MugaSofer comments on Rationality Quotes March 2013 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 March 2013 10:45AM

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Comment author: Endovior 06 March 2013 08:54:58PM 3 points [-]

Not necessarily. Cosmic rays are just electromagnetic energy on particular (high) frequencies. So if it interprets everything along those lines, it's just seeing everything purely in terms of the EM spectrum... in other words 'normal, uninteresting background case, free of cosmic rays'. So things that don't trigger high enough to be cosmic rays, like itself, parse as meaningless random fluctuations... presumably, if it was 'intelligent', it would think that it existed for no reason, as a matter of random chance, like any other case of background radiation below the threshold of cosmic rays, without losing any ability to perceive or understand cosmic rays.

Comment author: MugaSofer 24 March 2013 05:49:57PM 0 points [-]

Scanning itself and saying "nope, nothing to see here", that's one thing. Scanning itself and saying "well, this is basically cosmic rays, only at a lower frequency ..." is closer to what the quote describes.