Ask HN: What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being?

7 points by anthonyrubin 17 years ago | 26 comments

This submission is inspired by a quote from my previous submission.

Suppose a group of alien beings were to learn our language and randomly selected you as a source of further human knowledge. They send one of their kind to your home and the being informs you that it will be crashing at your place for a few weeks to learn whatever it can.

I realize this scenario is rather contrived, but what reading material would you provide to such a being? Remember that this being likely does not have the contextual knowledge that would be required to understand your favorite books.

tjic 17 years ago |

The Oxford English Dictionary.

It defines every English word they're going to ever come across outside of technical literature, it's got tons of historical examples, shows the connections between English and other languages, and more.

If we extrapolate the speed with which Google is learning to harvest latent information out of data dumps out just 20 or 30 years, I wouldn't be surprised if aliens smart enough to get here could pull a huge amount of culture and history out of the OED.

anthonyrubin 17 years ago |

I would start with world history -- first a book that covers the last few millennia, then specific books on significant events. Next would be a few of Karen Armstrong's books on religion; books such as the New Testament might prove difficult to understand without proper background.

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics would probably be a good starting point for math. I'm not aware of any great texts that provide the same level of broad introduction to science.

christofd 17 years ago |

- The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, 1973 (Douglas North, Robert Thomas): Nobel Economic Historian North explains how institutions and property rights determine how human beings got along with each other through history; this is important, so they don't think we're mass murderers by design

- some school biology book on natural selection, evolution

- The Princeton Companion to Mathematics

- Goedel, Escher, Bach: introduction to the "weirdness" of the human brain

- the little prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry): human beings and their quirks

- Several editions of Popular Mechanics

varun 17 years ago |

A RSS feed reader, pre-filled with top 1000 feeds covering various topics, from news to technology to gossip! I'd get the alien to spend the first half of his time reading these feeds, and the latter half I'd show him Google.com and ask him to find out what he doesn't even know he could have found out about! A trip to the urban jungle (Manhattan) and a trip to a natural area, and the being would be all set! :)

icey 17 years ago |

Wikipedia.

brk 17 years ago |

The Bible (any version. Or Qu'ran, or similar epic religious tome).

The 3rd party viewpoint would be very interesting.

anthonyrubin 17 years ago | |

Without proper historical context I believe the Bible would be somewhat confusing.

zackattack 17 years ago | | |

It's confusing, even with proper historical context.

clord 17 years ago |

I'd probably start with ABCs and those "See Spot Run" books. Oh, and anything by the good Doctor (Seuss, that is.)

After several years (if they are clever and good with languages), perhaps they'd be ready to work on Nancy Drew and Harry Potter.

Why assume they can read? This way they can get the context.

BigZaphod 17 years ago |

I'd probably want to gauge the aliens' true intent first. If it seems to be good, then I'd carefully select their media exposure so that they'd feel guilty for not taking me and my family with them to their advanced corner of the galaxy when they decide our planet isn't worth the effort.... :)

blender 17 years ago |

I had a Prof once that said there were two ways to become a Psychiatrist.

1. Go to medical school

2. Read The Bible, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky

I'd tell them to read The Bible, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky

Cheers

pavelludiq 17 years ago |

How about philosophy. It would be hard for them to get the other stuff(excluding math and science). I don't know if they could get our philosophy either, since the way we think and see the world is very tightly coupled with our psychology, but we can assume that if they got our language(lets call it blubish) they either understand humans to some degree, or are themselves similar to us(or similar enough to understand us).

pavel_lishin 17 years ago | |

I think that an applied philosophy text would be more interesting. You know, something like Cosmo, or Weekly World News.

TrevorJ 17 years ago |

The first 5 pages of digg perhaps? I mean, they will find out about it eventually, might as well warn them up front right?

But seriously, I think an encyclopedia would be a good bet but the very first message we send should probably be one the reiterates peaceful intentions. With our history of warfare anything such as a dictionary or Encyclopedia given without context could be seen as a threat of further violence.

vorador 17 years ago |

The hitchiker's guide to galaxy.

brk 17 years ago | |

In theory, they already posses this.

melito 17 years ago |

"The Little Engine That Could" and "Everybody Poops"

silentbicycle 17 years ago |

Codex Seraphinianus.

slavox 17 years ago |

Probably A history of computing and technology from flight upwards. Then give them a low down on wars and show them how ruthless we are.. Then before they go to bed i'd read them the bible as a short fictional story.

rksprst 17 years ago |

The War of the Worlds, so that they know that they can't mess with humans.

tjic 17 years ago |

Is anyone else gritting their teeth and cringing, waiting for someone to say "Atlas Shrugged" ?

:-)

nickfox 17 years ago |

The Enquirer, because... inquiring minds want to know.

jerryji 17 years ago |

My name card.

bmelton 17 years ago |

"Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book"

Allocator2008 17 years ago |

The only book anyone, human or alien, really needs to read is -

"On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection"

by Charles Darwin, 1859.

"The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, 1974 is a good appendum there as well but once mastering "Origin" one really has the basics one needs.

icey 17 years ago | |

While I think it's safe to say that we are a planet full of evolved lifeforms; it seems a bit narrow minded to me to suggest that all potential visitors we could meet would also have evolved.

What precludes an "intelligently designed" being from being the first non-terrestrial life-form we encounter?

For all the talk we have here about the Singularity, I would assume that the first signs of life from Earth that any other civilization would meet would probably be something engineered by man. (Assuming we're meeting them somewhere other than our solar system.)