9 ms·

The 1999 and 2003 messages explained [pdf]

28 points by lelf 6y ago

compsciphd 6y ago
there went our dark forest. :)
- lmilcin 6y ago
  I was about to make the same comment:) Take in mind that we emit so much garbage into space that it would probably make no difference for sufficiently advanced civilization. So if there really exist a civilization that goes out and kills everybody and only other civilizations survive because they maintain absolute silence, it must be already extremely advanced (to be feared by everybody else) and so we have already lost.
  - acqq 6y ago
    The claim that: "we emit so much garbage into space that it would probably make no difference for sufficiently advanced civilization" is a technologically wrong claim. Under some emitting power to some specific destination, the kind of emissions we commonly make drop to the levels which are below all the noise levels, effectively making them unrecognizable. Under the noise levels, it simply can't be resolved. The only way for our common emissions to be recognized would be if the "other civilization" already has some receivers in our solar system or very close to it. But if we assume that we have to send something in the direction to some distant star to get their attention, then it can be better not being "too loud." For the start, even on Earth you have to have a license to use some bandwidth, and some are completely forbidden for mortals. And again, imagine some indifferent Vogon bureaucrats deciding what to do with the annoyance...
    - lmilcin 6y ago
      You are looking from the point of view of our very limited technological level. To understand the problem you need to look at physical limitations of a civilization. A civilization that has an ability to wipe off another civilisation in another remote star system will definitely be at least hitting some physical limitations if not pushing them (if our understanding of physics is wrong). We already have plans to image other planets by use of gravitational lensing with something like 25km per pixel resolution. If we can image planet surface with this resolution remember, radio signals are also being amplified by gravitational lensing. While it seems it is more complicated I don't see any technical limitation to receiving even very weak radio signals this way. I mean, if we can almost do it now it is naive to think they can't do it. Our current biggest to getting this level of image is putting drones in right, remote place in space many AUs from us. If we are talking about a civilisation that has means and time to wipe off other star system then they definitely don't have that problem.
      - acqq 6y ago
        > If we are talking about a civilisation that has means and time to wipe off other star system then they definitely don't have that problem. No, I'm not talking about a civilization that would "wipe" the star system. I'm not talking about a civilization that uses instruments bigger than the solar system only to detect us. I'm also not talking about a civilization that would be faster than light. I'm just talking about a civilization that has some very strict (imagine, like the extremists in our world, but a few orders of magnitude more) views about what they "have" to do, and that has the attention span and endurance more orders of magnitude longer than ours, meaning that they wouldn't mind to send something to the Earth even if it would take, for example, 1000 years, and then make more steps to their benefit, etc. In short, our thinking of what is "far" and "reasonable" are limited by our very short lives. I of course don't think that I should worry in my lifetime about the possible responses, but I don't think that the humanity in thousands of years should be put in danger by our "young and naïve" actions now. The dangers I see are certainly not in the magnitude of "wiping off the star system", but more like those described by Rod Serling as "to serve man." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zon... Even the current humans are certainly technologically capable to destroy our civilization as we now know it, even if there's a possibility that a few specimens of humans would survive for a while somewhere. The aliens don't have to be much more capable than that.
        lmilcin 6y ago
        Have you actually read The Dark Forest? Because that scenario is what I was commenting about. The scenario says that the only logical conclusion is that, since resources are limited, if you are left with another civilization the most logical course of action is to preemptively, immediately strike and destroy it so that you can gain their resources and are in better position for the future encounters. For that reason all civilizations keep total silence for fear of another civilization wiping them off.
        compsciphd 6y ago
        I didn't understand the dark forest about gaining their resources in the context of the novel, (even though that's mentioned, I'll discuss below). I believe the stronger argument is about the inability to trust them at such great distances and time deltas (i.e. you can't trust, but verify). to recap: even if they meant what they said at t0, by the time you get the message at time t(1billion) (just picked a large number), their thoughts could have easily changed due to their development in the time that has elapsed. therefore, if you have the ability, the only "logical" thing is to wipe them out. Of course, this presumes the ability to wipe them out with one shot (2d foil), not get into a shooting war even if you are technologically superior (i.e. trisolarans) with that said, where I felt the logic of the novel fell apart a bit was in the context of the sophons. i.e. the technology for instantaneous communication existed (or at least was built). which negates one of the axioms. now to get back to the resource scarcity argument, while resource scarcity is mentioned, I also think it as basis is problematic. why? because a common method used to destroy these far off civilizations is effectively resource destruction (ex: collapsing 3d space into 2d space). If your goal is to maximize your resources (as opposed to minimizing your opponents resources), you don't go about "destroying" them.
JadeNB 6y ago
Does anyone know why MJD posted this? (Well, probably MJD does. So I guess I mean: Is anyone here in a position to explain why MJD posted it? Just general interest to them?)
- JdeBP 6y ago
  These aren't postings. They are downloadable files in a "misc¨ directory on a WWW server which is full of all sorts of stuff: https://www.plover.com/misc/ https://www.plover.com/misc/ For actual postings, in a web-log, go and look at https://blog.plover.com/2015/08/07/ https://blog.plover.com/2015/08/07/ .
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  mjd's reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24444125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24444125
- mjd 6y ago
  I posted this because around 2003 I spent a significant amount of time tracking it down. So I saved it, so that I wouldn't lose it, and so if I ever got around to writing an article about the message, I would have it handy and easy to find. This is important, because when I finally got around to writing the articles, twelve years later, I found it where I had left it. When I save something that I had trouble finding, I often try to save it in a place that other people will be able to find it, so save trouble for the next person. I don't remember where I found the paper the first time around, and I don't know if that location still exists. But stuff I throw into plover.com/~mjd/misc is (so far) available forever. There are files there that haven't been modified since 1994.
  - JadeNB 6y ago
    Thank you!
mellosouls 6y ago
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Call https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Call https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-couple-guys-built-most-ambitious-alien-outreach-project-ever-180960473/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-couple-guy...
acqq 6y ago
The paper about the messages written by Dumas and Dutil: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228862784_The_Evpatoria_Messages https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228862784_The_Evpat... As I was young, I watched Star Trek and listened to Carl Sagan's positive expectations about the "first contact." But that was before the modern Internet. Now I'm much more pessimistic. I'm almost sure that the biggest chance of anything outside of Earth responding would not be something we'd like: I would expect either cosmic spam, cosmic scammers or cosmic criminals to respond. And it can be even worse, to the point of some powers that do some planned destruction out of pure indifference to what the effects are, like Douglas Adams writes: just "to make room for a hyperspatial express route" and even if the Earth was not exactly there it was close enough that the "cleaning" from "risky" lifeforms will be performed and your time to file a complaint expired, thank you very much, we really care about your opinion, to return to main menu press 0. So I'm thinking more like Hawking: “Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn’t turn out so well.” (1) ... (to Native Americans). Some quite recent news, probably influencing me: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-46-000-year-old-aboriginal-site-was-just-deliberately-destroyed-in-australia https://www.sciencealert.com/a-46-000-year-old-aboriginal-si... 1) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/stephen-hawking-controversial-physics-black-holes-bets-science/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/stephen-hawk...
- bee_rider 6y ago
  An alien species would certainly be incompatible with our germs, possibly incompatible with the basic life-chemisty of our planet, and would likely be far enough away that we're restricted to swapping a message like once a generation assuming we're anywhere near right about the basic laws of physics. I wouldn't worry too much about it. The worst case is they will troll us.
  - gryfft 6y ago
    Oh, good. Trolling. That's never been a serious problem before.
- svachalek 6y ago
joezydeco 6y ago
Well now I'm curious: what are the "questions" posed in frame 23?
- mjd 6y ago
  https://blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/p23.html https://blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/p23.html
  - joezydeco 6y ago
    Thanks! That's helpful, but like you say it's also confusing.
mjd 6y ago
I wrote a long series of blog posts about every aspect of the messages. They are among the blog posts I'm most proud of. I think there are 25 in all, one for each of the 23 pages, and a couple of extras about the message as a whole. The first post, and table of contents: https://blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/intro.html https://blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/intro.html (I also produced good-quality, bit-for-bit bitmaps of the 23 pages; I don't think anything like this was available before. (At least, I couldn't find any.) https://pic.blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/ https://pic.blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/ )
razzfox 6y ago
Happy to see it uses my favorite map projection. Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/977/ https://xkcd.com/977/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

28 points by lelf 6y ago

compsciphd 6y ago

there went our dark forest. :)

lmilcin 6y ago
I was about to make the same comment:) Take in mind that we emit so much garbage into space that it would probably make no difference for sufficiently advanced civilization. So if there really exist a civilization that goes out and kills everybody and only other civilizations survive because they maintain absolute silence, it must be already extremely advanced (to be feared by everybody else) and so we have already lost.
- acqq 6y ago
  The claim that: "we emit so much garbage into space that it would probably make no difference for sufficiently advanced civilization" is a technologically wrong claim. Under some emitting power to some specific destination, the kind of emissions we commonly make drop to the levels which are below all the noise levels, effectively making them unrecognizable. Under the noise levels, it simply can't be resolved. The only way for our common emissions to be recognized would be if the "other civilization" already has some receivers in our solar system or very close to it. But if we assume that we have to send something in the direction to some distant star to get their attention, then it can be better not being "too loud." For the start, even on Earth you have to have a license to use some bandwidth, and some are completely forbidden for mortals. And again, imagine some indifferent Vogon bureaucrats deciding what to do with the annoyance...
  - lmilcin 6y ago
    You are looking from the point of view of our very limited technological level. To understand the problem you need to look at physical limitations of a civilization. A civilization that has an ability to wipe off another civilisation in another remote star system will definitely be at least hitting some physical limitations if not pushing them (if our understanding of physics is wrong). We already have plans to image other planets by use of gravitational lensing with something like 25km per pixel resolution. If we can image planet surface with this resolution remember, radio signals are also being amplified by gravitational lensing. While it seems it is more complicated I don't see any technical limitation to receiving even very weak radio signals this way. I mean, if we can almost do it now it is naive to think they can't do it. Our current biggest to getting this level of image is putting drones in right, remote place in space many AUs from us. If we are talking about a civilisation that has means and time to wipe off other star system then they definitely don't have that problem.
    - acqq 6y ago
      > If we are talking about a civilisation that has means and time to wipe off other star system then they definitely don't have that problem. No, I'm not talking about a civilization that would "wipe" the star system. I'm not talking about a civilization that uses instruments bigger than the solar system only to detect us. I'm also not talking about a civilization that would be faster than light. I'm just talking about a civilization that has some very strict (imagine, like the extremists in our world, but a few orders of magnitude more) views about what they "have" to do, and that has the attention span and endurance more orders of magnitude longer than ours, meaning that they wouldn't mind to send something to the Earth even if it would take, for example, 1000 years, and then make more steps to their benefit, etc. In short, our thinking of what is "far" and "reasonable" are limited by our very short lives. I of course don't think that I should worry in my lifetime about the possible responses, but I don't think that the humanity in thousands of years should be put in danger by our "young and naïve" actions now. The dangers I see are certainly not in the magnitude of "wiping off the star system", but more like those described by Rod Serling as "to serve man." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zon... Even the current humans are certainly technologically capable to destroy our civilization as we now know it, even if there's a possibility that a few specimens of humans would survive for a while somewhere. The aliens don't have to be much more capable than that.
      - lmilcin 6y ago
        Have you actually read The Dark Forest? Because that scenario is what I was commenting about. The scenario says that the only logical conclusion is that, since resources are limited, if you are left with another civilization the most logical course of action is to preemptively, immediately strike and destroy it so that you can gain their resources and are in better position for the future encounters. For that reason all civilizations keep total silence for fear of another civilization wiping them off.
        compsciphd 6y ago
        I didn't understand the dark forest about gaining their resources in the context of the novel, (even though that's mentioned, I'll discuss below). I believe the stronger argument is about the inability to trust them at such great distances and time deltas (i.e. you can't trust, but verify). to recap: even if they meant what they said at t0, by the time you get the message at time t(1billion) (just picked a large number), their thoughts could have easily changed due to their development in the time that has elapsed. therefore, if you have the ability, the only "logical" thing is to wipe them out. Of course, this presumes the ability to wipe them out with one shot (2d foil), not get into a shooting war even if you are technologically superior (i.e. trisolarans) with that said, where I felt the logic of the novel fell apart a bit was in the context of the sophons. i.e. the technology for instantaneous communication existed (or at least was built). which negates one of the axioms. now to get back to the resource scarcity argument, while resource scarcity is mentioned, I also think it as basis is problematic. why? because a common method used to destroy these far off civilizations is effectively resource destruction (ex: collapsing 3d space into 2d space). If your goal is to maximize your resources (as opposed to minimizing your opponents resources), you don't go about "destroying" them.

JadeNB 6y ago

Does anyone know why MJD posted this? (Well, probably MJD does. So I guess I mean: Is anyone here in a position to explain why MJD posted it? Just general interest to them?)

JdeBP 6y ago
These aren't postings. They are downloadable files in a "misc¨ directory on a WWW server which is full of all sorts of stuff: https://www.plover.com/misc/ https://www.plover.com/misc/ For actual postings, in a web-log, go and look at https://blog.plover.com/2015/08/07/ https://blog.plover.com/2015/08/07/ .
floatingatoll 6y ago
mjd's reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24444125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24444125
mjd 6y ago
I posted this because around 2003 I spent a significant amount of time tracking it down. So I saved it, so that I wouldn't lose it, and so if I ever got around to writing an article about the message, I would have it handy and easy to find. This is important, because when I finally got around to writing the articles, twelve years later, I found it where I had left it. When I save something that I had trouble finding, I often try to save it in a place that other people will be able to find it, so save trouble for the next person. I don't remember where I found the paper the first time around, and I don't know if that location still exists. But stuff I throw into plover.com/~mjd/misc is (so far) available forever. There are files there that haven't been modified since 1994.
- JadeNB 6y ago
  Thank you!

mellosouls 6y ago

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Call https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Call https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-couple-guys-built-most-ambitious-alien-outreach-project-ever-180960473/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-couple-guy...

acqq 6y ago

The paper about the messages written by Dumas and Dutil: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228862784_The_Evpatoria_Messages https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228862784_The_Evpat... As I was young, I watched Star Trek and listened to Carl Sagan's positive expectations about the "first contact." But that was before the modern Internet. Now I'm much more pessimistic. I'm almost sure that the biggest chance of anything outside of Earth responding would not be something we'd like: I would expect either cosmic spam, cosmic scammers or cosmic criminals to respond. And it can be even worse, to the point of some powers that do some planned destruction out of pure indifference to what the effects are, like Douglas Adams writes: just "to make room for a hyperspatial express route" and even if the Earth was not exactly there it was close enough that the "cleaning" from "risky" lifeforms will be performed and your time to file a complaint expired, thank you very much, we really care about your opinion, to return to main menu press 0. So I'm thinking more like Hawking: “Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn’t turn out so well.” (1) ... (to Native Americans). Some quite recent news, probably influencing me: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-46-000-year-old-aboriginal-site-was-just-deliberately-destroyed-in-australia https://www.sciencealert.com/a-46-000-year-old-aboriginal-si... 1) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/stephen-hawking-controversial-physics-black-holes-bets-science/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/stephen-hawk...

bee_rider 6y ago
An alien species would certainly be incompatible with our germs, possibly incompatible with the basic life-chemisty of our planet, and would likely be far enough away that we're restricted to swapping a message like once a generation assuming we're anywhere near right about the basic laws of physics. I wouldn't worry too much about it. The worst case is they will troll us.
- gryfft 6y ago
  Oh, good. Trolling. That's never been a serious problem before.
svachalek 6y ago

joezydeco 6y ago

Well now I'm curious: what are the "questions" posed in frame 23?

mjd 6y ago
https://blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/p23.html https://blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/p23.html
- joezydeco 6y ago
  Thanks! That's helpful, but like you say it's also confusing.

mjd 6y ago

I wrote a long series of blog posts about every aspect of the messages. They are among the blog posts I'm most proud of. I think there are 25 in all, one for each of the 23 pages, and a couple of extras about the message as a whole. The first post, and table of contents: https://blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/intro.html https://blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/intro.html (I also produced good-quality, bit-for-bit bitmaps of the 23 pages; I don't think anything like this was available before. (At least, I couldn't find any.) https://pic.blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/ https://pic.blog.plover.com/aliens/dd/ )

razzfox 6y ago

Happy to see it uses my favorite map projection. Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/977/ https://xkcd.com/977/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]