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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 “apple” 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 we’re 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 can’t communicate basic mathematical concepts to eachother we’re kind of hooped.

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cows_are_underrated@feddit.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

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 can’t 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.

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- Jolteon@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That really only matters at higher levels of communication, not the barebone basics that we’re talking about here. When we are referring to 1, 2, 3, etc., we’re not referring to our ASCII representations of the numbers. We’re 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.
  
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  - cows_are_underrated@feddit.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It is of course possible, but we still have to translate it
    
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- SlurpingPus@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  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 didn’t 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.
  
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- JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I confess, I was kind of baiting with the “decode the transmission” part. As someone else mentioned, the way we send the info doesn’t have to be as complicated as what you’re 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 they’re listening for. And cross our fingers.
  
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