All my life I have tried to adhere to the KISS principle. Keep It Simple Stupid. Its very words mean to not overcomplicate things and to make everything simple and easily understood so that everyone knows what is going on.
In general as a species though we like to complicate things. That is why IT, lawyers, banks, schools, etc. have their own little idiosyncrasies and in some cases their own language to make them difficult for outsiders to understand and give them an air of mystique. Make out that only experts in this field can even get involved in discussions when in most cases it’s easy enough to understand if explained properly.
So when I read this title ‘Why we shouldn’t hide our problems from ET’ I agreed straight away. Lying is the worst thing we could do and once the trust is lost we would find it impossible to recover. Reading further however it quickly becomes apparent that they were talking about sending a comprehensive message to the stars. Mmmm.
Thinking about how we can’t even send simple messages to people we know and have similar social understandings with. Examples are Obama’s gaff with the Russian gift, JFK’s gaff in Berlin etc. Our total lack of understanding of the Muslim terrorist mindset. Our lack of understanding of when to buy chocolates and when to buy flowers. Hell, there are just so many examples where we can’t even communicate when there is a high level of trust and caring. How why do we think we can send any sort of detailed message to outer space to an alien culture and hope we don’t put our foot in it is beyond me.
The KISS principle seems to apply here more than anywhere else. Sure send some mathematic, chemical or physics texts. Maybe a subset of a dictionary to enable them to have a basis for communication. Something factual. Just not our history, our social systems or our religions and keep our politicians from getting involved. After all, it could literally be the end of the world as we know it.
The KISS principle
All my life I have tried to adhere to the KISS principle. Keep It Simple Stupid. Its very words mean to not overcomplicate things and to make everything simple and easily understood so that everyone knows what is going on.
In general as a species though we like to complicate things. That is why IT, lawyers, banks, schools, etc. have their own little idiosyncrasies and in some cases their own language to make them difficult for outsiders to understand and give them an air of mystique. Make out that only experts in this field can even get involved in discussions when in most cases it’s easy enough to understand if explained properly.
So when I read this title ‘Why we shouldn’t hide our problems from ET’ I agreed straight away. Lying is the worst thing we could do and once the trust is lost we would find it impossible to recover. Reading further however it quickly becomes apparent that they were talking about sending a comprehensive message to the stars. Mmmm.
Thinking about how we can’t even send simple messages to people we know and have similar social understandings with. Examples are Obama’s gaff with the Russian gift, JFK’s gaff in Berlin etc. Our total lack of understanding of the Muslim terrorist mindset. Our lack of understanding of when to buy chocolates and when to buy flowers. Hell, there are just so many examples where we can’t even communicate when there is a high level of trust and caring. How why do we think we can send any sort of detailed message to outer space to an alien culture and hope we don’t put our foot in it is beyond me.
The KISS principle seems to apply here more than anywhere else. Sure send some mathematic, chemical or physics texts. Maybe a subset of a dictionary to enable them to have a basis for communication. Something factual. Just not our history, our social systems or our religions and keep our politicians from getting involved. After all, it could literally be the end of the world as we know it.