We Can Talk to the Aliens

Communication with non-human minds is an enduring topic in science fiction -- and in science, too. At the most basic level there's the question of how to make a message which aliens might actually be able to detect. Nowadays it's assumed to be some kind of radio signal, but in the past proposals included cool ideas like building a giant flaming Pythagorean Theorem in the Sahara desert.

But there's also the more troubling question of whether we can ever actually communicate with non-human minds. How much of our own intelligence is tied to our language and the way our brains are wired? Perhaps alien minds would be just so alien that communication just can't happen.

Happily, that may not be an issue. A story in New Scientist suggests that there may always be a basis for translation, simply because languages do ultimately describe the physical world. Since we and aliens do live in the same real universe, we would have terms and concepts in common. Marvin Minsky reaches the same conclusion in this essay, coming at it from the direction of mathematics.

In other words, while language may affect how we think about the world (and it probably doesn't), that still doesn't change the fact that there is a world out there, and different languages or methods of communication must ultimately be about that world.

Now if we could just find someone to talk to . . .

Comments

[Brian Rogers]

There was an intriguing bit on Weekend Edition last weekend about the earlier theories of how we must be alone because we aren't hearing anyone else's radio chatter have taken a beating with the rapid and extreme reduction in our own spillover noise. In an age of pinpoint communication beams we're not broadcasting nearly as much as we used to within just a century of broadcasting at all.

So all that quiet might just be because everyone else has learned what we're just figuring out....

[Thom H.]

I liken it to a modern "stone-age" tribe on some remote island trying to detect neighbors by listening for drum beats from other nearby islands, all the while totally unaware of the radio waves passing all around them. Maybe the universe is full of communications and we just haven't invented the right receiver yet.