Detecting Intelligence

[otseng]

There are two fields that actively pursues detecting intelligence that exist outside of the earth. One is the SETI program that seeks to detect intelligent life on other planets. Another is the field of Intelligent Design that seeks to detect intelligent life outside of this universe. Both are looking for clues of the existence of intelligent life by using natural means of detection.

SETI:

SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is an exploratory science that seeks evidence of life in the universe by looking for some signature of its technology. Our current understanding of life’s origin on Earth suggests that given a suitable environment and sufficient time, life will develop on other planets. Whether evolution will give rise to intelligent, technological civilizations is open to speculation. However, such a civilization could be detected across interstellar distances, and may actually offer our best opportunity for discovering extraterrestrial life in the near future.

ID:

Its fundamental claim is that intelligent causes are necessary to explain the complex, information-rich structures of biology, and that these causes are empirically detectable.

So, what would constitute as something (message, pattern) that required an intelligence cause?

How can we distinguish between an intelligent cause and a non-intelligent cause?

Would either of these be any different for SETI and for ID?

[jwu]

SETI is mostly the search for intelligence that wants to be found, i.e. for intelligence which intentionally leaves evidence that one can hardly miss.
Sequences of prime numbers would be such evidence.

I think that's a fundamental difference to ID.

[juliod]

So, what would constitute as something (message, pattern) that required an intelligence cause?

Ah, that's an interesting question. Basically that is a question for the field paracryptography. It's closely related to cryptanalysis in that you are trying to reveal information that is hidden from you. There's a book called The Codebreakers that gives a history of cryptology, and a section on paracryptology including the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Of course it's a highly technical field, none of which I understand, but there is a group of methods for deciding whether or not some "signal" contains information or whether it is just noise.

There is a good example of paracryptology, namely, the decipherment of Linear B. It was a form of writing found at the palace at Knossos. It was a nearly impossible task. The language was not known. There were good reasons for ruling out all the languages of that part of the world. The character set was unknown, being unrelated to other known written languages.

Yet through a series of individual efforts, and a long, intense effort of one particular person, the language was eventually worked out. He produced a putative syllabulary which seemed to render rational readings when interpreted in Greek.

Or course, we couldn't render an alien language directly into a human one, but we could apply the principles they used to analyse some signal or symbol set.

As for ID, paracryptology could be used to identify information hidden in animal or plant genomes, if there were any there. Something like "(c) Copyright by YHWH, 4004 BC" would be indicative.

But no such evidence has been found.

(BTW, there is also a science of testing whether putative decryptions are genuine or bogus. These have been used to conclusively show that some paracrytology is utterly phoney. Like Bible Codes, etc. (Although The Codebreakers does give examples of secret codes in the bible.))

DanZ

[Philip J. Rayment]

So, what would constitute as something (message, pattern) that required an intelligence cause?

It's quite simple really, in principle at least.

Any message from an intelligent being would be (a) non-random, and (b) non-repeating (i.e. a regular non-random blip every x seconds fails the non-repeating test).

Basically that is a question for the field paracryptography. It's closely related to cryptanalysis in that you are trying to reveal information that is hidden from you.

No, you don't have to decode the message. As long as you can determine that it is non-random and non-repeating, you can know that you have a message from an intelligent being. This is the principle behind SETI. They don't aim to decode the message, merely to find a non-random, non-repeating message.

And the genetic information of DNA satisfies the criteria. Here we have non-random, non-repeating data. We know of no source of such information other than from an intelligent being. We have people from SETI believing this principle that they can determine that an intelligent source must be responsible for such a signal, yet denying that a intelligent source can be responsible for the DNA!

I love being a creationist! It's so easy to shoot down bibliosceptical arguments by pointing out their inconsistencies!

[otseng]

Let's look at this problem the other way around. That is, if we were to try to convince a space alien that we were an intelligent lifeform through some remote communication method, how could we demonstrate that?

Well, we've attempted to do that with the Pioneer plaque by sending a pictoral message bolted onto a spacecraft. The plaque contains complex messages that require a relatively high level of intelligence to interpret. (Ironically, when scientists were presented with trying to interpret the message, almost none could decode it.)

Another message was the Voyager Golden Record. Besides a pictural message, it also included audio messages (if properly played back).

Though it is highly unlikely that these physical messages will be successfully intercepted by an alien civilization (even with assuming that they do exist), it still at least represents what we think it would take to demonstrate that we are intelligent beings to something else.

So, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager record would be examples of what would demonstrate an intelligence cause.

[jwu]

If there is no other goal than to demonstrate to our listeners that we are intelligent, then the best way would be to submit a message that is very easy to interprete and which shouldn't occur randomly.

The random occurence can be made to be considered improbable by our listeners by making the rest of the message predictable, by sending a pattern which is unlikely to be produced by natural causes. Certain mathematical patterns would be a good choice there, e.g. a not too short sequence of prime numbers.
An advanced alien civlization will almost certainly be aware of the special characteristics of a sequence like 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37 and so on.
If a list of like 100 prime numbers is followed by a normal counting from 1 to 100 and 10 square numbers, 1, 4, 9, 16... , then a non-natural origin can be considered to be almost certain.

Once we got their attention we can submit another message consisting of a product of two prime numbers bits, so there are only two ways to arrange the bits in a rectangular fashion - a primitive bitmap image.
With that we then can teach them our mathematical notations using simple pictograms.
E.g. first a sequence in which symbols are written next to groups of dots in order to show that they represent digits and the meaning of the "equals" symbol, then examples for the notation of multi-digit numbers, then examples of addition and other simple operations. Most of these things should look familiar to them, they will quite certainly understand the meanings of the symbols in things like "5 (symbol A) 3 (symbol B) 8"

[juliod]

As jwu says, there are ways of doing this. The paracryptologists have done a bit of work on this, along the lines of the mathematical code jwu posted.

The CodeBreakers also pointed out one other major problem that casual observers never considered. We are right next to a star that put out masses of radiation. It'll be exactly like trying to communicate by candle on a bright sunny day.

There is a solution. The emmission spectra of stars always have gaps in the wavelength bands. These are absorption lines. Particular freqeuncies that are absorbed by the sun rather than transmitted out to space. When you split the light from a star with a prism you observe these absorption lines as gaps in the rainbow. So we would transmit at these frequencies if we want to communicate. Then any alien astronomer studying our star, among others, might notice the flickering in the absorption line and investigate.

In any case, I think the best approach is to use actual bitmaps. Simple strings of dots and no dots, put together to form a monotone image. Use long pulses (dashes) to separate line. If we transmitted a signal like this:

- - . . . . . . . . [etc] . . . .. . . - . . . . ... . .. .- . . . .. . . .

and so on, ending with:

..... . . . ... . --

I think it would take the aliens only about 15 minutes to figure out what to do with the data.

But why would we want to communicate with the aliens? If interstellar travel is practical at all (it probably isn't) then habitable planets will certainly be in critical short supply. Any alien we find will just rush in, stomp on us, sterilize the planet and colonize it.

DanZ

[juliod]

So, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager record would be examples of what would demonstrate an intelligence cause.

By the same token, if there were various supernatural objects present on the earth, they would serve as clear signs of the existance of supernatural beings. Myth and fiction are full of these ideas. Weapons, rings, artifacts, created by gods, demi-gods, or deamons. In the Lord of the Rings (the book, not those blasphemous movies) the existance of the rings is sure proof of the existance of Sauron.

Unfortunately, there are no claims about supernatural objects that are not already known to be completely bogus.

DanZ

[QED]

I wonder if we are we approaching this with the proper perspective though. Consider the apparent gap in intelligence between us and insects. Our civilization has only been around for a short while in astronomical terms, and interstellar timescales are such that other civilizations might have had a technological capacity for millions if not billions of years -- I don't think anyone can properly assess how this might transform intelligent beings. But I do suspect that our puny metal plates and mathematical etchings might seem no more significant than the antics of ants to us.

The point is that we know we are just starting out on a technological journey -- after all we've only been able to leave our planet in the last 50 years. Compared to the window of possible technological ages this clearly positions us right at the lower boundary. The problem this poses for detecting intelligence is that alien communications will probably go totally unnoticed. Even our radio engineers of the 1950's would have found it an impossible task to detect, receive and decode the current flavour of spread-spectrum communications like those used by IEEE 802.11 WLAN adaptors in common use today. These transmissions appear to be very similar to noise and this is quite unintentional. Far more covert systems have been deliberately developed for military applications, all within our tiny technological timeslice. So I think that the chances of detecting even a domestic alien radio transmission are virtually nil.

Also there would be good reason to remain silent. Any number of peaceful civilizations could co-exist within a galaxy but it only takes one aggressor to instigate conflict. This would make it seem inevitable that, whether for defensive or offensive purposes, keeping a low-profile would be the best policy for everyone.

[ST88]

There are two fields that actively pursues detecting intelligence that exist outside of the earth. One is the SETI program that seeks to detect intelligent life on other planets. Another is the field of Intelligent Design that seeks to detect intelligent life outside of this universe. Both are looking for clues of the existence of intelligent life by using natural means of detection.

I don't think that the ID crowd is trying to "detect" intelligent life in the same way that SETI is. SETI is looking for patterns that would indicate intelligence as we understand it.

ID, however, is not looking for intelligence as we understand it. Instead, they are looking for examples that can't readily be explained by natural processes as we currently understand them. Whether or not they are motivated by a desire justify their beliefs or are on a scientific quest is between them and their god, so to speak.

For example, the prime number sequence, as jwu points out, would tend to indicate intelligence. But this is not enough. Is there an as yet undiscovered natural process that would generate the first 64 prime numbers and repeat them? Just because we can't think of any doesn't mean they aren't out there. If we were to find an intelligence via EM transmission in this way, for example, we would then attempt to communicate with it in some way in breathless anticipation.

But the distinction is clear. ID searches for patterns that can't be explained by current scientific theories, not specifially for intelligence.