On 31 Oct 2018 at 7:32, Henry Baker wrote:
I've been thinking about the following problem for a while, and hope that others have also.
The problem is: how do you establish communication with someone you don't know, and someone who doesn't speak the same language ?
Somehow, when we are babies, we manage to figure out how to communicate with our parents.
Somehow, when we are travelling, we manage to communicate -- to some extent -- with people who don't speak the same language.
Yes -- and that's accomplished, from what i can tell from reading some books about it [I'm hopeless with languages], because primarily we are all humans, we have the same body parts, we do the same things [eat, sleep, etc], and by and large share our emotions. And are generally in visual proximity to one another [and so can share the identification, and action with, nearby objects]. Many animals here on earth communicate with one another and we haven't done so well with sorting out their "languages" -- perhaps we should really start seriously with Dolphins and Ravens and.. before we try to communicate with unknown beings.
Given the noisy channel, it may take a large number of attempts before any progress is made. Indeed, one aspect of this mental exercise is to determine noise bounds which might preclude ANY communications.
It is my intuition that TM#1, TM#2, etc., can *eventually* -- after some number of "rounds" -- develop good hypotheses about whichever other TM's there are, and develop some number of *shared state* with those other TM's, where "shared state" can be measured in *bits*.
Has that worked with any non-human species on earth? Sorry but I'm very skeptical /Bernie\ Bernie Cosell bernie@fantasyfarm.com -- Too many people; too few sheep --