[polar]

In our modern days of human space flight, driverless cars, and Instagram attention whoring, there are some who are still unsatisfied with the scientific progress we've made. Going boldly where no man cis-privileged shitlord, woman, or otherkin have gone before, these brave souls keep questioning the scientific principles of yesterday, bringing the tomorrow only imagined by sci-fi ever closer.

What discoveries have they brought forth today?

True artificial intelligence?

Anti-gravity?

Perhaps nuclear fission?

Wrong. Here's the headline for you:

Quote:

Send aliens modern messages of Earth's equality and diversity, say scientists

Feminism is going to space!

Don't worry about women being raped in the war zones of Syria. Gender equality is coming to Alpha Centauri and a galaxy near you!

Quote:

The UK entrants to a Breakthrough Initiative competition agree on one thing: any missive to extraterrestrials must be an up-to-date portrayal of humankind

do they really agree? Or did the real scientists just not want to get fired for voicing their opinion?

Quote:

Messages sent into space to tell extraterrestrials about the nature of humankind should be updated to reflect gender equality and the diversity of life on Earth, scientists say.

Scientists? Plural? Really? Read on.

Quote:

At a conference in Leeds this week, a group of British astronomers and philosophers who form the UK research network for SETI - the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - agreed to enter a competition organised by the Breakthrough Initiative to devise a message to send out to space on behalf of the world to whoever might be listening.

However, discussing the likely content of the message at the British Science Festival in Bradford on Thursday, the need to revise our previous portrayals of life on Earth was raised.

Jill Stuart, an expert in space policy at the London School of Economics, pointed to the plaque that was placed on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, launched in 1972. Intended to convey the origin of the craft and to impart information about the inhabitants of Earth, Stuart observed that to modern eyes the pictorial message presents some issues.

Don't worry guys, an EXPERT said this, so it must be right! What do you mean she's not a scientist? What do you mean nobody else voiced approval?

Quote:


“The plaque shows a man raising his hand in a very manly fashion while a woman stands behind him, appearing all meek and submissive,” she said. “We really need to rethink that with any messages we are sending out now. Attitudes have changed so much in just 40 years.”

The plaque also clearly portrays the human figures as white, and Stuart added: “I would be uncomfortable with sending out any images or messages that include Western-dominated material.”

how many non-white countries were sending rockets to space forty years ago? USA and USSR were both Caucasian.

Quote:

The Breakthrough Initiative, organised by Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner, is a $100m project to utilise the best radio telescopes to listen out for alien communications - and he is offering a $1m prize for the best idea for a message to broadcast to whoever is out there.

Anders Sandberg of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, was in Bradford representing the SETI group, and said the decision to enter the competition was hard-won, with half of the scientists on the group opposed to sending out a message at all.

The dissenting scientists, said Sandberg, were concerned that we might be drawing attention to ourselves from the wrong sort of aliens. “The cliche of being invaded by aliens was not really on our minds. But the thinking was that the silence in the skies might be because alien civilisations are hiding from us, and that it might be stupid to attract attention,” he said.

The message, which would be beamed out on a powerful but currently unused frequency, could take the form of text, sounds, mathematical formulae or pictures. “But what we don’t know is if any aliens out there have eyes, so pictures might not work,” Sandberg said.

If the UK SETI group wins the competition they will invest the prize money in extraterrestrial research in the UK.

The nearest star that could potentially hold life, Sandberg said, is ten light years away, so even in the best-case scenario it would take 20 years - and more likely 200 -for an answer to arrive from the area of our galaxy where most Earth-like planets might be situated.

There’s also the possibility that rather than an advanced alien race, our messages might find a civilisation slightly behind us. Sandberg said: “If we got a message from aliens in the 1930s it might have freaked us out a bit, but would it have crushed us? No. Unless we had received transmissions of Big Brother, perhaps.”

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/...uri-milner

Men gather to discuss scientific progress, radio frequencies to send the messages of human civilization across space with potentially unknown consequences...woman complains about perceived injustice of 40 years ago when the only countries in space were predominantly Caucasian.

Article stuffs debate about actual, SERIOUS scientific issues into the last three paragraphs, focusing instead on feels.

I literally can't even.

[El Chinito loco]

Quote:

“The plaque shows a man raising his hand in a very manly fashion while a woman stands behind him, appearing all meek and submissive,” she said. “We really need to rethink that with any messages we are sending out now. Attitudes have changed so much in just 40 years.”

The plaque also clearly portrays the human figures as white, and Stuart added: “I would be uncomfortable with sending out any images or messages that include Western-dominated material.”

Clearly the solution is for the plaque to bear the likeness of Caitlyn Jenner but instead of a white transgendered woman have "it" be in blackface in a fat suit wearing a hula hoop grass skirt.

Why would aliens with a completely different physiology give two intergalactic shits about what a strange breed of bipedal animals on another planet and their culture of "diversity" are doing anyways? Does a lion care if a donkey is mating with a horse?

But seriously Carl Sagan and other astrophysicists talked about things like this a long time ago. He said that mathematical or geometric formulas are our best bet when it comes to communicating with alien species. These things are almost always universal, because the laws of physics at even its most basic form are pretty identifiable, especially if they have learned to travel through space and/or have developed technology for communication across space/time.

[Kyriarch]

(09-11-2015 09:21 AM)polar Wrote:  

Feminism is going to space!

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

Thank God Pioneer 10 is already so far from Earth that no radio signal sent sent now could possibly reach it. If its antennae were able to pick up this bullshit, it would surely self-destruct.

[ColSpanker]

I remember when this probe was launched. There was a cartoon where some humanoid aliens where looking the plaque inside it. Their comment: "The humans on earth are very much like us on Jupiter. Except they don't wear any clothes."

[El Chinito loco]

(09-11-2015 09:50 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

Thank God Pioneer 10 is already so far from Earth that no radio signal sent sent now could possibly reach it. If its antennae were able to pick up this bullshit, it would surely self-destruct.

I get the mental picture of the pioneer 10 literally swatting the nonsense radio signals away with its antennae and crashing into an asteroid to save humanity from itself.

[Deepdiver]

Hmmm call me crazy suppose a superior technological intergalactic race somewhere in the cosmos sees the 40 year old Pioneer glyphs and decides to through them back like a pickerel - too skinny and bony...

Fast forward forty years and the new glyphs now include Kardashian, Beyonce and Megan Trainor plump phat phemales and the same superior race says hmmm took about forty years for our genetically modified phat phucking phemale arse viruses to spread across the planet - now that the earthlings have been fully feminized and pacified time to harvest - delicious plumped up bootilcious - what do you want juicy white meat or juicier dark meat?

[Paracelsus]

Well I see this as a real problem we need to sort out right now. Clearly the only solution is to load every fucking feminist on the planet onto a few rockets and send them out in pursuit of this hateful sexist message so they can rewrite it for themselves on the spot.

[UroboricForms]

Sure, never mind the fact that the Pioneers were the first spacecraft to:

* Successfuly navigate the asteroid belt

* Survive the intense radiation environment around Jupiter and send back the first, albeit limited images of it and Saturn

* Leave the solar system altogether


No, let's just kick up a fuss about the messages attached to them. Messages created in a time of optimism, when people were probably more concerned about doing science that not upsetting somebody.

Quote:

expert in space policy at the London School of Economics

A joke of a title if I ever heard one.

[EvanWilson]

(09-11-2015 09:50 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

Thank God Pioneer 10 is already so far from Earth that no radio signal sent sent now could possibly reach it. If its antennae were able to pick up this bullshit, it would surely self-destruct.

Not in alignment anymore to get a radio transmission.

I checked. NASA thinks it no longer has enough power to transmit anymore and the last alignment for the antenna that would allow a signal was 2006:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_10

[EvanWilson]

Pioneer 10 plaque

Just think, if we run our civilization 'into the ground' and destroy ourselves, along with the planet, the plaques on Pioneer 10 and 11 may be the only thing left to show were existing someday.

[eljeffster]

This is one of the most important posts on this whole site. Think about it.

1. Advanced intergalactic aliens find our Pioneer spacecraft and see the inscription of a strong man and a submissive feminine woman. Seeing a cultural image that is in harmony with the universe, the aliens feel respect for us. Despite the difference in advancement, they visit Earth and assist us in reaching the stars. A golden age of mankind begins.

2. The feminists succeed in getting their messages into space which are found by the aliens instead of the older Pioneer messages. In their advanced state the aliens immediately see the corrosive rot of feminism and the weakness of men to allow such a thing to be. Enraged, they come to Earth to enslave us. They kill half the men, and defile all the women.

[kaotic]

Yeah, this is all I have to say about these idiots.

[AFS]

If they don't like it, women and minorities should send their own spacecraft into space or STFU.

[RIslander]

Can you imagine a team of female engineers and scientists trying to accomplish building and launching a rocket? They'd end up with a shitty, unusable prototype and spend all day taking selfies with it.

[UroboricForms]

(09-11-2015 01:57 PM)RIslander Wrote:  

Can you imagine a team of female engineers and scientists trying to accomplish building and launching a rocket? They'd end up with a shitty, unusable prototype and spend all day taking selfies with it.

[General Stalin]

Quote:

expert in space policy

Get the fuck outta here.

[StrikeBack]

(09-11-2015 10:07 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

Well I see this as a real problem we need to sort out right now. Clearly the only solution is to load every fucking feminist on the planet onto a few rockets and send them out in pursuit of this hateful sexist message so they can rewrite it for themselves on the spot.

I'm all for this idea provided that our current rocket technology can launch the combined weight of all those whiny fat feminists...

Quote:

expert in space policy at the London School of Economics

When feminists bitch about wanting more women in STEM, this is the kind of jobs they're talking about (getting paid heaps for doing fuck all), not the ones actually doing STEM work.

[eljeffster]

(09-11-2015 01:57 PM)RIslander Wrote:  

Can you imagine a team of female engineers and scientists trying to accomplish building and launching a rocket? They'd end up with a shitty, unusable prototype and spend all day taking selfies with it.

You know at least one of them would stick the rocket in her pussy, to impress a man of course.

[The Lizard of Oz]

I agree with Jill that Pioneer failed to give an adequate representation of humanity to all those little green losers out there.

They have no excuse. In 1972 they could have sent this, recorded a full three years earlier:

That should have been enough for any recipients to seek us out so that they may worship us as their new Gods.

The next spacecraft we send out should correct the error, and throw in Van Halen's video of Panama to seal the deal.

Yeah, we're runnin' a little bit hot tonight
I can barely see the road from the heat comin' off of it...

Those alien fools don't deserve it, but let them hear it anyway.

[tarquin]

Apparently feminists want us to abandon the search for intelligent life.

[Phoenix]

I think criticism of these messages is fair, assuming they don't come from a feminist. Ideas that come from a feminist are the intellectual equivalent of a violent bowel movement. If we're sending out space messages, we should try to make them as intimidating and unattractive as possible. You never know what those aliens will be like.

We should send out pictures of 7ft tall steroid monsters and hideous feminist twitter-beasts, with photos of terrorists beheading dudes in the deep Sahara as examples of 'home'. Also some pictures of angry dudes like Samuel Jackson. "Hey Zorg we found another one, want to conquer it?". "Jesus.... nah man we'll just leave that one alone".

[Alsos]

They obviously don't care that a lot of work actually went in to the plaques on the Pioneer probes and the plaques and data "records" on the Voyager probes.

The Voyager effort involved Carl Sagan, Ed Drake, Ann Druyun, Linda Sagan, etc., and actually did do a lot of thinking about "representation" or "inclusion', as it would be called now. The resulting record includes images of a wide assortment of races and places, precisely to present a balanced picture of humanity to whatever mind-shattering interstellar horror discovers and decodes the data. This is not a new criticism that these STEMless science policy chicks have suddenly thought of all on their little lonesomes - it was made back then as well, and more intelligently.

[El Chinito loco]

(09-11-2015 01:57 PM)RIslander Wrote:  

Can you imagine a team of female engineers and scientists trying to accomplish building and launching a rocket? They'd end up with a shitty, unusable prototype and spend all day taking selfies with it.

It'd be the effort that counts of course. After months and years of bickering, backstabbing, and general incompetency they'd come together at the end to celebrate with plenty of booze and a fancy catered dinner to talk about how this added to their "life experience."

Meanwhile the men who bankrolled the project (social experiment) foots the expensive bill for zero productivity.

SJW journalists and the mainstream media would then go to work to spin it as some success story by highlighting a video clip from an hour out of months and years of "work" where they actually accomplished something.

This is the level of discourse we're at in modern society in the west.