7 ms·

Unsure what the tone of this message is, so I don't know if you're aware, but that's included too: > Behind the figures of the human beings, the silhouette of

by aylmao 1y ago

Unsure what the tone of this message is, so I don't know if you're aware, but that's included too: > Behind the figures of the human beings, the silhouette of the Pioneer spacecraft is shown in the same scale so that the size of the human beings can be deduced by measuring the spacecraft. It's good to have redundancy, not just so someone interpreting the plaque can confirm their hypothesis, but also in case one of the messages fail. In this case, the spacecraft could break, but we can assume quantum transitions will always be observable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

arghwhat 1y ago
I sarcastically referenced the plaque itself, which is a convenient disc of a known size to anyone observing the drawing, unlike the space craft or physics riddles. Using quantum transitions is quite ridiculous in my opinion due to requiring not only the observer to have a perfectly compatible understanding of physics (even a more advanced understanding might not be compatible - maybe they don't categorize elements by electrons, or even treat elemental particles as a quantifiable entity), combined with the sheer number of deductions required to understand what was meant with two circles and a few lines. I doubt we would ever have decoded this had we been the recipient rather than author, and that's with a perfectly compatible understanding of physics.
- spullara 1y ago
  Do you think that physics is somehow subjective? We absolutely would have decoded the message.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - cuttothechase 1y ago
    Our understanding evolves, course corrects, spins off etc., we can use some static value as purported from the dark ages or by newtonian or later einstenian points of view. They all are measurably correct for the problems that they are trying to solve for the people who lived during those times. A million years from now would these values still be relevant or be considered as having the same value of importance or will they be replaced by even more finer and precise and contextually different values that could be more precise and more accurate etc.,
    - arghwhat 1y ago
      Indeed. Say, maybe a civilization didn't start out with trying to build the world of particles of progressively finer size, but started directly with a model of fields, waves and charges and therefore never had a concept of a discrete elemental particle, and in turn a system built around that to categorize elements. Or to them, an atom is as large an arbitrary macro structure as proteins are to us, and so they would never consider two empty circles with a single line to represent something so big and chaotic. Or maybe they had the crazy idea of building everything of vibrating strings! Who knows what the abstractions and approximations would be when the foundation of it all isn't "getting hit on the head by an apple".
  - monadINtop 1y ago
    As a theoretical physicist, yes physics could definitely be subjective between different species. Physics is the way HUMANS describe nature to themselves. I don't doubt that it describes some greater nature outside of us that is invariant, but it is only a description - not the thing itself. Like mathematics it is an anthropocentric conceptualization that has many arbitrary and historically contingent choices in its choice of representation and its chosen objects of study. How could we ever be certain than another intelligence (whatever that means) would be capable of understanding the intended message? Unless of course we are already starting off with the major assumption that the only things that can be intelligent are things like us. I'm not even sure that intelligent has any meaning aside from denoting behavior "similar to us".
    - spullara 1y ago
      If they could discover the probe at all and view the plaque, lots of things are already very similar.
      - monadINtop 1y ago
        Yeah perhaps, but its really hard to say anything concrete either way
  - wongarsu 1y ago
    Physics is a model of reality. Reality is objective, but the model we have chosen is very much "subjective" (maybe arbitrary is a better term). It's easy to imagine that another species might have never conceptualized electrons as little balls orbiting around a nucleus. They are neither balls nor are they flying in circles, those are simply abstractions we like because they appeal to the way we perceive reality. The way we conceptualize electrons leads to issues like the wave-particle duality, so it's likely just a local optimum we got stuck in. Another species might not even think of Electrons as being distinct entities, maybe they think of the electron field as one large ocean with some waves in it, or they subscribe to the single electron theory, or something we have never thought of and might never imagine from our perspective.
    - mannykannot 1y ago
      "Arbitrary" ("existing or coming about seemingly at random or by chance or as a capricious and unreasonable act of will", "based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something" [1]) is a very poor term. Not only is physics highly constrained by what can be observed in the universe, it is also capable of demonstrating (when it is actually the case) equivalences between apparently dissimilar modes of presentation. It is not perfect, but can you present anything that does better? [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arbitrary https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arbitrary
      - freehorse 1y ago
        > is physics highly constrained by what can be observed in the universe It is also very highly constrained by how _we_ observe the universe. Beings with different sensory/cognitive capacities could develop very different models. > equivalences between apparently dissimilar modes of presentation If there was some mathematical equivalence between their models and ours, which is already a leap to assume, there is still a question about whether the specific measure used would be translated to something equivalent to our object length measure in their model, which gets much stronger than just some equivalence assumption. And it’s even stronger to assume that this equivalence could just be inferred without any other information apart from the disk.
- petsfed 1y ago
  I submit that if the concept of quantum transitions is alien to whatever recipient of that probe (if ever), then any attempts to communicate are hopeless anyway. That is, if the recipient's physical reality is so different from our own that they can't at least get back to "oh, this distance means that transition, now the rest of the plaque makes sense", then no asynchronous communication will bridge that gap.
  - arghwhat 1y ago
    There is no relation between the ability to communicate and a shared understanding of our concept of quantum transitions - case in point, our invention of the technology we use to communicate with deep space far predates us learning these concepts ourselves. I'd also hold that the only thing this plaque could ever give is clear sign of artificial creation, and by virtue the (possibly past) existence of some entity capable of creating it. Maybe they'll get a vague idea of what we look like, but if "their" culture does not commonly depict themselves in 2D as we do, or "they" have vastly different morphologies, even that would be unclear. The context needed to understand our attempt at showing our location might also be lost if the thing went far enough.
    - fc417fc802 1y ago
      > our invention of the technology we use to communicate with deep space far predates us learning these concepts ourselves. Maxwell published in 1873. The double slit experiment was 1803, subatomic theory developed throughout the 1800s, and Planck proposed quanta in 1900. The first radio transmission across the Atlantic came approximately 2 years after Planck's theory. I doubt it is plausible to develop anything resembling industrial technology without stumbling across certain fundamental truths in the process because doing so requires a sufficiently accurate model of physics.
      - arghwhat 1y ago
        The period you're describing is that of old quantum theory, which was hugely inconsistent and predates our theories of modern quantum mechanics which is post 1925 or so. The inventor of the arc converter was 18 at the time radio waves were discovered, 34 at the time he invented the arc converter, but 56 and with only 17 years left till his death when the era of modern quantum mechanics started with the invention of wave mechanics. It's a lifetime apart. Some discoveries were made during that period that are of course still relevant.
- m4rtink 1y ago
  What if you end up with a picture of the record & everything else gets lost - that riddle will still work. Say the civilisation that found it collapses & leaves behind some garbled data, including a picture of the record. Or even future human data archeologists digging through a mix of 20 & 21 century data heavily polluted by AI slop. ;-)
  - arghwhat 1y ago
    Making the data fault tolerant to the discovery by another civilization, its collapse and later rediscovery by another civilization seems a bit of a stretch goal. :)
    - fc417fc802 1y ago
      Compared to a cold object being detected and then picked up from somewhere out in deep space?
      - arghwhat 1y ago
        That's the "discovery by another civilization" part, so yes.
      - m4rtink 1y ago
        Maybe you could detect the directional radio beam we used to talk to it first ? Would be likely doable with a stellar scale radio telescope array.
    - mannykannot 1y ago
      It was always a very long shot, regardless of who might be the recipients. Would we have been better off if it had not been done?
  - cuttothechase 1y ago
    What if extraterrestrial "intelligence" didn't have a reason to "evolve" functional equivalents of a visual cortex. Even on earth where having vision gives a distinct evolutionary advantage over non-vision based living forms, species without vision far outnumber those with vision.
- mquander 1y ago
  If we picked up that plaque from space with an illustration of some aliens and an alien solar system and someone Tweeted it, the correct hypothesis for the numbering would develop plurality consensus within one hour. I don't know if aliens would decode it but it's not right that humans wouldn't decode it.
  - adonovan 1y ago
    I highly doubt it, but it might deliver some memorable zingers about nude aliens.
    - bigiain 1y ago
      And probably complaints about "wokeness" from the Galactic Twitter owner because it used a woman as the size reference... :sigh: I hope I never live to see Galactic Twitter.
    - arghwhat 1y ago
      Not to mention that several dozen new cults formed around the plaque.
- jdhwosnhw 1y ago
  The 21 cm line was chosen specifically because it’s the brightest line in the radio regime in our galaxy. Any civilization in the Milky Way capable of developing electromagnetic sensors would see that emission. There is a game theoretic component to this, as these other civilizations would also know that we could also see that line, and thus understand its importance
  - arghwhat 1y ago
    The prevalence of the 21 cm wavelength is something they would likely discover should they be in a part of the universe similar to ours. What I find laughable is the means of trying to communicate this wavelength and using it as a means to indicate our size. Now if you go the other way, referenced 21 cm as a well known quantity (say, by making the plaque 21cm wide and referencing its diameter) and used that to describe the hydrogen spin flip in order to teach or communicate our level of physics understanding rather than depend on a shared understanding, then I'd say it makes more sense.

by aylmao 1y ago

arghwhat 1y ago

I sarcastically referenced the plaque itself, which is a convenient disc of a known size to anyone observing the drawing, unlike the space craft or physics riddles. Using quantum transitions is quite ridiculous in my opinion due to requiring not only the observer to have a perfectly compatible understanding of physics (even a more advanced understanding might not be compatible - maybe they don't categorize elements by electrons, or even treat elemental particles as a quantifiable entity), combined with the sheer number of deductions required to understand what was meant with two circles and a few lines. I doubt we would ever have decoded this had we been the recipient rather than author, and that's with a perfectly compatible understanding of physics.

spullara 1y ago
Do you think that physics is somehow subjective? We absolutely would have decoded the message.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- cuttothechase 1y ago
  Our understanding evolves, course corrects, spins off etc., we can use some static value as purported from the dark ages or by newtonian or later einstenian points of view. They all are measurably correct for the problems that they are trying to solve for the people who lived during those times. A million years from now would these values still be relevant or be considered as having the same value of importance or will they be replaced by even more finer and precise and contextually different values that could be more precise and more accurate etc.,
  - arghwhat 1y ago
    Indeed. Say, maybe a civilization didn't start out with trying to build the world of particles of progressively finer size, but started directly with a model of fields, waves and charges and therefore never had a concept of a discrete elemental particle, and in turn a system built around that to categorize elements. Or to them, an atom is as large an arbitrary macro structure as proteins are to us, and so they would never consider two empty circles with a single line to represent something so big and chaotic. Or maybe they had the crazy idea of building everything of vibrating strings! Who knows what the abstractions and approximations would be when the foundation of it all isn't "getting hit on the head by an apple".
- monadINtop 1y ago
  As a theoretical physicist, yes physics could definitely be subjective between different species. Physics is the way HUMANS describe nature to themselves. I don't doubt that it describes some greater nature outside of us that is invariant, but it is only a description - not the thing itself. Like mathematics it is an anthropocentric conceptualization that has many arbitrary and historically contingent choices in its choice of representation and its chosen objects of study. How could we ever be certain than another intelligence (whatever that means) would be capable of understanding the intended message? Unless of course we are already starting off with the major assumption that the only things that can be intelligent are things like us. I'm not even sure that intelligent has any meaning aside from denoting behavior "similar to us".
  - spullara 1y ago
    If they could discover the probe at all and view the plaque, lots of things are already very similar.
    - monadINtop 1y ago
      Yeah perhaps, but its really hard to say anything concrete either way
- wongarsu 1y ago
  Physics is a model of reality. Reality is objective, but the model we have chosen is very much "subjective" (maybe arbitrary is a better term). It's easy to imagine that another species might have never conceptualized electrons as little balls orbiting around a nucleus. They are neither balls nor are they flying in circles, those are simply abstractions we like because they appeal to the way we perceive reality. The way we conceptualize electrons leads to issues like the wave-particle duality, so it's likely just a local optimum we got stuck in. Another species might not even think of Electrons as being distinct entities, maybe they think of the electron field as one large ocean with some waves in it, or they subscribe to the single electron theory, or something we have never thought of and might never imagine from our perspective.
  - mannykannot 1y ago
    "Arbitrary" ("existing or coming about seemingly at random or by chance or as a capricious and unreasonable act of will", "based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something" [1]) is a very poor term. Not only is physics highly constrained by what can be observed in the universe, it is also capable of demonstrating (when it is actually the case) equivalences between apparently dissimilar modes of presentation. It is not perfect, but can you present anything that does better? [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arbitrary https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arbitrary
    - freehorse 1y ago
      > is physics highly constrained by what can be observed in the universe It is also very highly constrained by how _we_ observe the universe. Beings with different sensory/cognitive capacities could develop very different models. > equivalences between apparently dissimilar modes of presentation If there was some mathematical equivalence between their models and ours, which is already a leap to assume, there is still a question about whether the specific measure used would be translated to something equivalent to our object length measure in their model, which gets much stronger than just some equivalence assumption. And it’s even stronger to assume that this equivalence could just be inferred without any other information apart from the disk.
petsfed 1y ago
I submit that if the concept of quantum transitions is alien to whatever recipient of that probe (if ever), then any attempts to communicate are hopeless anyway. That is, if the recipient's physical reality is so different from our own that they can't at least get back to "oh, this distance means that transition, now the rest of the plaque makes sense", then no asynchronous communication will bridge that gap.
- arghwhat 1y ago
  There is no relation between the ability to communicate and a shared understanding of our concept of quantum transitions - case in point, our invention of the technology we use to communicate with deep space far predates us learning these concepts ourselves. I'd also hold that the only thing this plaque could ever give is clear sign of artificial creation, and by virtue the (possibly past) existence of some entity capable of creating it. Maybe they'll get a vague idea of what we look like, but if "their" culture does not commonly depict themselves in 2D as we do, or "they" have vastly different morphologies, even that would be unclear. The context needed to understand our attempt at showing our location might also be lost if the thing went far enough.
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    > our invention of the technology we use to communicate with deep space far predates us learning these concepts ourselves. Maxwell published in 1873. The double slit experiment was 1803, subatomic theory developed throughout the 1800s, and Planck proposed quanta in 1900. The first radio transmission across the Atlantic came approximately 2 years after Planck's theory. I doubt it is plausible to develop anything resembling industrial technology without stumbling across certain fundamental truths in the process because doing so requires a sufficiently accurate model of physics.
    - arghwhat 1y ago
      The period you're describing is that of old quantum theory, which was hugely inconsistent and predates our theories of modern quantum mechanics which is post 1925 or so. The inventor of the arc converter was 18 at the time radio waves were discovered, 34 at the time he invented the arc converter, but 56 and with only 17 years left till his death when the era of modern quantum mechanics started with the invention of wave mechanics. It's a lifetime apart. Some discoveries were made during that period that are of course still relevant.
m4rtink 1y ago
What if you end up with a picture of the record & everything else gets lost - that riddle will still work. Say the civilisation that found it collapses & leaves behind some garbled data, including a picture of the record. Or even future human data archeologists digging through a mix of 20 & 21 century data heavily polluted by AI slop. ;-)
- arghwhat 1y ago
  Making the data fault tolerant to the discovery by another civilization, its collapse and later rediscovery by another civilization seems a bit of a stretch goal. :)
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    Compared to a cold object being detected and then picked up from somewhere out in deep space?
    - arghwhat 1y ago
      That's the "discovery by another civilization" part, so yes.
    - m4rtink 1y ago
      Maybe you could detect the directional radio beam we used to talk to it first ? Would be likely doable with a stellar scale radio telescope array.
  - mannykannot 1y ago
    It was always a very long shot, regardless of who might be the recipients. Would we have been better off if it had not been done?
- cuttothechase 1y ago
  What if extraterrestrial "intelligence" didn't have a reason to "evolve" functional equivalents of a visual cortex. Even on earth where having vision gives a distinct evolutionary advantage over non-vision based living forms, species without vision far outnumber those with vision.
mquander 1y ago
If we picked up that plaque from space with an illustration of some aliens and an alien solar system and someone Tweeted it, the correct hypothesis for the numbering would develop plurality consensus within one hour. I don't know if aliens would decode it but it's not right that humans wouldn't decode it.
- adonovan 1y ago
  I highly doubt it, but it might deliver some memorable zingers about nude aliens.
  - bigiain 1y ago
    And probably complaints about "wokeness" from the Galactic Twitter owner because it used a woman as the size reference... :sigh: I hope I never live to see Galactic Twitter.
  - arghwhat 1y ago
    Not to mention that several dozen new cults formed around the plaque.
jdhwosnhw 1y ago
The 21 cm line was chosen specifically because it’s the brightest line in the radio regime in our galaxy. Any civilization in the Milky Way capable of developing electromagnetic sensors would see that emission. There is a game theoretic component to this, as these other civilizations would also know that we could also see that line, and thus understand its importance
- arghwhat 1y ago
  The prevalence of the 21 cm wavelength is something they would likely discover should they be in a part of the universe similar to ours. What I find laughable is the means of trying to communicate this wavelength and using it as a means to indicate our size. Now if you go the other way, referenced 21 cm as a well known quantity (say, by making the plaque 21cm wide and referencing its diameter) and used that to describe the hydrogen spin flip in order to teach or communicate our level of physics understanding rather than depend on a shared understanding, then I'd say it makes more sense.