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Notes -
The appeal of alien life is the fantastical and the joy of discovery. We have plumbed the depths of the ocean to only discover funny fish and our stars are just gas and rocks. Limits of physics and biology mean that as humans we will be unable to really experience interaction with extraterrestrial life, all those entities are too far away for a return signal to be parsed by an original sender.
The more likely path of interstellar communication will just be civilization-scale updates, like space PBS. A more fun bit of trolling will be basically pretending to be god. The old video game Star Control had a civilization of spider people manipulated into being torturous lunatics because a race of pranksters in another galsxy used a hyperwave communicator to hijack a planetary broadcaster. With communication being only one way, it just descended into hilarity. Humans could be space gods, commanding aliens to worship all bipeds, but we will never enjoy the spoils of our devotees.
IMO that "just" is doing a lot of work there -- what discovery couldn't be dismissed as "just [containing category]"?
Astrophysics and biologists get a justified kick out of understanding our world and how it works in the larger tapestry of the universe, but the spoils of the Age of Discovery were 'can I eat it' and 'can I fuck it'. If exploring the ocean depths didn't give me super caviar and looking at the pillars of eternity isnt pointing me to the Orion Nebulae fuck factory, then I consider the effort a waste.
Don’t forget ‘can I make money off it’.
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