Turns out the aliens all speak Esperanto
Talk like an đ˝
Submitted â¨â¨10⊠â¨hours⊠ago⊠by â¨fossilesque@mander.xyz⊠to â¨science_memes@mander.xyzâŠ
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/631ecb72-ccc5-4c69-9194-37c823b9638b.jpeg
Comments
Noite_Etion@lemmy.world â¨9⊠â¨hours⊠ago
zakobjoa@lemmy.world â¨7⊠â¨hours⊠ago
So no one on Earth can communicate with them? Damn.
Mirshe@lemmy.world â¨16⊠â¨minutes⊠ago
Surprising amount of Esperanto speakers, and a few people who speak it as a native tongue.
Zacryon@feddit.org â¨4⊠â¨hours⊠ago
What are we seeing here?
spectrums_coherence@piefed.social â¨2⊠â¨hours⊠ago
I believe they are higher dimensional string diagrams. Maybe called n-diagram? They are used in higher homotopy and higher category theory, I believe. But not entirely sure.
witheyeandclaw@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨hours⊠ago
Isaac Arthur made a compelling video about why this may be just the case with extraterrestrial beings.
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml â¨9⊠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.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world â¨8⊠â¨hours⊠ago
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)
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml â¨55⊠â¨minutes⊠ago
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
- their neurology is such that they canât comprehend the link between sounds and meaning
- same with visible light. Itâd be like us seeing magnetic fields and making the leap to thinking planets were talking to us.
- they donât have an understanding of names. Individuality for them is not a concept they understand - there are individuals, but they are not referred to. Maybe they speak in generalities & objectives. Not âyou, go farm the fieldâ but âsatiate hungerâ - perhaps who does and where/how this is done is not particularly important or it is marked with pheromones or context or something.
- they do not have phonetic components of speech.
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:
- sequences of IR pulses generated by things other than them can have meaning. Granted, seems simple enough.
- the length and cadence of the pulses matter. We could presumably figure that out by observation & tailor our communication to them, granted.
- intention is to name the two objects in front of them. Hmmmm that is suddenly a bit harder since they donât typically view names the same as we do. But maybe.
- phonemes can be represented with IR flashes. Oops, they donât have a concept of those⌠theyâd have to make a massive leap to understand that. But maybe theyâd view the word as an ideogram.
- the 2 we were broadcasting referred to the quantity of the apples and not some other feature. Not a given at all, they could take it to mean any number of things, in theory.
- the specific type of thing that an apple is can have a name. Not a given.
- that we are referring to the apples and not to something else. Maybe the act of presenting objects, the act of flashing IR light, the concept of presence vs non-presence, etc.
- that we were labelling the thing as apple and not instead talking about what you use it for, where it comes from, how old it is, itâs scent, who knows - could be anything.
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.
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works â¨3⊠â¨hours⊠ago
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?
JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca â¨8⊠â¨hours⊠ago
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.
cows_are_underrated@feddit.org â¨8⊠â¨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 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.
happybadger@hexbear.net â¨9⊠â¨hours⊠ago
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.
Chakravanti@monero.town â¨2⊠â¨hours⊠ago
Still bad logic. You can and write all the MethâŚuhâŚI mean MathâŚtotallyâŚor Language and just what fuck makes you think they not consider it gibberish?
Seriously, die. Like, OK, not really. Just thinkâŚby dying, but, like, not really.
OK, so, DMT, or even fucking better, letâs go all the way, 5-MEO-DMT.
Then you realize they ainât so far from home as you thought, Just Sayan.
bmebenji@lemmy.blahaj.zone â¨8⊠â¨hours⊠ago
I think itâs funny to think of mathematics as a universal language because all of formal logic is built on the assumption that binary truth values are grounded in reality, but I believe that has yet to be proven. All of human communication functions based on an assumed shared context.
If I say I have an apple, and you say you have an apple, humans would say that together we have two apples but in reality we each have an estimated collection of matter that shares nothing physically in common with the other. Maybe other intelligent life forms donât make the same assumptions that we do that lead to the statement that there are two âapples,â and maybe mathematics isnât universal.
I guess I mean to say that formal logic and mathematics are not grounded in reality, but are grounded in the way that a human brain perceives reality.
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works â¨5⊠â¨hours⊠ago
First of all, there has been a lot of research into what the minimal set of assumptions you need is to reproduce what we consider âbasic mathâ and also what happens if you tweak those assumptions.
Second of all, the main goal for science and the type of math we use for science is to effectively model the world we live in.
Any aliens that live in the same universe are subject to the same physics, and any civilization advanced enough to detect our messages will know some basic universal facts about the world, and those facts are what we hope to use as the basis for starting communication.
bmebenji@lemmy.blahaj.zone â¨1⊠â¨hour⊠ago
Yeah youâre right, the main goal of science and the math we use for science is to model the universe. That model is completely subjective. The more we learn about the universe, the more the model changes. The way we learn is limited by our 5 senses and our mental models for the immediate universe around us.
That model is something of a language itself, and if a language is subjectively limited then I donât think it can be universal
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works â¨2⊠â¨hours⊠ago
thereâd a big difference between experiencing a force and describing it though. Imagine attempting to describe proprioception to a race of spherical beings with no sense of touch.
edinbruh@feddit.it â¨7⊠â¨hours⊠ago
Look into âintuitionistic logicâ and âconstructive logicâ
mr_anny@sopuli.xyz â¨8⊠â¨hours⊠ago
Thatâs a flaccid penis.
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club â¨6⊠â¨hours⊠ago
The universal language we will use to communicate with aliens.
ignotum@lemmy.world â¨4⊠â¨hours⊠ago
So we will have no way of communicating with them if theyâre hot?
rockerface@lemmy.cafe â¨4⊠â¨hours⊠ago
Looks like a testicular torsion incantation
LittleBorat3@lemmy.world â¨4⊠â¨hours⊠ago
Toilets and dicks, why send this to the aliens?