Comment on Talk like an đ˝
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml â¨14⊠â¨hours⊠ago
People always say that, but like⌠what does that actually mean? Like we could work from first principles and just build a system of communication based on math?
Gotta say I have my doubts. I have no idea what alien cognition would be like.
Counting is kind of basic. From one-two-three you can get fairly quicky to yes-no, and then comparisons, and with yes/no/more/less/same you have enough to fuzzle out whatever squak gigors.
Aliens we could talk to at all wouldnât be cthulu or q. They would live in the same basic reality we do, with entropy and gravity and the same elemetnts and stars. (They WOULD likely see different colors than we do, unless their sun was the same temperature as Sol and their planet the same size as earth)
unless their sun was the same temperature as Sol and their planet the same size as earth
Most other animals see different colors than we do, and they live under a start of the same temperature as ours, and in a planet with the exact same atmospheric composition.
The sun is the big one. What we call âvisible lightâ is just the band of the em spectrum right around Solâs peak. A larger\hotter star would have that band shifted dramatically bluer, while a smaller/colder star would be redder.
what if they donât have the concept of atomic concepts: thereâs no such thing as âoneâ because everything can be divided, until you reach wave/particle duality in which case thereâs no singular state anyway? Thereâs no such thing as âtwoâ because there can be no dividing line between phenomena that have no external nor internal boundaries? What if they cannot see or hear but use other senses we have no names for?
I feel like any civilization advanced enough is going to have no problem with that.
A body of water is connected but you can count the waves. Theyâd surely count repetition, too, such as their planet rotating and and orbiting itâs starting. Or sound - âclickâ one âclick clickâ two.
And if theyâre as intelligent as humans, both species are able to learn new abstract concepts
I mean this is all a hypothetical, so let me throw some blockers at you:
They donât distinguish between wave and not-wave, assuming they dont have a Lacanian concept of language and their pre-language concept of what we would call a wave is actually the average distance from the bottom of the ocean in an arbitrary field of qualia whereby they average out âextendedâ phenomena from an âunextendedâ experience of the average of the different forms of background radiation.
In which case they couldnât count a planet rotation and have no concept of counting or rotation but would express it instead as an average speed and direction in relation to the absorbed radiation of different astral and planetary (by which I mean âterrestrialâ for lack of a better word when not talking about our planet) bodies? So what is a year to us is a limitless expression of the average rate of change of the comparative rate of radiation from the nearest star and the largest vent in the bottom of their ocean? They express this by making parts of their carapace emit different strengths of radiation in different directions. Would we even know to call those emissions a language?
If a spacefaring race is so utterly alien they donât even have a concept of counting how did they manage space travel?
And, like I said, math only works for the (presumably large) subset of aliens we could eventually talk to.
we did it without what loosely translates as blarglsnargling and they are equally confused as to how we did it. The downside to our approach being pollution of our air, the downside to their approach being pollution of their planetâs crust. Both of which would be catastrophic if occurred in each otherâs ecosystem but is a mild irritant heading towards and eventual catastrophe for each respective society.
My trouble is that they may have a totally different theory & understanding of numbers, language, symbols, names, etc.
For instance, what if they donât have the concept of symbolic representation of objects/concepts in visual/auditory ways? That seems incredibly fundamental from an anthropocentric perspective, but their neurology would be totally different - maybe they evolved a different way to store concepts.
Or say they do, but we get to math - and their understanding of math is similar to ours and they represent it symbolically, but beyond that their perception of time, self vs other distinction (theory of names type stuff), senses are so radically different that we canât ever reach enough common ground to communicate.
Maybe they communicate with like, pulses of IR light that we can detect & reproduce, and they represent numbers basically like morse code and they have words for standard mathematical and logical operators. And maybe they have hearing and can see the visible light spectrum - just to make things easy.
But
So, how do we communicate?
We can broadcast numbers at them maybe. We place 2 apples in front of them and broadcast âtwoâ on repeat in distinct, discrete sequence: Two. Two. Two.(âŚâ âŚâ âŚâ) Maybe we start throwing the word for apple in there in morse code. ( âŚâ . - .â. .â. .-⌠.)
To get the message, theyâd need to understand that:
It is not a given that they get past apple. The likelihood, I think, goes up when you contrast it with something else, but what if they donât understand comparison and contrast similarly to us?
Okay. Say they understand apple. We go through thousands of things to build up their vocabulary of objects. Maybe we show them someone eating an apple next and they know the word for human and the word for apple.
They have to understand what verbs are, have some concept of grammar, the relation of things in the sentence, the conveyance of cause/effect - the specific human is causing the action of the apple being eaten.
âHuman eat appleâ could really mean anything in this context. Perhaps they donât know that words like these presented in a different context have the same meaning. Or they donât understand eating in this case - like it is an unimportant concept, the concept they understand is what is achieved by eating.
Anyway. It all gets very abstract. But, what Iâm trying to say is: thinking we can communicate with creatures that evolved in a totally different context assumes their neurology is strikingly similar to ours in ways I think are honestly far-fetched. Some of the above could be solved, with difficulty, given enough time and motivation, but it takes a lot more assumptions than I think people typically realize regarding how anthropic the aliens would be. And the challenges go beyond mere logistics & extend to fundamental linguistic/psychological/philosophical/neurological barriers.
For instance, what if they donât have the concept of symbolic representation of objects/concepts in visual/auditory ways?
Then how did they manage space travel?
Rocket science demands math. You canât get to orbit if you canât figure out both the rocket equation, orbital dynamics, and sufficient chemistry to power your launch engine. And you donât even realize that orbit is a thing if you donât have enough math to realize that the lights in the sky are things you might be able to stand on.
We have sapient non-human life right here on earth that doesnât have the concept of writing. And since they donât they didnât build cities or civilization and we keep them in zoos and nature preserves.
Thatâs just what has happened on Earth, though. Also I didnât specify theyâd be coming to us - if they landed here in something weâd recognize as a rocket, then Iâd suspect weâd have a lot more in common with them.
But what if they evolved in gas clouds? Or hell what if they perceive higher dimensions? What if itâs a 4D being, capable of instantaneous long distance travel through spacetime - they donât need math for that. Or even language. Those are far-out scenarios, but Iâm just saying that it takes a very earth-centric, anthropocentric view of intelligent life to assume the sorts of things thatâd make communication possible.
Like we could work from first principles and just build a system of communication based on math?
Not necessarily based on math, but math gives us a common ground to start from.
Like if you meet someone almost anywhere on earth, you can show them an apple and say âappleâ and then they can say whatever they call an apple. This gives you a starting point to start communicating.
Aliens may not know what an apple is, but weâre pretty sure they know what 1+1=2 is⌠given context so they can understand the symbols. You can also communicate math over long distances⌠as long as they can decide the transmission.
Gotta say I have my doubts. I have no idea what alien cognition would be like.
Yes, this is pretty much the basis of using math vs trying to talk directly with language. If we canât communicate basic mathematical concepts to eachother weâre kind of hooped.
as long as they can decide the transmission.
That is the Problem. Even something as basic as a simple transmission can become quite hard to decode when you canât make any assumptions about how their technology works. This may start with things as simple as that they might not use binary logic, but tertiary logic instead. They might not use 8 bits as a smallest package of date. And then we have the big problems of how do we actually decode it. We as humans have tables for which bit sequence means which character, they probably dont have the same. They might use different logical levels/protocols for communicating single bits and so on. Sending a simple message to be decoded by aliens is everything but simple.
That really only matters at higher levels of communication, not the barebone basics that weâre talking about here. When we are referring to 1, 2, 3, etc., weâre not referring to our ASCII representations of the numbers. Weâre referring to literal pulses or some kind of other countable thing. While sending what a layman would call a simple message would be difficult, the kind of simple message we are talking about is very doable.
It is of course possible, but we still have to translate it
that they might not use binary logic, but tertiary logic instead. They might not use 8 bits as a smallest package of data.
People did both of those things in computers. They have also decoded encrypted messages where they didnât know the algorithm or the key. And, as others have said, in this case you start with simple messages, establishing the basic boundaries of transmission, before trying to communicate most primitive ideas.
I confess, I was kind of baiting with the âdecode the transmissionâ part. As someone else mentioned, the way we send the info doesnât have to be as complicated as what youâre thinking. Many books and movies have been made about the subject⌠Contact and Project Hail Mary come to mind immediately. SETI is dedicated to being on the receiving end and makes assumptions about what ET would be sending based on assumptions about what we would send (filtering for repeating patterns and mathematical structures on narrow frequency bands).
In any case, how we transmit and what we transmit are two different things. What we transmit will likely be math and/or cosmos related, things we have in common with our galactic cousins (we assume). How we transmit⌠There are a million ways, so we narrow it down to what we think is the most likely to reach the target and be something theyâre listening for. And cross our fingers.
Itâs a post-biological pidgin. You canât communicate cultural ideas to beings that probably have entirely different ideas of culture, but you can establish the intent to communicate as two rational species. Since mathematics is presumably consistent across the universe, you can beam a non-natural signal into space as a technosignature. If something responds to it, youâre both sentient and have some kind of respect for academia. You can then use it to establish logic, make grids, and represent simple images without relying on their âeyesâ perceiving the same wavelengths we do. Something like 1s and 0s is probably going to be easier for them to interface through than speech.
marcos@lemmy.world â¨1⊠â¨hour⊠ago
The image is literally about the kind of thing the aliens would have in common.
You can decide on a language from that, but you will have to write down the definition of every word too.