Re: The Fermi Paradox and SETI Success

On Aug 19, 2:41�am, Ben Standeven <be...@pop.networkusa.net> wrote:

On Aug 16, 3:06 am, "Chris.B" <chri...@mail.dk> wrote:> Last attempt to communicate with Experimental Flask 379 prior to total

systems collapse,

Greetings, blind, intellectual masturbators!

We send you messages warning that the human race is close to
extinction but you are all far too busy parading your self importance
to notice. Nothing we communicated was untrue but you chose to
criticise the format of our communications? Did any of you actually
read anything we sent or did you just scan and dismiss us as just more
cybernuts? Perhaps you lacked the capacity to understand the messages?
(likelihood 78.443%)


[...]

No good, you forgot to ask for money.


Science fiction has struggled with the question of what value can be
traded between civilisations in space that can only exchange messages,
so how do we send money?  We can send knowledge; information; cultural
productions, literature; DNA genome information; electronic funds
transfer backed by a bank at the other end, but how do we earn money
in the first place on a world that we can't touch?  By sending
knowledge, information, cultural productions...

Questions arise such as the trustworthiness of information (and if the
aliens tell you how to build a giant robot or something, it may be not
a good idea), and the turnaround time.  For instance if the ETs see
_Jesus Christ Superstar_ on video and send back "We will provide the
cure for cancer if Andrew Lloyd-Webber undertakes to spend the rest of
his life painting our embassy tartan with brushes made from his own
eyebrow hair instead of writing any more music", but we just heard
this week...

(I'm not responsible for the tastes of aliens.  Except, I did imagine
them.  As it happens I'm Scottish, so...)