The Other Kind Of SETI - die alternative Suche nach Intelligenz

As I was looking on the workings of an Universal Turing Machine when my father called me and told me about grandfather's death I am even more inspired to write about a quite inspiring Book which is known as A New Kind Of Science and the way it helped me to understand quite difficult things.

Wolfram might be critized for quite a lot of things but the way he presented simple programs as he called it to quite a huge audience of non-mathematicians deserve some word of praise.

All of his simple programs are presented as pictures and from the patterns they made he concluded that some of them were universal or in other words could compute everything which is computable. And just for coming up with this idea and presenting it the book is worth in being read and looked at.

Although the focus seems to be on one dimensional cellular automaton the book is about much more.

Intelligence and intelligent life

Life is processing data and some of those data processing could remain visible for quite a while. Might it just be the remains in rocks or structures build by intelligent life. One of those reminands or remains is art.

Knowing how data processing might look like is thus the key in finding alien life. Alien life or even undiscovered life here on earth might not be like we know it from humans, beavers or ants. It might be slower and not even share physical or chemical characteristics and if one day or one month is like a second for them it is nevertheless life.

Life might even be an-organic or not carbon based. It might look like lycheen, mold or even crystalls. Instead of a group of individuals, it might have evolved to be a hive mind from the very beginning.

complexity outside of biology

Quasicrystalls occur naturally and show non-repeating complex patterns and as far as I know it is not know whether their behaviour or growth can be used for universal computation.

Complex patterns or behaviour is believed to be found in plasma and even the growth or forming of snowflakes involves some complexity.

from structure and reminands to the conclusion of intelligence

Aliens find the voyager probe and conclude that it was created by intelligent life or just apes which were too proud about their little knowledge.

Humans or primates went from fruit collecters to hunter and gatherers to agriculture etc. Animals were domensticated, conflicts arose, plagues and diseases came and finally probes and radio signals made it into space.

Intelligent slime would not come up with bows and arrows nor microwave ovens and inline skates. However there is a good chance that it would discover gravitational waves before radio waves and probably interdimensional warp portals before spaceships.

It might have colonized and sent probes in the form of comets and meteorides or just dust while humans were busy with multiplying and killing each other and have colonized even more galaxies through warp portals than we can see with our telescopes.

For ages humans did not know about viruses and bacteria and all that microbiological life although quite abundand around them all the time was not even supposed to be existent by them. It turned out that this microbiological life is much more abundand, older and diverse than all the life we can see around us.

So instead of looking at another copy of ourselves or something like birds, bees, fish or intelligent squid in the universe or on other moons or planets we should start in our head and imagine how working life can look like and the question is >>Does it process data in a complex or universal way?<< .

And that pretty much sums it up why A New Kind Of Science is so important.

consciousness and why it is not important

We have no proof that anyone besides you might be conscious - depending on how strict we are - but as we do the most complex things unconsciously it might not even be important. Life is life even when unconscious of itself.

Zusammenfassung

Wenn man wirklich außerirdisches Leben finden will, dann sollte man sich vielleicht fragen wie so was eigentlich aussehen könnte oder vielleicht erster was Leben überhaupt ist. Vermehrung allein mag vielleicht doch nicht das ausschlaggebende Kriterium sein, da auch anorganische Dinge wie Sonnen und Planeten sich auf anorganischem Wege bilden - man kann sogar sagen - sich vermehren. Schließlich gibt es ja jetzt mehr Sonnen oder Sterne als in der Anfangsphase des Universums.

Simple Programs oder einfache Schemata, die quasi alles berechnen können was berechenbar ist, wenn man ihnen nur genug Speicher und Zeit lässt, sind für den Mathematiker Stephen Wolfram da wohl schon eher ein Brauchbarer Ansatz um wirklich exotisches und unvorstellbares Leben zu finden. In seinem Buch A New Kind Of Science untersucht er anhand von Bildern oder grafischen Darstellungen von solchen "primitiven Programmen", die unter anderem als zelluläre Automaten, Tag-Systeme, Turingmaschinen, Collatz-Funktionen usw. bekannt sind ob sie komplexe Strukturen bilden und vielleicht sogar Turing-Vollständigkeit aufweisen.

Zeitweise wird in dem Buch bewusst auf mathematische Sprache verzichtet und stattdessen werden - unsere besonders gute visuelle Verarbeitungsrate voll unterstützend - grafische Darstellungen dieser "primitiven Programme" gezeigt. Ein Bild sagt bekanntlich mehr als tausend Worte.

Die Idee dahinter ist, wenn es Leben oder außerirdische Intelligenz gibt, dann bringt sie komplexe Strukturen und Systeme hervor oder basiert auf einfachen Phänomenen, die komplexe Strukturen hervorbringen können - wenn die Eingabe oder der Input es erlauben. Wenn man also nach solch exotischen Leben sucht, dann wärs von Vorteil wenn man im Vorhinein über die theoretisch möglichen Vorgänge bescheid weiß, die sie hervorbringen.