4 ms·

But you disprove yourself in the same observation, no? we can detect language pretty reliably without being able to decode it

• thih9 2y ago
  No, we only happened to detect a language; still, we thought it’s simpler than it actually is, even though we are on the same planet and carbon based, with similar life spans, sizes, etc. I wouldn’t say we can reliably detect languages, I’m sure there are many more communications between earth species that we’re still not seeing, not noticing or otherwise misclassifying.
  • photonthug 2y ago
    All language is going to be governed by information theory though, so I would think that if we have trouble detecting language then either a) we’re not looking very hard, or b) the comms are so efficient it’s approaching indistinguishable from white noise. Later category seems unlikely with animals, but I could see it being the case for hive minds leveraging emergent properties of simple behaviors like in bee dancing or ant pheromones
    • thih9 2y ago
      Maybe even both a&b can happen at once. The article also mentions Fermi’s paradox and “the great filter”, a proposed solution. There are more[1], notably: “our search methodologies are flawed and we are not searching for the correct indicators”. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_extraterrestrial_intelligence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_extraterrestrial_...