Roy Tang

Someone on quora asked:

If we were to come in contact with intelligent life, and were able to exchange messages, how would we understand each other?

This is something that often comes up in science fiction.

Think about the scenario where you are stranded in a foreign country where nobody speaks your language. How would you communicate with the locals? You would look for common signals or signs that they would interpret the same way. For example, if you were thirsty, you would mime drinking from a glass and hope that they get the message. If they don’t understand you would need to try different signs or words and hope that they recognize one of them

Any contact with extraterrestrial intelligence would likely proceed the same way. We have no guarantee of what medium of communication they would use (it is possible they do not use visuals or sounds, but instead through some sort of E-M radiation), so we would have to try all sorts of things to see what they would recognize. Obviously we can’t send out signals in English or such as this would be meaningless to them. One possibility is to use a universally recognizable language - mathematics. We can transmit recognizable mathematical patterns or sequences to establish that we are an intelligent species capable of communication. If we are lucky enough that the alien species can understand visual signals we can show them images to try to explain what we mean, then use a secondary medium such as sound to try to establish our language.

In effect we would have to spend effort to learn how to communicate with each other, largely through trial and error until a reasonable approach can be found. It’s not too different from the usual scientific method approach