Analyzing An Easy Peasy Method For First Contact With Low Orbit Tech Sapient Human-like Races...

[Spacescifi]

Seems to me the laziest (yet profoundly effective) way is to simply do a drive by.

Not in a bad way... rather just fly into low orbit, drop a few language learning satelites into orbit, then fly away. Then come back in ten years.

In ten years they should have studied and learned how to speak the language, and if for some silly reason they have not then they probably are not worth your time anyway (Pakleds lol?).

Pre-requisites: It helps to already speak a vocal language as well as use visual writing to communicate. Otherwise less people beyond experts will be able to communicate with you. Although the good news is that they should have some form of google translate, and inserting your given language into that would be possible. Also it goes without saying that it's required to monitor a planet enough to verify the planet uses spoken language and visual writing so that using language learning satelites can actually be effective.

Last but not least it helps immensely to have a common space faring language, a lingua franca of sorts. That way whoever you meet will have to learn it and your influence and ability to network will increase across the star systems.

Main Question: Any potential challenges to this method of first contact? Sure it is not fool proof but what ever is? It surely avoids the issues with immediate communication that would occur otherwise.

Edited February 29 by Spacescifi

[farmerben]

It is more respectful to learn their language for introductions, just like when travelling to foreign countries.  

[kerbiloid]

+1
We must capture one of them, and make him/it teach us their language and disclose their geography, habits, weak places.

Maybe more than one, to compare.

[darthgently]

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Seems to me the laziest (yet profoundly effective) way is to simply do a drive by.

Not in a bad way... rather just fly into low orbit, drop a few language learning satelites into orbit, then fly away. Then come back in ten years.

In ten years they should have studied and learned how to speak the language, and if for some silly reason they have not then they probably are not worth your time anyway (Pakleds lol?).

Pre-requisites: It helps to already speak a vocal language as well as use visual writing to communicate. Otherwise less people beyond experts will be able to communicate with you. Although the good news is that they should have some form of google translate, and inserting your given language into that would be possible. Also it goes without saying that it's required to monitor a planet enough to verify the planet uses spoken language and visual writing so that using language learning satelites can actually be effective.

Last but not least it helps immensely to have a common space faring language, a lingua franca of sorts. That way whoever you meet will have to learn it and your influence and ability to network will increase across the star systems.

Main Question: Any potential challenges to this method of first contact? Sure it is not fool proof but what ever is? It surely avoids the issues with immediate communication that would occur otherwise.

The only weakness I see is the assumption of language being restricted to audio signals in a gaseous medium.  Maybe they use color and light like octupae and other sea creatures, or even biologic em as many sea creatures like hammerhead sharks use to scan for food, and perhaps for communication.

It should be noted that every species with eyes that we know of also use visual information to communicate, secondarily, if not primarily.

But maybe you are sidestepping these issues with however narrowly you mean "human-like"

The movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind explores the visual language and human-ish angle fairly well, though math/music plays a big part also

Edited February 29 by darthgently

[Spacescifi]

2 hours ago, farmerben said:

It is more respectful to learn their language for introductions, just like when travelling to foreign countries.  

True but that increases difficulty and has other risks.

And when you are setting off for dozens of worlds a drive by language learning method is most efficient.

[magnemoe]

Issue with this is that they have to have radio or they could not hear the satellites. Radio is just 125 year old, much less in practice as in able to communicate with an satellite even if pretty powerful. 
Assuming we do this in 200 years. The alien will be less than 300 year behind us or ahead, so ahead is much much more likely and we are likely to could talk directly to them, but sending an probe with data would make sense. 

If not they could not get anything from the satellite and you have to land, if they are doing agriculture you should probably be able to spot that from orbit. Send down an lander. 
If they don't have fields with crops they would be hard to spot. 


Named this image first contact, an cat like alien trying to eat an small rover.  We did not know of them before she spotted the rover and went to investigate. 

[PakledHostage]

3 hours ago, darthgently said:

The movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind explores the visual language and human-ish angle fairly well, though math/music plays a big part also

That was a great movie  with a cool premise, but there was a big plot loophole at the end when they return the pilots that they abducted years earlier from the Bermuda triangle. If they had had human specimens for a couple of decades,  wouldn't they have learned how to communicate with us by studying those specimens?

[darthgently]

31 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

That was a great movie  with a cool premise, but there was a big plot loophole at the end when they return the pilots that they abducted years earlier from the Bermuda triangle. If they had had human specimens for a couple of decades,  wouldn't they have learned how to communicate with us by studying those specimens?

Yes, the movie was far more emotional than logical.  More of an archetypal myth based plot than reasoned out thoroughly.  Nothing wrong with that, but it has weaknesses

[magnemoe]

40 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

That was a great movie  with a cool premise, but there was a big plot loophole at the end when they return the pilots that they abducted years earlier from the Bermuda triangle. If they had had human specimens for a couple of decades,  wouldn't they have learned how to communicate with us by studying those specimens?

Yes, it would make it unnecessary.  I assume you could also learn this just by spying on us. 
But having people would make it easier as you could start communicating much easier than trying to make sense of stuff. 
 

Edited February 29 by magnemoe

[darthgently]

2 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Did not remember that part, it would also make the entire send us an radio message to build an transporter device also pretty pointless as they had been here already unless it was some sort of test. 
 

Different movie?  Not sure

[magnemoe]

1 minute ago, darthgently said:

Different movie?  Not sure

I thought of Contact, my bad so my comment make no sense so will change it.

[Terwin]

Even assuming that they are not some sort of insect that communicates through pheromones, and they have the capacity to perceive your attempts to communicate as such, why would you depend on the intellectual and computational capacity of a presumably more primitive society to decide and understand your message which presumably has a finite and thus limited body to work on (and no doubt includes ideas for which they do not even have words)

As opposed to having as much time and computational capacity as you can cram on your ship to decide the more primitive words and ideas of the culture you intend to contact?

 

Someone very lazy could do as you describe, but it would not make a very good impression, and may only be worked on by crazies if everyone else thinks it is a hoax

[magnemoe]

47 minutes ago, Terwin said:

Even assuming that they are not some sort of insect that communicates through pheromones, and they have the capacity to perceive your attempts to communicate as such, why would you depend on the intellectual and computational capacity of a presumably more primitive society to decide and understand your message which presumably has a finite and thus limited body to work on (and no doubt includes ideas for which they do not even have words)

As opposed to having as much time and computational capacity as you can cram on your ship to decide the more primitive words and ideas of the culture you intend to contact?

Someone very lazy could do as you describe, but it would not make a very good impression, and may only be worked on by crazies if everyone else thinks it is a hoax

Problem with lots of weird alien communication methods is that most outside of visual one who sign language is the low bandwidth, not an huge issue for animals who just say a few things to say but not something you can build an society out of. Sign language has the downside of being line of sight and you have to watch the speaker not that you are doing. But it would work and work better if better field of view or more eyes.
And you would need hands or something similar to make tools so if you can not speak you use some sort of sign language, you probably has loads of sounds too but they would be more like our body language but more to call attention or shout warnings, I want to talk to you / ask a question or watch out. 

But decoding an alien language without direct interaction would be much much harder than decoding hieroglyphs without the rosetta stone who I assume we done by now but an alien language is an much harder nut to crack.
Also decoding signals might be an problem today everything is encrypted often multiple times like an https is probably again is encrypted 

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, Terwin said:

Even assuming that they are not some sort of insect that communicates through pheromones, and they have the capacity to perceive your attempts to communicate as such, why would you depend on the intellectual and computational capacity of a presumably more primitive society to decide and understand your message which presumably has a finite and thus limited body to work on (and no doubt includes ideas for which they do not even have words)

As opposed to having as much time and computational capacity as you can cram on your ship to decide the more primitive words and ideas of the culture you intend to contact?

 

Someone very lazy could do as you describe, but it would not make a very good impression, and may only be worked on by crazies if everyone else thinks it is a hoax

I thought he meant the satellites would learn the native language, not that the satellites would teach the natives ours.  Rereading I still think that what he meant.  Could be wrong tho

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, PakledHostage said:

That was a great movie  with a cool premise, but there was a big plot loophole at the end when they return the pilots that they abducted years earlier from the Bermuda triangle. If they had had human specimens for a couple of decades,  wouldn't they have learned how to communicate with us by studying those specimens?

Silly humans think, that these specimens are indeed exactly those ones, who were stolen.

Then they make sci-fi movies, where a wife sees strange behavior of her "returned husband".

Thanks to the lonely hero, who was contacting with the pre-human, the humans are now thinking that they are friends.

***

On the other hand, establishing the first contact with a less developed civilization on another planet is rather simple, and is described in epics.

First of all, you need a fire from sky.
Drop a meganuke on the ocean, to make your appearance well visible from various lands.

Then come to them from that side and ask: "Mortals! Where are our fruits and virgins?"

So, they will deliver fertile specimens of local flora and fauna, to study them in a lab, develop a scientific model of the biosphere, and make their families local lords, assigned by the allmighty beings.

Then let them learn your language to speak.

[SunlitZelkova]

14 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Seems to me the laziest (yet profoundly effective) way is to simply do a drive by.

Not in a bad way... rather just fly into low orbit, drop a few language learning satelites into orbit, then fly away. Then come back in ten years.

In ten years they should have studied and learned how to speak the language, and if for some silly reason they have not then they probably are not worth your time anyway (Pakleds lol?).

Pre-requisites: It helps to already speak a vocal language as well as use visual writing to communicate. Otherwise less people beyond experts will be able to communicate with you. Although the good news is that they should have some form of google translate, and inserting your given language into that would be possible. Also it goes without saying that it's required to monitor a planet enough to verify the planet uses spoken language and visual writing so that using language learning satelites can actually be effective.

Last but not least it helps immensely to have a common space faring language, a lingua franca of sorts. That way whoever you meet will have to learn it and your influence and ability to network will increase across the star systems.

Main Question: Any potential challenges to this method of first contact? Sure it is not fool proof but what ever is? It surely avoids the issues with immediate communication that would occur otherwise.

We've barely cracked chimp communication, how are we supposed to learn the infinitely more complex language of a humanoid species with human-level intelligence?

[PakledHostage]

A group from SETI is working on communicating with humpback whales, with the idea that we should practice learning to communicate with known species before we need to do it with extraterrestrial ones.

[StrandedonEarth]

12 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

A group from SETI is working on communicating with humpback whales, with the idea that we should practice learning to communicate with known species before we need to do it with extraterrestrial ones.

This. Dogs understand us, but we barely understand their body language. We expect other animals to understand our commands. We should be working to communicate and understand the languages of cetaceans.

[PakledHostage]

39 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

This. Dogs understand us, but we barely understand their body language. 

As an aside, we're the only great apes that have whites of our eyes. This is seen as an evolutionary advantage because it allows us to communicate silently with just a look, or for others to know what we're looking at just by looking at our eyes. Both are useful if you're trying to sneak up and catch your dinner. Dogs have figured this out about us too, which makes us very successful hunting companions.

Edited March 1 by PakledHostage

[kerbiloid]

It proves that the first phrase of human speech was: "Look into my eyes! Now!"

[Spacescifi]

11 hours ago, darthgently said:

I thought he meant the satellites would learn the native language, not that the satellites would teach the natives ours.  Rereading I still think that what he meant.  Could be wrong tho

 

I guess I was not explicit enough in the OP title.

I literally meant an alien race dropping language teaching satelites in orbit of worlds with human-like aliens who ALREADY have something akin to a modern space program.

Meaning they have rockets and a bunch of satelites already in orbit.

The aliens make the satelite look as non-threatening as possible, and they fully expect planet astronauts to enter inside it (the satelite is large enough a group of people could go inside it).

When the planet people approach in a shuttle craft, arrows would light up on the satelite directing them to an open door. When they walk through the air will already be pressurised because a forcefield screen is keeping it inside while permitting them to cross over.

Inside would be a control panel and a language learning screen that would activate, as well as several portable pad devices with multiple power AC outlets that also have the language learning software.

Within 10 years the aliens figure we should figure the language out, because they expect we would throw a lot of resources at the challenge.

Edited March 1 by Spacescifi

[SunlitZelkova]

2 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

I guess I was not explicit enough in the OP title.

I literally meant an alien race dropping language teaching satelites in orbit of worlds with human-like aliens who ALREADY have something akin to a modern space program.

Meaning they have rockets and a bunch of satelites already in orbit.

The aliens make the satelite look as non-threatening as possible, and they fully expect planet astronauts to enter inside it (the satelite is large enough a group of people could go inside it).

When the planet people approach in a shuttle craft, arrows would light up on the satelite directing them to an open door. When they walk through the air will already be pressurised because a forcefield screen is keeping it inside while permitting them to cross over.

Inside would be a control panel and a language learning screen that would activate, as well as several portable pad devices with multiple power AC outlets that also have the language learning software.

Within 10 years the aliens figure we should figure the language out, because they expect we would throw a lot of resources at the challenge.

I think such a situation would only be possible after years of UFO/Close Encounter like study of the race-to-be-contacted.

The aliens sending the satellite would need to learn the other aliens’ language first.

But if they have to do that, why not learn each other’s language at the same time?

[farmerben]

Wherever the aliens lie on the spectrum from peaceful to aggressive, it will be to our advantage in almost every case to know more about them than they know about us.  If they are technologically our near peer and aggressive, it will be extremely important.

Edited March 1 by farmerben

[kerbiloid]

To interrogate everyone's secret prisoners.