Question: *[Blindsight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel))* mentions a group of 5 transhumans in a first contact with an unconscious alien species (Rorschach).

Which the writer mentions any form of communication in human language, interpreted by the species is treated as an attack. But how?

From the book:

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> "Since Rorschach doesn’t have consciousness, human languages and signals are meaningless to it. The act of receiving and decoding the signals consumes time and energy but yield no benefit for Rorschach. Thus, for Rorschach, human language is virus, and “communication” in human language is an attack.
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> "Imagine that you encounter a signal. It is structured, and dense with information. It meets all the criteria of an intelligent transmission. Evolution and experience offer a variety of paths to follow, branch-points in the flowcharts that handle such input.
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> There are no meaningful translations for these terms. They are needlessly recursive. They contain no usable intelligence, yet they are structured intelligently; there is no chance they could have arisen by chance. The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus. Viruses do not arise from kin, symbionts, or other allies. The signal is an attack."
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The writing is quite dense and could anyone explains whats the reasoning behind human language being hostile when interpreted by the Rorschach?

Answer: 
I think a real world example of this would be a DDOS attack on a website. Malicious users flood the website with, more-or-less, nonsense signals. This takes up all the website's ability to interpret any sort of incoming information. If someone watching the website notices a bunch of nonsense signals hitting the site, they could assume it was an attack on the site. 

So the Rorschach species might interpret the nonsense communications similarly as a malicious attack.
It's not *all* human language that is interpreted as an attack, it's specifically inter-human messages that *assume consciousness*. Since Rorschach is non-conscious, it doesn't have the terms of reference available to 'understand' those messages.

There are examples given, between the passages you quote. In my 2006 Tor edition, the relevant section starts on p.323 with "Imagine you're a scrambler"

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> You decode the [intercepted human-to-human] signals, and stumble:
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> *I **had a great time**. I **really enjoyed** him. Even if he cost twice as much as any other hooker in the dome--*
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> *To **fully appreciate** Kesey's Quartet--*
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> *They **hate** us for our freedom--*
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> ***Pay attention**, now--*
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> ***Understand**.*
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My emphases indicate the particular parts that would *have no meaning* to a non-conscious intelligence.

You can see the kind of non-conscious language that would *not* be interpreted as an attack, later on after

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>  vampires take over the Earth, and all the humans are killed - the comms Siri picks up from his escape torpedo are "mostly traffic control and telemetry", but "Every now and then I still hear a burst of pure voice, tight with tension ... other ships in **dispassionate** pursuit" - vampires, who as it turns out are also non-conscious, chasing down the last humans.
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