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Author Topic:   Message from the future
coffee_addict
Member (Idle past 477 days)
Posts: 3645
From: Indianapolis, IN
Joined: 03-29-2004


Message 15 of 90 (247294)
09-29-2005 12:06 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Parasomnium
09-29-2005 9:26 AM


Re: Message from the future (updated)
Is that all of it?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Parasomnium, posted 09-29-2005 9:26 AM Parasomnium has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 17 by Parasomnium, posted 09-29-2005 5:39 PM coffee_addict has not replied

  
coffee_addict
Member (Idle past 477 days)
Posts: 3645
From: Indianapolis, IN
Joined: 03-29-2004


Message 20 of 90 (247379)
09-29-2005 6:22 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by New Cat's Eye
09-29-2005 6:00 PM


Re: Could've been more helpful
Perhaps most of the people with the know-hows were already dead.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by New Cat's Eye, posted 09-29-2005 6:00 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 24 by New Cat's Eye, posted 09-29-2005 8:45 PM coffee_addict has replied

  
coffee_addict
Member (Idle past 477 days)
Posts: 3645
From: Indianapolis, IN
Joined: 03-29-2004


Message 28 of 90 (247512)
09-30-2005 1:44 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by New Cat's Eye
09-29-2005 8:45 PM


Re: Could've been more helpful
It was made clear in the text that the aliens didn't know anything about the plaque except that it wiped out mankind. Remember that they discovered the message and sent it back through time.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 24 by New Cat's Eye, posted 09-29-2005 8:45 PM New Cat's Eye has not replied

  
coffee_addict
Member (Idle past 477 days)
Posts: 3645
From: Indianapolis, IN
Joined: 03-29-2004


Message 29 of 90 (247515)
09-30-2005 1:51 AM
Reply to: Message 23 by crashfrog
09-29-2005 8:06 PM


Re: Message from the future (updated)
crashfrog writes:
How would you send a message to our internet from the future?
Try explaining how aerodynamics or rocket science to an Amazon native who hunts monkeys daily for food.
Why send only a short text message and not, say, 100 gigs of data on the infection?
There are many reasons, and most of them we cannot think of.
When the white men wanted to "buy" land from the North American natives, the natives laughed and agreed thinking that the white men were stupid. To them, you can't own land. You can't take the land with you when you're dead. To the Europeans, they were laughing, too, because they thought the natives sold the land too cheaply.
Moral of the story? You can't force the aliens to think in terms of our logic that has been molded by cultural influence.
Call me crazy, but what if they had a prime directive that only allowed them minimum interference?
I'm not dismissing this out of hand, because I don't believe that "time travel is impossible" is a scientific conclusion, but more prosaic technical problems with data transmission to infrastructure in the past, especially to a digital, packet-switched network, lead me to believe that this is most likely a funny hoax and not actually contact from the future.
Yes, I must agree with you that this is probably a joke or hoax, and I am speaking out of my prejudicial instinct. However, strictly speaking, I have no way to prove either way.
Posting stuff to the internet requires a two-way link. And if the link is two-way, why wouldn't the future aliens stick around to chat with us?
You need to watch more stargate sg-1 and star trek. There are a brazillion reasons why they wouldn't chat with us, and most of them we couldn't think of.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 23 by crashfrog, posted 09-29-2005 8:06 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 30 by Phat, posted 09-30-2005 2:02 AM coffee_addict has not replied
 Message 33 by Parasomnium, posted 09-30-2005 4:47 AM coffee_addict has not replied
 Message 38 by crashfrog, posted 09-30-2005 7:47 AM coffee_addict has replied

  
coffee_addict
Member (Idle past 477 days)
Posts: 3645
From: Indianapolis, IN
Joined: 03-29-2004


Message 42 of 90 (247647)
09-30-2005 11:06 AM
Reply to: Message 38 by crashfrog
09-30-2005 7:47 AM


Re: Message from the future (updated)
crash writes:
Then they've already violated it. Significantly violated it.
You can't be absolute with everything. Even our laws are up for debate now and then.
Here is a scenario. What if they went through a debate and the alien judges decided that they could only send a short one way message? 2 reasons: (1) They want to do something to help but (2) their prime directive prevented them from interfering too much.
Here is another possibility. What if they decided that their prime directive was too strict and that interference was out of the question, but a small group of aliens decided to go ahead anyway with sending the message and only had enough time to send a short one way message before being caught?
Remember the star trek voyager episode where Chakote (sp?) and Harry Kim in the future sent a message back in time to prevent voyager from crashing and killing everyone onboard. Why didn't they just use the technology to open up a chat with the voyager crew? Why didn't they just tell them exactly how to get back home? Wanna know the answer? Guess you'd have to watch it to find out.
'm not sure it would be possible for me to increase my viewership of those shows.
Sure it's possible. Just have your wife tie you up, tape your eye lids open, and start watching all the episodes at once over and over.
The argument from ineffability doesn't go too far with me.
So, are you saying that we should never consider not knowing the unknown to be a possibility when approaching a problem? You're getting a little creationist-like there.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 38 by crashfrog, posted 09-30-2005 7:47 AM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 43 by crashfrog, posted 09-30-2005 1:34 PM coffee_addict has replied

  
coffee_addict
Member (Idle past 477 days)
Posts: 3645
From: Indianapolis, IN
Joined: 03-29-2004


Message 44 of 90 (247675)
09-30-2005 1:40 PM
Reply to: Message 43 by crashfrog
09-30-2005 1:34 PM


Re: Message from the future (updated)
crashy writes:
Because it wouldn't take any more transmission time to send 100 gigs of data than to send the message that they did send. That's the part that doesn't work for me - it wouldn't have been harder to send 100 gigs than to send less than 1k of text.
You forgot to reply to my other possibility.
I know the answer. It's because the writers didn't know, yet.
Yes, they did, though. They even explained in that episode how voyager could have gotten home safe and sound.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 43 by crashfrog, posted 09-30-2005 1:34 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
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coffee_addict
Member (Idle past 477 days)
Posts: 3645
From: Indianapolis, IN
Joined: 03-29-2004


Message 69 of 90 (247864)
10-01-2005 12:28 AM


This is a message from the future. We arrived in your solar system in what would have been your year 9194, if your civilization had still existed. We found evidence of your existence on the third planet, which we have determined to have been your home planet. We also found remains of your civilization on the fourth planet and on your moon. In the databanks of one of your moonbases, which were much better preserved than anything we found on your homeplanet, our scientists discovered a message from the last remaining humans. After deciphering it, we decided to use technology we have developed to manipulate information through time to relay the message back to their ancestors in the past, i.e. you. The human message is as follows:
quote:
Quote:
In 2005, the earth received a "message from the future", which contained a warning that humanity would be wiped out by a viral pandemic in 2114. It took a while before the message was taken seriously and resulted in an international effort to start a human colony on Mars. In 2076 the first settlement on Mars was established. In just over three decades it expanded to a city-sized colony, containing about 23,000 people. About two and a half years ago, however, it was devastated by an asteroid impact. There were only 17 survivors, all of them from a well sheltered hospital. Without resources and with no time left to start another viable colony off earth before the predicted pandemic, they got to a space station in orbit around Mars, awaiting rescue. Earth launched a mission to retrieve them and they made it back to earth in six months time. Then, in december 2113, the viral infection started. It all happened so quickly that by mid march 2114, more than half of the world's population had died. We have sought desparately for a cure, but there was too little time and none was found before it was too late. The pandemic did indeed wipe out humanity. We are the last humans, we number only 11 now, and all of us are infected.
The only way out for humanity we can think of at this point, is to realise that we originally became aware of what awaited us, via a message from the future. The message itself was somehow lost very soon after it first appeared on what was then called the 'internet'. But the stories about the message have become part of our cultural history, and folklore has it that the original message was somehow sent back in time, by aliens who discovered the traces of our civilization. We think that if we leave a message ourselves, it might be found by these aliens. In fact, we think this is the original message. We will beam this message to one of our automated data facilities on the moon, where we think it will have the best chance of ever being found.
If this message reaches our ancestors back in 2005, we urge them to analyse what has happened and to somehow try and avert the disaster.

  
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