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That Alien Message
- GenresScience FictionFiction
10 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2008
16 people want to read
About the author
Eliezer Yudkowsky
48 books1,946 followersEliezer Yudkowsky is a founding researcher of the field of AI alignment and played a major role in shaping the public conversation about smarter-than-human AI. He appeared on Time magazine's 2023 list of the 100 Most Influential People In AI, was one of the twelve public figures featured in The New York Times's "Who's Who Behind the Dawn of the Modern Artificial Intelligence Movement," and has been discussed or interviewed in The New Yorker, Newsweek, Forbes, Wired, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Washington Post, and many other venues.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 18, 2025
Eliezer Yudkowsky’s That Alien Message is a sharply intelligent exploration of communication, inference, and the dangers of assumption.
Rather than presenting alien contact as a spectacle of wonder or terror, Yudkowsky treats it as a problem of interpretation—one fraught with cognitive bias, overconfidence, and human limitation.
The story’s core tension lies not in what the message contains, but in how humans attempt to understand it.
Yudkowsky draws on rationalist themes, examining how flawed reasoning and institutional pressures distort interpretation. The result is a narrative that feels both cerebral and urgent, challenging readers to question their own habits of thought.
Yudkowsky’s prose is clear and direct, reflecting his interest in logic and precision. Yet the story never becomes dry or abstract. The intellectual puzzle is anchored in human stakes: pride, fear, ambition, and the desire to be right. These motivations drive the narrative forward as much as any speculative premise.
What makes That Alien Message particularly effective is its refusal to flatter human intelligence. The story exposes how easily meaning can be projected rather than discovered, and how authority can reinforce error rather than correct it. In doing so, it becomes a cautionary tale about epistemology as much as first contact.
This is science fiction that assumes an attentive, thoughtful reader. It rewards close reading and reflection, offering no simple answers.
That Alien Message stands as a concise but powerful example of how speculative fiction can interrogate the limits of human understanding.
Recommended.
Rather than presenting alien contact as a spectacle of wonder or terror, Yudkowsky treats it as a problem of interpretation—one fraught with cognitive bias, overconfidence, and human limitation.
The story’s core tension lies not in what the message contains, but in how humans attempt to understand it.
Yudkowsky draws on rationalist themes, examining how flawed reasoning and institutional pressures distort interpretation. The result is a narrative that feels both cerebral and urgent, challenging readers to question their own habits of thought.
Yudkowsky’s prose is clear and direct, reflecting his interest in logic and precision. Yet the story never becomes dry or abstract. The intellectual puzzle is anchored in human stakes: pride, fear, ambition, and the desire to be right. These motivations drive the narrative forward as much as any speculative premise.
What makes That Alien Message particularly effective is its refusal to flatter human intelligence. The story exposes how easily meaning can be projected rather than discovered, and how authority can reinforce error rather than correct it. In doing so, it becomes a cautionary tale about epistemology as much as first contact.
This is science fiction that assumes an attentive, thoughtful reader. It rewards close reading and reflection, offering no simple answers.
That Alien Message stands as a concise but powerful example of how speculative fiction can interrogate the limits of human understanding.
Recommended.
September 29, 2021
I recently read Bostrom: Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?
It must have inspired a lot of fiction, so I googled around and found a few. Including this. There is an almost similar story about researchers at CERN accidentally opening the equivalent of a developer window. Goodread's does not allow links, so try google for “It was the late 21st century before humanity finally discovered the truth. Reality it turns out didn't really exist.”
I liked the CERN-version better (funnier), but I also liked the extreme change in time perspective in this one.
It must have inspired a lot of fiction, so I googled around and found a few. Including this. There is an almost similar story about researchers at CERN accidentally opening the equivalent of a developer window. Goodread's does not allow links, so try google for “It was the late 21st century before humanity finally discovered the truth. Reality it turns out didn't really exist.”
I liked the CERN-version better (funnier), but I also liked the extreme change in time perspective in this one.
July 2, 2024
most intuitive description of a super intelligence I've encountered thus far
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews