Cyber ​​Heroes

Chapter 891 Another possibility

"Trouble? Clue is a ghost." Ingrid shook her head and handed her notebook to Xiang Shan: "The computer has counted the most frequently appearing symbols, and you can check it yourself."

Ingrid's notebook has ten ... or three different sets of symbols, one solid circle, one hollow circle; four arrows pointing up, down, left, and right, the main part of the arrow is an equilateral triangle, and the back followed by a line segment perpendicular to the base; four arrows pointing diagonally, the body of the arrow is an isosceles right triangle, the most common base being perpendicular to a line segment.

It's all handwritten.

"This is?"

"If my guess is correct, the solid dot and the hollow circle represent 'start' and 'end' respectively, and the 'arrow' is the 'direction of reading'. In other words, these things can not only be left, right, Read up and down, or diagonally," Ingrid said.

Xiang Shan grinned: "It's so troublesome... won't you faint?"

"Everyone guesses that these symbols are not natural language, but a symbol system similar to high-level language or assembly language, which is convenient for humans to operate machinery."

Xiang Shan looked at the symbols: "So you think these things are...mnemonics? Something like that?"

"Very likely." Ingrid nodded: "These things are highly graphic. But if you look at it by the standard of pictographs, the number of characters is too small, only a hundred or so. But if you look at it by the standard of letters , which is too much. And so... such complex and difficult to guess symbols, it really doesn't seem to be read to aliens-of course, this is in terms of human thinking. Alien's concept of language , may be based on a completely different physiological basis."

"Oh……"

"But in the end, there is something that 'everyone studies science, he will understand'. First draw a few geometric figures, and then draw a schematic diagram of a hydrogen atom to show that we can understand mathematics and physics, and then label the symbols of the numbers Come out, it's better than anything else." Ingrid continued.

Xiang Shan nodded: "Indeed."

"These symbols are for machines, not creatures."

Xiang Shan thought for a moment: "It's actually not the case. I think these words must all correspond to a human vocabulary that 'has and only has one natural semantic meaning', and each symbol points to a 'clearly defined' concept."

"A clear concept..."

"Register, accumulator, memory, add, send..." Xiang Shan waved his hand: "Of course, this is also based on human computer technology. In fact, the computer architecture of aliens may have nothing to do with this set." It doesn't matter. But concepts such as 'plus', 'teleportation' and 'displacement' always exist."

Ingrid quickly recorded in the notebook: "Indeed..."

"And this must contain their number symbols. Did you find any symbols in it that are similar or identical to the symbols on the steel beams outside?"

"The computer is counting, and the current data shows that not only do those symbols exist, but the number is not small."

"So do you figure out where '0' and '1' are?"

Ingrid shook her head: "It hasn't been finalized yet, what's the matter?"

"If I guess, there must be an area with a lot of 0s and 1s... well, it may be 0/1/2-maybe aliens will use ternary computers, but in general it is more likely to be binary. "Xiang Shan said: "If these symbols are similar to mnemonics as you think, then there must be an area where the set of 'mnemonics' can be matched one-to-one with the set of 'machine instructions' Get up, in some form." Xiang Shan said: "The machine must first be able to convert mnemonics into mechanical instructions before it can work through these mnemonics."

Ingrid nodded: "Indeed, I should have thought of it - if there is any progress in deciphering, I will include you in the report. But why are you so sure it is binary?"

"This involves a question of 'under which base system can we use the least symbols to represent the most numbers?'." Xiang Shan said: "For example, the range '0~99'. Binary 99 is 1100011, seven digits, so if we want to represent any number between 0 and 99, we prepare two states for each digit, namely seven 0s and seven 1s, a total of fourteen symbols. Trinary 99 is, um, 10200, five digits. To represent all the numbers in this range, we need five 1s, five 2s, and five 0s. Quaternary requires sixteen symbols, quinary, hexa The hexadecimal and heptadic systems have fifteen symbols, eighteen symbols, and twenty-one symbols."

"If you extend '0~99' to 'arbitrary numbers', then you will find that the final result of 'the most economical' falls on the natural logarithm e, which is the most economical e-base. And e is not an integer , it is an irrational number, the closest value is 2.7182. At least in engineering, the base can only be positive integers, so it is either 2 or 3."

Ingrid nodded: "Then the ternary system is better?"

"From the point of view of information storage and computing, it's true." Xiang Shan sighed: "But, 'components with two states' and 'components with three states' have different costs. Three Compared with binary system, the advantages of storing information are quite limited, and the difference is only a few percent. However, under the existing technology, the cost of ternary components is much higher than that of binary components, and the difficulty of integration is even greater. ——Of course, this is only based on human understanding. Perhaps on the side of aliens, things are reversed. But I think the physical laws of the universe are consistent, and so should aliens.”

Ingrid thought for a moment: "The cost issue... But look, you just said that these aliens 'do not care about the cost'."

"Ah..." Xiang Shan was taken aback, apparently convinced: "It makes sense..."

If those aliens really uphold the religious belief of 'as long as it is as close as possible to mathematical theory'...

During the meal, Ingrid and Xiang Shan told Yawgmoth and David these words.

As a result, Yawgmoth rolled his eyes: "I won't comment on the part of the computer, but 'regardless of cost'... Have you ever thought about another possibility? The home planet of the 'Ogun' builder is far from his own. The stars are very close, very close, and the energy is so abundant that even the oceans are filled with organic fuels formed by the decomposition of plants—it is a planet where even animals can photosynthesize. In this extremely resource-rich environment, They certainly have a different idea of ​​'resources' than we do."

Xiang Shan and Ingrid were stunned.

Yawgmoth raised his fork and pointed. "Anthropocentrists."

David thought about it for a moment: "In this environment, can evolutionary pressure really give birth to intelligent creatures... The optimal evolution strategy in this place should be to spread as many leaves as possible?"

(End of this chapter)