Sophie, a response to your questions, requires a long post even for brief answers:
So saidith Sam C:
“If we are clueless about our "past" ..... it is highly unlikely we will have success at predicting our future.”
Sophie Marie, I stated the above as a per se, “paraphrase” of ……
“if you ignore your past actions, you are doomed to repeat them”. Well “DUH”, we cannot, and are not, “ignoring our past”, simply because we don’t have much of a clue what our past was. Thus, “predicting” is all we can do. Aka: like predicting the climate.
“What do you mean that "our current species of humans are not going to contact it"?”
Several reasons why.
1. It might contact us, but not vice-versa.
2. Anarchy will cause us to “
self-destruct” before any contact occurs.
3. The closest star to our Solar System is Proxima Centauri, about
4.24 light years away.
4. The nearest potentially habitual planet for intelligent life is
12 light-years away.
Note: 1 light year
is nearly 6 trillion miles5. The current human race has only been capable of communicating vast distances
for less than 115 years (1906), ….. thus, out of the past 6,000 to 15,000 years of current human intelligence there has only been an “
80 year window of opportunity” via which “contact” via radio was possible. And if there was, or is, an intelligent entity on another planet, what was, or is, their “
window of opportunity” in respect to ours? If the "windows" don't overlap ..... then no can converse. And the "stars" that we can see from earth are so far out in space that they all could have exploded and disappeared 50,000 years ago and we wouldn't even know it happened.
"Reinforcement Learning By experimenting, computers are figuring out how to do things that no programmer could teach them". I'd like to know what you think as it is not software teaching them to learn!
Sophie Marie, don’t you be believing such “
tripe n’ piffle” such as you related above.
“DUH”, the programmers are creating the “program code” that instructs the “APP”, or application software how to “
figure out how to do new things” and to record how it was done so that it can be “repeated”.
Sophie, current electronic computer design is incapable of ever acquiring AI (Artificial Intelligence) that mimics the human brain/mind, …….. simply because,
as best as I can describe it, …….. the brain/mind is
a biological self-programming super-computer with unlimited data storage capacity, multiple virtual processors, ……… all functioning concurrent with each other …… via a memory storage addressing scheme that is “data/info” orientated rather than “address” orientated/partitioned.
Sophie, the brain/mind “uploads” environmental data via the sense organs and stores it
in the DNA of the brain neurons and then “links” that data to “associated” data in other neurons via a “synapse” or synaptic connections. A single neuron can have
as many as 10,000 synapses.
“You might also like the ones on Self Driving Trucks and Paying by Facial Recognition. I'm sure you've heard about the self driving taxis and cars. Also, at my place of employment, people pay for food via finger print scanning.”
Sophie, the above is nothing more than
a highly revised “modern version” of an old, old technology that was first installed in “vending machines” in 1960, …..
the “dollar bill changer”. And then in June 1974 another version of “scanner”, the first
UPC (bar code) scanner was installed at Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
“Also, about those dozen or so archeological sites .... the "un-explainables" - maybe we weren't meant to know everything that happened before us...sometimes we just don't have enough information.”
“HA”, humans have evolved to be “curious” animals and a few of us want to know what happened. But we have two (2) very BIG problems, ….. one is the NIH mindset (Not Invented Here) and the second one is an avid belief in Monotheism. Both of the afore noted are a great hindrance to education and/or discoveries.
Sophie, I have written 3 0r 4 commentaries on the above subject, that you might find interesting, but they are far to long to be posting here on.
Cheers