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This seems a bit backwards to me. It's only futile to blast ABBA songs (or other human-like signals) into space if we think human-like intelligence is special.

This seems a bit backwards to me. It's only futile to blast ABBA songs (or other human-like signals) into space if we think human-like intelligence is special. It's precisely because we believe human-like intelligence is _not_ special that blasting (or listening for) space signals makes any sense. The assumption is that other civilizations will converge on some of the same technology that we've developed and recognize a patterned signal when they see one.

mFixman 5y ago
> The assumption is that other civilizations will converge on some of the same technology that we've developed and recognize a patterned signal when they see one. Why would anyone think that? No other species in the history of the Earth has the ability to create human languages. Nobody outside the tiny group of 0.1% of humanity can speak Swedish. No single rock we've observed outside our planet can even understand the concept of a word like "Läderlappen" or "Knullruffs". Those 10 million people are alone in the Universe as developers and speakers of Swedish just like these 7.9 billion people are alone in the Universe as developers and users of human-like intelligence. Blasting signals into space is the same as singing ABBA songs really loud: maybe a sci-fi civilization of Klingons who speak a Swedish-like language could understand it, but in our Universe there's no chance that some extraterrestrial thing will converge on the same languages or technologies as we did.
- T-A 5y ago
  Radio is currently the only realistic means of interstellar communication at our disposal, so we listen for (and sometimes send [1]) radio waves. In other words, we look for aliens equipped with radio telescopes, because they are the only kind we can hope to find. The choice of language follows from that. To have technology at the level of radio telescopes, you need to understand physics at mid-20th century level (or higher). To understand physics at that level, you need math at the level of calculus and differential equations. So we look for, and sometimes send, messages which start with simple mathematical relations and then build up to physical quantities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message
betwixthewires 5y ago
I think what he means by "special" is that "every civilization will go through the same phases we go through" and not "we are the only ones that have it." This disagreement really hinges on that very disparate use of the term "special."
- mFixman 5y ago
  That's my point: I strongly disagree with the "every civilization will go through the same phases we go through" statement. I also disagree that "civilization" is something that could be applied to non-human things and not an arbitrary property of humanity like "Swedish speaker".

mFixman 5y ago

> The assumption is that other civilizations will converge on some of the same technology that we've developed and recognize a patterned signal when they see one. Why would anyone think that? No other species in the history of the Earth has the ability to create human languages. Nobody outside the tiny group of 0.1% of humanity can speak Swedish. No single rock we've observed outside our planet can even understand the concept of a word like "Läderlappen" or "Knullruffs". Those 10 million people are alone in the Universe as developers and speakers of Swedish just like these 7.9 billion people are alone in the Universe as developers and users of human-like intelligence. Blasting signals into space is the same as singing ABBA songs really loud: maybe a sci-fi civilization of Klingons who speak a Swedish-like language could understand it, but in our Universe there's no chance that some extraterrestrial thing will converge on the same languages or technologies as we did.

T-A 5y ago
Radio is currently the only realistic means of interstellar communication at our disposal, so we listen for (and sometimes send [1]) radio waves. In other words, we look for aliens equipped with radio telescopes, because they are the only kind we can hope to find. The choice of language follows from that. To have technology at the level of radio telescopes, you need to understand physics at mid-20th century level (or higher). To understand physics at that level, you need math at the level of calculus and differential equations. So we look for, and sometimes send, messages which start with simple mathematical relations and then build up to physical quantities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message

betwixthewires 5y ago

I think what he means by "special" is that "every civilization will go through the same phases we go through" and not "we are the only ones that have it." This disagreement really hinges on that very disparate use of the term "special."

mFixman 5y ago
That's my point: I strongly disagree with the "every civilization will go through the same phases we go through" statement. I also disagree that "civilization" is something that could be applied to non-human things and not an arbitrary property of humanity like "Swedish speaker".