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0 pointsteachingassist5y ago0 comments

> Don't you find it fascinating that we think it's wildly improbable that we are alone, yet have not been able to find other life? I certainly do.

Given that we can scarcely communicate with a chimpanzee, our nearest living relative, nor fully comprehend how any other species on Earth communicates (those which evolved under the same conditions that we did), I find it totally unsurprising that we're unable to communicate with aliens.

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aksss5y ago· 1 in thread

Humans have determined that chimpanzees and other species do communicate, and in many cases how they communicate, even if those who study such things don't understand the communications in anything but the broadest sense. Being able to communicate with aliens isn't really what we're asking for, but merely detecting that communications are happening at all.

teachingassistOP5y ago

Right!

That's as much as we can manage with chimpanzees - our immediate relatives, who we have physical contact with.

Humans scarcely care how other earth-bound species communicate enough to identify it as communication - how do insects and plants and fungi communicate? What information is whale song (mammal) transmitting? Is the 52 Hz whale communicating, or not?

Alien communication will look far more different even than that.

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