Alienology Question Paper (Makeup)

Answer all the questions. All the questions carry equal marks.


Q.1. Businesspersons recognize this as a familiar scenario. 'How do you sell to someone who does not need something?' The case for businesspersons is simplified by the fact that they deal with humans, who have emotions, albeit to varying degrees, and these make it simpler to make them take decisions which don't gel with their logic.

How one can get something from an alien who has no need or desire. Do all aliens feel a need to connect to others? What if the aliens would rather remain aloof? How would you interact with such an alien?

How do you deal with an alien who is purely logical? How do you exchange something with it when you have nothing to exchange which it deems worthy? How do you deal with aliens who do not even subscribe to logic as we know it? Is logic universal? Is it tied to the mathematical system we use, which is incidentally based on a set of human made axioms? Is it tied to our senses? Had we accepted that sun moves around the earth and earth if flat (believing what we see) and tried to explain this world, would we probably have succeeded with a different set of theories, and probably a different logic?

Q.2. Imagine a planet with just one living being. Describe its life. Integrate insights from the previous answer into this.

Q.3. How is life different on planets with life form that live for hundreds of millions of years different from life on earth? How is it different from the planet in Q.2.? Would your answer have differed if you had not thought of the planet in Q.2?