If aliens call, what should we do? Scientists want your opinion.

[The Wizard Joseph]

I hate robots. 

Okay so no aliens no robots... No humans kind of goes without saying.

Is there anything that might potentially bear Consciousness that you don't hate? Like would you be cool if we discovered a terrestrial animal other than humans was conscious?

IF IT'S POLAR BEARS, OUT THEY GO!

 

[Nephew Twiddleton]

We can't really survive somewhere that we're not adapted to live in.

Actually, I already survive somewhere that humans are not biologically adapted to.  When I go outside during winter, I could die.  But I overcome this with technology.  When the temperature drops, I wear a coat.

Why is wearing protective gear (space suits, encounter suits, whatever) a showstopper for alien visitors?  For that matter, why couldn't they alter their biology to match the environment?  We are much closer to modifying humans than to visiting the stars (some Chinese researchers are already trying to create HIV-resistant babies.)  Being able to modify one's biology significantly may even be a prerequisite to surviving interstellar travel.

There is also the possibility that the alien visitors are so alien, that our microbes wouldn't affect them at all.  If they were all robots, for example.

...yeah.  Actually, forget everything I just said, and let's go with that.  The aliens are all robots.

Aliens are all robots is the most feasible.

And yeah, I'm well aware of the Chinese CRISPR babies. Thing is that comes with a lot of ethical problems for a reason. Not the least of which being that straight Mendelian genetics is just scratching the surface and altering one gene could disrupt multiple gene networks. I'm not a computer programmer, but I'm sure a computer programmer can easily spot an analogy here. It of course depends on exactly what's being done in genetic modification, but if you're so heavily modifying a genome to be able to handle alien worlds, those aliens might be aliens to the aliens that point

Please see Greg Egan’s Diaspora. There is a character who does something along these lines just to communicate. It’s fiction, but Egan is about as hard as science fiction can get.

Does what to communicate, robots or gene editing?

[altered]

Becoming “aliens to the aliens”. The whole sequence is so well done that saying more would ruin it. Just read it, it’s well, well worth it.

Egan handles the most out there ideas so casually and effortlessly that it makes me jealous. He does more with one seemingly off-the-cuff word than I can do with four paragraphs and a committee.

[Frontside Back]

Just read it, it’s well, well worth it.

I'd strongly advise against reading anything that hasn't gone through a tester.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Becoming “aliens to the aliens”. The whole sequence is so well done that saying more would ruin it. Just read it, it’s well, well worth it.

Egan handles the most out there ideas so casually and effortlessly that it makes me jealous. He does more with one seemingly off-the-cuff word than I can do with four paragraphs and a committee.

You say just read it like I don't have a backlog of pleasure reading and more importantly, required reading.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Like, I'll do it but it might be months if not years

[altered]

The correct thing to do is to simply add it to your pleasure reading backlog, silly.

Unless you don’t like hard sci-fi, in which case I guess you can spoil yourself, but that’d be a major disservice to that story and I’d rather let others around here be able to go in blind on it. PM me if you want the spoiler.

EDIT: wrote the above up veeeery slowly, while distracted, before your second post. To be clear here, I have books I’ve been meaning to get to since 2005. I only just finally got around to reading The Thread That Binds The Bones this past September, and well... That’s one I’d meant to read since 2003. I fully expect people to read stuff years after I suggest it to them, it’s inevitable. A simple hazard of existing in information overload: even once you sort the noise from the signal, you still have far more to consume than you ever can possibly hope to.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

The correct thing to do is to simply add it to your pleasure reading backlog, silly.

Unless you don’t like hard sci-fi, in which case I guess you can spoil yourself, but that’d be a major disservice to that story and I’d rather let others around here be able to go in blind on it. PM me if you want the spoiler.

EDIT: wrote the above up veeeery slowly, while distracted, before your second post. To be clear here, I have books I’ve been meaning to get to since 2005. I only just finally got around to reading The Thread That Binds The Bones this past September, and well... That’s one I’d meant to read since 2003. I fully expect people to read stuff years after I suggest it to them, it’s inevitable. A simple hazard of existing in information overload: even once you sort the noise from the signal, you still have far more to consume than you ever can possibly hope to.

There's a downside to academia. I've been trying to finish the entire expanded Dune for years. I'm about 20% through Chapterhouse and have been for months. I'm probably going to have to start from the beginning. And then there's the two sequels to that.

[altered]

Wasn’t Chapterhouse the last Frank book?

Either way, Herbert hasn’t aged well. I read Dune in 2012 and loved it, all the way through Chapterhouse. I reread it all about six months or so ago and it was painful. Joe Biden defending his record on racial segregation painful.

Okay, bit of an exaggeration there. Unlike Biden, when judged as a product of its time, it’s fine or better. Today, though, it just comes off as horny for dominatrices at best, and everything goes downhill from there. Shame, really: the cultural elements outside of the Bene-connected stuff (G or T, irrelevant really) holds up strong as nails, still some of the best worldbuilding I’ve seen done.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I'm indirectly bitching about a needing a better work/life balance. I apologize for getting a little cranky at you

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Wasn’t Chapterhouse the last Frank book?

Either way, Herbert hasn’t aged well. I read Dune in 2012 and loved it, all the way through Chapterhouse. I reread it all about six months or so ago and it was painful. Joe Biden defending his record on racial segregation painful.

Okay, bit of an exaggeration there. Unlike Biden, when judged as a product of its time, it’s fine or better. Today, though, it just comes off as horny for dominatrices at best, and everything goes downhill from there. Shame, really: the cultural elements outside of the Bene-connected stuff (G or T, irrelevant really) holds up strong as nails, still some of the best worldbuilding I’ve seen done.

I agree with your assessment. It's hard to get through and frankly I prefer his son's additions to the series more readable

[Nephew Twiddleton]

The weird focus on sexuality is why I couldn't get through Heretics when I was, laughably, in my 20s (I turn 38 in a few weeks).

[chaotic neutral observer]

The Dune series goes downhill pretty quickly after God Emperor, IMO.

[altered]

God Emperor is definitely the high point. Leto II is a horrible/wonderful character, and it’s the most convincing writing about precognition in the series. Full agreement with you there.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

The Dune series goes downhill pretty quickly after God Emperor, IMO.

I mean, it goes Downhill after Dune. Children was pretty good because it was Dune-like