musso@nous.unige.it

Presentation given at the

"3⁰ Simposio Mondiale sulla Esplorazione dello Spazio e la Vita nel Cosmo"

sul tema

"EUROSETI: intelligenze extra-terrestri, dal SETI al SETV"

Repubblica di San Marino, 8-9 Marzo 2002

A first Workshop on Interstellar Message Composition was hold in Toulouse, France, from 30 September to 2 October 2001, sponsored by the SETI Institute.

Disciplines represented at the Toulouse Workshop:

- Linguistics

- Mathematics

- Communication theory

- Philosophy of science

- Logic

- Astronomy

- Journalism

- Art

- Economics

- Psychology

- Physics

Other possible areas of interest identified in Toulouse:

- Music

- History

- Signal processing

In these early Workshops on the societal implications of SETI 4 broad areas of interest were identified:

- History

- Human behavior

- Policy issues

- Education, news and entertainment

While message composition obviously cannot provide a complete context for exploring these areas, it provides a useful start for future, broader explorations of these topics.

In the history of SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence with radiotelescopes) several languages have been proposed to communicate with extraterrestrials when (and if) SETI itself succeeds.

Despite their differences, they all belong to two main categories:

a) formal languages (based on mathematics and logic);

b) iconic languages (based on pictures).

From a general point of view, we can say that formal languages succeed in communicating many mathematical, logic and also scientific concepts, while iconic languages succeed in communicating the sensible features of our world. So, both approaches are in some way complementary to each other, and this is the reason why, in my opinion, the best we can do is to work out an integrated language, using both mathematics and pictures. In some way, this idea was present in the Arecibo message, too, but it was only a sketch, not a systematical construction, and then it has been no more carried out until the last few years, when Douglas Vakoch began to work on something similar with his 3-D digital "movies", using both human and geometrical figures. At first sight the problem could appear insolvable: cultural concepts, indeed, are neither, in general, referred to sensible patterns nor to logical and mathematical relations, so how could we communicate them from such a starting point?

What we are forgetting, however, is that we human beings, too, have always started from there to elaborate those concepts, both in mankind’s history and in our personal life: there is not, indeed, something like "Good and Evil" or like "God" in sensible nature, nor in mathematics, and, yet, we were able to get their concepts so well. So, how can it happen?

Very different answers have been given to this question in the history of philosophy. Some people, for example, have maintained that these ideas are a priori (e.g., Plato, Descartes, Kant); others, that they are seized by a direct insight of our mind (St. Anselmo, St. Bonaventura, Leibniz), or thanks to an illumination coming from God (St. Augustinus, Malebranche); there are also some (as Middle Age Nominalists, Hume, Wiener Kreis Neopositivists) who say that these are empty and meaningless ideas (even though they are not able to explain how and why so many people believe to understand them perfectly). Should any of them be right, our task would be obviously hopeless. Anyway, I don’t think so, because a more realistic and promising explanation is available, basing on analogy.

Analogy has been considered very little in SETI language up today. The main reason is, in my opinion, that it is very little considered in contemporary philosophy of language, which is still much influenced by a neopositivistic attitude. Wittgenstein said something important about this subject, speaking about his famous "family resembrances", but he lacked a real theory of it.

Such a theory, however, has been worked out (in a very detailed and refined way) by the philosophers of the Middle Age, especially St. Thomas Aquinas. According to him, the starting point of our knowledge is always sensible reality: "nihil est in intellectu, quod prius non fuerit in sensu", he said ("nothing is in our mind, without having been first in our senses"). So, there is no direct insight of any abstract concept, including God’s one. All they are hence derived from sensible impressions thanks to an original faculty of our mind called "intellectus agens" (= active intellect), or, in modern terms, "intentionality", which is able to universalize them (that is, so to speak, to "look at" them from a universal point of view). Some of them (mainly the concepts of natural kind) are derived directly, the others indirectly, via analogiae (= in an analogical way), starting from the first ones. So, in this view the right way to get -and then to communicate- the higher-level (and more abstract) concepts is just to start from a lower-level one, related with any sensible feature of our material world, and then to extend its meaning by using analogy.

In a real SETI communication we should introduce at least the basic concepts of mathematics and physics in a much more systematical way, thus establishing them as firmly as possible (see YVAN DUTIL’s work), in order to avoid as far as possible any misinterpretation, thus assuring a starting point surely common to both of us. Then, some basic information about our world and our human race should be provided, using both pictures and the former data. Finally, we could try to communicate something about our cultural ideas in a way similar to that sketched above, but with a very wide and solid set of concepts to be used.

In Toulouse a surprising and paradoxical fact emerged: while ON EARTH art is the most universal cultural product, much more easy to be communicate across cultural boundaries than religious and philosophical believes, at a COSMIC SCALE this may be no more true, but just the contrary.

The reason is that art is mainly based on SENSATIONS, while religion and philosophy are based on CONCEPTS. So, IN A SAME SPECIES, having the same sensorial apparatus and the same (more or less) environmental conditions, art turns out more universal, because doesn’t need the effort of intellectual understanding, but it turns out to be LESS universal if we have to do with two different species: in that case, indeed, it is much more easy to communicate a cultural product based on abstract concepts, just due to its independence from the sensorial apparatus.

In Toulouse a strong tendency emerged towards a UNIQUE FORMAT: a set of standard "pages" formed by sequences of binary pulses, each being the product of two prime numbers, just as in the Arecibo message or, better, the square of only one.

This format has proved to be suitable for science, mathematics and probably for every form of conceptual knowledge, too.

The construction of an interstellar message is a COMMON ENTERPRISE.

In principle, it should be a common enterprise of THE WHOLE MANKIND, but, obviously, our group CANNOT be representative of mankind and, anyway, we are not able, at present, to elaborate a real "Cosmic Encyclopedia"; furthermore, funds might be available only for particular issues (e.g., altruism). SO, our message cannot be about the whole terrestrial culture, but only about some topics, and we have to CHOOSE them.

1. First of all, it is quite obvious that we cannot –and moreover shouldn’t- speak "on behalf of the whole mankind" as stated by SETI Declaration of Principles.
2. On the other side, that principle is the only possible in such an enterprise.
3. So, we have only two possibilities:

3.a) trying to create a really world-wide team working on it, and doing nothing before have reached this goal;

3.b) starting to work on our own, but in such a way that more and more people are attracted to joint us in time, thus moving from a particular to reach the universal.

4. Since it is clear that 3.a is completely unrealistic, the best we can do is 3.b.
5. But how could we do it? Both basing on theoretical considerations and my personal experience, I think we could succeed if and only if:

5.a) on one hand, in that particular situation we are starting from, an attitude aiming towards universality is present just from the very beginnings (because "what is not at one in principle cannot at one at the end", as someone said: we must start "thinking big" now, not tomorrow, otherwise we’ll do it not even tomorrow, that’s sure); and

5.b) on the other, this potential universality is exemplified in this particular situation in a very attractive and convincing way.

6. In our concrete situation, in my view two things are needed:

Last summer a "crop" representing a modified version of the Arecibo Message appeared near the radiotelescope of Chibolton (England). Some people have claimed that it may be a "reply" to that message coming from an extraterrestrial civilization. In my opinion this is VERY unlikely.

1) Most modifications (the number of nucleotides and population, the dimensions of humanoids and planets, the shape of humanoids, the crop near the radiotelescope) are not significant, because everyone could do them, since their scientific content is very poor.

2) The modification of the DNA has no information content (because THE ORIGINAL ITSELF has not such a content).

3) But, above all, the "queen proof", the real signature of the forger is the addition of silicon - better, the WAY of this addition:

- In the carbon chemistry, indeed, silicon is present, but not so important; anyway, it is NOT present in the DNA.

- Silicon has been hypothesized as the possible basis of an ET chemistry, ALTERNATIVE to the carbon one.

- But here silicon is simply ADDED at carbon’s side, without ANY change in nucleotides’ chemical formulas, and this is simply meaningless!

- So the resulting identikit is not an intelligent ET scientist’s one, but the one of a smart terrestrial trickster, knowing not so well science, but very well the way of using our present obsessions (e.g. genetics) to get media’s attention.

I realize only now that there is something else strange in the "Arecibo Reply" of Chibolton, that is the fact that the number of the nucletoides in the aliens’ DNA has been INCREASED. Obviously, this is possible, so the fact in itself is not a proof against the reliability of the message, anyway I’d be much more ready to trust in its real extraterrestrial origin if, on the contrary, the number would have been DECREASED.

The reason is that this circumstance fit very well (TOO well, indeed) three very widespread commonplaces about this topic, that is:

1. aliens are much more intelligent than us;
2. intelligence depends on genes;
3. the more intelligent you are, the more genes you must have.

Given these three premises, it follows, obviously, the conclusion that aliens must have a DNA longer than ours. But the matter is that ALL these commonplaces are (at different degrees) wrong, so the conclusion DOES NOT follow. Indeed, the first is possible, but not probable; the second is only partially true (and, hence, also partially false); and the third is completely false.

1. Should an alien civilization exist, it would be very likely much older than ours: our civilization, in fact, is only few thousands years old (and, if we take in account only TECHNOLOGICAL civilizations, the only able to receive the Arecibo message and reply to it, even only few HUNDREDS), that is the same, at the cosmic scale, to say that it was born today, so almost every other will be much older. But this does NOT imply that it will be also much more ADVANCED. Despite its popularity, this idea completely relies on the belief that science and technology will never end. But, since science let us know reality, it is very likely that just the contrary will happen, because, soon or later, we SHOULD get its fundamental principles! Should we be able to construct an effective TOE (Theory Of Everything), for example, no further fundamental discoveries would be available in physics from then on: and it is possible (and even probable) we are not so far from this goal. And the same might happen in all the other fields (this is, for example, the position of John Horgan, who has recently written a very provocative but also very well documented book just titled The end of science). Technological progress might well last longer than scientific one (because the consequences of the fundamental principles of nature are much more than the principles themselves), but the common assumption that the technology of a much older civilization must be much more advanced than ours (even at the point of looking "magic") is completely gratuitous and without any objective ground in reality, at least in so far as we know it at present. Anyway, even in this case there would not be necessity at all that aliens be more intelligent than us. This view forgets that scientific and technological progress is a CUMULATIVE process, resulting from a long sequence of steps, each of them requesting, more or less, the same intelligence than others to be achieved. There is no evidence at all that Einstein was more intelligent than Newton, Newton than Galileo and Galileo than Plato or Aristotle: the only difference is that the ones who were born later started from where the others had ended. So, maybe we might say (provided that such an imprecise expression had a meaning) that aliens’ CIVILIZATION as a whole might be more "intelligent" than ours: but this has nothing to do with genetics.
2. Even though aliens WOULD be really more intelligent than us, this does not imply they have more genes. Intelligence, in fact, depends on them only partially. Nobody can, at present, exactly quantify the right percentage, but it is sure that environment and education are at least as much as important than genetic factors in determining intelligence.
3. Finally, should aliens’ superior intelligence actually depend at least partially on genetic causes, even in that case a bigger genome would not be requested. The number of the genes, in fact, is NOT a measure of the intelligence degree, nor even of the complexity one. The biggest genome on Earth is lily’s one, that is composed by about 12 billions of nucleotides. Human genome, as you well know, is only 3 billions nucleotides long. And yet, despite our unnumerable defects, we are NOT less intelligent, nor less complex than lilies! So, intelligence does NOT depend, even partially, on the number of the genes.

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