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We already have very robust descriptions of how the world works at every scale, from the planck length all the way up to the limits of the observable universe,
by simonh 4y ago
We already have very robust descriptions of how the world works at every scale, from the planck length all the way up to the limits of the observable universe, and in extremes of environment from the surface of neutron stars, to the roiling virtual particles of empty space. We can calculate behaviours in these environments very precisely right now. Sure, there are things about these environments we still need to learn, but they're not utterly intractable or inconceivable to us.
There's a character Rimmer in a comedy series Red Dwarf that's always going on about how aliens would be unimaginable to use because they're alien and everything they do would be... well.. 'alien'. It's poking fun at SF that presents aliens as inherently utterly unintelligible to us simply by virtue of being alien, but frankly that's absurd. Physics doesn't care who or where you are, the same rules apply.
- TuringTest 4y agoYes, but the point I think is that the rules of symbolic reasoning are not like the rules of physics; formal systems have an arbitrary shape, so exploring the universe from a different starting point could yield a completely different method of representing it and processing information about it. And such methods needs not be compatible with our understanding of math.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoYou've already presupposed that experimenting across all those scales is somehow an integral (necessary?) part of being the kind of life that we might encounter. That could be possible, but I don't think that we can assume that.
- JackFr 4y agoYour brain is lying to you. It's not your brain's fault, really. It doesn't know any better. Your brain has a way of interpreting the sensory perceptions communicated to it. It conflates this with 'reality' because it doesn't know anything thing else. And because it doesn't have anything else, it also declares itself the universal understander. Just like there are sounds you cannot hear, and chemicals you cannot taste, wavelengths you cannot see -- consider that there may be thoughts that you physically cannot think. No magic and no spooky mysterious stuff. Just that it seems quite possible that our brains are limited in their ability to construct a representation of the universe, and insofar as the representation is true, we have kno way of knowing if it's the only true one.
- simonh 4y agoIf you know what Turing complete means, and what a universal Turing machine is and can do, and that we are examples of such, then you must realise that’s not true. Provably. Unless you’re a dualist of some sort and believe thinking is some sort of spiritual woo, in which case I can’t help you. But I can imagine what that’s like (see what I did there?). Seriously, there are sensory experiences I can’t have, but in principle no thoughts that are intractable to analysis and understanding given enough information.
- shkkmo 4y agoOur brains are technically only "turing complete" if you ignore their finite memory. (Edit: which is what is commonly meant by turing complete.) It seems pretty obvious that there are thoughts that are too big to fit inside our heads.
- simonh 4y agoAgain this is descending into nitpicking at the extremes. PG is not saying everything we understand will be in common with aliens, or that our cognitive match with them will be 1 to 1, just that there is likely to be overlap. That given the universality of human cognition, there is likely to be thoughts we can mutually appreciate. I am not claiming that human brains are capable of all thought possible to aliens, only that there will be common ground. That’s all. It’s a very minimal claim. Pointing out possible edge cases is a non sequitur. Of course there will be things we don’t have in common. Yes, we know that. The fact we’re explicitly looking at common ground from first principles implicitly acknowledges there will be ground not in common. That’s given.
- shkkmo 4y agoYou said that JackFr was provably incorrect. I'm not pointing out an edge case but pointing out the massive hole in your argument. As a limited computing system, our brain has been optimized to process the world in specific ways using various heuristics and compression techniques. Alien brains would presumably be optimized in different ways. Given our limited capabilities, it seems quite possible that translating any concepts between the two systems would be unfeasible for either our brain or the alien one. I would like to think that there would common ground but that isn't something that can be known a priori, and is thus not presently "proveable". Edit: We do have some fairly "alien" brains here on earth but we haven't had much luck teaching any mollusks any of our mathematical truths.