Re: How do you say 'Hello' to an alien?

Joe sikyal:

> > Well, I don't think it's *that* obscure.  If you have the idea of it being
> > binary, the two-prime-number thing would suggest a rectangle to anyone who
> > has any half-decent maths, I'd think.  And (bigger if) if they have a
> sense
> > of bilateral symmetry they could even tell which reading is the right
> > one.  What I've always doubted is that they'd figure out anything much
> > encoded in the message.
> >
> > Still, if they get that far it's enough to suggest there's some sort of
> > "intelligent life" out there, I'd have thought.
> >
> > It's still a massive longshot, but I think the prime number thing is the
> > simplest bit of it. :)
>
> Yes, but who's going to look at the fact that something has, say, twenty-one
> bits and say 'Oh look! It's a product of two primes! Let's map it onto a
> rectangle!'.  It just doesn't seem
. . . reasonable? I disagree. If you get a message whose length is a
product of two primes, some sort of mapping of those products is likely,
and a rectangle is a likely understanding.

Thinking that they'll understand the message is a whole different matter.
Representational art is remarkably different even between human cultures,
and thinking that aliens could understand the Arecibo message makes far
too many assumptions about their cognitive and perceptive abilities.

But Nikhil asked a more interesting question--is it possible to
communicate without language?  I think the answer is no. Even mathematics
presupposes a sort of metalanguage that we use to learn it, so it's hard
to see how any communication could be had with creatures from a different
biology. There have been some attempts, though. Read Sagan's _Contact_ for
a fairly plausible discussion of aliens contacting *us*, and how we
decoded their message.


--
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
of our being, the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our
interpersonal relationship."

And Jesus said, "What?"

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