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> If humans ever detect the Arecibo message being sent back to Earth, they will know someone is trying to get their attention. Pretty much the plot of Contact

> If humans ever detect the Arecibo message being sent back to Earth, they will know someone is trying to get their attention. Pretty much the plot of Contact (or at least its inciting incident). Both the book (by Carl Sagan) and the movie (with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey) are really good.

Razengan 7y ago
We often miss all the ways animals right here on Earth try to get our or each other's attention. A truly alien species might communicate in ways we cannot even detect, or think of detecting, like say magnetic fields or some other medium that almost nothing on Earth uses. Furthermore, even if they used the same "channels" and frequencies as us, their minds may just be too different. Even fundamental concepts like time and numbers or the notion of self may be perceived too differently by them for their languages to have any convenient analogues to ours.
- close04 7y ago
  I think we're hoping (even if it's a double edge sword) that the aliens are smart enough to communicate with us not the other way around. We have been unable to fully decipher the "language" of dogs beyond some body language. And they have lived with us for millennia. Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/638/ https://xkcd.com/638/
  - vermilingua 7y ago
    I doubt many dog owners would agree with you that we have not deciphered the language of dogs. We viscerally understand how they communicate, it’s simply hard to systematically describe it.
    - close04 7y ago
      > We viscerally understand But that's a very superficial understanding of a language. Maybe we have different concepts of what understanding a language means. Dogs are smart enough to grasp relatively advanced concepts, do you think you would understand the response if you asked "do you want food A, B, C, or D"? And I'm not talking about body language (them pointing at the thing) or training them to react in a specific way because that's actually you teaching them a language. Another example: listen to 2 dogs barking at each other. To what level can you understand what they are "saying"? Yes, you can say "aggressive" or "submissive". But is it fair to call that understanding the language? There has to be more to their language than just basic emotions. Take this list of languages [0] (or any language that is completely foreign to you). If someone is speaking one of them to you and you can only guess things from body language or tone is it fair to say you understand that language? The meaning of a lot of human languages or alphabets is completely lost even if they were conceived by humans almost identical to us biologically. Hoping to understand alien languages without the aliens helping us is a pipe dream. [0] https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/2018/02/rare-languages-spoken-10757/ https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/2018/02/rare-languages-...
      - cetalingua 7y ago
        >The meaning of a lot of human languages or alphabets is completely lost even if they were conceived by humans almost identical to us biologically. Hoping to understand alien languages without the aliens helping us is a pipe dream. There has been limited success with parts of Voynich Manuscript (some plants names?) and some interesting developments with rongorongo, but overall, yes, super hard. Hopeflly, Natural Language Processing might help, some promising results were reported for Linear B. (https://neurohive.io/en/news/researchers-use-machine-learning-to-automatically-translate-long-lost-languages/ https://neurohive.io/en/news/researchers-use-machine-learnin...)
        close04 7y ago
        I'm not sure the manuscript really qualifies as a language but it does highlight the difficulties in understanding an artificial construct, coming from an intelligent mind. We understand natural constructs because we kind of understand the natural laws that govern them. We're nowhere near understanding the laws that govern the intelligent, conscious mind. Even our own. P.S. Good luck with your project. Sounds very interesting and right on the money for this conversation.
        cetalingua 7y ago
        Thank you!
- ggambetta 7y ago
  Dolphins seem particularly promising!
  - cetalingua 7y ago
    Yet, after nearly 5 decades of research we are still unable to crack their code. We do know however that some sequences they make do not seem to be random.Our problem is to penetrate the communication system that is not visually based,and is purely acoustical. Shameless self-plug: we are working on it, combining citizen science and AI. Our plarform goes live in a few weeks.
    - arwineap 7y ago
      I'll pull the plug; any suggestions for further reading? > Our problem is to penetrate the communication system that is not visually based,and is purely acoustical. Given our depth in knowledge in acoustics, I'm hoping you can expand a little on this
      - cetalingua 7y ago
        >any suggestions for further reading? "Deep Thinkers" is a good recent book, you can check it out (https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo27346780.html https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo27...) >Given our depth in knowledge in acoustics, I'm hoping you can expand a little on this Our challenge is that we are visual species who are trying to understand “acoustic” species. (see ”What it is like to be a bat? https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/hum...) Yes, we can describe their vocalizations in terms of peak frequencies, RMS, center frequencies, duration, intensity, inter-click-intervals for burst pulses or sperm whale codas, but what does it all mean? The biggest struggle is not even that, but how to conceptualize their communication system. Naturally, being humans, we want it to have semantics, grammar, pragmatics and phonetics, and if it does not, they must be dumb (i.e. Chomsky’s argument). So we search for the smallest unit (a phoneme) and naturally we cannot find it. Additionally, we know that dolphins have at least 2 sound generators (and possibly up to 4) that could work simultaneously and independently, potentially producing very complex utterances. On top of that, we have an animal that “sees” the world through sound, it must have at least some contribution to how the communication system is set up. The conventional belief as of now is that echolocation is separate from communication, although Dr. John Lilly was convinced that dolphins could use echolocation to describe things in their environment (to be clear, we have no scientific support for this hypothesis). That is why describing dolphin whistles and other sounds terms of duration, peak frequencies, infliction points, etc., does not help at all, as it does not help us to understand how the communication system is set up and what this whistle actually means (and why is it used). The only positive thing in all that is that there must be some sort of communication system. If you ever encounter a pod (especially the offshore species) you would be amazed at their constant chat. So much energy is spent on all these utterances they must be important and must have at least some meaning.
- hindsightbias 7y ago
  Derrick Jensen touches on this in A Language Older Than Words with his experiences running a farm.

Razengan 7y ago

We often miss all the ways animals right here on Earth try to get our or each other's attention. A truly alien species might communicate in ways we cannot even detect, or think of detecting, like say magnetic fields or some other medium that almost nothing on Earth uses. Furthermore, even if they used the same "channels" and frequencies as us, their minds may just be too different. Even fundamental concepts like time and numbers or the notion of self may be perceived too differently by them for their languages to have any convenient analogues to ours.

close04 7y ago
I think we're hoping (even if it's a double edge sword) that the aliens are smart enough to communicate with us not the other way around. We have been unable to fully decipher the "language" of dogs beyond some body language. And they have lived with us for millennia. Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/638/ https://xkcd.com/638/
- vermilingua 7y ago
  I doubt many dog owners would agree with you that we have not deciphered the language of dogs. We viscerally understand how they communicate, it’s simply hard to systematically describe it.
  - close04 7y ago
    > We viscerally understand But that's a very superficial understanding of a language. Maybe we have different concepts of what understanding a language means. Dogs are smart enough to grasp relatively advanced concepts, do you think you would understand the response if you asked "do you want food A, B, C, or D"? And I'm not talking about body language (them pointing at the thing) or training them to react in a specific way because that's actually you teaching them a language. Another example: listen to 2 dogs barking at each other. To what level can you understand what they are "saying"? Yes, you can say "aggressive" or "submissive". But is it fair to call that understanding the language? There has to be more to their language than just basic emotions. Take this list of languages [0] (or any language that is completely foreign to you). If someone is speaking one of them to you and you can only guess things from body language or tone is it fair to say you understand that language? The meaning of a lot of human languages or alphabets is completely lost even if they were conceived by humans almost identical to us biologically. Hoping to understand alien languages without the aliens helping us is a pipe dream. [0] https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/2018/02/rare-languages-spoken-10757/ https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/2018/02/rare-languages-...
    - cetalingua 7y ago
      >The meaning of a lot of human languages or alphabets is completely lost even if they were conceived by humans almost identical to us biologically. Hoping to understand alien languages without the aliens helping us is a pipe dream. There has been limited success with parts of Voynich Manuscript (some plants names?) and some interesting developments with rongorongo, but overall, yes, super hard. Hopeflly, Natural Language Processing might help, some promising results were reported for Linear B. (https://neurohive.io/en/news/researchers-use-machine-learning-to-automatically-translate-long-lost-languages/ https://neurohive.io/en/news/researchers-use-machine-learnin...)
      - close04 7y ago
        I'm not sure the manuscript really qualifies as a language but it does highlight the difficulties in understanding an artificial construct, coming from an intelligent mind. We understand natural constructs because we kind of understand the natural laws that govern them. We're nowhere near understanding the laws that govern the intelligent, conscious mind. Even our own. P.S. Good luck with your project. Sounds very interesting and right on the money for this conversation.
        cetalingua 7y ago
        Thank you!
ggambetta 7y ago
Dolphins seem particularly promising!
- cetalingua 7y ago
  Yet, after nearly 5 decades of research we are still unable to crack their code. We do know however that some sequences they make do not seem to be random.Our problem is to penetrate the communication system that is not visually based,and is purely acoustical. Shameless self-plug: we are working on it, combining citizen science and AI. Our plarform goes live in a few weeks.
  - arwineap 7y ago
    I'll pull the plug; any suggestions for further reading? > Our problem is to penetrate the communication system that is not visually based,and is purely acoustical. Given our depth in knowledge in acoustics, I'm hoping you can expand a little on this
    - cetalingua 7y ago
      >any suggestions for further reading? "Deep Thinkers" is a good recent book, you can check it out (https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo27346780.html https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo27...) >Given our depth in knowledge in acoustics, I'm hoping you can expand a little on this Our challenge is that we are visual species who are trying to understand “acoustic” species. (see ”What it is like to be a bat? https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/hum...) Yes, we can describe their vocalizations in terms of peak frequencies, RMS, center frequencies, duration, intensity, inter-click-intervals for burst pulses or sperm whale codas, but what does it all mean? The biggest struggle is not even that, but how to conceptualize their communication system. Naturally, being humans, we want it to have semantics, grammar, pragmatics and phonetics, and if it does not, they must be dumb (i.e. Chomsky’s argument). So we search for the smallest unit (a phoneme) and naturally we cannot find it. Additionally, we know that dolphins have at least 2 sound generators (and possibly up to 4) that could work simultaneously and independently, potentially producing very complex utterances. On top of that, we have an animal that “sees” the world through sound, it must have at least some contribution to how the communication system is set up. The conventional belief as of now is that echolocation is separate from communication, although Dr. John Lilly was convinced that dolphins could use echolocation to describe things in their environment (to be clear, we have no scientific support for this hypothesis). That is why describing dolphin whistles and other sounds terms of duration, peak frequencies, infliction points, etc., does not help at all, as it does not help us to understand how the communication system is set up and what this whistle actually means (and why is it used). The only positive thing in all that is that there must be some sort of communication system. If you ever encounter a pod (especially the offshore species) you would be amazed at their constant chat. So much energy is spent on all these utterances they must be important and must have at least some meaning.
hindsightbias 7y ago
Derrick Jensen touches on this in A Language Older Than Words with his experiences running a farm.