illustrates, and recognisable depictions of things we know about like our solar system and immediate stellar neighborhood. So we can understand the names for specific objects, properties of those objects, etc. From mathematical examples we know about category containment, and using our own solar system as a Rosetta Stone we learn words for various properties and how they are expressed. So, we can then understand when they mention, for example, a planet named label with a particular mass and radius, that we didn't know about before.

To recap: categories and properties are learned from known examples, and can then be applied to other things.

But how can they communicate an idea like "like" or "desire"? How can they teach the words needed to convey a polite invitation?

It's easy to describe a navigational course. But how to say "the ship you make should follow this course"? And given that it's possible, how do they say they would "like" us to visit? That is, a polite invitation rather than a demand?

By "polite" I don't mean usage of diplomatic protocols and rituals, which they cannot know. I mean that it is a request (not a demand) and they would be happy for a visit, but we are free to decline.

Although the sender is a powerful Kâ…¡ or higher civilization, they are just passing through at 10% c, and don't know us in detail "” only what they can see from 10's of light years with enormous synthetic apertures on the order of half a light year.

posted almost 8 years ago

JDługosz‭

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