I loved that part at the end of the book! It's the sort of thing that makes me love sci-fi: A "What-the-hell-if?" question to ponder and toy with. And to spark the reglious part of our brains; even (especially?) in non-religious people. In his books, Sagan encourages people to feel as in awe of the natural world as some do with religion. With that in mind, it fits. And, as little mysticism can be fun in a world with rules. Stephenson includes a (somewhat) similar mysticism in Cryptonomicon (And in a few of his books that followed it)
> in awe of the natural world as some do with religion
I have a real problem with the distinction between "religious people" and "non-religious people" because it presumes a distinction that I don't think exists. Everyone takes something to be the highest good. Most philosophers (for most of human history, anyway) and what you call religious people typically take God to be the highest good, the supreme summum bonum. Others worship pleasure or power or Man or nature or whatever else. In this sense, everyone is religious. We just differ about what the highest good is and what Man's orientation toward that good is.
What you call religious people do experience awe at creation. Indeed, God is not generally knowable directly, but creation is taken to tell us about the creator or first cause (what is in the effect must be in some way in the cause for you cannot give what you do not have).
> mysticism can be fun in a world with rules.
Two problems. First, mysticism isn't obscurantism. I believe Rahner somewhat obnoxiously called mystery "inexhaustible intelligibility" which is to say that true mystery is fully intelligible, but we cannot exhaust the knowing of that thing. I might imagine this to be something like trying to swallow the Nile. There's no end to it. The mystery par excellence for Catholics, then, is the beatific vision.
Second, what do you mean by "rules"? There are no rules, but things do have natures and what we call "scientific laws" are just shorthand descriptions of tendencies of things of a certain nature. There are no externalized laws "out there" that "govern" the world from without, imposing order onto what is otherwise some kind of unintelligible chaos. Things themselves are ordered by virtue of what they are. It's important not to commit the reification fallacy here w.r.t. "law". Furthermore, it almost sounds like you're saying that what you call religion is somehow antithetical to there being natures and principles. On the contrary, that is essential to something like Catholicism. Read the first few verses of the Gospel of John. Jesus is identified with the Logos, which is to say something like the order of the universe which was made incarnate in the hypostatic union. Natural law theory, something traditionally embraced by the Catholic Church, presupposes not only the utter intelligibility of the universe, but that things have natures and that the basis for ethics is human nature.
So what I sense here is a number of presuppositions, among them that "religion" (a word itself too broad and vague) is essentially (and only) an emotional phenomenon, which, in the case of something like Catholicism, isn't true.
> I have a real problem with the distinction between "religious people" and "non-religious people" because it presumes a distinction that I don't think exists
The distinction between people who believe that someone is watching and judging and people who don't does exist (ask them, they'll tell you which camp they fall in to).
I suspect he is referring to what is underneath powering the surface level appearances and processes that we interact with? Here the distinctions are quite different imho.
The definition of pi is what determines the digits of pi, FULL STOP. There's no room whatsoever, for any sort of agent to 'leave a message' in those digits. I would think even a full-on theist would be embarrassed to suggest otherwise.
> The definition of pi is what determines the digits of pi, FULL STOP. There's no room whatsoever, for any sort of agent to 'leave a message' in those digits.
All the agent needs to do is design or adjust the life forms it wants to find the message so that they are inclined to choose a numeric base in which the right sequence appears in the digits of π. The definition of π defines it's value, but the sequence of digits doesn't just depend on the value, but also the choice of base.
The Babylonians used based 60 for at least some things, but even that seems unwieldy, and even taking everything in between as equally useful provides only 58 distinct sequences of digits in pi.
The control implied is basically the power to create all the universes laws (and the math we can learn in it) from scratch.
It has been a very long time since I read the book, but if I remember correctly the first message was actually found in base 11 (a picture of a circle).
Back then it hadn't been decided yet if the distribution of the digits of pi are such that all finite numbers can be found in it or not. Some years ago I read about some proof that they can. That means that "Carl Sagan was right!" in whatever encoding you like can be found in pi is you look deep enough.
The thing is what does "deep enough" mean? If we consider some two digit decimal number, like 27, then the chance that it isn't the first two digits is 99%. The chance that it isn't the first two nor the second and third digits is 98.01% and so on. The chance of not finding it among the first 500 digits is less than 0.6%. But unlikely things can still happen, so finding a message "too near the start" might convince some people that pi was created by an intelligence but wouldn't really be a good proof.
Back then it hadn't been decided yet if the distribution of the digits of pi are such that all finite numbers can be found in it or not. Some years ago I read about some proof that they can.
I would be curious to hear more. As far as I know that is still a conjecture.
Aren't the digits of pi randomly distributed? So then, you can encode literally any message you want by picking an offset into them. Could even design a "compression" algorithm where a message is designated by its offset, though I'm guessing it won't be very efficient in practice.
Me too. The suggestion that logic itself could be a contingent part of the universe (best mechanism for making something like this true) just seems wrong, and is anti-scientific, in any case. Not sure how to dispose of the idea, though, hence the unease.
The VLA is still there in New Mexico and impressive. As of 4/22 they have not reopened the visitors center. But you can see the miles long rows of them from the road. And if you lucky you may see all of them change pointing in unison to another part of the sky.
I thought this article was going to be about Sagan's notorious ego[1] and lack of expertise and mathematical chops as an astronomer (Sagan was noted to have often asked for help from colleagues to do simple calculus).
I'm a huge fan of his work, and was greatly influenced by Cosmos, watching it as a child. I don't really care if he had a big ego or wasn't the best at math. What he did better than anyone else was to convey the sense of wonder. He maintained curiosity and skepticism in equal measure. That is hard to do, but understanding and communicating the sense of wonder to the masses is even harder - and I'm very grateful that he did.
"If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped." - Carl Sagan. The Demon-Haunted World.
Do you have actual proof or citations to suggest he wasn’t good at math? Also that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A good scientist can and should understand their limitations and collaborate accordingly.
The fact of the matter remains that he was more academically active than the current crop of science evangelists (cough NDT) and was more relatable at least in his TV persona. Unless he was straight up evil in his life his ego doesn’t matter and is more likely not surprising.
Interesting that it’s an article about Carl Sagans SciFi side and it doesn’t mention that he’s the one who suggested the aliens in 2001 be just a big monolith without form. Also arguably a better sci-fi film (and more cerebral?) than Contact.
I love Contact myself but it was clearly not exceptional. I’d rate it comparably to 2010, 2001’s sequel.
For me it’s banalaity arises from its following of the one sci-fi trope that always disappoints me - the existence of an unexplained force/alien/species/molecule that transcends known physics as the main plot point. Pretty much every sci-fi show movie novel has this component and I’m just tired. The only two movies I know that don’t have it are the Martian and Gattaca. Those are the exceptional sci-fi works if you ask me.
PS: please don’t mention the moon, I hope we can keep the discussion to sci-fi works that are logically consistent at the least.
Absolutely. In my interpretation Contact is as unscientific as it gets. In the end it’s another dumb equivocation to the need of religion and faith.
The advanced species went through all this bs just to explicitly make their story as unbelievable as possible? They couldn’t allow any proof to be taken back? What was the point exactly then? They were so advanced but couldn’t see human fallibility?
What’s wrong with trying to transcend known Physics, there are so many things we don’t know, so speculating / imagining what is still unknown is part of sci-fi (as long as it’s not fantasy like the space mushroom network in Star Trek Discovery - which is not Star Trek anymore anyway)
And talking about logical consistency… Martian is good, but it had parts in it that were questionable, so I don’t understand why you’re not applying your same standards you used for Moon to the Martian.
Nothing fundamentally wrong with a fantastical element, but the issue then is that the story essentially splits into 3, among the politics and human stories, the actual science parts, and the fantastical parts. Often the science parts take third place and I also think it’s a cop out story wise. I still love me some Expanse and Firefly and Star Wars.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 94.4 ms ] threadI have a real problem with the distinction between "religious people" and "non-religious people" because it presumes a distinction that I don't think exists. Everyone takes something to be the highest good. Most philosophers (for most of human history, anyway) and what you call religious people typically take God to be the highest good, the supreme summum bonum. Others worship pleasure or power or Man or nature or whatever else. In this sense, everyone is religious. We just differ about what the highest good is and what Man's orientation toward that good is.
What you call religious people do experience awe at creation. Indeed, God is not generally knowable directly, but creation is taken to tell us about the creator or first cause (what is in the effect must be in some way in the cause for you cannot give what you do not have).
> mysticism can be fun in a world with rules.
Two problems. First, mysticism isn't obscurantism. I believe Rahner somewhat obnoxiously called mystery "inexhaustible intelligibility" which is to say that true mystery is fully intelligible, but we cannot exhaust the knowing of that thing. I might imagine this to be something like trying to swallow the Nile. There's no end to it. The mystery par excellence for Catholics, then, is the beatific vision.
Second, what do you mean by "rules"? There are no rules, but things do have natures and what we call "scientific laws" are just shorthand descriptions of tendencies of things of a certain nature. There are no externalized laws "out there" that "govern" the world from without, imposing order onto what is otherwise some kind of unintelligible chaos. Things themselves are ordered by virtue of what they are. It's important not to commit the reification fallacy here w.r.t. "law". Furthermore, it almost sounds like you're saying that what you call religion is somehow antithetical to there being natures and principles. On the contrary, that is essential to something like Catholicism. Read the first few verses of the Gospel of John. Jesus is identified with the Logos, which is to say something like the order of the universe which was made incarnate in the hypostatic union. Natural law theory, something traditionally embraced by the Catholic Church, presupposes not only the utter intelligibility of the universe, but that things have natures and that the basis for ethics is human nature.
So what I sense here is a number of presuppositions, among them that "religion" (a word itself too broad and vague) is essentially (and only) an emotional phenomenon, which, in the case of something like Catholicism, isn't true.
The distinction between people who believe that someone is watching and judging and people who don't does exist (ask them, they'll tell you which camp they fall in to).
The definition of pi is what determines the digits of pi, FULL STOP. There's no room whatsoever, for any sort of agent to 'leave a message' in those digits. I would think even a full-on theist would be embarrassed to suggest otherwise.
All the agent needs to do is design or adjust the life forms it wants to find the message so that they are inclined to choose a numeric base in which the right sequence appears in the digits of π. The definition of π defines it's value, but the sequence of digits doesn't just depend on the value, but also the choice of base.
The control implied is basically the power to create all the universes laws (and the math we can learn in it) from scratch.
Back then it hadn't been decided yet if the distribution of the digits of pi are such that all finite numbers can be found in it or not. Some years ago I read about some proof that they can. That means that "Carl Sagan was right!" in whatever encoding you like can be found in pi is you look deep enough.
The thing is what does "deep enough" mean? If we consider some two digit decimal number, like 27, then the chance that it isn't the first two digits is 99%. The chance that it isn't the first two nor the second and third digits is 98.01% and so on. The chance of not finding it among the first 500 digits is less than 0.6%. But unlikely things can still happen, so finding a message "too near the start" might convince some people that pi was created by an intelligence but wouldn't really be a good proof.
The point was that this is what proof of a Creator would look like (and the aliens suggested there were others).
It was, IMHO, a giant gauntlet thrown down to religious folk. And elegantly done, too.
I would be curious to hear more. As far as I know that is still a conjecture.
Aren't the digits of pi randomly distributed? So then, you can encode literally any message you want by picking an offset into them. Could even design a "compression" algorithm where a message is designated by its offset, though I'm guessing it won't be very efficient in practice.
Alas, it's just another puff piece.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_7100#Codename_...
"If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped." - Carl Sagan. The Demon-Haunted World.
Interested in reading more about this.
The fact of the matter remains that he was more academically active than the current crop of science evangelists (cough NDT) and was more relatable at least in his TV persona. Unless he was straight up evil in his life his ego doesn’t matter and is more likely not surprising.
Still interested in the citations though.
I love Contact myself but it was clearly not exceptional. I’d rate it comparably to 2010, 2001’s sequel.
For me it’s banalaity arises from its following of the one sci-fi trope that always disappoints me - the existence of an unexplained force/alien/species/molecule that transcends known physics as the main plot point. Pretty much every sci-fi show movie novel has this component and I’m just tired. The only two movies I know that don’t have it are the Martian and Gattaca. Those are the exceptional sci-fi works if you ask me.
PS: please don’t mention the moon, I hope we can keep the discussion to sci-fi works that are logically consistent at the least.
We clearly have very different tastes.
The advanced species went through all this bs just to explicitly make their story as unbelievable as possible? They couldn’t allow any proof to be taken back? What was the point exactly then? They were so advanced but couldn’t see human fallibility?
What’s wrong with trying to transcend known Physics, there are so many things we don’t know, so speculating / imagining what is still unknown is part of sci-fi (as long as it’s not fantasy like the space mushroom network in Star Trek Discovery - which is not Star Trek anymore anyway)
And talking about logical consistency… Martian is good, but it had parts in it that were questionable, so I don’t understand why you’re not applying your same standards you used for Moon to the Martian.
Btw, I was talking about this sci-fi:
Moon
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/
Not sure we're talking about the same movie.