Information theory, animal communication, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
Information theory, animal communication, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
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DOI：
10.1016/j.actaastro.2009.11.018
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发表时间：
2011-02-01
影响因子：
3.5
通讯作者：
Hanser, Sean F.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Doyle, Laurance R.;McCowan, Brenda;Hanser, Sean F.
我们目前正在进行的研究中的应用信息论的动物通信系统的目标是开发额外的探测器和估计器可能的外星智能信号。不管是什么物种，对于智力（即，复杂的知识）传输信息理论的某些规则仍然必须遵守。我们展示了一些初步的结果，应用信息理论的社会复杂的海洋哺乳动物物种（海豚和座头鲸），以及树栖松鼠猴，因为他们几乎完全依赖于他们的通信声音信号，产生的信号，可以很容易地通过信号分析的特点。像齐普夫定律和高阶信息熵结构这样的理论正在成为这些动物信号中“智能信息”内容的交流复杂性特征的指标，考虑到这些物种的社会复杂性，这也许并不奇怪。除了人类的语言，为了比较，我们也将这些指标应用于脉冲星信号也许（可以说）是最“有组织”的恒星系统作为天体物理系统的一个例子，必须通过这种信息理论过滤器与外星智能信息区分开来。我们还研究了从地球（阿雷西博天文台）发送的信息，它包含了很多意义，但我们在这里定义的数学意义上的信息很少。我们的结论是，在我们自己的星球上的非人类通信系统的研究可以通过提供通信复杂性的定量一般措施，为探测地外文明做出宝贵的贡献。研究我们地球上其他智能物种的复杂通信系统也可能是使我们对地外通信系统的思考去省的最好方法之一。(C)2009爱思唯尔有限公司保留所有权利。
We present ongoing research in the application of information theory to animal communication systems with the goal of developing additional detectors and estimators for possible extraterrestrial intelligent signals. Regardless of the species, for intelligence (i.e., complex knowledge) to be transmitted certain rules of information theory must still be obeyed. We demonstrate some preliminary results of applying information theory to socially complex marine mammal species (bottlenose dolphins and humpback whales) as well as arboreal squirrel monkeys, because they almost exclusively rely on vocal signals for their communications, producing signals which can be readily characterized by signal analysis. Metrics such as Zipfs Law and higher-order information-entropic structure are emerging as indicators of the communicative complexity characteristic of an "intelligent message" content within these animals' signals, perhaps not surprising given these species' social complexity. In addition to human languages, for comparison we also apply these metrics to pulsar signals-perhaps (arguably) the most "organized" of stellar systems-as an example of astrophysical systems that would have to be distinguished from an extraterrestrial intelligence message by such information theoretic filters. We also look at a message transmitted from Earth (Arecibo Observatory) that contains a lot of meaning but little information in the mathematical sense we define it here. We conclude that the study of non-human communication systems on our own planet can make a valuable contribution to the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence by providing quantitative general measures of communicative complexity. Studying the complex communication systems of other intelligent species on our own planet may also be one of the best ways to deprovincialize our thinking about extraterrestrial communication systems in general. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.