Alien Pranksters

hypericin

A meteor falls in backwoods Montana. The farmer who discovers it contacts the media, and it immediately becomes a global sensation. It is a perfect shiny sphere with no evidence of damage, covered in strange etchings. Radiography is eventually able to discern what appears to be a book inside. After furious debate, a hole is etched with a laser and the book is extracted.

It is remarkable. The title is etched with some kind of synthetic gemstone that seems to glow with its own light. 512 pages of text are densely written on a seemingly indestructible material, with a lustrous, iridescent ink. The characters are packed on each page, without apparent spaces, and are like no language ever seen. They are hauntingly beautiful. Looking at a page, one's head seems to swim in ethereal eddies of alien thought.

It is universally acknowledged as the most profound artifact ever discovered. The world economy lurches to a near halt as everyone is glued to their phone, waiting for the smallest update. After furious demands and even protests, the entire contents are made available in the public domain. Every professional and amateur linguist drops what they are doing, and the race to decode is on.

135 distinct glyphs are immediately identified, including 20 modifiers that seem to serve as punctuation. Characters, words, and groups of words are picked out, with a language-like distribution of frequencies. Humanity vibrates with excitement, the pace of discovery foretells breakthrough, always just around the corner.

Over weeks, and then months, enthusiasm slowly transforms to an increasingly grim determination. Where are the prime numbers? The pictograms? Nothing whatsoever, just pages of these beautifully maddening, indecipherable glyphs. For such a seemingly advanced alien race, the lack of any assistance seems to betray a curious absence of mental empathy. One camp claims that the codex, despite its spectacular appearance and delivery, was not intended for a human audience. Another, that the book is a kind of test, and is intentionally inscrutable, so that only the most intelligent species may decode it. An increasing subset of these despair that humanity is doomed to fail it.

Months turn to years, and years into decades. Public interest has long subsided, but the book becomes the basis of an entire academic field. Devotees spend their lives obsessed with it. Multiple religions are born with The Codex as its holy text, meditating daily on elaborate reproductions of its pages. As the decades roll past, increasingly powerful technology is brought to bear on the problem. AI that has long ago transcended AI which itself had long ago usurped the crown of ingenuity from humanity. Quantum computers which make today's look like glorified abaci.

In truth, what some suspected, only half in jest, turned out to be correct. The text was a practical joke played on humanity by a cruel and whimsical alien species. It is complete nonsense, random gibberish, imbued with enough regularity to look like a plausible language, but no more.

The question is this: given enough time and computing power, can humanity eventually "discover" an interpretation that renders the text coherent? While in truth, inventing one out of whole cloth? Or will the text remain indecipherable forever?

L'éléphant

The question is this: given enough time and computing power, can humanity eventually "discover" an interpretation that renders the text coherent? While in truth, inventing one out of whole cloth? Or will the text remain indecipherable forever? — hypericin

No interpretation. It's not a language.
Language, and what you wrote about is an appearance of a 'language', has logical steps and intentional word/sound connection. Behind any language, there are minds that want to express an idea or ideas.

Hanover

The question is this: given enough time and computing power, can humanity eventually "discover" an interpretation that renders the text coherent? While in truth, inventing one out of whole cloth? Or will the text remain indecipherable forever? — hypericin

This a hermeneutics question, asking if there is a single correct perspective for linguistic interpretation. The aliens' interpretation scheme is based upon their culture and life and is only valid to earth culture if earth culture adheres to the hermeneutic that we are to interpret alien langauge as if we were alien.

In this example though we have limited knowledge of alien life to consider.

"To understand a text always means to apply it to ourselves and thus to find its meaning.”
— Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method

hypericin

No interpretation. It's not a language. — L'éléphant

Maybe. But that is just semantics. "Is it an interpretation or isn't it" is ultimately definitional. I'm interested if meaning can be constructed in noise.

↪Hanover

Did you miss

In truth, what some suspected, only half in jest, turned out to be correct. The text was a practical joke played on humanity by a cruel and whimsical alien species. It is complete nonsense, random gibberish, imbued with enough regularity to look like a plausible language, but no more. — hypericin

L'éléphant

I'm interested if meaning can be constructed in noise. — hypericin

Noise without intention and a look back to build up what's ahead is just...noise.

ToothyMaw

The question is this: given enough time and computing power, can humanity eventually "discover" an interpretation that renders the text coherent? While in truth, inventing one out of whole cloth? Or will the text remain indecipherable forever? — hypericin

Are we talking about any interpretation at all? Or specifically one that would comport with what we might expect intelligent aliens (who have decided to communicate with us) to have to say to us?

hypericin

Are we talking about any interpretation at all? Or specifically one that would comport with what we might expect intelligent aliens (who have decided to communicate with us) to have to say to us? — ToothyMaw

Any interpretation at all is too permissive, only our alien expectations is too restrictive. What I am asking is, can a incontrovertible message be derived (and in doing so, likely a language)?

Nils Loc

I'm guessing if the text contains what could be construed as universal patterns, then maybe that could be used as a basis for discovering more complex meanings. The work would have to contain an attempt on the alien's part to assist universal translation. Mathematical regularities would be encoded from the most basic counting system.

*, **, ***, ****, *****

I wonder if intelligent aliens would find this universal, along with demonstrated basic arithmetic operations.

Moving from the universal to local meanings seems like it'd be supremely difficult if not impossible, if alien life is nothing like human life.

ToothyMaw

Any interpretation at all is too permissive, only our alien expectations is too restrictive. What I am asking is, can a incontrovertible message be derived (and in doing so, likely a language)? — hypericin

It seems to me there must be a kernel of meaning, or perhaps some arbitrary carry-over from the aliens’ actual means of written expression, to the codex, for there to be some sort of incontrovertible message to be derived in the codex. That is to say, that across all possible combinations of the arbitrarily created, “meaningless” characters that could be created according to the potentially spurious linguistic rules, there is a particular kernel of meaning that needs to manifest in just the right combination of characters to create an incontrovertible message - the combination we see in the codex. From there we could perhaps extrapolate some sort of language? I’m not sure.

This kernel of meaning might not even originate with the creation of the codex, but rather be related to the openness of all the possible, valid combinations of the alien characters as a sort of commonly occurring connection arising from some emergent meta-rules.

Fire Ologist

↪hypericin

The question is this: given enough time and computing power, can humanity eventually "discover" an interpretation that renders the text coherent? While in truth, inventing one out of whole cloth? — hypericin

That’s two totally different questions
1. Can we see the meaning in the text?
2. Would we fool ourselves that a reasoning we imposed on the text was in the text when it was not?

My answer to both is no, probably not (“definitely not for me, but Incant speak for everyone.)

Seems reasonable to assume it is language and text. But maybe it isn’t. But still seems reasonable to assume it was made by something sentient, like us, but maybe not. Until we find a Rosetta Stone, or a decryption key, confirming it is indeed a language at all, or even an artifact of a knowing being, I think most people would never get too far convincing others about the “meaning” of its “language.”

Did you see the movie “Contact” with Jodi Foster? They had a similar alien text problem. The aliens built in a decryption key to help other intelligent species learn the language. Neat movie.

wonderer1

Some here may find the history of investigation of the Voynich Manuscript interesting.

The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex, hand-written in an unknown script referred to as Voynichese.[18] The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438). Stylistic analysis has indicated the manuscript may have been composed in Italy during the Italian Renaissance.[1][2] The origins, authorship, and purpose of the manuscript are still debated, but currently scholars lack the translation(s) and context needed to either properly entertain or eliminate any of the possibilities. Hypotheses range from a script for a natural language or constructed language, an unread code, cypher, or other form of cryptography, or perhaps a hoax, reference work (i.e. folkloric index or compendium), glossolalia[19] or work of fiction (e.g. science fantasy or mythopoeia, metafiction, speculative fiction).

hypericin

It seems to me there must be a kernel of meaning, or perhaps some arbitrary carry-over from the aliens’ actual means of written expression, to the codex, for there to be some sort of incontrovertible message to be derived in the codex. — ToothyMaw

I think we are in the same page. It is not possible to derive a message from noise. But that is just my intuition.

I think most people would never get too far convincing others about the “meaning” of its “language.” — Fire Ologist

Everything about the presentation screams "language". And note that the aliens embedded language like statistical patterns into the noise.

Some here may find the history of investigation of the Voynich Manuscript interesting. — wonderer1

I had indeed heard of it, this is probably the closest real life analog to my post. Epistemically that is, we still don't know what it is (which surprises me).

I'm guessing if the text contains what could be construed as universal patterns, then maybe that could be used as a basis for discovering more complex meanings. — Nils Loc

You missed some key parts of the op.

Sir2u

Did you see the movie “Contact” with Jodi Foster? They had a similar alien text problem. The aliens built in a decryption key to help other intelligent species learn the language. Neat movie. — Fire Ologist

The key was probably contained in the etchings on the sphere, and a key part was where they cut the whole to remove the book.

unenlightened

In truth, what some suspected, only half in jest, turned out to be correct. The text was a practical joke — hypericin

Out what jelly mould or cake tin was this truth turned? It is sometimes difficult for me to say with certainty even on this site and in English whether some controversial complex science laden post is too hard for me to understand, or too incoherent to be worth reading at all. But in this case, I'm going to go out on a limb and call nonsense.

For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43909/the-hunting-of-the-snark

Nils Loc

The question is this: given enough time and computing power, can humanity eventually "discover" an interpretation that renders the text coherent? While in truth, inventing one out of whole cloth? Or will the text remain indecipherable forever? — hypericin

Isn't imposing a false meaning on the text achievable with a considerable bit of work? It's just mapping a known language/meaning onto a novel set of symbols. The text could probably serve as code for innumerable different meanings. I guess it really depends on the patterns/regularities of the text in question.

It is not possible to derive a message from noise. But that is just my intuition. — hypericin

Apparently you can encode information in noise. Binary code looks like digital noise. In your story there is the sense that there is no original message in the noise anyway because it is in truth a practical joke, so there is no deriving a message, only imposing/inventing one.

hypericin

Isn't imposing a false meaning on the text achievable with a considerable bit of work? It's just mapping a known language/meaning onto a novel set of symbols. — Nils Loc

No. Imagine how the symbols are arranged in a language, vs noise. There is a lot of structure and repetition in a language, whereas noise has none.

Apparently you can encode information in noise. Binary code looks like digital noise. — Nils Loc

Noise by definition carries no information. Binary code does not look like noise unless it has been perfectly compressed.

But in this case, I'm going to go out on a limb and call nonsense. — unenlightened

We can with the benefit of omniscience. I wonder if the earthlings ever can.

Nils Loc

There is a lot of structure and repetition in a language, whereas noise has none. — hypericin

But your alien text has structure and repetition, plausibly functions like a language as a carrier of information, like the Voynich manuscript. Otherwise it wouldn't be interesting to the experts.

If I was sitting in a classroom in which everyone was talking and I was trying to understand what the lecturer was saying over other discussions, the unwanted interference of other coherent conversations could be considered noise, even if the only thing I could understand was the very thing I didn't want to listen to (the noise).

Noise is relative to the receiver, as what interferes in the transmission/reception of a message. A concern for random noise (if that is how you are defining it) isn't that relevant to your hypothetical text because if it looked like random noise to begin with no one would consider whether it could carry meaning.

It is complete nonsense, random gibberish, imbued with enough regularity to look like a plausible language, but no more. — hypericin

With respect to using the text as the basis for the creation of a language, which could possibly make original text arbitrarily coherent in some new meaning, the syntactical/structural content is all that matters. The semantic content is gibberish (or lost) but the syntactic content could be useful and is not random.

In any case, we could use a machine learning expert who is also a linguist to weigh in.

hypericin

Isn't imposing a false meaning on the text achievable with a considerable bit of work? It's just mapping a known language/meaning onto a novel set of symbols. The text could probably serve as code for innumerable different meanings. I guess it really depends on the patterns/regularities of the text in question. — Nils Loc

Sorry, let me try again, I might have gotten mixed up in my last attempt to reply to this.

I guess what I am asking is precisely this. CAN a false meaning be imposed on such a text? It seems genuinely unclear to me.

Consider one symbol, A. Literally any meaning can be imposed. Now two symbols, AB. Still, any meaning pair will do. Now repeat those in some pattern:

ABBAAB

Now, meaning already becomes quite constrained. There are only so many values we can assign to A and B such that the string makes sense (for instance, it might be instructions to enter a code to a lock where there are two options ). Now consider the codex. 512 pages of words appearing with some probability distribution, and phrases in some probability distribution. But with no underlying semantic content. By page 5 the constraints are already bad, by 512 they are crushing. Can ANY meaning at all be imposed on this thing? It it just not clear to me.

ToothyMaw

Now, meaning already becomes quite constrained. There are only so many values we can assign to A and B such that the string makes sense (for instance, it might be instructions to enter a code to a lock where there are two options ). Now consider the codex. 512 pages of words appearing with some probability distribution, and phrases in some probability distribution. But with no underlying semantic content. By page 5 the constraints are already bad, by 512 they are crushing. Can ANY meaning at all be imposed on this thing? It it just not clear to me. — hypericin

Right. If we consider avenues of meaning corresponding to one-dimensional strings of information, such as what might unlock a certain combination lock, we can impose meaning somewhat easily on the codex - we just need a corresponding lock or something that will accept the codex as a raw input. However, since you suggest that the codex appears to be written in a language due to probabilistic distributions of characters and phrases, we are inclined to consider different meanings.

Indeed, this is what I proposed in my last comment: if there is a kernel of meaning insofar as a certain combination of the characters could have an incontrovertible meaning, then the kernel of meaning must manifest in the specific combination of characters and phrases we see in the codex. It being a one-dimensional combination/string would simplify this. But it would be incredibly unlikely that this raw input is useful, I think. Alternatively, we could consider it the way you have laid out - as a piece of written communication in a language, which is more difficult to parse.

Therefore, I think that if we could determine if when fragments from the codex are treated as one dimensional strings they derange in predictable patterns - that is to say they are only useful up to a point when tested for being a model for a more a more straightforward, transparent meaning - then we know that somewhere in there is a statement conveying meaning that subsumes the demands of the corresponding, meaningful one-dimensional string it is being tested to model up to that point.

Think of the combination ABBAB. If we were to say that ABBAB in alien characters means “always eat the pizza crust first, except on Wednesdays”, and ABBABA corresponds to an alphabetical combination lock’s code, they agree up to the last B in the truncated code. However, if “always eat the pizza crust first, except on Wednesdays and Thursdays” is then evaluated in alien characters because that is the fragment being considered from the codex, and it changes the actual string from ABBAB to ABBABC, then we know that there is disagreement between the lock’s code and the meaning of the sentence in words.

This allows us to guess at the meaning of fragments of the codex by logging the valid one-dimensional strings of meaning and then guessing at their potential meaning as written pieces of communication by substituting alien characters with (perhaps arbitrarily assigned) meanings until the agreement with those one-dimensional strings terminates and then repeat the process.

This would require a probabilistic character generator that could differentiate between and calculate both semi-correct but incomplete one-dimensional strings and phrases and fragments of written language, but I think that could be created given the work the Aliens put into the prank.

So yes, given enough time and computing power, a meaning can be imposed on the codex, I think.

SophistiCat

↪hypericin

The message need not even be nonsense to be indecipherable. There is such a thing as a perfect cipher, e.g. a one-time pad.

ToothyMaw

↪SophistiCat

The thread isn't really about creating something indecipherable, but that's pretty cool, too.

SophistiCat

↪ToothyMaw

I was just citing a perfect cipher as a proof of concept. Regardless of the intention of the sender, when all you have is a single message, it is entirely possible that the message is indecipherable in principle. And that means that there is no way to prove, or even offer a reasonable conjecture, whether the message in the OP scenario is gibberish or carries a meaning.

hypericin

↪SophistiCat

If it is an encrypted alien message, the task is certainly hopeless. But if it was, then it wouldn't display the language like regularities I mentioned.

In any case the op is different from decryption. Decryption is about decoding meaning from a signal. The op is about mapping meaning onto nonsense.

hypericin

This allows us to guess at the meaning of fragments of the codex by logging the valid one-dimensional strings of meaning and then guessing at their potential meaning as written pieces of communication by substituting alien characters with (perhaps arbitrarily assigned) meanings until the agreement with those one-dimensional strings terminates and then repeat the process. — ToothyMaw

I don't follow what you are proposing. What is a "valid one dimensional strong of meaning"?

LuckyR

Of course humans can find meaning in the meaningless. Haven't you seen animals in clouds? Are you familiar with the "deciphering" of Nostradomus?

ToothyMaw

I don't follow what you are proposing. What is a "valid one dimensional strong of meaning"? — hypericin

By "one-dimensional string of meaning" that I mean a combination of characters that has a function or a meaning insofar as a one-dimensional string of characters can. That is, for example, things like lock combinations, a series of inputs into a particular algorithm, etc. In the context of the codex, valid one-dimensional strings of meaning would be those strings that model something more complex in terms of fragments from the codex (although imperfectly), and it's pretty open-ended what their function and meaning could be predicated on. However, since we are specifically concerned with the content of a written "language", they would be at least partially predicated on written content.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪hypericin

Ha, I had this idea for a short story, although in my version and alien race was receiving the slowly scrolling text of the whole of Wikipedia through an indestructible but otherwise inert screen. The main question I had thought of was if the text, having no relationship to their world, really meant anything in their context.

In theory, any medium with enough measurable variance can encode any message, with more variance needed to capture more complexity. But seemingly endless amounts of complexity can also be off-loaded to the perceiver. So for instance, in analytic philosophy papers, signs like "S1," "S2," and "S3," with be used as stand-ins for sentences that are themselves high level summaries for very complex ideas. Yet every time we read "S2" in this context, we "unpack" it into a wider meaning. Or, similarly, through good training, thousands of men on a warship might be taught to all respond differently, and to begin completing complex tasks, from a single piercing alarm tone, a totally on or off signal.

To make gibberish not appear to be random noise, it would have to have some structure, and this would be in some sense meaningful, even if it didn't correspond to an alien language. Your artifact would still have information about its production process. It would still have aspects that were invariant, that could be traced and understood. Knowing that the aliens understand linear algebra, etc., seems important enough.

ToothyMaw

In theory, any medium with enough measurable variance can encode any message, with more variance needed to capture more complexity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

While I think that this is true, we are talking about imposing an incontrovertible meaning on this particular alien text. That means that out of the infinitude of possible messages a given text written in the (statistically simulated) alien language could convey, we have to limit our analysis (at least initially) to deriving a meaning for this one specifically. Or maybe we could use it as a basis for a more complex analysis, although I'm not entirely confident in the method I have proposed.

hypericin

if there is a kernel of meaning insofar as a certain combination of the characters could have an incontrovertible meaning — ToothyMaw

But what possible combination of characters could have an incontrovertible meaning, given that there is in fact no meaning at all to the codex?

hypericin

But seemingly endless amounts of complexity can also be off-loaded to the perceiver. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But this is cheating, and would be readily apparent to the community of decoders. You are essentially putting the decoding into the decoder.

Suppose someone came up with an ad-hoc decoder, like

" :rage: :naughty: :heart:" = "Call me Ishmael", when it appears on page 1.

Someone else could come up with decoder, much smaller than the ad-hoc decoder, that decodes the ad-hoc decoder itself into the ad-hoc decoding.

ToothyMaw

if there is a kernel of meaning insofar as a certain combination of the characters could have an incontrovertible meaning
— ToothyMaw

But what possible combination of characters could have an incontrovertible meaning, given that there is in fact no meaning at all to the codex? — hypericin

I see what you are saying, but I'm mostly laying out what conditions would be necessary for an interpretation to be incontrovertible; I'm not saying that that such a kernel of meaning exists without prosecution of the problem. Actually, to humanity, this kernel of meaning exists in a sense de facto, even if it must be doubted. Even further, I would say that any endeavor to interpret the text in a meaningful way probably has to assume that the codex could theoretically have a discoverable, incontrovertible meaning, even if it cannot possibly be truly identified - because it is the limiting case.

Thus, even if we cannot say there is definitely an incontrovertible meaning, I would say that we can approach it from a probabilistic standpoint that might get us close to virtual incontrovertibility. That is to say that if we could, across the distribution of meanings the codex could take on, narrow down the likelihoods of certain interpretations over others, there is probably one that is most likely, although I don't know to what degree, or what degree to which it would have to be the case to be considered the correct interpretation.

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