Re: Learning a language from STL radio signals

Wildepad wrote:
On Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:16:57 -0800, Erik Max Francis <max@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
If in a CETI message you
describe a theory, you define it in terms of known concept.

But the concept is "known" only to us, meaning that the definition
might very well be completely meaningless to an alien, meaning that
the theory you are describing is subject to a wide variety of
interpretations.

But this is simply not true, as has been explained repeatedly in this
thread. There are many scientific concepts that are completely, utterly,
and totally universal. Atoms are the same everywhere. Electromagnetic
radiation is the same everywhere. Numbers work the same everywhere. The
medium of the signal itself will be a "reference point" that the aliens
are absolutely guaranteed to have access to by the very fact that
they're receiving the message that was carried on it.

They may have different labels to attach to things and they may use
different conceptual models to describe them, but the underlying
behavior is exactly the same and if they're even remotely capable of
scientific thought they'll be able to recognize the correspondence
between our models and theirs.

There are good examples in theories we use all the time. Send them a
description of Newtonian mechanics, and they'll know it's wrong, since
it's woefully incomplete. That doesn't mean that they conclude their
translation is wrong.

1) They might not understand even the most basic fundamentals since
their science is based on energy, not mass.

I have no idea what you mean by this since I wasn't aware our science
was "based on mass", or why it might make it impossible to understand a
system of physics that's "based on" something different from our own.

Note that real-life modern physics has multiple different incompatible
models competing as the "basis" for reality. String theory, loop quantum
gravity, the holographic universe, all kinds of wacky things. There have
been even more in the past that are now discredited, and some that
physicists know don't correspond to our actual universe but that are
still interesting to work with for other reasons. The physicists who
work on them may disagree with each other but they can still
_understand_ each other perfectly well.

2) They might not use math at all, meaning what you sent is a
meaningless jumble.

The "I" part of CETI is missing in this case. These are not the
extraterrestrials we're trying to communicate with.

3) They might easily believe that you're talking about your religion
since Newtonian mechanics is only the most simplistic view of reality,
on a par with rain dances and devil worship.

With the rather significant difference that Newtonian physics is a
scientific theory that can be tested and observed anywhere in the
universe, and will be seen to correspond with the real physical behavior
of objects.

4) They might conclude that their translation is completely wrong
since a race advanced enough to send a CETI message obviously wouldn't
use something so transparently wrong, and they'd start over from
square one to see where they made a mistake. If they can't make any
headway on a more reasonable translation, they'll set the whole thing
aside.

But again, it's not "transparently wrong", it's just an _approximation_.
A very good approximation for small masses and low velocity.

The aliens you're describing here are so monumentally stupid that I
doubt they'd be worth communicating with, even if it were possible to
somehow spoon-feed them information with the exacting care and precision
that they apparently require to understand the simplest concepts.
.

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