Thoughts on ExoLinguistics and Glorified Stamp Collectors.

Something that should be made clear on the outset: This blog does (and for that matter, myself) take seriously the notion UAP/UFO could be controlled by ETI. The extraterrestrial hypothesis, contains a symmetry, which often is the hallmark of a valid theory. However, the community surrounding "UFOs" is something left to be desired. Two weeks ago, I posted a "call out" to anyone and everyone who had any ideas on how to approach the UAP "problem" scientifically. To this day, I have not received a single response. Last weeks post dealt with the possible reasons why this might be; namely: 1. People don't know how to read. 2. The mystery is better left as such, otherwise the UFO story telling would come to an end. (a concept not to be taken too lightly) 3. The UAP/UFO community works under the same general rules as all "virtual" social groups, mainly that I have no street cred, so was/is ignored. In essence that is what was posted. And by not too much of a surprise, no one commented.

Being more "proactive" myself.

Shortly after writing last weeks post, I did make the rounds through the various online forums, social sites and podcast. I was checking to see if any of the other attempts to gather ideas had come to fruition; once again, not really any surprise, several views but not a single comment. It felt, as if I had run into a brick wall of apathy, the community seemed comprised of two sets of people: drooling, brain dead "ufo-ists" and self proclaimed "ufologists" who, when not busy fighting amongst their peers were salivating in philatelic delight over the latest scraps of government documents.

But, then I came across this: www.atlanticcoastufos.com Not having anything better to do while despairing over the ineptitude of the community, I decided to load up the latest show and give it a listen. The episode I happened to download, was an interview between Kate Valentine and Peter Davenport of NUFORC I was gratefully shocked to hear Peter Davenport, echo many of the same thoughts I had had about the UAP/UFO communities. Further, he had also approached the community with a science based proposal which was promptly ignored. Naturally, I was ecstatic to read his proposal and "see" if it was along the same lines of thought as my own. The white paper he had written, proposes to use passive radar to detect and calculate characteristics of UAPs. Granted the white paper is not "technical" in the sense that someone could read it and start building; but, it was certainly along the same lines I had had in mind. (There does seem, according to his proposal, a DIY solution which could be more conducive to the "open science" ideas I had in mind. Simply put, this interview restored some hope that had been lost by the lack of response; though it does leave the question: Why didn't anyone in any of the forums "at least" post a link to Peter Davenports white paper? Presumably, the answer is self evident, the above characterizations of the community are almost accurate.

Now, with the skeleton of a project in place, I will be contacting Mr Davenport with proposed modifications to his concept and then bring it to the DIY, Open Science communities. (which, I think might be more receptive and participatory than the UAP/UFO has been.) As this first project progresses, I will be posting updates and complaints and further derogatory statements about the UFO community until they get off their collective lard-asses and start being a tad bit more proactive.


ExoLinguistics

The main reason I am skeptical about many of the abduction / experience(er) stories has to do with communication. I am not implying these people did not "experience" something; but, rather I am not entirely convinced it was ETI based in nature. The abduction stories, often contain an element of telepathy; as the mood for communication. This in itself is not absurd as there have been many "human" advances in technology which would allow us to do much the same. Some of the more dramatic (exotic) examples can be found here, here and here. No, it is clear, even with the primitive commercial technology available, we can perform telepathic "like" stunts; so assuredly, any ETIs who have traveled here would be able to also. Rather, the problem I have is not exactly with the mode of communication, but rather viability of communication at all. It is becoming increasingly clear, that human language, regardless of region, culture or even history, shares certain entropic principles. Further, the study "Universal Entropy of Word Ordering Across Linguistic Families" has shown there is innate structure to human written (and verbal)communication. Additionally, because human language has built in redundancy (not to mention physical cues)the "fatal" error rate is quite small. These are the reasons, we can understand one another in circumstances less than optimal for communication. i.e. different languages, noisy atmosphere, whispering. Now, the above, would seem to indicate: "oh, human language is simple, so the ETIs would have no problems with communication" Here, is where the seemingly obvious is wrong. Because, of these shared traits in communication, we are able to communicate with one another; but, also it may very well prevent cross species communication from occurring. (at least easily)

Imagine for a moment if an ETIs language doesn't contain the same amount of redundancy as human language. A case where every "letter" contained meaning, without which no communication would be possible, meaning conveyed or perhaps, where a single inflection changed the entire concept of discourse. And these above examples are things that still do happen in natural language, notwithstanding communication between species. Further, we could compound the above problem with cultural artifacts which play a part in language too: what if the concept of ocean or blue sky or even the color blue were foreign? So, even if ETIs had somehow gained total access to our mental language processing: how would they even know what they were saying? Outside of instilling emotions, and perhaps "spacial" instructions, real communication between humans and ETIs would be problematic at the least. It has been partially for this reason, that many scientists have proposed that mathematics would be the common language between ETIs and humans: though I do see some potential issues with this e.g. mathematics built upon a different base, our incomplete understanding of some natural phenomenon.

Communication between ETIs and humans would require time, patience and a lot of thought. If the ETIs have however, been here for some time (more than 50 years) I could see the breaking down of the world's languages into its constitute parts and being able to communicate broad terms and concepts; but, find it highly doubtful they would be able to communicate with any amount of understanding abstract concepts such as: liberty, justice, shadenfreund and saudade.