The hard step is only in establishing the very first few conventions, after that it becomes trivial.
Take a binary-colored picture of a circle (outline only), on a square background. Just transmit one line after the next (all appended), for linebreaks use a sequence that doesn’t otherwise occur, e.g. ’11′. Every optimizer worth its salt should figure out that the least complex / most compressible representation of that overall pattern will be to break up the transmission at those linebreaks such that the ’1’s representing the circle are close to each other, forming a circle.
Vary with various image sizes, to establish that point. Since it’s symmetrical, left-to-right and right-to-left doesn’t matter. Then you can start transmitting various black and white pictures of stars and their spectra, assigning other encodings to them (if you insist on colors).
There may be a surprise if the whole time the aliens thought the pictures were meant to be interpreted upside down, and wonder why you’re not standing on your head when they meet us. But the gist should get through.
There may be a surprise if the whole time the aliens thought the pictures were meant to be interpreted upside down, and wonder why you’re not standing on your head when they meet us. But the gist should get through.
If, once you finally meet, the alien greets you and holds out his left hand to shake… do not touch it!
“We are happy to assist with the creation of many more humans using this nuclear weapon. We know that sadly they will eventually all perish in a female’s womb, having shriveled away into nothing.”
The first convention is that the sequence is coded by flashes of intensity distinct in time with a beginning and end. (rather than the information being the Fourier transform of the light wave, or any other property of light).
Once we have established what 1 and 0 are, how to decode an ordered string of them, and that we are drawing a picture with a bitmap (as opposed to a vector encoding, or an image encoding foreign to human computer science), we have to establish that we are using scanlines (as opposed to any other way of ordering a bitmap). We also need a line break sequence which is guaranteed to never occur outside a line break; that means that the line break pattern has to be a sequence of bits which cannot occur within the line. (not ‘doesn’t occur in this particular image’) That requirement breaks any simple binary encoding.
Something as simple as transmitting the image using a different order for the pixels, like a spiral on a hexagonal grid, would be difficult to decode. Something complicated, like encoding the message into a transform of the wave or an interference pattern of two waves, would be impossible to notice even if the sending civilization was using electromagnetic radiation to send their message.
I’m also not sure why an image of a particular star or geometric figure would be first; I’d transmit the cosmic background radiation as the first image. That allows the receiver to use their own observations to confirm their understanding of our encoding.
Sending strange patterns on the same frequency is a good way to assure that our signal—if received—gets classified as ‘generated by an unknown phenomenon’. Unless we’re transmitting on many frequencies or change the amplitude (signal strength), the Fourier transform would just yield a single number. If all we vary are the times between bursts, it should be quite clear that the information lies somewhere in the time between bursts. I’m no expert in this, though (shrug).
We also need a line break sequence which is guaranteed to never occur outside a line break; that means that the line break pattern has to be a sequence of bits which cannot occur within the line. (not ‘doesn’t occur in this particular image’) That requirement breaks any simple binary encoding.
You’re thinking about establishing the final encoding that can be used for all subsequent communications, but that’s not necessary. These aren’t the Golden Plates which need to contain everything we’ll “ever” communicate (although their approach is relevant to our discussion, it’s a different scenario).
The one thing that (nearly?) any optimizer should be able to do (to ever have evolved in the first place) is to notice patterns in its environment, and to have a tendency to compress those patterns into their simplest representations (model building). Only when arranging the lines such that a circle (and a line on one side representing the ’11′ line breaks) emerges is the pattern simplest to describe.
At some later point we can still move to a more sophisticated line break representation, slowly varying the encoding of that baseline calibration picture, we could even keep the ’11′ for nostalgia’s sake.
I’m also not sure why an image of a particular star or geometric figure would be first;
Using cosmic background radiation introduces new elements to be figured out (e.g. how you visualize frequencies). Anyways, we’re not bandwidth limited in any meaningful sense, so there’s no need to rush things. (Re: circle—see above)
How are you modulating a carrier wave if you aren’t varying frequency or amplitude?
Would you notice a transmission which consisted of a constant illumination equivalent to that produced by a number of lasers with frequencies that were linked to powers of two? Instead of “On, on, off, off, on, off” separated by time, there would be a single signal which would scope to the same wave as “sin(x)+sin(2x)+sin(16x)” or “”sin(x)+1/2sin(2x)+1/16sin(16x)”
Meanwhile, because we’re broadcasting AM broadcasts on many different frequencies, they’re trying to figure out a:Why and how our transmitter is failing intermittently on such a fast scale b:What our baseline frequency is. c:How to decode the vast wealth of information they have.
If all we do is notice patterns and automatically ascribe meaning to them, we end up looking at pulsars. For that matter, what evidence do we have that pulsars aren’t the result of intelligent communication? Can you construct a ‘universal’ encoding which could be communicated using only the properties of pulsars? Could you decode such an encoding?
The hard step is only in establishing the very first few conventions, after that it becomes trivial.
Take a binary-colored picture of a circle (outline only), on a square background. Just transmit one line after the next (all appended), for linebreaks use a sequence that doesn’t otherwise occur, e.g. ’11′. Every optimizer worth its salt should figure out that the least complex / most compressible representation of that overall pattern will be to break up the transmission at those linebreaks such that the ’1’s representing the circle are close to each other, forming a circle.
Vary with various image sizes, to establish that point. Since it’s symmetrical, left-to-right and right-to-left doesn’t matter. Then you can start transmitting various black and white pictures of stars and their spectra, assigning other encodings to them (if you insist on colors).
There may be a surprise if the whole time the aliens thought the pictures were meant to be interpreted upside down, and wonder why you’re not standing on your head when they meet us. But the gist should get through.
If, once you finally meet, the alien greets you and holds out his left hand to shake… do not touch it!
“We are happy to assist with the creation of many more humans using this nuclear weapon. We know that sadly they will eventually all perish in a female’s womb, having shriveled away into nothing.”
The first convention is that the sequence is coded by flashes of intensity distinct in time with a beginning and end. (rather than the information being the Fourier transform of the light wave, or any other property of light).
Once we have established what 1 and 0 are, how to decode an ordered string of them, and that we are drawing a picture with a bitmap (as opposed to a vector encoding, or an image encoding foreign to human computer science), we have to establish that we are using scanlines (as opposed to any other way of ordering a bitmap). We also need a line break sequence which is guaranteed to never occur outside a line break; that means that the line break pattern has to be a sequence of bits which cannot occur within the line. (not ‘doesn’t occur in this particular image’) That requirement breaks any simple binary encoding.
Something as simple as transmitting the image using a different order for the pixels, like a spiral on a hexagonal grid, would be difficult to decode. Something complicated, like encoding the message into a transform of the wave or an interference pattern of two waves, would be impossible to notice even if the sending civilization was using electromagnetic radiation to send their message.
I’m also not sure why an image of a particular star or geometric figure would be first; I’d transmit the cosmic background radiation as the first image. That allows the receiver to use their own observations to confirm their understanding of our encoding.
Sending strange patterns on the same frequency is a good way to assure that our signal—if received—gets classified as ‘generated by an unknown phenomenon’. Unless we’re transmitting on many frequencies or change the amplitude (signal strength), the Fourier transform would just yield a single number. If all we vary are the times between bursts, it should be quite clear that the information lies somewhere in the time between bursts. I’m no expert in this, though (shrug).
You’re thinking about establishing the final encoding that can be used for all subsequent communications, but that’s not necessary. These aren’t the Golden Plates which need to contain everything we’ll “ever” communicate (although their approach is relevant to our discussion, it’s a different scenario).
The one thing that (nearly?) any optimizer should be able to do (to ever have evolved in the first place) is to notice patterns in its environment, and to have a tendency to compress those patterns into their simplest representations (model building). Only when arranging the lines such that a circle (and a line on one side representing the ’11′ line breaks) emerges is the pattern simplest to describe.
At some later point we can still move to a more sophisticated line break representation, slowly varying the encoding of that baseline calibration picture, we could even keep the ’11′ for nostalgia’s sake.
Using cosmic background radiation introduces new elements to be figured out (e.g. how you visualize frequencies). Anyways, we’re not bandwidth limited in any meaningful sense, so there’s no need to rush things. (Re: circle—see above)
How are you modulating a carrier wave if you aren’t varying frequency or amplitude?
Would you notice a transmission which consisted of a constant illumination equivalent to that produced by a number of lasers with frequencies that were linked to powers of two? Instead of “On, on, off, off, on, off” separated by time, there would be a single signal which would scope to the same wave as “sin(x)+sin(2x)+sin(16x)” or “”sin(x)+1/2sin(2x)+1/16sin(16x)”
Meanwhile, because we’re broadcasting AM broadcasts on many different frequencies, they’re trying to figure out
a:Why and how our transmitter is failing intermittently on such a fast scale
b:What our baseline frequency is.
c:How to decode the vast wealth of information they have.
If all we do is notice patterns and automatically ascribe meaning to them, we end up looking at pulsars. For that matter, what evidence do we have that pulsars aren’t the result of intelligent communication? Can you construct a ‘universal’ encoding which could be communicated using only the properties of pulsars? Could you decode such an encoding?