Christopher Carroll asks if communicating with aliens really would be possible.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/131/Arrival
Arrival
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Justintruth
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Re: Arrival
I think that the author's conclusion is ill advised.
In order for our biology to evolve it had to enable two things: 1) The ability to manipulate the environment 2) The desire to use that ability.
That problem is common ground and it *might* be possible to communicate based on it.
Take for example bees. While they did live in our conditions they did not develop mammalian, or even vertebrate solutions to the evolutionary problem. Nevertheless, we have communicated with them, or rather we can interpret their communications with each other. We can find the source of their honey by watching their dances.
It is true that we must expect that our mammalian biases will have to be overcome. Threat displays, affection, etc have a common linguistic core across many mammalian species and we have no trouble communicating with dogs or chimps etc. There is both common syntax and semantics. But it is very different when communicating with lizards or insects. Still, even there there is commonality.
For example if an alien species were encountered and it puffed it self up really big and started cautious but aggressive runs at us we would be probably on tract to interpret the meaning of their behavior as a kind of threat display. That is syntax, semantics and ultimately language.
But there is even a bigger reason for cautious hope. The bandwidth of experiencing seems to be limited as well as the bandwidth for life. As for life I need only say: Goldilocks zone, carbon based, water etc and drop the issue. Are there alternate chemistries for life? Possibly. But the one we use could surely be available on other worlds and we know that it works.
As for experiencing, we see a widely divergent number of species utilizing sound and light in its various aspects and displaying them in experiencing like color or pitch. That means that it is probable that an alien species would also rely on similar interaction using signals and transducers. It is hard to imagine the evolution of an ecology not to be based on some form of signaling be it sound waves in a geothermally heated ocean beneath ice or more like us. And the same pathways that a creature uses to experience inanimate objects are also available to communication between its individuals and surely that communication has evolutionary implications as it did for us. Surely the biochemical pathways available to the evolution of neurology are *possibly* limited also and - who knows how many primary colors they might see (or hear) in but we have instruments already that can visually display very wide ranges of the spectrum within our brains as experiencing of color or pitch within our limited bandwidths so the idea of developing telescopes and other instruments which we can hardly deny that they might have accomplished also leaves intact signal pathways with greatly expanded bandwidth than originally evolved.
We have the *possibility* that the only way that life could have evolved is similar to what we see on our own planet - similar variation let's say. Like between an ant and a human. But if that variation rose to the level of being capable and desirous of interstellar travel would it not *possibly* converge?
In fact, given the possibility of these limitations why is it that we are so concerned over what "continent" meaning planet they evolved on? The fact that they visit us at all would give us a very high probability of communication and the fact that they haven't, well, I can project where our psycho sexual behavior like love, and religion, and art are going and it might not be exploration so we might indeed have a basis for deeper communication.
Our mammalian emotional heritage, mediated by hormone doped neurology, is a credible avenue for other ecosystems as well. There is nothing about the fact that the chemicals that make us up evolved on earth that makes us what we are. We are adaptable to a admittedly narrow range of environments here but the possibility of life emerging outside of us is *possibly* limited. And there are plenty of similar places.
Linguistics is in the end not so hard. A signal transmitted through a medium and received by a sensory apparatus which routes the signal to an experiencing neurology which in turn determines the experiencing in accordance with the received signal is a basic model of all perception. That same perceptual pathway can be used between two experiencing neurologies. (I use the term neurology loosely. Any material arrangement that induces experiencing can be characterized as a neurology whether cellular/carbon based or not.) Those systems should be capable of action if they are evolved -how do you get a survival advantage without some form of action- and so capable of generating signals. If the nature of these signals (syntax) is related to the type of experiencing occurring (semantics) then an experiencing can communicate a message using some syntax with another. True - instinct allows us to interpret between mammals but even our instincts can be explored once we gain engineering control of our neurology. That means that linguistics puts only a very small limit on the process and the possibilities for translation are very present.
In fact, the future of biology is probably engineering. Once there the possibilities of goals - the *possible* limitations on what goals can be experienced as good - might drive common objectives into evolution and convergence of life to try to attain some good-experiencing might even occur. Look at Teihard de Chardin's broad view of evolution as an example of what could be developed. Ok its speculative but...well...science starts that way.
The one weak point is this idea of the "visitor". We have not been visited. It's a negative result that must be explained. But I think our religious, artistic and reproductive histories give a fertile grounds to explain it. Why I remember when we first set foot on the moon and all the howling that occurred about not wasting time pursuing such a task. You still hear it about Mars and for whatever reason we are not straining ourselves much - with exceptions like SpaceX and various Mars engineers - a fraction of the engineering community - we are not straining to explore much. So it might mean that "visiting" species are rare. Perhaps if we visit them first? Then we can be the ones who must communicate with those who chose to stay on the ground.
Where engineered biology might go and how it would travel is a great question but we don't know the range of experiencing that can be induced into and arbitrary biology. We don't know the limitations. The *possibility* of limitations driving the resulting evolution should prohibit us from concluding we will not be able to communicate. We at least should be agnostic about it.
In order for our biology to evolve it had to enable two things: 1) The ability to manipulate the environment 2) The desire to use that ability.
That problem is common ground and it *might* be possible to communicate based on it.
Take for example bees. While they did live in our conditions they did not develop mammalian, or even vertebrate solutions to the evolutionary problem. Nevertheless, we have communicated with them, or rather we can interpret their communications with each other. We can find the source of their honey by watching their dances.
It is true that we must expect that our mammalian biases will have to be overcome. Threat displays, affection, etc have a common linguistic core across many mammalian species and we have no trouble communicating with dogs or chimps etc. There is both common syntax and semantics. But it is very different when communicating with lizards or insects. Still, even there there is commonality.
For example if an alien species were encountered and it puffed it self up really big and started cautious but aggressive runs at us we would be probably on tract to interpret the meaning of their behavior as a kind of threat display. That is syntax, semantics and ultimately language.
But there is even a bigger reason for cautious hope. The bandwidth of experiencing seems to be limited as well as the bandwidth for life. As for life I need only say: Goldilocks zone, carbon based, water etc and drop the issue. Are there alternate chemistries for life? Possibly. But the one we use could surely be available on other worlds and we know that it works.
As for experiencing, we see a widely divergent number of species utilizing sound and light in its various aspects and displaying them in experiencing like color or pitch. That means that it is probable that an alien species would also rely on similar interaction using signals and transducers. It is hard to imagine the evolution of an ecology not to be based on some form of signaling be it sound waves in a geothermally heated ocean beneath ice or more like us. And the same pathways that a creature uses to experience inanimate objects are also available to communication between its individuals and surely that communication has evolutionary implications as it did for us. Surely the biochemical pathways available to the evolution of neurology are *possibly* limited also and - who knows how many primary colors they might see (or hear) in but we have instruments already that can visually display very wide ranges of the spectrum within our brains as experiencing of color or pitch within our limited bandwidths so the idea of developing telescopes and other instruments which we can hardly deny that they might have accomplished also leaves intact signal pathways with greatly expanded bandwidth than originally evolved.
We have the *possibility* that the only way that life could have evolved is similar to what we see on our own planet - similar variation let's say. Like between an ant and a human. But if that variation rose to the level of being capable and desirous of interstellar travel would it not *possibly* converge?
In fact, given the possibility of these limitations why is it that we are so concerned over what "continent" meaning planet they evolved on? The fact that they visit us at all would give us a very high probability of communication and the fact that they haven't, well, I can project where our psycho sexual behavior like love, and religion, and art are going and it might not be exploration so we might indeed have a basis for deeper communication.
Our mammalian emotional heritage, mediated by hormone doped neurology, is a credible avenue for other ecosystems as well. There is nothing about the fact that the chemicals that make us up evolved on earth that makes us what we are. We are adaptable to a admittedly narrow range of environments here but the possibility of life emerging outside of us is *possibly* limited. And there are plenty of similar places.
Linguistics is in the end not so hard. A signal transmitted through a medium and received by a sensory apparatus which routes the signal to an experiencing neurology which in turn determines the experiencing in accordance with the received signal is a basic model of all perception. That same perceptual pathway can be used between two experiencing neurologies. (I use the term neurology loosely. Any material arrangement that induces experiencing can be characterized as a neurology whether cellular/carbon based or not.) Those systems should be capable of action if they are evolved -how do you get a survival advantage without some form of action- and so capable of generating signals. If the nature of these signals (syntax) is related to the type of experiencing occurring (semantics) then an experiencing can communicate a message using some syntax with another. True - instinct allows us to interpret between mammals but even our instincts can be explored once we gain engineering control of our neurology. That means that linguistics puts only a very small limit on the process and the possibilities for translation are very present.
In fact, the future of biology is probably engineering. Once there the possibilities of goals - the *possible* limitations on what goals can be experienced as good - might drive common objectives into evolution and convergence of life to try to attain some good-experiencing might even occur. Look at Teihard de Chardin's broad view of evolution as an example of what could be developed. Ok its speculative but...well...science starts that way.
The one weak point is this idea of the "visitor". We have not been visited. It's a negative result that must be explained. But I think our religious, artistic and reproductive histories give a fertile grounds to explain it. Why I remember when we first set foot on the moon and all the howling that occurred about not wasting time pursuing such a task. You still hear it about Mars and for whatever reason we are not straining ourselves much - with exceptions like SpaceX and various Mars engineers - a fraction of the engineering community - we are not straining to explore much. So it might mean that "visiting" species are rare. Perhaps if we visit them first? Then we can be the ones who must communicate with those who chose to stay on the ground.
Where engineered biology might go and how it would travel is a great question but we don't know the range of experiencing that can be induced into and arbitrary biology. We don't know the limitations. The *possibility* of limitations driving the resulting evolution should prohibit us from concluding we will not be able to communicate. We at least should be agnostic about it.
Re: Arrival
Beginning with the known ...Justintruth wrote: ↑Tue Apr 02, 2019 6:23 pm Where engineered biology might go and how it would travel is a great question but we don't know the range of experiencing that can be induced into and arbitrary biology. We don't know the limitations. The *possibility* of limitations driving the resulting evolution should prohibit us from concluding we will not be able to communicate. We at least should be agnostic about it.
In this documentary video clip related to the observation, wildlife photographers are slowly approached by a wild bear. The expert says to submissively crouch. This causes the bear to leave. The expert says the bear would have attacked if they had shouted and waved, trying to look big.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh9-0oZZtuE
It was life and death situational knowledge. What triggered the retreat of the bear? If it’s instinct then what is the instinct? Is it confusion? Is it caution against possible injury? Does the top predator fear injury on its own turf? Does it calculate the odds of survival in that little brain?
Is it exhibiting Ayn Rand objective, detached compassion by respecting unknown strength from either a moose or a strange smelling herd of humans?
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Justintruth
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Re: Arrival
It would be interesting to have an example from like a lizard or insect. Something further from us than another mammal. I believe that the strategy of inflating ones size is a strategy common to more than just mammals but I could be wrong.
In the case you mention I think that the bear has evolved to distinguish a threat from a non-threat even from another species and it acts according to that. The people involved communicated across species to the bear that they were not a threat and thank God they had an expert that knew how dangerous threatening a bear could be.
My understanding is that there are two types of bear attacks. In one you surprise the bear or get between a sow and her cub. In the other you are stalked by the bear in circles of decreasing radius because it is hungry and you look good to eat. In the first case you must act by looking away, not running and backing slowly. In the latter you must get a big stick and let the bear know that she suffers risk in closing the circle further. Else the bear closes within a few meters before it charges. It feigns disinterest so as not to instigate your flight or fight instinct until it can kill you very quickly.
At any rate it seems to me that it is inconceivable for an advanced organism not to process signals from its environment and generate motor reflexes in order to gain survival advantage. So perception is there. And piggy backing right behind it is communication between members of ones own species and others. How many signal types are available in places where life "as we know it" exists that are not available here? Small number. Some perhaps, but even then, the fundamentals of signal processing admit the ability to move a signal from one medium to another. So the types of signals are possibly so limited that any robust instances of an ecology will most likely be using the electromagnetic spectrum, vibrations in media like we do with sound in air whales do with sound in water and that snakes do with their bellies on the ground to communicate. They probably don't throw rocks at each other but they may!
And how do they represent these signals in experiencing? The ideas of objectivity that underlie our own virtual reality display, are so aptly described by Sartre's Being and Nothingness, that it is probable that other species would find that book relevant even to them.
Color? Most likely there also. Now what it is connected to might not be an electromagnetic sensor but we know that brains can produce red-seeing and it is likely again that a robust ecology will have organisms utilizing color experiencing to display information, perhaps even spectral information and perhaps even electromagnetic spectral information, and given the frequencies that some likely atmospheres are transparent to, perhaps even in our visible range. But if not so what? A simple translation problem - a transduction of the signal will be required.
We might not know how it is to be a bat but we can know something about it. It doesn't mean you cannot threaten or scare one. If they were intelligent like us and using echo-location it still would not be that much of a problem. Science will soon be able to in-bed in our biology sensors, processing and even experiencing types of other species by studying them in the light of future discoveries in neurology.
In any event we are talking about material species with non material experiencing being generated by neurology. If they have control of their physics and we have control of ours and we are both engineering our experiencing well - their physics IS our physics and almost surely is capable and limited in the same way there as here, as to what experiencing can be designed and what is needed for it to survive so I think species will converge whereever they occur.
I suspect that even our more profound ideas, protecting family, nationality, species chauvinism, religion, etc have a fairly good chance of happening elsewhere. Ok, some fish don't guard their young but ants do.
It comes down to limitations imposed by the physics. Hard to imagine life in a plasma like the sun. It needs some kind of structure. That it will evolve only where their are complex atomic and molecular processes similar to what we have is very likely true. Ok, maybe silicon vs carbon or something but it will be very similar and there is small reason to doubt that the qualities of non-physical experiencing generated by the physics will also be constrained to a reasonably small set of types of experiencing that physics is capable of generating in an arbitrary device and with similar ways of hooking up sensors too it. Evolution can only work within those limitations.
How that information is coded will surely be different. Look just at humans and how many languages evolved but the fact that the semantics are encoded in syntax of some kind surely confers survival advantage to us. So it is likely that signal processing and virtual reality systems are being experienced wherever life evolves to a high level. Then it is just a translation problem.
So I do not agree with the author that we will not be able to communicate with developed extra terrestrial life forms. In fact, I would hazard a radical hypothesis: That it will be easier to communicate with an advanced species from another planet than it is for the people you described to communicate with a bear. Probably wrong but, you know, it just might be true.
Certainly, I would not say it is likely we will not be able to communicate. I would say it is likely we will be able to communicate. Linguistics will be similar and based on signal processing and information science and the phenomenology of experiencing.
In the case you mention I think that the bear has evolved to distinguish a threat from a non-threat even from another species and it acts according to that. The people involved communicated across species to the bear that they were not a threat and thank God they had an expert that knew how dangerous threatening a bear could be.
My understanding is that there are two types of bear attacks. In one you surprise the bear or get between a sow and her cub. In the other you are stalked by the bear in circles of decreasing radius because it is hungry and you look good to eat. In the first case you must act by looking away, not running and backing slowly. In the latter you must get a big stick and let the bear know that she suffers risk in closing the circle further. Else the bear closes within a few meters before it charges. It feigns disinterest so as not to instigate your flight or fight instinct until it can kill you very quickly.
At any rate it seems to me that it is inconceivable for an advanced organism not to process signals from its environment and generate motor reflexes in order to gain survival advantage. So perception is there. And piggy backing right behind it is communication between members of ones own species and others. How many signal types are available in places where life "as we know it" exists that are not available here? Small number. Some perhaps, but even then, the fundamentals of signal processing admit the ability to move a signal from one medium to another. So the types of signals are possibly so limited that any robust instances of an ecology will most likely be using the electromagnetic spectrum, vibrations in media like we do with sound in air whales do with sound in water and that snakes do with their bellies on the ground to communicate. They probably don't throw rocks at each other but they may!
And how do they represent these signals in experiencing? The ideas of objectivity that underlie our own virtual reality display, are so aptly described by Sartre's Being and Nothingness, that it is probable that other species would find that book relevant even to them.
Color? Most likely there also. Now what it is connected to might not be an electromagnetic sensor but we know that brains can produce red-seeing and it is likely again that a robust ecology will have organisms utilizing color experiencing to display information, perhaps even spectral information and perhaps even electromagnetic spectral information, and given the frequencies that some likely atmospheres are transparent to, perhaps even in our visible range. But if not so what? A simple translation problem - a transduction of the signal will be required.
We might not know how it is to be a bat but we can know something about it. It doesn't mean you cannot threaten or scare one. If they were intelligent like us and using echo-location it still would not be that much of a problem. Science will soon be able to in-bed in our biology sensors, processing and even experiencing types of other species by studying them in the light of future discoveries in neurology.
In any event we are talking about material species with non material experiencing being generated by neurology. If they have control of their physics and we have control of ours and we are both engineering our experiencing well - their physics IS our physics and almost surely is capable and limited in the same way there as here, as to what experiencing can be designed and what is needed for it to survive so I think species will converge whereever they occur.
I suspect that even our more profound ideas, protecting family, nationality, species chauvinism, religion, etc have a fairly good chance of happening elsewhere. Ok, some fish don't guard their young but ants do.
It comes down to limitations imposed by the physics. Hard to imagine life in a plasma like the sun. It needs some kind of structure. That it will evolve only where their are complex atomic and molecular processes similar to what we have is very likely true. Ok, maybe silicon vs carbon or something but it will be very similar and there is small reason to doubt that the qualities of non-physical experiencing generated by the physics will also be constrained to a reasonably small set of types of experiencing that physics is capable of generating in an arbitrary device and with similar ways of hooking up sensors too it. Evolution can only work within those limitations.
How that information is coded will surely be different. Look just at humans and how many languages evolved but the fact that the semantics are encoded in syntax of some kind surely confers survival advantage to us. So it is likely that signal processing and virtual reality systems are being experienced wherever life evolves to a high level. Then it is just a translation problem.
So I do not agree with the author that we will not be able to communicate with developed extra terrestrial life forms. In fact, I would hazard a radical hypothesis: That it will be easier to communicate with an advanced species from another planet than it is for the people you described to communicate with a bear. Probably wrong but, you know, it just might be true.
Certainly, I would not say it is likely we will not be able to communicate. I would say it is likely we will be able to communicate. Linguistics will be similar and based on signal processing and information science and the phenomenology of experiencing.
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Impenitent
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Re: Arrival
we have been altering the genetics of plant foods for decades
-Imp
-Imp
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Justintruth
- Posts: 187
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Re: Arrival
Longer if you include our selection of plants. Mendel. Corn. etc.Impenitent wrote: ↑Wed Apr 03, 2019 11:10 pm we have been altering the genetics of plant foods for decades
-Imp
But you mean direct manipulation of the genome.
Will be interesting when we start selecting for the nature of the experiencing the device produces.
Did I say "start selecting", I guess there have been many marriages in the past arranged because of an idea of what the offspring would be like menatlly. Character selection.
Has an intersting history in ethics.
But once we start direct manipulation for those reasons it will get very interesting and make the current culture wars seem like skimishes at best.
https://www.amazon.com/You-See-Lights-B ... 096254311X
I can't believe how old this book is. 1989? Chalmers meets Mendel? Anyway, too bad its couched in such religious language. There should be somethng like a google translate that can turn religious terminology into secular metaphysical terminology and vice versa! Still, I could get what he meant when I read it so many years ago.
Re: Arrival
Food for thought
Terence Mckenna talks Alien DNA and Genes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0MakikG0Kw
Terence Mckenna talks Alien DNA and Genes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0MakikG0Kw
Re: Arrival
Primal awareness is unlearned awareness. Contrast this with dualistic, conditioned knowledge. The humans and the bear communicate with primal awareness, and the humans also have conditioned knowledge of bear behavior.Justintruth wrote: the bear …
Humans and aliens would also each communicate with primal awareness, but presumably neither party would have conditioned knowledge. Can two different species communicate conditioned, learned knowledge? To some degree, as with the bear and human. Communicating via conditioned knowledge is learning the conditioning of one another, however primal knowledge is immediate, unconditioned, and not clouded with thought.
I think that without the elephant gun off camera, or without the sheltering Range Rover off camera (both inferred), the humans would have been primordially communicating something different to the bear. Something they could not control. In the real irrevocable face of death their bodies would spontaneously emit different chemical odors, possibly triggering an attack. One or two may run to the Rover, possibly triggering an attack. Their crouching posture would even be different, the difference between confident and fearful submission (crouching and fetal position). A perceptive bear would likely pick up on real fear in the voices calling out to it, and perhaps attack.
What is the involuntary intent that triggers the primal communication? Total honesty in the face of death. To try and scare the bear with a bluff of big size and noise would have shown to the bear an inconsistency between body and mind, the state of human mind being revealed to the bear by the human odors and perhaps observable changes in skin temperature (energy), perhaps perceivable (to the bear) electromagnetic emanations from the humans in addition to primal behavior of fear.
As the humans said, they displayed submission but not fear and the bear picked up on that primal confidence.
Same with Arrival. Humans had fear, and also faith in their elephant-gun nukes.
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Justintruth
- Posts: 187
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Re: Arrival
I wonder why you say that? We already have some conditioned knowledge and if they visit presumably they would too....but presumably neither party would have conditioned knowledge.
Perhaps you mean "...condition knowledge of each other...." but even there I would expect we would start to study each other and try to understand each other which is a kind of deliberate mutual conditioning where we try to show what we mean when we speak and we study the signals coming from their bodies to try to convert any modulated signal into something we can work with - probably binary storage in some memory accessible by powerful processors. I bet the machine learning guys would love to have a look at the data. Perhaps the first comm might be as a result of a neural network.
I look at knowledge as a kind of experiencing produced by a brain. Now brains have physical pathways into them. Some of them are sensory, there is the bloodstream, and their is/was the fetal pathway where genetic material made its way into what is now our brains. There is also the ability to literally insert bi-directional probes into the brain. All of these are ways we can "learn" i.e. get into a state of knowledge which is about something if the experience has characteristics that reflect what it is to be about. Perhaps, if they are advanced enough they will scan our brains and produce a helmet that will directly place the experiences they want us to have into our brains. After all, we think "How will we communicate with them?" But they will also be trying to communicate with us. And maybe they will have better ways to do it.
Who knows? But saying that we won't be able to communicate is at best premature. There are too many ways for it to pan out no?
Re: Arrival
Yes, conditioned knowledge … of one another.
The only conditioned knowledge we currently have of aliens is fantasy and anecdotal accounts of inexplicable phenomena, some of which is based on logical extrapolations of the known. After first contact, conditioned knowledge complete with right and wrong inferences would commence to accumulate.
Sure we could communicate. Primal communication begins with mutual awareness of the other.
The only conditioned knowledge we currently have of aliens is fantasy and anecdotal accounts of inexplicable phenomena, some of which is based on logical extrapolations of the known. After first contact, conditioned knowledge complete with right and wrong inferences would commence to accumulate.
Sure we could communicate. Primal communication begins with mutual awareness of the other.
Re: Arrival
That movie got into my radar recently, as was this magazine,
But with a different intake;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZpPMuvoaok
Besides taking it literally, being aliens visiting earth, and how to approach it,
This could very well be a story about the main character (Louise) that is simply not fully embracing (predetermined?) life, And the aliens could be the symbol of triggering her into embracing things at last, by confronting them naked (she takes away her protected suit) and having a kid, although she knows her creation, kid is going to die as well,
this expressed with the kid that is going to die trough an illness, but the faith of any creation in essence with time included).
The language gap is also an interesting one, since it shows the linearity and incompleteness, just as another tool, (what current language is in the end unfortunately), vs the non linear circle like language of the more advanced alien race.
and how the gap is bridged more and more during the movie ...accepting and embracing life with all aspects ...and human kind better of in general trough that process. With the aliens giving human kind tools, a language, and more importantly; some kind of multicultural unification party with more understanding towards each culture.
What can I say; a jewel, this movie.
If you have not seen it already, it's worth one's time watching this one
.
But with a different intake;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZpPMuvoaok
Besides taking it literally, being aliens visiting earth, and how to approach it,
This could very well be a story about the main character (Louise) that is simply not fully embracing (predetermined?) life, And the aliens could be the symbol of triggering her into embracing things at last, by confronting them naked (she takes away her protected suit) and having a kid, although she knows her creation, kid is going to die as well,
this expressed with the kid that is going to die trough an illness, but the faith of any creation in essence with time included).
The language gap is also an interesting one, since it shows the linearity and incompleteness, just as another tool, (what current language is in the end unfortunately), vs the non linear circle like language of the more advanced alien race.
and how the gap is bridged more and more during the movie ...accepting and embracing life with all aspects ...and human kind better of in general trough that process. With the aliens giving human kind tools, a language, and more importantly; some kind of multicultural unification party with more understanding towards each culture.
What can I say; a jewel, this movie.
If you have not seen it already, it's worth one's time watching this one
.