Instead of sending flat messages into space, why not send an explorable environment?
This idea is in Extraterrestrial Languages, Daniel Oberhaus’ excellent history of attempts to talk to aliens (read last year).
e.g. there’s the famous Arecibo message, transmitted in the direction of Messier 13 in 1974 (the message will arrive in 22,000 years, by which time M13 may have moved out of the way). The message is a pixel grid, 73 by 23, which shows atomic numbers and a pictogram of a person.
Here’s a list of other interstellar messages, and they’re the same more-or-less: data with enough clues to say “hey try and decode me” with some fundamental information communicated as simply as possible. Who knows what alien intelligences might be like.
BUT:
Paul Fitzpatrick’s insight was that if you can send a message, you can send mathematical equations. And if you can send equations, you can send the rules of a programming language. And then you can send executable code. And then…
The idea behind Cosmic OS is that by beginning with simple math, it is possible to construct a programming language that can simulate an interactive virtual environment for an extraterrestrial intelligence. Such a rich environment would in principle allow the extraterrestrial to manipulate the program to get a better idea of the social and behavioral properties of the Earthlings who sent the message.
Here’s CosmicOS on GitHub. The code is open; it’s an ongoing project. (Cosmic OS hasn’t yet been sent into space.)
There’s a demo too. You can see the message, and run the code. There are a large number of statements, building up to abstract objects of “things” and “rooms” and “robos” (things that can move) and a few others.
Until eventually…
“New York” and “Boston” are connected, north and south, with an “autobus” that moves between them.
I mean, it’s basic.
But it shows the power of Fitzpatrick’s idea.
Instead of a description, which is what previous messages have been, an interactive environment - even a simple one - shows ontology, behaviour, and context. It allows the alien to build their own understanding of our world because they get to experience it, well, not exactly directly, but almost. It’s such a better way to transmit knowledge and understanding.
If we can transmit immersive environments to aliens, why not to each other?
Instead of sending a Powerpoint deck, why not a self-contained wiki? A packaged hypertext.
Instead of preparing a Google Doc, why not build a miniature explorable world? Not VR in photorealistic 3D, but a virtual reality of (mainly) text.
I would like to email a “file” which is a playable, navigable space of words, pictures, and embedded bots to have conversations with, at the end of which the recipient understands my ideas just as much as if I had used bulleted lists and diagrams. Their comments should come back to me as in-game questions that I can answer with environmental embellishments. This “world document” should be as easy to author, and as endlessly flexible, as a spreadsheet.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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Instead of sending flat messages into space, why not send an explorable environment?
This idea is in Extraterrestrial Languages, Daniel Oberhaus’ excellent history of attempts to talk to aliens (read last year).
e.g. there’s the famous Arecibo message, transmitted in the direction of Messier 13 in 1974 (the message will arrive in 22,000 years, by which time M13 may have moved out of the way). The message is a pixel grid, 73 by 23, which shows atomic numbers and a pictogram of a person.
Here’s a list of other interstellar messages, and they’re the same more-or-less: data with enough clues to say “hey try and decode me” with some fundamental information communicated as simply as possible. Who knows what alien intelligences might be like.
BUT:
Paul Fitzpatrick’s insight was that if you can send a message, you can send mathematical equations. And if you can send equations, you can send the rules of a programming language. And then you can send executable code. And then…
Here’s CosmicOS on GitHub. The code is open; it’s an ongoing project. (Cosmic OS hasn’t yet been sent into space.)
There’s a demo too. You can see the message, and run the code. There are a large number of statements, building up to abstract objects of “things” and “rooms” and “robos” (things that can move) and a few others.
Until eventually…
“New York” and “Boston” are connected, north and south, with an “autobus” that moves between them.
I mean, it’s basic.
But it shows the power of Fitzpatrick’s idea.
Instead of a description, which is what previous messages have been, an interactive environment - even a simple one - shows ontology, behaviour, and context. It allows the alien to build their own understanding of our world because they get to experience it, well, not exactly directly, but almost. It’s such a better way to transmit knowledge and understanding.
If we can transmit immersive environments to aliens, why not to each other?
Instead of sending a Powerpoint deck, why not a self-contained wiki? A packaged hypertext.
Instead of preparing a Google Doc, why not build a miniature explorable world? Not VR in photorealistic 3D, but a virtual reality of (mainly) text.
I would like to email a “file” which is a playable, navigable space of words, pictures, and embedded bots to have conversations with, at the end of which the recipient understands my ideas just as much as if I had used bulleted lists and diagrams. Their comments should come back to me as in-game questions that I can answer with environmental embellishments. This “world document” should be as easy to author, and as endlessly flexible, as a spreadsheet.