3 ms·

That was my immediate reaction as well, "decontamination is impossible" um, why? I deal with 'unusual' payloads all the time and I've never seen anything that

That was my immediate reaction as well, "decontamination is impossible" um, why? I deal with 'unusual' payloads all the time and I've never seen anything that has this potential, I don't see how anything could be built to be so, without obviously being so. EG: the progression would go from something being some form of plain text, to it being encoded in some way which is very very likely. On the extreme ends say something is sent as machine code. Firstly, this is very odd and suspicious for a lot of reasons but even still you can run untrusted machine code in a very safe way. Assume its resistant to existing types of disassembly for whatever reason. Let's say you want to take an absurd level of paranoia (which, really, is justified if an alien civilization sends us machine code), rut it on an entirely physically disconnected (battery powered) machine inside a Faraday cage. If the code still won't work (ERR: must be connected to the internet to proceed) you can basically assume its malicious. And, after all that, there are far easier ways to kill us all. Send the plans to a massive superweapon but only send it to the USA (or just to Russia, or just to China) but send the other side a message telling them what you did. The snubbed nation may feel the need to make a preemptive attack before the other nation can develop the technology. Send plans for an ultimate bioweapon to the right/wrong people.

sbierwagen 9y ago
>rut it on an entirely physically disconnected (battery powered) machine inside a Faraday cage What if decompression produced an alien message hundreds of gigabytes in length? Is that file completely safe to transmit to un-airgapped computers? Would you bet all of human civilization that it's safe? No way any part of it would produce any negative effect on a human reading it? >Send the plans to a massive superweapon but only send it to the USA Laser beams sent over interstellar distances will be hundreds of thousands of kilometres wide at the destination. The threat model for a hostile probe inside our solar system would be rather different, of course.
- 13of40 9y ago
  "This is a national security issue that must be treated with the utmost care. Can you analyze and decode this message we received from Alpha Centauri 4?" [Time passes] "By Jove, I think we've cracked it, Sir. It's essentially Huffman encoded and contains a mechanism for repeating redundant strings. Let me see if I can decode the entire message." [Time passes] "Shit, my computer crashed."
geoah 9y ago
I think you are both might be confusing the medium with the message. Even if decoding of the message can be done safely, the content of the message might be the danger itself. The author is suggesting that the message contains the code for a true ai and makes the point that it might be able for it to bargain in exchange for giving humans information they want or need. It goes on to reason that eventually knowledge of this ai will become public and due to human nature it will eventually be let free. Disconnection from infrastructure is not enough to make the message safe. Given that time is not a factor for the ai this does not seem far fetched. At least in the context of this paper.
- RobLach 9y ago
  Reminds me of His Master's Voice by Lem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice_(novel) It goes beyond the medium. Humanity could receive a schematic for an extinction device and wouldn't know it until it's turned on. How long would we last before we caved? We could project any potential use for some mysterious alien tech; debate and rationalize at every moment of weakness. Could it cure a plague or teach us even more? Someone could build it in secret.
  - eitland 9y ago
    Greasemonkey gerbil Looking at the mousetrap Interesting device It sees the spring and smells the bait Understands everything -except the connection

sbierwagen 9y ago

>rut it on an entirely physically disconnected (battery powered) machine inside a Faraday cage What if decompression produced an alien message hundreds of gigabytes in length? Is that file completely safe to transmit to un-airgapped computers? Would you bet all of human civilization that it's safe? No way any part of it would produce any negative effect on a human reading it? >Send the plans to a massive superweapon but only send it to the USA Laser beams sent over interstellar distances will be hundreds of thousands of kilometres wide at the destination. The threat model for a hostile probe inside our solar system would be rather different, of course.

13of40 9y ago
"This is a national security issue that must be treated with the utmost care. Can you analyze and decode this message we received from Alpha Centauri 4?" [Time passes] "By Jove, I think we've cracked it, Sir. It's essentially Huffman encoded and contains a mechanism for repeating redundant strings. Let me see if I can decode the entire message." [Time passes] "Shit, my computer crashed."

geoah 9y ago

I think you are both might be confusing the medium with the message. Even if decoding of the message can be done safely, the content of the message might be the danger itself. The author is suggesting that the message contains the code for a true ai and makes the point that it might be able for it to bargain in exchange for giving humans information they want or need. It goes on to reason that eventually knowledge of this ai will become public and due to human nature it will eventually be let free. Disconnection from infrastructure is not enough to make the message safe. Given that time is not a factor for the ai this does not seem far fetched. At least in the context of this paper.

RobLach 9y ago
Reminds me of His Master's Voice by Lem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice_(novel) It goes beyond the medium. Humanity could receive a schematic for an extinction device and wouldn't know it until it's turned on. How long would we last before we caved? We could project any potential use for some mysterious alien tech; debate and rationalize at every moment of weakness. Could it cure a plague or teach us even more? Someone could build it in secret.
- eitland 9y ago
  Greasemonkey gerbil Looking at the mousetrap Interesting device It sees the spring and smells the bait Understands everything -except the connection