A potential mental model: we cannot communicate. I need to *imply* a computer program by giving you a file to parse, based on the file contents, but I also need to create the file contents based on what you would also want the file contents to be given that we have the shared goal of independently writing a program to parse the file. Therefore we do not need to share anything and can write the program. Is this possible?

Posted in: s/permacomputing

🐉 gyaradong [mod]

2023-10-31 · 7 months ago

6 Comments ↓

🐉 gyaradong [OP/mod] · 2023-10-31 at 13:18:

I realise I'm probably defining some sort of universal truth solver, but I was thinking more along the lines of the voyager record.

🚀 StanStani · Feb 07 at 16:14:

The 3- Body Problem deals with bootstrapping communication.

🌲 Half_Elf_Monk · Mar 20 at 17:43:

What can we assume about those attempting to communicate? Human beings? English language? Intent to communicate? If the end goal is communication through digital networks, it seems like a xenolinguistics model might have some parallels.

🌲 Half_Elf_Monk · Apr 09 at 15:41:

@gyaradong - I've always wondered how successful (or prudent) the voyager record would be. It seems like it assumes quite a bit about the intelligent life that finds it, friendliness being a HUGE first assumption.

🐉 gyaradong [OP/mod] · Apr 19 at 09:45:

Sorry for the late reply I've been away. Yeah I was thinking human and though not English, I was thinking it would be clear when correctly parsing the file. So if an image you could see it, and if text then, yes you could read it (assuming shared language).

Humans have specific hearing ranges and only specific wavelength sensitivity. It means our encoding would be for pixels which fundamentally don't make sense. Aliens would struggle with that.

🌲 Half_Elf_Monk · May 01 at 14:11:

@gyaradong - a shared language makes this easy enough, imo. When establishing a connection, dialup modems would transmit blocks of frequency at the "1" bit and the "0" bit, in a regular tempo, to establish a baseline.

If we're granting a shared language, couldn't each file that's being sent do something similar, and transmit (for example) 256 characters as part of the header, to establish "this is the ascii table, and how thus to interpret the content that follows"

Now we can communicate in our shared language, because the header included a key to decode whatever set of signals followed.

If you meant that the file being sent should also imply a program of executable code... then... i don't know. you'd have to assume similar architecture for the machines reading the code, and that's a big ask. So *automatically* constructing an implied program to parse file contents is tough. Manually decrypting file contents based on a character table and a shared language seems easy.