Re: Learning a language from STL radio signals
- From: af250@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (John Park)
- Date: 24 Nov 2007 07:36:43 GMT
Wildepad (noreplies) writes:
Often? And if there's a chance of something being presented as its opposite,
Redundancy often causes more problems than it solves. If you have
enough iterations of the material, interpretations of some parts of
the message will be exact opposites.
there's a similar chance that an isolated original would be wrong
Ever try to read something translated from an ancient language and the
various possibles for some of the words are shown in a stack?
Whichever 'path' you choose in reading will result in a different
understanding of the material than reached by someone who reads along
a different path.
Hence different ways of communicating the same idea.
Until they really do understand it.
Also, the more you present different ways of looking at the same
material, the more you confuse those who thought they understood it
the first time.
Since up to 80% of humans might be incapable of understanding
calculus, no matter how it is taught, trying to encode it into a
one-off message and have it understood by aliens is, imo, a real
non-starter.
It sems a reasonable working hypothesis that the ones receiving the message
would not be limited to the equivalent of the 80% who don't know calculus.
[...]>
But they'll probably recognise the concepts.
It is pure hubris to think that our understanding of *anything* is the
way it really is. The best we can ever do is create models and rules
which are adequate for our use. A thousand years from now, our
descendants will look upon our 'science' the same way we think about
the people who worked out the motion of the heavenly bodies based on
the fact that the Earth was the center of the universe.
[...]
Scenario (dish): Someone living on the edge of a desert noticed that
it was warmer where the reflections from two shiny surfaces crossed.
By playing with the positioning of metal ornaments, he created a point
of light so hot he could not stand to keep his hand in it.
Figuring that it might be a better option than always buying charcoal
for his brass furnace, he made a batch of polished metal plates and
set them up to reflect several square meters of sunlight onto the
bottom of a pot.
Since that was only good enough for small batches that could melt very
quickly, his son, who took over the family business, refined it by
using many more, but smaller, reflectors, and mounting it so he could
track the sun.
After several more generations, the solar collector was a silvered
metal bowl.
Hence, without what we think of as geometry, they had the perfect
design for a dish.
Scenario (radio): Early aliens had a thing for elaborate headdresses
made of copper wire. All was well and good until they started to
notice that some of the taller and more elaborate styles became
uncomfortable when there was a thunderstorm in the area. Many people
reporting tingling sensations where some of the decorative crystals
touched their skin.
Strangely enough, they experienced the same sensations when near the
medicine man as he was making tiny balls of light using his
wine/copper/zinc vase (ala the "Baghdad battery").
A general had the idea that that might be a good way of communicating
with his troops and set some of his people on making it useful.
Without any attempt to figure out why the effect occurred, they
combined the different shapes, mixing and matching until they came up
with something practical.
That early 'radio' was advanced through similar methods over the
generations until suitable for mounting on a dish and pointing
skyward.
(A *lot* of steps missed out. AC? Amplifiers? Frequency dependence? Or are
they limited to amplitude modulation? Even granting all that . . .)
What leads them to think of connecting the radio to a dish and pointing that
dish at the sky? Can you have that sort of curiosity and the ability to
build a radio telescope and not *develop* a scientific culture?
No physics (an understanding of why it works) is necessary.
Conceivably true (though I'm far from convinced), but isn't it likely that
physics would have developed on the way? After all, you've assumed these
creatures have some interest in the world around them. And if
understanding proves to be more efficient than just trial and error as a
way of developing technology, you're back on the route to a scientific
culture.
[...[>
Considering that a very cute little radio was built using
only > materials and tools available in 4th C. China, you can rule out the
need for advanced chemistry.
Not necessarily. Mathematics to us is like the subway system to a New
Yorker -- it's so useful and omnipresent that it's difficult to
believe that anyone can survive without it.
Only someone totally bereft of imagination could not conceive of an
advanced race that does not use any of our sciences, just as we do not
use what sciences they know.
Again conceivably true, but it seems unlikely--which is all we can really
say about any of this.
[...]>[..]>
Just because something is "basic and fundamental" doesn't mean that an
alien race would recognize it as important, just as there are untold
physical phenom that we either totally ignore or dismiss as worthless.
But in commerce, arithmetic is simpler; and commerce seems likely. And one
Even if they know mathematics, they might not understand our
abstractions and made-up rules for it.
To an alien, "1+1=2" might be totally meaningless because it lacks the
most basic qualifiers.
Adding one cup of salt to one cup of water results in less than two
cups of saltwater.
Combining one proton and one anti-proton does not yield two particles.
Introducing one male rabbit to one female rabbit eventually equals far
more than two animals.
etc. etc. etc.
mouth to feed plus one mouth to feed generally means two mouths to feed.
Without the referents, "1+1=2" is sometimes true, sometimes false, and
sometimes indeterminate. It all depends on how you look at it, and
aliens are, almost by definition, sure to look on it differently than
we do.
It seems to me that, with no experience of an alien technological
society to compare with, nothing we say in this area is certain. Some
scenarios appear more likely than others. When we encounter a message, we'll
find out what's actually possible; in the meantime it seems better to make
the conservative assumption that whoever's communicating isn't vastly
different from us, and so some meaningful exchange can happen.
For story purposes, with a bit of handwaving, there's an extremely wide
range of scenarios available, and your aliens would make a potentially
interesting one.
--John Park
.
- References:
- Learning a language from STL radio signals
- From: sigidunum
- Re: Learning a language from STL radio signals
- From: Erik Max Francis
- Learning a language from STL radio signals
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