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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Randomness is a human concept (was Re: Time is a human concept)
Message-ID: <D01LsF.Co7@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <CzDKJD.FH4@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <3b87dp$g0c@cascade.pnw.net> <CzzwG9.Iny@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <3beh97$ds9@cascade.pnw.net>
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 1994 18:53:02 GMT
Lines: 72

In article <3beh97$ds9@cascade.pnw.net>, Don Edwards <warrl@pnw.net> wrote:

(your article is too long to comment in detail. I'll just point out few
places where you are showing clear antropomorphization, for which there is
no support, except human arrogance)

>Andrzej Pindor (pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca) wrote:
..........
>" In fact it easy to see how
>"wrong it could be. If the aliens based their classification on a number of
>"nucleons in the atomic nucleus (and why not?) then their table of elements
>"would look very different. 
>
>Guess again.  This becomes true to a *limited* extent when ordinary
                                                            ^^^^^^^^
"ordinary" for whom?

>temperatures get high enough that plasmas are more common than gases.
>But even then, for this to actually occur would require that the
>aliens become intimately familiar with the direct effects of nucleon
>count (which are virtually nonexistent for the non-radioactive
>isotopes) before they become intimately familiar with the *much* more
>profound, and *much* more readily observable, direct effects of
 ^^^^^^^^      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^       
"profound" for whom? "*much* more readily observable" for whom? Even for 
aliens living inside stars?

>electron count (which is a reflection of proton count).
........
>(This basically requires that the aliens live near the core of a
>star or in the innermost portions of an accretion disk, as these
>are about the only places where fusion is commonplace.)
>
Why not? 

>And if they organized their periodic chart on that basis, (ignoring
>unusual isotopes) they would have the first 18 elements "right" by

"Unusual" where? In the immediate vicinity of Earth, right?

>A different way of looking at the universe might remove any interest
>in the periodic table -- but if an alien species has any interest
>at all, and makes any scientific progress worth noting, they will
                                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^
"Worth noting" by whom?

>end up with a structure which *must* convey certain information.
>The more progress they make, the more certain it is that their
>periodic table will carry the same information as ours and be
>instantly decodable as soon as it is identified.

This would only be (and very partly) true if aliens were very much like us
and lived in similiar environment. Try to break out of restrictions of
your imagination. Few hundred years ago people thought that Earth was 
a center of the Universe. You still cling to a similar idea - that our
way of seeing the Universe is a unique one, which everyone else has to share
("if they only make enough progress, they will see that we are right" -
doesn't this remind you some ideological fanatics?)

>-- 
>-- "Self-interest has no place in society"         **  **  **    ********
>    -- Sandy Cuney, speaking for Handgun Control    ** ** **    **  **  **
>       Incorporated, in a live-broadcast debate      ******     **  **  **
>       in Seattle on 5/6/94                            **        ********

Andrzej

-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
