meganmayTue, Jul 17, 2007 though i agree to a point, that analogy actually supports the value of thinking about these things...because that's precisely the method by which we came to understand hyroglyphics or cuniform, for example, and if any alien intelligence ever sends a message to Earth, like in Contact, we'll have to do the same thing. i'm personally not a huge fan of the blatent why are we here? line of questioning but, speaking of languages, its rediculous how just the slightest re-framing of an issue that's been turned over for milennia can bring unarticulated, or unimagined concepts into focus, even if no conclusion to those unanswerable questions is ever reached. and infinity will keep us from ever figuring out the ansers to those questions perhaps. In that case infinity itself is kind of a funny/pointless/maddening thing to think too much about. case closed.
though i agree to a point, that analogy actually supports the value of thinking about these things...because that's precisely the method by which we came to understand hyroglyphics or cuniform, for example, and if any alien intelligence ever sends a message to Earth, like in Contact, we'll have to do the same thing. i'm personally not a huge fan of the blatent why are we here? line of questioning but, speaking of languages, its rediculous how just the slightest re-framing of an issue that's been turned over for milennia can bring unarticulated, or unimagined concepts into focus, even if no conclusion to those unanswerable questions is ever reached. and infinity will keep us from ever figuring out the ansers to those questions perhaps. In that case infinity itself is kind of a funny/pointless/maddening thing to think too much about. case closed.