Why we might be alone in the Universe

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Anomalocaris]

Besides an anthropocentric projection of our primitive social needs deriving from our particular precivilization social evolution, what reason can you think of why a technological civilization might feel the need to communicate with those who could only understand very dumbed down communication by the standards of the technological civilization?

[vulcanlogician]

Besides an anthropocentric projection of our primitive social needs deriving from our particular precivilization social evolution,  what reason can you think of why a technological civilization might feel the need to communicate with those who could only understand very dumbed down communication by the standards of the technological civilization?

Curiosity might be a possible answer to that. A technological civilization would have had to learn about math and science somehow, and it's hard to see how unless they also had some innate curiosity. Don't forget that when we discovered that the solar system was heliocentric, this was useless information. It was curiosity to discover facts about the natural world that drove us to solve the mysteries of nature and only eventually did these discoveries pay dividends in technology.

It's also not absurd to assume that a civilization that has managed to get itself into outer space would be a social species. After all, getting off a planet is a group project, isn't it? And without a social element in the species's behavior facilitating cooperation for such projects, it would be hard to imagine how a technological civilization might arise. (I suppose it's possible, though.)

Just going by humans though, if we were to discover another planet inhabited by beings who used dumbed down communications (say at the level of the telegraph), we would be very intrigued and want to learn about them.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Besides an anthropocentric projection of our primitive social needs deriving from our particular precivilization social evolution,  what reason can you think of why a technological civilization might feel the need to communicate with those who could only understand very dumbed down communication by the standards of the technological civilization?

Because there's a better chance of being understood.  The more advanced the information, the fewer receiving civilizations are likely to understand it.  Suppose the situation were reversed and we were the ones attempting to communicate.  Might it not be more effective to transmit what are universal messages (it's tough to imagine an advanced civilization that hasn't stumbled across the relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle) than to transmit esoteric or high-end information that is known only to a few?

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

Why would an advanced technological civilization need to be understood by a backwards one? Why would it’s curiosity necessarily require some understanding of its by the subject of its curioty to satisfy?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Why would an advanced technological civilization need to be understood by a backwards one?   Why would it’s curiosity necessarily require some understanding of its by the subject of its curioty to satisfy?

Shits and giggles?

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Why does the Prime Directive apply at all?

[Fireball]

Why does the Prime Directive apply at all?

It's definitely our (humanity's) thing, SOME of the time, but then ("Excuse me sir, have you heard our Lord and Savior!?"). I suspect that any aliens detecting our emissions took one look at those televangelist preachers and are going to give us a pass for a few millennia. Or, maybe realized that humans would make the perfect shock troops in a galactic war...which they no longer participate in.

[Jehanne]

Uh, The fact that the signal was seen only by one horn and not the other strongly suggest it didn’t come from very far away?

It might have been a transient signal, a beacon, or extremely narrow-band and off-axis to the adjoining horn.

[awty]

Why does the Prime Directive apply at all?