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Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

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Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#181

Post by murbard2 »

Panoramix wrote: post #180
murbard2 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing this argument has going for it is sounding wise by virtue of being self-deprecating. If there are structured radio signals being emitted, it matters not whether or not we understand what the aliens are up to, if it hits a sweetspot between noise and simplicity we can tell it's a signal. And no, "radio waves" aren't the equivalent of "smoke signals", if there are better ways to communicate across space,…

Those are huge assumptions IMO. Maybe they don't feel the need or comprehend the concept of communicating over long distances. Maybe they discovered a different force we don't know of. Just because radio waves worked for us, it doesn't mean every advanced civilization will makes use of them. The possibilities are so vast and endless.

If they are a space faring civilization, they need long distance communication. No the possibilities aren't endless, there's a lot of physics that we know that strongly constrains the search space. AFAIC, I think compression is the big issue, we should be looking for forward error correcting codes in the data.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#182

Post by brianmcconnell »

sdrinf wrote: post #23
codeshaman wrote: post #17

A very noble endeavour indeed, but I still don't get it. So let's say that by examining the petabytes of data that's received from the telescopes, at some point a signal is detected. Let's say that somehow all the competing scientests and skeptics, religious and opinion leaders magically and peacefully agree: the signal is from an inteligent life form. Somewhere close, just a couple of hundred light years away ... Th…

There are very few pieces of information really worthy of deliberate broadcasts across star-systems in the hopes of someone catching it. One of these few might be a full dump of neural vector-states (or functional equivalent thereof), at an appropriately low-level assembly, which when successfully executed, brings not a message, but the messenger itself.

A fair amount of work has already been done with algorithmic communication systems, as its a small step from a mathematical language to a general purpose programming language. Paul Fitzpatrick, then with the MIT AI lab, developed the most complete framework around the idea, CosmicOS.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#183

Post by eridius »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #170
sixQuarks wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk disagrees with that statement. He believes once intelligence gets beyond a certain threshold (which humans have), there are no such things that are beyond understanding. Most people don't know how to write complex math equations, but that doesn't mean they can't understand what mathematics is.

In discussions about artificial super-intelligence (the final stage of AI that sends us rocketing beyond the singularity), our inability to comprehend what such an intelligence might desire or do is frequently accepted as a significant risk by those who fear such AI. When one considers an infinitely and exponentially increasing intelligence that can quickly bypass the point of easily answering the questions that curr…

We may not be able to predict what such an AI would desire or do, but I assume you'll agree that we'll still be able to observe what it does do and understand that it's doing it (even though we may not necessarily understand how it does something).

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#184

Post by eridius »

scrumper wrote: post #69
jessriedel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditionally, SETI is not specialized to messages intentionally crafted for us (or, in fact, necessarily crafted for anyone). It's just a search for radio transmissions that are unlikely to have been created by natural sources using various statistical techniques. Even for intentional messages, it's certainly conceivable that another civilization with sufficient power simply transmits the message in all direction co…

Even for intentional messages, it's certainly conceivable that another civilization with sufficient power simply transmits the message in all direction continuously. I think that scenario would imply a relative scarcity of intelligent life: after all, if a space-faring civilization needs to transmit powerful, omnidirectional signals in the blind, it must be pretty lonely. Maybe, just maybe, the fact that we're not se…

SETI isn't just looking for spacefaring civilizations. It's looking for any form of intelligent life. Take us, for example. We've been broadcasting radio signals into space for many years now (basically as a side-effect of broadcasting them to ourselves). Given sufficient time for the radio waves to travel, an alien equivalent of SETI would be expected to recognize them as non-natural.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#185

Post by outworlder »

murbard2 wrote: post #164
Pigo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like too much assumption to me. The scenario described well by Michio Kaku is the only one that seems probable to me. "Lets say we have an ant hill in the middle of the forest. And right next to the ant hill, they're building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is 'Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would the ants be able to understand the technology and the inten…

The only thing this argument has going for it is sounding wise by virtue of being self-deprecating. If there are structured radio signals being emitted, it matters not whether or not we understand what the aliens are up to, if it hits a sweetspot between noise and simplicity we can tell it's a signal. And no, "radio waves" aren't the equivalent of "smoke signals", if there are better ways to communicate across space,…

> If there are structured radio signals being emitted,

Why should there be? Earth itself is getting quieter. Our electronics are more sensitive, for the applications that still use radion. For a lot of things, we are using plain boring fiber-optic (and copper) connections.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#186

Post by wlesieutre »

murbard2 wrote: post #181
Panoramix wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are huge assumptions IMO. Maybe they don't feel the need or comprehend the concept of communicating over long distances. Maybe they discovered a different force we don't know of. Just because radio waves worked for us, it doesn't mean every advanced civilization will makes use of them. The possibilities are so vast and endless.

If they are a space faring civilization, they need long distance communication. No the possibilities aren't endless, there's a lot of physics that we know that strongly constrains the search space. AFAIC, I think compression is the big issue, we should be looking for forward error correcting codes in the data.

Laser communication seems more likely for long distance communication. Omnidirectional radio broadcasts need a comparatively huge amount of energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPALS

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#187

Post by RALaBarge »

aswanson wrote: post #167
RALaBarge wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I am willing to bet that all intelligent life will end up being quite lonely. Unless we find ways to bend space, there is little chance of us ever getting out of our local solar system, let alone galaxy or the local galactic cluster. I am a big fan of science and science fiction, do not get me wrong. I do feel that technology evolves and will surprise even the most tech savvy, but to violate faster than l…

I'm skeptical as well...but... something at the beginning of the universe caused it to expand far faster than the speed of light... something , some unknown force is causing it's continuous expansion. There are many deep, fundamental questions we don't know about the universe. FTL travel may be possible, but I wouldn't bet on it.

I present to you the answer that I most prefer for that question: http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#188

Post by murbard2 »

wlesieutre wrote: post #186
murbard2 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are a space faring civilization, they need long distance communication. No the possibilities aren't endless, there's a lot of physics that we know that strongly constrains the search space. AFAIC, I think compression is the big issue, we should be looking for forward error correcting codes in the data.

Laser communication seems more likely for long distance communication. Omnidirectional radio broadcasts need a comparatively huge amount of energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPALS

I agree, but that's a very different argument from "who are we, measly little ants to think we can understand..."

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#190

Post by agentgt »

ekianjo wrote: post #140
agentgt wrote: post #99

One of my favorite topics is the Fermi Paradox and consequently the Great Filter (which someone already discussed). One of my favorite explanations is that there are other ET out there but they are two engrossed with their own entertainment to "give a fuck" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#They_tend_to_iso... ). I find it amusing and ironic while also seriously consider it a possibility. From wikipedia:…

> It may also be that intelligent alien life develop an "increasing disinterest" in their outside world That's only something you can say with n size=1 (human civilization). We have no idea if intelligent species out there with similar capacities as humans would actually think in the same way or not. Let's not assume every intelligence out there is just like ours.

(OP here) Well actually we might have some good ideas of thought patterns / behaviors since we as humans and life as we know it have made it this far. The quest to survive and reproduce so far seems to be very common and is probably inherent in any intelligent life. I would imagine most aliens would want to survive and maybe reproduce.

Similar to the original entertainment idea is to imagine though a super intelligence that understands almost everything. What goals would it have? What would it do? Its hard to imagine anything motivating other than perhaps itself. But to your point who knows however its still fun to think about.

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