The problem is that our associations are dependent on almost everything that makes up a human mind. They are affected by the mood of the situation, how things look like, what the current events are and how they affect the particular group that is talking, our human needs and priorities and other things that are very particular to human programming. — Qmeri

Well put, but I don't see why all aliens must lack in ability of human-like mirroring. Some aliens may have had experiences and developments in their evolutionary past that are similar to human experiences and developments. This is what you need to show is impossible. I don't think this can be shown on an a priori manner. — god must be atheist

The main reason we have not been able to replicate human conversation with computers is because we use mirroring in human speech. This means that we trust that our phrases cause almost the same associations in the minds of the participants of the conversation. And then we just have to modify these associations a little to understand one another.

The problem is that our associations are dependent on almost everything that makes up a human mind. They are affected by the mood of the situation, how things look like, what the current events are and how they affect the particular group that is talking, our human needs and priorities and other things that are very particular to human programming.

This causes that our speech works only between systems that have almost the same human programming so that the phrases cause almost the same associations. We can see this even between humans of different cultures. Even if the cultures speak the same language, it becomes hard for them to understand each other if the phrases and contexts cause different associations in those cultures.

Because of this:
A - we will never have a fluent conversation with aliens unless they are programmed almost exactly like us.
B - we will not program an AI that can speak human in the foreseeable future because we don’t have the empirical knowledge of how human mind is programmed to replicate that programming in an AI and thus enable the AI to use mirroring.
C - if a single human changed his programming in a major way (for example by emphasizing logic in his thinking beyond normal) he would gradually lose his ability to fluently communicate with other people unless other people changed at the same rate.

Not that this means that we can’t communicate in any way in these situations. Logical languages like mathematics are still a way to communicate even without mirroring. — Qmeri

If I understand what you mean by "mirroring", it plays an important part in when the subject of discussion is privileged in some sense i.e. there exists a certain association that isn't common knowledge and it's that particular link you want to convey. Under such circumstances communication can break down but this are rare occasions otherwise how on earth are people able to make sense of each other? Civilization would collapse if this problem just a tad more common. — TheMadFool

Perhaps of some relevance is our ability to "understand" animals. I don't know how much we've progressed in the the field of animal communication but there are some various clearly unambiguous expressions e.g. a dog's growl that we seem to have understood. As to whether we can extrapolate animal-human communication to human-alien exchanges is an open question. — TheMadFool

If I understand correctly then your "mirroring" argument depends on the multitude of ways information may be transmitted through any given medium of communication. I'm not qualified to comment on that but if evolution is true then there must be some logic to how our senses, input/output devices, evolved. We can look at the communication systems in humans, presumably the highest intelligent lifeform and examine how they evolved. A fair estimate would be that such systems evolved to maximize information carrying capacity e.g. color discerning ability gives us access to more information than just light-shade contrast vision.

If that's the case then, evolution on other planets would also evolve in a similar enough way that would make communication systems of all life in the universe converge rather than diverge. This would mean that, contrary to your argument, "mirroring" ability among lifeforms in the universe may not be so radically different to each other to render communication impossible. — TheMadFool

The very definition of 'alien' is in terms of the respective entity's tendency or capacity to mirror and predict our stimulus-responses for it's own survival. The Turing 'Test' is a misnomer; for the test constitutes our natural definition of intelligence. If we cannot interpret an entity's stimulus-responses as acting in accordance with the basic organising principles of human culture, then as as far as we are concerned, the entity isn't worthy of consideration. So to a large extent, the ability of alien's to speak 'our language' is a presupposed in our definitional criteria. — sime

This is the reason why complex mirroring requires so precise similarity from the systems that use it. — Qmeri

However, if there's anything in favor of communication still being possible is the shared environment. Arguably Hydrogen on earth would be identical to Hydrogen anywhere else in the universe. In fact this assumption has been used for an attempt at alien communication - the golden record on the voyager spacecrafts. — TheMadFool

Yes, and that is exactly a form of communication that doesn't use mirroring - a logical language which is based on definitions. Definitions don't need mirroring since they are defined the same irregardless of what you associate with them. And that's what our communications with aliens and AIs will be like - making definitions and saying things simply by those definitions. It's much slower and the things we don't know how to define with purely logical means become near impossible to talk about. — Qmeri

Recall that in the Turing Test, a human evaluator has to decide purely on the basis of reading or hearing a natural language dialogue between two participants, which of the participants is a machine. If he cannot determine the identities of the participants, the machine is said to have passed the test. Understood narrowly as referring to a particular experimental situation, yes the Turing Test fails to capture the broader essence of intelligence. But understood more broadly as an approach to the identification of intelligence, the Turing test identifies and defines intelligence pragmatically and directly in terms of behavioural propensities that satisfy human intuition. The test therefore avoids metaphysical speculation as to what intelligence is or is not in an absolute sense. — sime

Recall Wittgenstein's example — sime

I agree with you that we lack a good definition for general intelligence — Qmeri

Mirroring is anything where the way you are is used to predict the way something else is. For example in our language, we just assume that our associations have something to do with the thing someone else said, just because we have those associations. It doesn't work all the time and we do modify our thoughts of what someone meant by what we know of him, but as the basis, our language simply uses mirroring to predict what others mean. Very fast - doesn't need definitions, but does require everyone to be programmed in a very similar way. — Qmeri

My clock is intelligent. It can tell me the time. — ovdtogt