From: mayc...@andrews.edu
Subject: Re: Designer as a Scientific Theory
Date: 1998/09/07
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In article <R2AI1.562$Ha3.1516...@news.inreach.com>,
  "Mike Painter" <mpain...@inreach.com> wrote:
>
> mayc...@andrews.edu wrote in message <6stgei$sv...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> >In article <35f160ed.23155...@news.blue.net>,
> >  teap...@bbtel.SPAMLESS.com wrote:
> >> On 5 Sep 1998 05:50:19 -0400, mayc...@andrews.edu wrote:
> >>
> >> >In article <199809050838.BAA01...@cx33978-a.dt1.sdca.home.com>,
> >> >  "Wesley R. Elsberry" <w...@cx33978-a.dt1.sdca.home.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >snip
> >> >
> >> >> Yep.  We can recognize design as humans do it because we have
> >> >> prior experience of both what and how humans do things.  The
> >> >> SETI project will only find aliens if those aliens happen to
> >> >> do things in the ways that our experience with radio
> >> >> communication makes us recognize properties we know from our
> >> >> own communications.
> >> >
> >> >What if the aliens were broadcasting to us in some kind of code, and we
> broke
> >> >it? What would be impossible about that?
> >>
> >> You mean, what if aliens really bradcast in English or French to one
> >> another, just scrambled somehow? Are you serious?
> >>
> >> What is the difference between a language you don't know, and a
> >> language you don't know in code? None.
> >
> >Right; in both cases, it's possible to figure out what's being said. So we
> >could figure out what the aliens were saying without knowing anything about
> >them.
>
> There is a massive difference between an unknown language and a code, or
> more correctly a cypher.
> No one has ever demonstrated the ability to understand a "foreign" language
> without some tools to translate it.

That's true; some ancient dead languages are still untranslated, presumably
because we don't have the proper references, like a Rosetta Stone or
something. But how do we know that the aliens wouldn't have the proper
references? Couldn't they use universal "languages" like mathematics,
physics, or the universe and its history, as references?

How do the break codes based on known languages, by the way?

--vince

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