Notes

         You are at the Mongolian Grill on Mason-Montgomery across from P & G waiting for Rich Grimsley for lunch. While online you found an article on aliens. Let’s put it in here, at least in part.

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22 August 2010 Last updated at 19:16 ET

Alien hunters 'should look for artificial intelligence'

By Jason Palmer

Science and technology reporter, BBC News

. . . Seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has until now sought radio signals from worlds like Earth.

But Seti astronomer Seth Shostak argues that the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence (AI) would be short.

Writing in Acta Astronautica, he says that the odds favour detecting such alien AI rather than "biological" life.

Many involved in Seti have long argued that nature may have solved the problem of life using different designs or chemicals, suggesting extraterrestrials would not only not look like us, but that they would not at a biological level even work like us.

However, Seti searchers have mostly still worked under the assumption - as a starting point for a search of the entire cosmos - that ETs would be "alive" in the sense that we know.

That has led to a hunt for life that is bound to follow at least some rules of biochemistry, live for a finite period of time, procreate, and above all be subject to the processes of evolution.

But Dr Shostak makes the point that while evolution can take a large amount of time to develop beings capable of communicating beyond their own planet, technology would already be advancing fast enough to eclipse the species that wrought it.

"If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you," he told BBC News.

"But within a few hundred years of inventing radio - at least if we're any example - you invent thinking machines; we're probably going to do that in this century.

"So you've invented your successors and only for a few hundred years are you... a 'biological' intelligence."

From a probability point of view, if such thinking machines ever evolved, we would be more likely to spot signals from them than from the "biological" life that invented them.

'Moving target'

John Elliott, a Seti research veteran based at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, says that Dr Shostak is putting on a firmer footing a feeling that is not uncommon in the Seti community.

"You have to start somewhere, and there's nothing wrong with that," Dr Elliott told BBC News.

Alien AI may choose to linger at galactic centres, where matter and energy are plentiful

"But having now looked for signals for 50 years, Seti is going through a process of realising the way our technology is advancing is probably a good indicator of how other civilisations - if they're out there - would've progressed.

"Certainly what we're looking at out there is an evolutionary moving target."

Both Dr Shostak and Dr Elliott concede that finding and decoding any eventual message from such alien thinking machines may prove more difficult than in the "biological" case, but the idea does provide new directions to look.

Dr Shostak says that artificially intelligent alien life would be likely to migrate to places where both matter and energy - the only things he says would be of interest to the machines - would be in plentiful supply. That means the Seti hunt may need to focus its attentions near hot, young stars or even near the centres of galaxies.

"I think we could spend at least a few percent of our time... looking in the directions that are maybe not the most attractive in terms of biological intelligence but maybe where sentient machines are hanging out."

***

         Cyborgs, that’s the way I remember them. Sounds like science fiction to me. I would not have put this in here, Amorella. They would be more efficient than machines, but more efficient yet would be DNA converted to be more machine-like and efficient – why not just stick with the biology and physics that already exists? That’s what I like about the tiny alien in the books – a parasite with full consciousness measuring no more than the physical size of the orbit of an electron around a hydrogen atom. Extremely efficient with the ability to move from one host to another somewhat like a dandelion seed that the aliens were first in their biology and higher consciousness.

         Post, boy. Later, Amorella.

         Home, and re-reading the above BBC article I can understand looking at a problem from a new perspective, however, I am somewhat stuck from what is already written in the first three books. It is almost like I have created a ‘formula’ for just this series. It works though which is more important than anything else. What happens in scene five, Amorella?

         The greeter, the first voice, is that of Meir the ancient Israeli shaman and the shade Panagiotakis quietly follows.

         Dusk. Tim K. and Erik K. finished cutting down the tree by the house  and cleaning the area after. You paid them both and feel better that the project is done. Also, you both ordered the new windows and patio door from Gilkey so that is complete. A good lunch with Rich, and Carol has breakfast at First Watch on north Montgomery Road with her friends tomorrow. Thus, it has been a busy and quite productive day.

         In a different light one of your high school classmates asked what you think about when you are in a stage of forgetfulness, or as you like to say, “not here in the world,” on Facebook earlier today.

         I erased the material a little while ago and forget who asked but I think it was Bev S. Anyway, I forgot to respond and told her that I would ask Amorella later.  I think I have asked before but I forget what your response is. Basically, where am I (consciously) when I am in a forgetfulness in the world?

         You are in a semi-conscious autonomous state. There is little consciousness of time and place other than you are ‘here’, that is you are where you are. These states are usually very short like dots and dashes flowing in a telegraph message. The dots may represent the short lived autonomous state and the dashes a conscious of time and place state. This happens many times a day during your life. You are sometimes ‘here’ enough to catch most of what is going on, but then again, you may, as it were, miss a short part of a message. Sometimes you just don’t listen, other times, you half listen – enough to get the gist – other times you miss the point altogether but it is your practice to say nothing and wait until you can pick up the gist of the message a short time later. Do you disagree with this assessment, orndorff?

         No. It is perhaps simplified, but that’s the way my mind works. Pretty much my private inner life of sensory apparatus at work, or not.

         Tomorrow, dude. Post. Amorella.