Include physical constants

[void4]

It may be a good idea to include physical constants (1) as a proof of intelligence (2) as a signal of how advanced humanity currently is (3) maybe to make pattern search easier

Especially the fundamental constants, which seem to be time and location invariant across the universe would be a good idea: https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/constants.html

Constants using the SI measurement system could be converted to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_units

The latest official NIST constant table is here: https://pml.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/Table/allascii.txt (I parsed it here as .json (perhaps unreliably, please double check if accuracy required): https://github.com/void4/parseCODATA/blob/main/CODATA.json)

Interesting page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensionless_physical_constant

[joha2]

@void4 sorry for chiming in: Are we sure that physical constants are not only anthropocentric concepts? Further, some of the constants are constant in our physical model of the world: but first this depends on our conception of reality and second it is also based on our limited experimental capabilities (i.e. we cannot verify well whether G or hbar are real constants or just an expression of some effective action of another field, we just do not know, yet). Maybe, it is easier for ET to rely on purely mathematical or logical concepts in the message, which are more or less decoupled from our conception of nature (at least at the beginning). What do you think?

[void4]

Are we sure that physical constants are not only anthropocentric concepts?

real constants or just an expression of some effective action of another field

What do you mean by these?

[joha2]

@void4 Thanks for your questions. Maybe I explained it a bit sloppy. I try to elaborate more on that:

Are we sure that physical constants are not only anthropocentric concepts?

With this I mean: At the end physical constants depend on experiments and to the last end on our conception of reality (i.e. they depend on a given unit system which is connected to measures of time, space, mass and so on, which in fact are connected to our senses). Due to the dependency on our conception of reality they are maybe something which an intelligence whose conception is disjoint to ours (or has little overlap) cannot follow. So maybe this hypothetical intelligence does not recognize the physical constants as such fundamental quantities like we do. The next question is, how one should encode the constants in the message such that they are immediately recognizable. The dependency on our conception is what I meant by anthropocentric concept.

real constants or just an expression of some effective action of another field

Here I refer to something like the Brans-Dicke theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brans%E2%80%93Dicke_theory where an additional scalar field due to its dynamics appears like an effective gravitational "constant" whose value is actually not constant (maybe with a very small gradient). This means, we treat our physical constants as constants, but the hypothetical ET does not know this.

Do these two comments make any sense for you?

[void4]

Yes, now it makes sense :)

I think this would be all the more reason to include them, because if that were the case, they would be an indicator of our experimental and modelling ability and way of perception!

[paulfitz]

I like the way constants are introduced in the DearET message, as part of an ensemble describing atoms and solar systems (I posted an unofficial translation of that message at https://github.com/paulfitz/robobo/blob/master/dearet/outcome.scm). Seem like reasonable points of reference in our physical neighborhood. Hard to make descriptions that are not steeped in our own culture, so I'm a fan of a suitcase message where we stuff in all the approaches we can think of. They'll all be very "provincial" but maybe one of them will work despite that.

[joha2]

Hey! Sorry for my late reply. It's like with cosmicos itself, like @paulfitz already mentioned "Short bursts of activity then a long silence" :-).

Yes, you're right! It totally makes sense to include all we know into the message to have more than one point where ET can try to investigate the message. My point was, that maybe the introduction of anthropocentric concepts should be postponed to later parts of the message and at the beginning avoid them as best as possible. In later parts, the idea was (if I remember correctly) to introduce some kind of (dungeon?) game to transport cultural concepts, anyway. And those are intrinsically anthropocentric :smile:.

Best wishes Johannes

[void4]

I think dimensionless physical constants and other fundamental physical constants given in Planck or other Natural units are probably the least anthropocentric, most objective real world data we can come up with. While all of these are measured "from our place/perspective" in the universe, it seems there has been no evidence for a possible time- or space-dependence of their values.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radioactive_nuclides_by_half-life may also be a good list of values (assuming they are represented in some natural unit)

It's a good point though that mathematics may still be the best sign of intelligence for an alien intelligence that is extremely unlike us, and that our existing knowledge and assumptions strongly influence how we send our messages - and thus who would be capable to receive it.