(no subject)

[gfish]

Moving sucks, but it is pretty much done. I'm all the way back in Seattle, and have updated all my location fields to reflect this.

So, to distract me while I try to tetrissokoban my workroom into shape, a question:

You're trapped with an alien who only communicates via mythological analogy. What story from our cultural heritage do you tell them? Gilgamesh is taken, obviously.

Comments

[zzyzx-xyzzy.livejournal.com]

Because, lots of sci-fi is written with aliens whose motivations and psychology are basically human. I think this is unlikely, and would like to get concepts like subjectivity and the unreliability of memory memory on the table if they're going to be dealing with humans.

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

Whether or not I would want the aliens to know that depends a great deal on the situation — starting a negotiation be describing oneself as unreliable seems like a bad plan. Also, faced with an alien to whom subjectivity and the unreliability of memory are foreign concepts, how do you even yell the story of Rashomon?

[zzyzx-xyzzy.livejournal.com]

I'm also not sure you can declare in advance what rhetorical moves would be advantageous in dealing with an alien intelligence. But maybe I should just hand over a copy of To Serve Man then?