Exchange Ideas

Ken Chaffin#7327 — 21/08/2023 13:47 on Discord

I think there are many layers to this entire project. Our performance here is probably the primary intent of the project as providing a platform for global collaboration, mutual respect and sharing of imagination. At some fundamental level, it probably does not matter what "the message" is. It was and is the process that the project initiated and that we continue each day that is important. Where the receivers were pointed is part of the story. Where they were pointed stimulates our imagination of what might be in the message. And at some level, as a work of fiction, that is really all we have here. The meaning is not in the "minimalist message", the meaning is existential and personal and is evolving and growing with every post here from all over the world. I'm going to try to keep these ideas in mind as we move forward with writing this story.

Janishri — 24/06/2023 09:07 on Discord

Btw, can I say, a very big compliment for the team for creating an artificial messge that allowes sooo many different attack vectors, in all kinds of "science departments", whether it is Biology, Maths, Physics, Chemistry. And different parts within that as well. Sound, atomic level, molecular level, space level, light, organic chemistry... binary, hexadecimal, encryption/decription, .... And the people within the different parts as well. Everybody wants to help, wants to join. Non-technical people waiting anxiously for their opportunity to aid. Others jumping right in, creating programs in different programming languages, creating all kind of visualisations, from moving 3d to easy editable 2d rasters in Excel and frequency analysis in sound tools like audacity. O, and I totally forget the literature and phylosophical approaches. 🙂 I probably still have missed several in this already big list. But it shows the amount of knowledge we possess as individuals, as a group, maybe even as a species; the flexibility for different approaches, the drive to succeed.
Up to some level I really hope that there is an actual message, that there will be a "final" result. On the other hand having "something" as a result will always lead to more and deeper investigations.
So, that a bit of reasoning behind my big compliment to the "A Sign In Space" team 🙂
And, to give you all some credit as well. Over 200 are online atm, so probably near 500 (just a guess) are registered on this server. I guess a couple of dozens check back regularly to see the new approaches. And the amount of hours spent is enormous. Big thumbs up to all!

Sparta | Phrenic — 25/07/2023 19:11 on Discord

To be honest I don't know what I should think about. We are working for many weeks on that and are making no progress. It gets harder and harder to believe that there is anything else in the message besides the unintelligible "star map". Also I'm not quite sure what I should think about on WHY the heck did they make it this hard to understand the message! I mean, it would be logical to instruct someone step by step but this message feels like as someone is trying to explain Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to a child.
I know that this is not a real message from Aliens only some kind of an "Art project" but with time, more and more doubts arises as no one with whatever skill set is able to make at least a little step forward. In the end it could be a "meaningless" message which would be sad.
I personally don't think that in a real first contact scenario it would be that hard to understand anything. The hardness would maybe progress with each step to reveal slowly information but not this level of hardness. I am thinking this because we see in the message that "they" may obviously know more about us as we do about them. With all possible differences in culture the Universe is quite an uniform place with stars, planets, moons and galaxies all over the place.

Luna — 25/07/2023 19:41 on Discord

In my opinion (or, better, in my hope) the message wasn't designed to be hard or to be a puzzle. I always found not convincing the approach of some people to "solve" this message approaching like an hard puzzle. I think (or, still, I hope) the message was linear and simple per se, but designed (we have the confirm of the creators about this) with in mind a species (and culture) quite different from humans.
It's neither necessary the message was a complex concept like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to make it "hard". Let say we want describe who we are to a dolphin. We are both mammals, but seems quite an hard task. Even communication with a domestic animal is more complex how it looks. It's easy for someone say "they are animals, we are ...hum.." . We are animals, too. Specialized to use brain to make abstractions and using tools, but we are animals.
Ok, now let think the scenario we never have had seen a celestial dolphin on a far far planet and this kind of dolphin never had seen us. We both have a capacity to use tools and set information on objects. How it will be hard to communicate? A lot.
And this makes me very skeptical in a real contact scenario we will able to communicate with an alien. Or we are hyper-lucky (but very very very.. a lot of very lucky) to find a species similar in some way to us... or... maybe we and aliens we'll meet eachother just to not recognize at all.

Kanamit — 26/07/2023 at 12:55 on Discord

"And what if we were to receive a message ourselves? How could we interpret it?
Give it to every adult and every child on the planet who wants it. Toss it to the dolphins and whales. Show it to the other primates. And, we need to encourage people to express that data in all kinds of ways: in strings of 1's and 0's, in grids, using different pitches of sound, with colored lights, played backward, interpreted as instructions for origami, expressed in bead work or knotted threads or in mosaics made of M and M's. And we should do this because we can have no idea how it was meant to be interpreted. The very worst thing we can do is leave it to professionals to fuss over. It'll be a glorious all-hands-on-deck cacophony of thought and conjecture!

Hi! I haven't listened to the message, but do NOT give any hints EVER! This is an important step for humanity. If this really was a real alien message, there would be no hand holding. If we cannot crack the code, any alien messages in the future might also remain in mystery forever. Cracking the code might take days, it might take weeks, it might take months, years, decades, centuries. But I hope, one day, we will decipher it. And I hope, one day, we have an actual alien message on our hands to decipher. Sincerely,

What would it be like to receive a message from aliens? What would you, individually, experience if this were to happen? These are special questions to ask, and this is different from asking questions about the content of the message or the nature of the aliens themselves. It isn’t really about the stuff we can point to or what that stuff tells us about outer space. It is instead a human question. Humans are experiencers. What will it be like to be you, a human being, experiencing a piece of potentially communicative technology from elsewhere in space? And will that experience transform us here on Earth? I don’t mean will it transform our surroundings in some way—though that is an obviously important question that is often considered—I mean, will it transform our way of experiencing both ourselves and the world?

I was wondering if the message was for animals instead of humans...and animals could have understood it. Would there be a possibility to establish communication with animals and they may help us what the message was all about.. Just a thought.
I presume establishing successful communication with animals would be a step closer for communicating with aliens. Animals could help us explore and go beyond the human intelligence
May we also involve animals could n the race to decipher the received message?

This happens a lot. Different people will want different things from the message. Some want it to be Contact-like. Some others some interesting insight on what life or intelligence means. Others want to validate their existing technical knowledge on top of this message. Others, to create something new. But with this lack of context (as you mentioned) it is fundamentally impossible to say "hey, your approach is wrong".
Anything goes, basically. And also, even if we managed to crack the interpretation, look at what we have: more than 30 competing interpretations, many of them with a bit of the soul of their proponents. Trying to convince other people that this other interpretation is right also has the risk of being understood as denying someone else.
A consensus has to be found as well. And we are far from there.

All life is alien that we haven't seen before, why is this needing a conference seriously?
From the depth of the seas to anything we come across outside our planet.
Modern reimagining of "aliens" is popular culture dealing with the age old supernatural issue- its the modern reenactment of jinn and such else. Real aliens are no different to us coming across a new bacteria in our body or a life form in the sea.