Minecraft Forums

Quote from Shpaget

but this topic is about their secondary mission.

They didn't really have a "secondary mission". The flight plan mechanics required to reach all the intended planets for examination simply caused it to end up on an escape trajectory from the solar system. Given that, it didn't seem like a terrible idea to staple some extra information in case it is found by ourselves or another alien civilization in the future. It's "Secondary mission" as you've called was more a "hmm, well looks like we won't be seeing this Probe again since it will be on an escape trajectory from the solar system. Let's put some stuff in it in case it's found.".

-It was never intended as a sure thing
-It was always known to be a miniscule chance it would ever be found

The reason NASA did that is because there was no reason not to.

Consider the following:
The civilization that is capable of space flight and has sensitive enough equipment to detect such a small object that is not actively emitting radio signals surely is at least as intelligent as we are at this point in our development.

Actually, it will be able to emit beacon signals intended for communication with Earth for a quite a long time, powered by it's Nuclear Reactor. (Though I'm not sure how long that is, probably not long enough). Even so, we can still detect it with high-power Telescopes. The chance is bigger than zero that it is found. Not much bigger than zero, but still non-zero.

The probes are not aimed particularly well. Their first close encounters with another star will not occur for the next 40 000 years, and when I say close encounter, I mean they will miss their respective stars by almost 2 light years.

They aren't aimed at all, actually, and time is inconsequential in this case. It's also worth noting that only Voyager 1 is really intended for this sort of purpose- Voyager 2 has the same disc that Voyager 1 does, but it's "main" mission now is to examine the conditions in interstellar space. Voyager 1 is less sueful for that purpose since it's magnetometer was busted.

So, my point is that likelihood of the probes ever being found are minuscule.

That's not much of a point, considering that is known all along. The fact is that miniscule is still >0.

Can you read them? Imagine an alien dragging in one of those probes and seeing the scribbles we've left them.

I find it a bit humourous that throughout your critique of the Voyager program you have neglected to actually learn the details of the Golden disc and the markings and instructions that it comes with. The golden disc included with the probes also includes the stylus required to play it back, and encodes information on how to play it back in binary- Any mathematically aware civilization is going to have an understand of mathematics and base-number systems. Ht includes a drawing of the record, and the stylus; The stylus is shown in the correct position to play the record from the beginning, and written near it, in binary arithmetic, is the correct time of one rotation of the record (3.6 seconds) expressed in time units of .70 billionths of a second. That time scale is going to be universal as well since it is the fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom.

Even if they survived thousands or millions of years in space and are not damaged by interstellar particles, what is this alien supposed to make of the markings? Wouldn't it be just gibberish to them?

It's not written in English. That would be stupid. It's written in binary- again, universal. Just like math. Pi is going to be the ratio of a circle's circumference to it's diameter regardless of where you are in the universe. Any sufficiently advanced civilization is going to understand number bases. If they happen to get Voyager, will it be a quick discovery? No. Do you really think such a civilization would find this spacecraft from some unknown part of the universe and just say "nah, too hard, we give up". I know if we got a similar piece of debris of interstellar origin there would be scientists working night and day to discover what it has to say. To imply that other civilizations might be inherently different in this regard is presumptious I think; additionally, the assumption that it would basically be too hard for them to figure our way of communicating out I think is putting us on a pedestal.

Wouldn't their thought processes be so fundamentally different than our own that it would be impossible for them to work out what we wrote?

Math is going to be the same regardless. Number bases will be the same regardless. If the civilization were sufficiently advanced they would figure it out eventually. Hell we eve made it easier- it's not, as you imply, as if we wrote everything in English or even any human language. It's binary. That is universal. I cannot stress that enough but I will keep doing so despite this all being in response to the same thread.

I roughly know what the records say and what part is supposed to mean what, but even with that knowledge I find it hard to translate the markings into numbers they are supposed to present. Would you like to give it a try? If yes, here is one simple rule:
You can use any search engine to access information on any topic you want and need, except the ones related to the Voyager probes and the "Golden Records" themselves. You have access to the entire knowledge of human kind with that one exception.

It's binary. Would it be easy to do without knowing how to do it? well, no. Would it be impossible? No.

The hydrogen transition is a fundamental property of the universe. Binary is a fundamental number system of mathematics, mathematics and numbers are going to be universal as well; any civilization capable of finding Voyager 1 or 2 is going to have their own mathematical understanding and if they are in space they are going to be sufficiently advanced to understand number bases. Also this isn't designed to be picked up by some backwater alien yokel to be gawked at- the idea is that any other civilization will have their own educated individuals to determine it's secrets.

Conversely, consider the opposite- if we found a piece of interstellar debris in space and managed to bring it back, you know damn well that we wouldn't stop trying to figure out what it says until we know what it says, and we would start with what we can reasonably expect an alien civilization to know- things that are universal. Math, Binary, and Basic properties of the universe- especially focused on the most basic- including hydrogen.

You are suggesting that an alien civilization would be implicitly stupider than ourselves because we are just that awesome. That is giving is far to much credit, particularly when we consider that the amount of time it will take the spacecraft to reach another start is over twice as long as we have even been on this planet (and it is unlikely it will be found then).

they will not have a chance of doing it for a very long time. tens of thousands of years, if not millions, will pass before there will be a chance of someone intercepting the probe. In that time, what will happen to the human race? We could destroy ourselves, we could lose the knowledge of the probes, the information might become buried in the ever growing mountain of data we collect. What if it's not an alien that finds the probes, but a human? Imagine us developing faster than light travel capability and overtaking the probes, spreading across the galaxy. Then one day, by chance we find the probe. Most certainly the person who finds it would not recognize it. The writing on it would be in an old and forgotten language written in weird old and long obsolete letters. Would the finder even realize it's human made? Maybe he would think of it as a message from the aliens. Remember, tens of thousands of years have past.

You start this post with the idea that only people who have no understanding of the two probes should read it. Now I know why, and the reason is because you would hate for people to point out what your ignorance on the subject, since you have clearly done ABSOLUTELY ZERO research on this, at all.

Whether the human race still exists is IRRELEVANT. The fact that you think this matters at all, I do not know. It's not meant as a "hey come see us we'll still be around" it's intended as a answer to the question we are still asking ourselves now- "Are we alone" the answer is intended for another civilization, and not ourselves, and really it's just intended as a symbolic "message in a bottle". Considering even the fastest time possible for a civilization to get the probe is going to be longer than humanity has even existed it's unlikely that humans will still exist as we know them. And I repeat, the language everything on the record is written on is not in english, it's not "ancient language" it is binary. that will never be "ancient" because that is going to be understandable to any alien race or even ourselves in the future.

If a future inhabitant of Earth was to find it, I would imagine the diagram of space indicating where we are in the Milky way might provide two clues. And that is assuming the images of humans on the disc aren't a good clue (assuming people have changed in appearance enough).

The two clues would be that it did come from Earth; but that diagram of space? that would also show how long ago it was. Beecause stars drift.

And any sufficiently advanced civilization is going to know that. and since we already know that now, if we acquire faster than light capabilities and a more thorough understanding of the universe, we'll know it then, too. So we'll know it came from Earth. So we'll know it is a "time capsule" from the past. Will there still be knowledge from the present in this imagined future? How should I know. You certainly seem to think you do, though, and you've gotten lost in your own thought experiment of what ifs.

What are your thoughts?

Tl;DR

Quote from Corvo

You can have your opinions, but it's flaunting around your opinions as fact that removes any good sense from this thread.

There is a difference between an OPINION and a fact. And most of what I've stated is the latter. (I'd say everything, but there will always be counter-examples, and somebody will go "ha ha! but you said X, therefore your entire argument is invalid, I win!")

The problem is that there is this apparent "special respect" reserved for religion. I move that such special respect is idiotic at best. The problem is in the posit that "we can never know if there is or is not a god, therefore we must assume both are of equal probability". But that's ridiculous. Either God Exists, or he does not. Either he Created the Universe 6000 years ago, or he did not. The fact that we do not have a video recording of every last second of the Creation of the universe and the Earth is no more reason to teach creationism as a 'theory' than it is to teach the theory that the Earth was created by Brahma. Which brings me to another point. If we teach a "theory" of creationism, why does it seem to only accord with the abrahamic faiths? What feature of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam make their fanciful explanations for Earth's creation as depicted in Genesis any more valid than the creation stories of the ancient Greeks, Hinduism, or any number of other religions? Does a larger number of people believing something somehow make it more likely to be true? I don't think so, and I fail to see how that could be the case.

Because I didn't use the phrase "near flame" did I? Most of this thread can been seen as a heavy flame bait, and often where there is flame bait, there is flame.

You have no idea what flaming, or flame-bait is.

Bias blindness. As I've said already, you do not know that for a fact, so stop flaunting your beliefs around like they are.

I'm not suffering from bias blindness. I was not brought up in any particular religion, in fact I didn't even learn that religion existed in the ridiculous, organized manner it does until much latter; at which point it was exceedingly clear to me that these buildings, and this time set aside by so many people, was simply to feed a shared delusion. There really is no other rational explanation. the fact is that you need to have the mind of a child to be indoctrinated into the ridiculous belief systems of most religions; then you take the "truths" to be self-evident. The only types of people that buy any sort of religious nonsense are the ones that are brought up into it; and, in kind, when a person is brought of as a Christian, they find the beliefs of Hinduism, the Ancient Greeks, Buddhism, Mormonism, Scientology, etc. Just as ridiculous as they would feel about their own religion had they not been heavily exposed to it in their childhood.

However, this is somewhat tangential to the original topic: is Creationism Child Abuse? And to answer that question, we need to consider some facts.

The first thing to consider is that schoolchildren are a captive audience, particularly for school curricula.
As children, their minds are wired in such a way as to basically 'short-circuit' incoming information to long-term memory. That is, they accept, without question, things being given as "facts" by adults and other recognized authority figures. This, perhaps ironically, is an evolved trait and has been exploited for hundreds of years, both knowingly and unknowingly, to keep religions on their feet; A Child born to an Indian Family is taught in the ways of Hinduism at a young age, when they grow up they continue to profess the faith and teach it to their children, etc; same for any religion. One could argue that "science" is a religion to, by this metric, But generally the teaching of science starts with the information and evidence, and works towards conclusions, rather than vice versa as you would find with religion. The scientific concept is "well, here's what we've discovered, how what does this tell us" rather than "We already know the answers, pick and choose some evidence that supports it and discard the rest". The problem with creationism is that it is fundamentally intellectually dishonest; being intellectually dishonest in a school curricula may not be Child abuse on par with physical beatings or one on one time with a catholic priest, but it can be considered abuse of the respect and authority bestowed on those in charge to profess unreasonable claims in order to bring more into their fold; Basically, teaching creationism is not "professing other views" because it quite dogmatically excludes pretty much any other creation story. Why is that? What makes, for example, Genesis more 'valid' than the creation stories of other religions?

The second thing to consider is that creationism in pretty much any form will fundamentally violate the First Amendment in the United States anyway. Thank goodness for that since it's a thinly disguised Intelligent Design.

Quote from Corvo

There is a lot of evidence against your girlfriend that she cheated on you but was later made obsolete when other evidence came via a video showing it wasn't your girlfriend that cheated on you, but some other guy.

aside from the implication that a girlfriend could be a guy (eg. Some other guy) this situation is far to unspecific to even entertain. In any case, in those situations, the 'evidence' is typically circumstantial. Usually the problem of such 'evidence' is that it doesn't actually point to anything specific; for example, 'evidence' like finding a gum wrapper in your girlfriends car for a brand she doesn't like being 'evidence' that she is cheating, when in fact it's only evidence that somebody at some point discarded a gum wrapper. The conclusion that she was cheating is fueled not by evidence but by a lack of trust as well as insecurity.

The difference is rather concrete. In the above case, the only time a person ever finds 'evidence' of an affair or that they are being cheated on is when they are looking for it to begin with. I know this because I've been on both sides of that fence and it's always been circumstantial- eg. "You don't like Juicy Fruit and I found a wrapper in your car why are you cheating on me". In the case of evolution, the evidence points in it's direction on it's own.

For example, consider Fossil evidence. One of the most common claims against this are that "well, God/the Creator put those there to test our faith". I thin kwe can safely dismiss this, because we cannot disprove that, and double-talk regarding the origin of evidence without any actual information about why is usually religiously motivated. It raises a few other questions, but let us discard this particular assumption for the obvious reason of being strongly motivated by religious beliefs.

Now, moving forward, we have Fossil evidence.

Now, this evidence is unequivocal. it doesn't, on it's own, actually "say" anything about religion; we discovered fossils- most independent from one another, on separate continents, and various other places. It is through these fossils we notice some interesting trends.

First, there are distinct similarities between fossils found in South America and those in Africa, particular on the adjacent Atlantic Coasts. In many cases fossils that are physiologically identical appear in these two otherwise disparate locations, separated by an ocean. This suggested that the African and South American Continents were one land-mass, and separated later on. Later discoveries, particularly of the Sub-atlantic Rift, and measurements of it's rate, which moves at about 2.5cm a year.

Now, these two pieces of information suggest strongly that the two were connected around 180 Million years ago.

Evidence for Evolution is not so much found in the fossils as it is the fossils; throughout all the fossil evidence we have found, many things are explained by evolution. For example, we find many fossils of dinosaurs such as Struthiomimus, which was a lizard but had many bird-like features- Ostrich-like, even. This on it's own is merely comical- an Ostrich Dinosaur. But we also find various other fossil evidence throughout that shows a distinct change to have more 'bird-like' features, culminating in creatures such as Archeopterx.

All of the evidence is internally consistent with Evolution; in fact Evolution was originally presented as a reason for all these strange internal consistencies on the fossil record as well as the observed variations throughout the sedimentary layers (which themselves could be used to judge age); this is also consistent with what we know today, too; we have various human-like fossils, which are very similar to ourselves and in many cases we share a significant percentage of our genome with them- even more so than we share with chimpanzees, (which approaches 98%). We have fossils that show that there was even a fractured early history for the race to sentience and planetary dominance between Neanderthal's and early Hominids, as we can see through the fossil record that, unlike many of the other species throughout, we find they are both present in the same time periods as well as the same locations.

The only reasonable assumption for every single fossil and skull we find is that it was, at some point, a living creature. Given the shape and appearance of the many numerous pre-hominid and early hominid fossils, it stands to reason that they likely looked very much like ourselves. When you have fossils that show a gradual change over time among various species from an Ape-like form to that of ourselves, it's hard to come to any other conclusion- unless you've already made a conclusion about the origins of human life and this planet, in which case it won't matter what evidence is presented, because it is difficult- if not impossible, to refute the claims of what this evidence means. Of course, it could be wrong, but the possibility that current conclusions based on evidence are wrong is not in and of itself evidence for a contrary view being more likely, particularly when that opposing perspective seeks to essentially disregard evidence on the basis of hand-wavey metaphysical claims. The fact of the matter is as I said, however- these fossils exist and we can reasonably assume they were, at one point, living creatures, and evidence points towards the time-frame in which they lived. Do we want to invoke a naturalistic explanation like Evolution, or a magical one like Creationism? And is teaching Magic as truth Child Abuse? These are difficult questions to answer, but since there is no supporting evidence, teaching Creationism in a scientific setting gives it undue creedence and legitimacy where it has not shown any such legitimacy outside of some ancient scribblings. I talk of course of the Hindu Creation story where Lord Brahma creates the Universe, Vishnu Maintains it, and Shiva Destroys it in an unending cycle. Now, obviously, in these sorts of discussions, the "assumption" is that we are talking about Abrahamic Creation and Genesis. The problem, of course, is that in repackaging Intelligent Design into the package of Creationism and trying to label it as non-theological, the only way to get, say, the Genesis story of Creation taught as an "alternative" to Evolution as an explanation for "why are we here" would require an equal amount of time to be spent on every single other Creation story ever. The problem is that we would turn a Scientific cirriculum into a a theological case study. For every single thing we'd have to suddenly step back and try to see how different religions would interpret it, and it stands to reason that such a situation is just plain silly.

Said the guy who's been doing almost nothing but talking down to people this entire thread.

really? Where did I talk down to people? If I talked down to people may the lord strike me down before I post this response.

If you are reading this, I was able to post this response. Is that evidence that I didn't 'talk-down' to people (whatever that means)? Not really, but by the logic of many it would be sufficient evidence.