Caledonian:
I was responding to this:
“not because of information bounds but because of uncorrelation—that video seems (ha!) equally likely to be from any number of alien species as from humans”
by pointing out that there were ways you could see whether the movie was from aliens or humans.
You are correct in that some of my points made assumptions about which universe we were in, rather than just which planet. I should have been more clear about this. If “aliens” included beings from other possible universes then I misinterpreted Nick’s comment.
Nonetheless if the movie were long enough, you wouldn’t need the knowledge base, in principle.
In principle, you can just try all possible knowledge bases and see which is the best explanation. In practice, we don’t have that much computing power. That said, intelligences can short-cut some pretty impossible-looking searches.
Caledonian: I was responding to this: “not because of information bounds but because of uncorrelation—that video seems (ha!) equally likely to be from any number of alien species as from humans” by pointing out that there were ways you could see whether the movie was from aliens or humans.
You are correct in that some of my points made assumptions about which universe we were in, rather than just which planet. I should have been more clear about this. If “aliens” included beings from other possible universes then I misinterpreted Nick’s comment.
Nonetheless if the movie were long enough, you wouldn’t need the knowledge base, in principle. In principle, you can just try all possible knowledge bases and see which is the best explanation. In practice, we don’t have that much computing power. That said, intelligences can short-cut some pretty impossible-looking searches.