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Comment by Geee | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone looking at the stars itself? Isn't modulating the light from a star the easiest way to transmit information afar? This would be the case if you want someone to notice.

If I was a digital superintelligence, I would try to conquer the universe by transmitting myself everywhere with maximum power, including instructions to construct a computer which can run me. I could do this by constructing a modulating device around a star. Surely there would be some sort of 'easy detection code' which allows primitive species to first notice the signal and start studying it, and then progressively include more advanced instructions + data.

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> If I was a digital superintelligence, I would try to conquer the universe by transmitting myself everywhere with maximum power

Hah. This is the plot of "Existence" by David Brin.

In this book, civilizations are destroyed by crystals, containing computers running virtual realities for its inhabitants. The inhabitants subvert the civilizations, giving them technology to build these crystals, upload themselves into them, and then spend all the resources to spam the universe with these crystals.

Sounds like a great premise for a hard sci-fi novel. let me know when you have a draft, I'll read it!

IIRC, modulating light from a star is part of the plot from The Dark Forest.

I'd love to write sci-fi one day. Don't hold your breath though. :)

Read A Fire Upon the Deep

Building something around a star would require so much effort. would it not be easier to send out something at a further distance so it could be smaller and eclipse the star for anything on that path? you could then open/close it like a shutter to make it blink the signal. you'd have to put one in the line of sight for each thing you're communicating with, but that still seems easier than some dyson sphere type object

> Isn't modulating the light from a star the easiest way to transmit information afar? This would be the case if you want someone to notice.

We aren't doing that.

Yet

Sounds partially like the plot (or the conspiracy theory) from Contact, starring Jodie Foster.

The book, like in almost all cases, is so much better than then the movie.

Eg: she doesn’t travel alone. Think about what that does to the plot.

Ooooh it’s one of my favorite movies I’m surprised I never realized there is a book! Actually I probably knew at some point that there was a book but it didn’t occur to me it would be better than the movie!

Usually the movie feels worse if you have read the book already. Imagination is so much better than movie

Yah I read The Martian before seeing the movie and found the movie left so much out! Makes sense as the audiobook is 10 hours and the movie is 2.

but by going alone, it adds that much more tension/suspicion on if it actually happened. it's easier to believe if more people go and have the same experience. unless it's the Sphere where they all just agree on the idea.

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