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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

#201

Post by eridius »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #193
eridius wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> I assume you'll agree that we'll still be able to observe what it does do and understand that it's doing it No. To make that leap, I must assume the conclusion. I cannot know that I'll be able to observe what it does, because I don't know what it will do (or whether I can even perceive the dimension in which it does it for that matter). Secondly, the word "understand" is subjective. I assume that Musk meant the wor…

I had a really long reply written, but before posting I went to try and find the source of the Elon Musk paraphrased belief, and I can't find it. I don't know where sixQuarks got it from, but without knowing what the source is, it's hard to second-guess what Elon Musk was actually trying to say (or whether he even said it at all).

That said, ignoring the Elon Musk bit, even if a superintelligent A.I. figures out how to communicate in some other dimension, surely there's plenty of work it will do that fits within the bounds of the physics we know, and we can observe what it does that we do understand, and we can observe what it does that we don't understand. And given time we can figure out how to understand that which we can observe. And more generally, even if it manages to jump straight to communicating in some other dimension without letting us see its intermediate work, it seems very likely that whatever it is doing will have observable effects within the realm of the physics we understand and can observe (even if it's just EM radiation). At the very least, we can tell that it's there and that it's doing something and start figuring out what it is doing.

This is in contrast to the ants of Michio Kaku, who don't even know anything is going on. The point isn't that the ants don't understand how to build their own 10-lane superhighway, it's that they don't even know that this is a thing built by another species or for what purpose it was built. sixQuarks's point (regardless of whether what he said about Elon Musk is true), summed up in his analogy about complex mathematics, is that we should still be able to observe aliens and comprehend that they're doing something, even if we don't necessarily understand how to do that thing ourselves.

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

#202

Post by 0xffff2 »

eridius wrote: post #184
scrumper wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not really true (for better or worse). Radio signals attenuate with distance. In the case of omnidirectional signals expanding in a sphere, they attenuate at a rate of 1/r^3. As a result, virtually all of our radio signals intended for terrestrial consumption are basically noise before they even leave the solar system.

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

#203

Post by 0xffff2 »

bryondowd wrote: post #107
x5n1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am glad you asked: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propu... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Longshot - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-Mag_Orion

Three of those are fission, not fusion. And Daedalus looks more like a very high level concept, without the actual tech to accomplish it.

Daedalus is not even a high level concept at the level we are talking about, it's a completely different level altogether. Project Daedalus was more like a project to establish reasonable parameters on which to base a high level concept.

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

#204

Post by Panoramix »

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.

I do agree with you, but I have the feeling you have a narrow view of how these guys look like. Your argument was not too compelling. For all I know they could be giant gas clouds, silicon life forms, dark matter creatures, a fungi-like thing that spans the whole interior of a small planet and manages to shoot spores into space. Their motivations are not going to be in line with those of the average American. Their lives could span milliseconds, or aeons. Their brain could function at so extremely different rates than ours, that we or they wouldn't consider each other sentient. They could be highly intelligent* and/or propagate successfully without radio communication.

But I think we might be discussing semantics. When you say "intelligent", you probably have something specific in mind. Which probably boils down to "can do math". But a different intelligence could also grasp the laws of physics at an intuitive level, in the same way a dog can catch a frisbee. Perhaps they can "get" turbulence or higher dimensions,understand a trees as a whole, something we completely fail at.

So to me it's a stretch to think that we can find them by looking at error correcting codes. But then again, I have no better proposal.

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

#205

Post by scrumper »

joe_the_user wrote: post #192
scrumper wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe, just maybe, the fact that we're not seeing much is actually indicative of a fairly rich sea of life in the galaxy, communicating point-to-point with each other. Except for the small question of how those many civilizations would have found each other in the first place.

True. But nearer the galactic core where stars are so much closer together? SETI might have a much higher hit rate there. We are in kind of a backwater out here. It's easy to forget about the big city when you're out in the sticks.

It's not very likely though. Occam's Razor alone suggests that the reason for loneliness is that there aren't a plethora of civilizations all talking to each other over narrowband channels. And we'd be very unlikely to pick up the omnidirectional beacon of a lonely civilization way out here anyway.

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

#206

Post by pekk »

zamalek wrote: post #11
JosephRedfern wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It strikes me that the two are very different things. ET != AI.

SAI != ET. The idea of SAI is that it progresses at a significantly faster rate than biological processes can. For example, if humans and chimps were on a "staircase of evolution" and were one step apart; SAI would be one step above us a mere hour after it is turned on. After 2 hours it would be multiple steps above us. So the theory goes, anyway. This means that evil aliens would be unlikely more dangerous than evil…

A minor note on word usage here: usually the word "theory" is reserved for explanations with a good track record rather than wild speculation.

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

#207

Post by Sven7 »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #160
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:…

That seems unusually optimistic to me. Considering how much warfare human society has had and now that we have nuclear weapons and the endless brinkmanship of them, it seems the reasonable view here is that intelligent species probably just destroy themselves after a certain level of development. There is no Federation or aliens visiting because societies don't like that long due to a self-inflicted extinction event.…

It's a different world today though. Even if two countries go nuts and drop the bomb on each other, it doesn't really mean the rest will jump into the fray.

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

#208

Post by eridius »

0xffff2 wrote: post #202
eridius wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not really true (for better or worse). Radio signals attenuate with distance. In the case of omnidirectional signals expanding in a sphere, they attenuate at a rate of 1/r^3. As a result, virtually all of our radio signals intended for terrestrial consumption are basically noise before they even leave the solar system.

The wikipedia page on Path Loss[1] suggests that radio and antenna engineers typically model path loss (in decibels) using the formula

  L = 20 * log10(4 * pi * d / λ)
(where λ is the wavelength and d is the distance between the transmitter and receiver expressed in the same units as the wavelength)

If I'm doing the math right[2], this says that the path loss over 1 lightyear for an 80MHz transmission (which seems to be in the analog TV range?) is something like 330 decibels. Now I'm not sure how strong TV transmissions are, but I'm guessing it's not that strong.

Darn. Seems Futurama and every other piece of mass media that claims that aliens are watching our TV from 80 years ago is wrong.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_loss

[2] Which is to say, if I'm typing it into Wolfram Alpha correctly.

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

#209

Post by Cyph0n »

Pigo wrote: post #106
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:…

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…

This same argument is quite validly used by people like myself (a Muslim) who believe in a creator.
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