Still missing the same point about alien talk
From MindMatters yet again.

The other question is, in a universe governed by the same principles of logic, mathematics, physics, and chemistry throughout, it should be possible for intelligent entities to somehow find a way of making contact. The fact that those principles of math and physics can be described abstractly at all seems to show that we do not live in a meaningless universe. Thus, in principle, there is meaning that we — and ET — should be able to find.

If extraterrestrial intelligences exist and want to communicate, it will be the same meaning. They won’t have a different “logic” or “mathematics” because they can’t.

No, no, no. Logic and math are irrelevant and unnecessary.

When we are communicating via radio waves, there is a guaranteed set of commonalities. We don't know anything about the aliens, but we know how their receiver works, and they know how our transmitter works. There are only two basic ways to create and receive electromagnetic waves. Nature does it one way, and human technology does it the other way.

Nature alters the static field by moving ions in neurons or tissue. Human tech alters the magnetic field by moving electrons in wires.

We know several of Nature's methods. Radio fish simply extend the axons of neurons out of the body in an antenna, with its length tuned to match the impedance of the mud they live in. Flowers transfer ions into petals to send a message to bees, then pull back the ions after the bees have grabbed the pollen.

Nature did it WITHOUT USING MATH, and the first humans to send and receive radio were doing it with minimal math. Mostly by trial and error, expanding in directions that seem to work, steering away from directions that don't seem to work. FEEDBACK IS LIFE.

So, as I've been saying repeatedly, the communication should be ABOUT the communication. Describe the circuits and antennas in a two-dimensional pattern that can be scanned after the receiving intelligence realizes the scanning freq.



This is how radio hams communicate across cultural barriers, especially when censors are listening. Humor and politics and religion aren't easily understood, and may be deadly. Antenna lengths and circuits can be understood by everyone in the circle.

HOWEVER! Considering that I've been repeating this message for years in the tiny single-culture circle of a few blogs, and nobody has heard it yet, I doubt that we have any chance of communicating to mysterious aliens.

Labels: AI point-missing, infinite STUPID, Real World Math, Trinity House

  ¶ 7:47 PM