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[bryant]

"This place is not a place of honor.
No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
Nothing valued is here.
This place is a message and part of a system of messages.
Pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us.
We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture."

Comments

[seborn.livejournal.com]

I wonder if this is an intentionally ironic statement on the part of the designers, because in the end these are precisely those circumstances.

Fully articulated, the monument reads "Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. (In our hearts, we doubted. If we had not doubted, we would not have gone to all the trouble to craft this message so you could understand it after we fell. We were not powerful. But sending this message was important to us.)"

[bryant]

Hmmm.

I read it as "we're powerful enough to make something dangerous." The assumption being, perhaps, that future cultures would not assume that. The Romans were powerful, and we know they considered themselves powerful, but we wouldn't take a warning like this from Rome very seriously.

[kodi]

But then the question is - what can we say that would enable Milo Morai to tell the difference between us and the Romans? Assuming that Mr. 11,000 A.D. has no record of our culture, and has to determine just from the monument "Do these people know what they're talking about better than I do?", what is the statement we want to make to enable him to judge?

Just to clarify - I'm not questioning whether the proposed schemes succeed or fail in their ultimate goal. I'm just looking at the message "We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture." Because I think it the message represents something important to the communication, but I don't think the message is the best way to say it.

[bryant]

Damned if I know. I don't think any of the designs actually succeeded. But I think it's a worthwhile goal.

I see what you mean about the phrasing, though. "We considered ourselves to be capable of determining what might threaten you" would be a better message.

And when you think about it that way, are we right? Cause if, in 11,000 AD, we have developed good ways of dealing with radiation... well, all those monuments will look pretty dumb.

[kodi]

Hm, that's an interesting way of looking at it. I was working under the assumption that if Mr. 11,000 A.D. can handle our waste, he'll also be able to translate our language, and we can just say "U must 238 to ride this ride," and he'll understand that we were just leaving a message for Charlton Heston, who never showed up. But it's fun to assume that The (technologically advanced) Future doesn't know who we are, and they find this imposing monument, and say "Well, crap - we don't know who these guys were, but they claim they're more advanced than we are, we'd better stay away," when in fact they could just flip a switch and make it all safe.

Maybe the right message is "Have you guys played Civilization? Well, we we're somewhere in between Nuclear Fission and Nuclear Fusion. If you guys are already on Alpha Centauri, here's our level 4 message for you, otherwise, we're smarter than you, and just stay out."