From: hal@finney.org
Date: Fri Mar 08 2002 - 11:24:00 MST
Michael Dickey writes:
> I read the book about a two years ago and I felt that the main theme Sagan
> was hitting on was that there is difference between evidence based belief
> and faith based belief. The government officials did not believe Elly
> because there was no evidence, until the video tape showed 8 minutes of
> recorded time. The theme of the book, at least in my opinion, was different
> than that perveyed in the movie. The movie ends with the question open as
> to what happened to her. The book ends with Elly finding evidence that the
> universe was engineered (based on a hint from the alien she encountered I
> believe.
I read the book back when it was published in 1985, so my memories
are not very clear. Didn't several people go on the trip with Elly?
And when they got there, each of them had a different experience, each
met a different loved one from their past?
Then wasn't there some evidence of the trip because the ship had damage
from rubbing against the walls of the wormhole as it travelled?
Finally, as you mentioned the real proof was that the alien Elly met
(who looked like her father) had told her that the aliens were looking
for messages from the creators of the universe by finding patterns in
various constants. So a team back on Earth gets going cranking out Pi
and eventually they find a pattern of some sort, which is considered
vindication of the reality of Elly's trip.
By the way in the past couple of years a way has been found to learn
the nth digit of Pi without calculating all the intermediate digits.
However it only works in binary and related numbering systems like
hexadecimal, not base 10. But probably the message from the creators
of the universe would be in binary and not an arbitrary base like 10.
It's also hard to see how anyone could put a message into Pi. That
is such a simply defined number, how could it have a message? It's
almost provably impossible. It would make more sense to put a message
into Newton's gravitational constant G, something physical rather than
mathematical. Of course it's a lot harder to find the 100th digit of
G than to do so for Pi.
Back to the movie, I agree with the comments about making Elly so
fuzzy-headed at the end. In the penultimate scene she's talking
to some schoolkids and they ask her if the universe is inhabited.
Instead of giving them the best and most accurate information she has,
she just says, "what do you think?"
Now, I can understand this as an instructional technique, getting
the kids to think for themselves, but in this case they are not in a
position to acquire the relevant information. Only Elly, out of the
entire human race, has the firsthand knowledge and information to be
able to answer that question accurately. Under the circumstances she
has an obligation to be truthful and say, I went to the stars, and I met
someone who told me that the universe is full of life. Not only that,
there were even greater beings who built these marvelous structures so
that someday we'll be able to travel quickly and easily to the stars.
This is her story and she should tell it.
Hal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:12:51 MST