I’m also basically happy to assume that they know exactly what our civilization is looking for and so can optimize their solution to be noticeable to us. (After all, they’ve run a billion billion simulations of civilizations like ours, they know the distribution, they can spend 5x as much energy to cover the whole thing.)
Okay, so a critical response here. Is it just me? The above seems very irrational and illogical to me. Knowledge of any true distribution doesn’t say very much about any specific member of the population much less “exactly what” a given member’s characteristics are. Simulations, without any underlying empirical basis cannot be anything other than speculative effort and so provide no insight on something like a real distribution.
I think the unrealistic assumption that the alien civilization knows what we would be looking for could be used for simplification, but to my mind also makes the question a technical problem of how to give us what we are looking for and not how to get some external civilization to notice. In that case they simply need to have the technology to put a sign up that says “We are here.” Adding the little arrow would be a bonus ;-) That should be simple enough by manipulating the frequency of light from selected stars in the galaxy.
The question is: how broad is the distribution of stuff that a civilization like ours might look for?
If the distribution is extremely broad, then I agree that knowing the distribution isn’t that helpful. (For example, they know the distribution of years at which we might be listening, but it doesn’t help them since there are lots of years.)
In that case they simply need to have the technology to put a sign up that says “We are here.” Adding the little arrow would be a bonus ;-) That should be simple enough by manipulating the frequency of light from selected stars in the galaxy.
Actually trying to make a sign seems out, since it only works from one direction, and I assume that we lack the resolution. Manipulating the frequency of stars is fair game if a small enough manipulation would work, that’s the kind of thing I meant by “disfigure.”
Okay, so a critical response here. Is it just me? The above seems very irrational and illogical to me. Knowledge of any true distribution doesn’t say very much about any specific member of the population much less “exactly what” a given member’s characteristics are. Simulations, without any underlying empirical basis cannot be anything other than speculative effort and so provide no insight on something like a real distribution.
I think the unrealistic assumption that the alien civilization knows what we would be looking for could be used for simplification, but to my mind also makes the question a technical problem of how to give us what we are looking for and not how to get some external civilization to notice. In that case they simply need to have the technology to put a sign up that says “We are here.” Adding the little arrow would be a bonus ;-) That should be simple enough by manipulating the frequency of light from selected stars in the galaxy.
The question is: how broad is the distribution of stuff that a civilization like ours might look for?
If the distribution is extremely broad, then I agree that knowing the distribution isn’t that helpful. (For example, they know the distribution of years at which we might be listening, but it doesn’t help them since there are lots of years.)
Actually trying to make a sign seems out, since it only works from one direction, and I assume that we lack the resolution. Manipulating the frequency of stars is fair game if a small enough manipulation would work, that’s the kind of thing I meant by “disfigure.”