From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Mon May 28 2001 - 13:22:45 MDT
At 10:25 AM 5/28/01 -0700, Spike wrote:
>The question of how to define intelligence is central to the
>discussion of the Singularity. Pondering the question in
>light of my ongoing prime number research is what has
>me thinking of the Singularity again.
>
>Suppose instead of aliens landing on a ruined earth, we
>send the map to them. This map is of a structure that any
>apparatus we would call intellingent would recognize. The
>simplest one I know of that fits this description is Sagan's
>list of primes as described in Contact.
>
>Now suppose one wishes to beam some kind of message
>analogous to a list of primes, except we want to demonstrate
>that the sender is *really* intelligent, not just a simple list of
>primes. What do we send? spike
All that I can suggest is that you send just certain
primes, e.g., the ideal numbers, or some other subset
to prove that our civilization knows a lot about primes.
But if you want to communicate intelligence, what's wrong
with the old (but most excellent) idea of sending a two
dimensional picture in a 2999 x 3001 array that they'd
factor and then spot the patterns? As you know, they
really did use this scheme in Pioneer II.
Lee
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