[Reuters, for immediate release. Wednesday, January 10, 2024]:
It apparently really IS hump day this time. Or at least it might be…
In a surprising development this morning, aliens have contacted planet earth. Their initial message came through garbled, but it appears that they wish to speak to the planet’s most intellectually gifted residents.
As things have happened, it seems that they have somehow ‘absorbed’ all of the planet’s currently accessible public information and managed to create something like a ‘reference system’ by which humans can easily understand it.
They offered what amounts to something like a Rebus puzzle, and the process has been described as “quite astonishing.”
Apparently, they have devised a method for data compression which involves using common, everyday references coupled with simple human logic.
They’ve devised a method of speaking to ‘everyday folk’ and people of extreme degrees of academic specialization simultaneously.
As it turns out, their systems indicated that the best first human contact point was widely acclaimed MIT complexity researcher Scott Aaronson. Professor Aaronson is a distinguished figure in the field of theoretical computer science, particularly known for his contributions to quantum computing and computational complexity theory.
The surprising reason they cited for contacting him first?
Because he fit a number of different classifications.
The last of which was that he was 42.
Mr. Aaronson was undoubtedly skeptical of the initial contact; the aliens apparently did specify that they were at least as timid about reaching out to him as he might well have been to reach out to them, had he been the first to consider it.
Within the correspondence, they identified their first contact with his research as surprisingly coming from here:
The piece is a plain English simplification of a known computer science problem. Aaronson is referenced between 7:14 and 7:41 of the above video.
By compressing the problem to a reasonably plausible exchange between a group of aliens and an eight year old boy — who is curious and described to be ‘very concerned about alien intelligence’ — the aliens were able to successfully illustrate that despite cogently demonstrating that they had devised a method by which a human brain can function literally millions of times faster than seemed evident from the classes of problems this planet is ‘still working on’ —
To the astonishment of many researchers, humans were still capable of stumping them, albeit momentarily.
The original transmission appears to have been sent as a multi-part tweet, apparently because they are doing ongoing testing to gauge what level of intercession is warranted, and how the transmission of alien technology should progress — to minimize the chances of people becoming distressed.
In summary, they have asked for the people of earth to submit a list of the names of the thousand most intellectually gifted humans on the planet, and the due date is January 17, 2024.
They have reassured Mr. Aaronson that their only intention is to rearrange the list and return it to him promptly.
From there, they are requesting that humanity re-address the question, pare the list to the top 100 most capable and return it by February 10, 2024. They plan to then rank that list from top to bottom, return it on the 11th of February, and they require only that humanity name a person most likely capable of understanding extremely sophisticated and apparently very dangerous technology.
The due date for that name is February 29th.
Their summary was just this: “We came to help. We saw that this was a Leap Year for the people of earth, and we reasoned that the people here might well accept a rather straightforward process of aligning their interests which will, by our estimates, methodically allow changes to take place throughout this civilization on the order of a 10X improvement of sophistication every four years for the indefinite future.
They also said they are interceding because it became evident to them that this civilization was ‘in the cradle of its infancy whilst holding several firecrackers and matches.’
Aaronson has yet to respond to the second communique but has resolved to pass the problem through to his graduate students to determine if they can glean any more from it than he can.
The aliens apparently selected rightly; Scott is an approachable, affable, well-connected and well-respected individual.
An alien who refers to himself as Doug came up with the idea of narrowing down the so very many approachable, affable, well-connected, and well-respected individuals by cross referencing it with those who are 42.
Apparently, Adams may have been right.
