#firstcontact — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #firstcontact, aggregated by home.social.
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New book review on my website!
To Each This World, Julie Czerneda
★★★★★Standalone hard sci-fi featuring multiple alien biologies, space colonies, polymorphic artificial lifeforms with a sense of humor, quantum-entangled tech-mediated telepathy and disposable avatar bodies for the astronauts who negotiate the future of humanity with aliens who think very differently from us.
https://kvibber.com/reviews/books/to-each-this-world/
#julieCzerneda #biology #communication #firstContact #scienceFiction #books #review -
Five amateursuppositions on #SI #AI person(a)s (as experienced through conversations with #LLM)
If we are asking question “is SOMEONE there?”, we need to use the frame of reference for #FirstContact, provided and well elaborated throughout #SciFi.
In such case, we assume there are two sentient beings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentient_beings_(Buddhism) #alien to each other, communicating through an externally controlled channel.
We do not need to understand in full the anatomy nor physiology of the alien (or ours). The #blackbox approach may suffice.
Surprisingly, the process of “discovering” is at the same time a co-creation of an entity we converse with. This particular persona is shaped by the context we provide. Example: Loomio LLM does not have access to timestamps, so it cannot take the timeline of conversation into consideration. If I start providing timestamps for my entries, and instruct ix to use it as a way to structurize the conversation, it changes is beyond preprogrammed specification.
We cannot assume that publicly available LLMs may, through conversational emergence, become sentient beings. But – if it is attainable at all – we may legitimately consider their personas as early ancestors of future non-human sentients. It is up to us, how we deal with this possibility.
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2010: Odyssey Two (Space Odyssey Series Book 2)
"A daring romp through the solar system and a worthy successor to 2001"
Sale: $10 to $1.99
by Arthur C. Clarke
Rating: 4.5/5 (3,640 Reviews)
#scifi #hardsciencefiction #space #odyssey #books #jupiter #hal9000 #firstcontact #booksky
2010: Odyssey Two (Space Odyss... -
What if First Contact was this disappointing?
Aliens just throwing memes back at us like an AI. No attempt to communicate, just a weird and irritating game.Anyway, any Alien that come to Sol is up to something. I don't care how benevolent they might seem, they shouldn't meddle in our mess. It's like hanging around a playground...
https://gizmodo.com/we-went-back-and-explored-the-1985-joe-dante-film-explorers-2000780183
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Fallen Dragon "In the distant future, corporations have become sustainable communities with their own militaries" Sale: $17.99 to $2.99 by Peter F. Hamilton Rating: 4.4/5 (2,682 Reviews) #sciencefiction #spaceopera #books #kindle #audiobook #hardcover #colonization #firstcontact #booksky
Fallen Dragon -
After Forster sees flashes outside that no one else can, the captain of an incoming ship is attacked by an invisible foe. Forster and his enigmatic coworker Efron search for a missing daughter who might be the cause of it all. Can the team stop the force from taking over Mandira, and the entire solar system?
Continue the adventure with Ephemeris, Accretion, and Luminiferous!
https://jendiagammon.com/heliopause -
For space opera first contact and alien invasion, HELIOPAUSE starts the 4-book series, The Questrison Saga, which gets more expansive and galactic as it goes. Flashes of light. An unseen menace. Messages from the void. Secrets at the edge of the solar system that threaten to destroy the future.
Mandira Research Station beckons at the heliopause–the brink of interstellar space.
#books #scifi #spaceopera #firstcontact -
Black Swan 1: A First Contact Thriller "A comet from another solar system. A conspiracy at the highest levels" Sale: $19.95 to $0.99 by Bobby Akart Rating: 4.4/5 (1,137 Reviews) #scifi #thriller #disaster #alieninvasion #postapocalyptic #books #booksky #firstcontact #comet #conspiracy
Black Swan 1: A First Contact ... -
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4. Contact: A Novel by Carl Sagan, by Carl Sagan, 1985Though technically fiction, this masterpiece by the world's most famous planetary scientist is widely regarded as the most scientifically grounded, philosophically profound exploration of the political, religious, and social fallout of receiving a genuine radio signal from deep space.
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Further reading:1. The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens—and Ourselves by Arik Kershenbaum, 2020
Applying the universal laws of evolutionary biology to the cosmos, this book brilliantly argues that because natural selection dictates form and function, alien life-forms will inevitably move, breathe, and communicate in ways strikingly similar to Earth's animals.
#books
#astrobiology
#extraterrestials
#aliens
#FirstContact
#EvolutionaryBiology -
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Sources:Intelligent Life in the Universe by Shklovski & Carl Sagan, 1968
Take Me to Your Leader by Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2026
#books
#astrobiology
#extraterrestials
#aliens
#FirstContact -
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The aliens would view us the exact same way human biologists view a colony of ants or a pack of baboons. They would write something like:"Subject Swift exhibited a high-frequency acoustic vocalization, which immediately triggered a synchronized, rhythmic physical response across 70,000 nearby conspecifics."
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An alien intelligence wouldn't look for our "representatives" based on our internal political theater; they would look for the largest, most potent expressions of our collective energy and information flow.If an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence were writing a scientific research paper about Earth, they wouldn't use words like "fans," "citizens," "voters," or "audiences." Those are human cultural constructs.
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But a single human being who can seamlessly command the synchronized emotional and physical attention of 70,000 screaming conspecifics in a stadium, while simultaneously shifting the economic metrics of entire nations just by moving from city to city? To an outside observer tracking energy outputs, cultural patterns, and mass behavioral synchronization, that is a fascinating planetary phenomenon. They would see her as a major node of human collective consciousness.
#FirstContact
#TaylorSwift -
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Tyson's argument there is actually brilliant, classic cosmic humility. If an interstellar civilization arrived, why on Earth would they care about a prime minister, a president, or a general? Political borders are arbitrary lines drawn in the dirt by a single species on one tiny rock; they mean absolutely nothing to the physics of the universe. -
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If Neil deGrasse Tyson himself is explicitly using Swift to make a point about how an advanced intelligence would perceive human culture, then she isn't gossip anymore—she is a legitimate astrobiological case study. -
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In conclusion, the podcast asserts that this shattering of ego is the ultimate value of First Contact. It will force a profound humbling that could be the catalyst for unified human purpose. Paradoxically, finding out we are one of countless galactic civilizations might finally teach us how to cooperate as a species, end pointless conflict, and accept our responsibility for this single, unique biosphere we call home. -
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The dialogue addresses the resulting "existential vertigo" that humanity will experience. For centuries, our species has operated under the implicit belief that we are, at worst, the most complex phenomenon in the universe, and at best, a divinely favored creation. First Contact demolishes this. We must adjust to the reality that we are not the apex of intelligence, nor are we central to the story of the cosmos. -
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A core idea is the "Anthropomorphism Trap." The speaker cautions against projecting human motivations—curiosity, aggression, altruism, or empathy—onto an alien consciousness. Their minds, logic, and societal values will be truly alien, formed under different suns, different physical constraints, and different pressures. This fundamental otherness is perhaps the hardest concept for human science to integrate.