Riddle for this month

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This puzzle is based on one posed by the late Dr. Richard Feynman in one of his lectures:

Let's say you're a theoretical physicist who has just contacted an alien civilization using a brand new technology. Unfortunately, you can't figure out quite yet where your new alien friends live. They could be on the other side of the Galaxy, across the Universe, or even in another dimension.

But you start talking, starting first in the language of mathematics, then gradually working your way up to more complicated topics. After a while you come to understand that their world is more or less like ours. They have the same concepts of math and geometry, the same physical laws, and their world seems in many ways like ours. It has the same chemicals, and orbits a star with numerous other planets. And the aliens are far more advanced than us scientifically.

Eventually the aliens announce that they'd like to transport you over to their world. Ignoring the details of how they plan on accomplishing this (hypothetically assume "magic"), they would like to make you feel at home when you arrive. So you starting telling the aliens everything you can about your home. Surprisingly, you discover that using only concepts built up from a shared understanding of math, physics, and chemistry, you can paint an amazingly detailed picture of life on Earth over time.

Assuming the aliens can build anything you can describe, and that you have the combined resources of all of Earth, could you theoretically describe your world well enough for you to survive on their world? Well enough that you couldn't tell the difference

 

[Never]

Yes, you could survive on their world.
Yes, you would know the difference.

 

[Ask For More]

So much for the intellectual debate i was hoping for.....

 

[Ask For More]

Come on people!

Stop being so bloody useless!

Give me some hope that there is intelligent life still on Lit!

 

[Tabby432]

I'd like to help you out here but... I can't. The only riddle I ever heard, that I could answer, was the black, white, and red/read all over one.

 

[TaffyJ]

They'd have to keep me indoors.

Even if they were to construct an exact replica of a portion of Earth, the constellations in the sky would be different when you looked up at night. They'd have to keep me indoors at night if they didn't want me to know the difference.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

There are too many "What ifs" and variables here. As long as I'm assuming things like magic and all of the earth's resources at my disposal let's also assume that, sure, given a hell of a lot of time and brainstorming, yes I could help them create perfect doppleganger of earth to the point where I wouldn't know the difference. Given the lattidues here, sure I could. But to discuss this at length is like counting to a billion -- sure I could do it, but who has the inclination?

Now -- where's the riddle?

 

[willywanker]

I'm not so sure you could explain things never seen by the other "beings" clearly enough that they could replicate them.

The story of the four blind men describing the elephant comes to mind. Each of the four men was feeling a different part of the elephant. One was holding and feeling it tail, one his large ears, another his trunk and the third his massive legs. Each accuratly described what he felt but with 4 very different descriptions. Yet each one was correct, just incomplete.

Pick up an object from your desk, say a stapler. Try to give a description that would allow someone who had never used or seen one before to make a working model of it. I think it would take longer than we have to live to accuratly describe one room.

I don't think it is possible.

 

[HAPPYMONKEY]

i think that i would not be able to describe such a place due to my lack of understanding of physics and subatomics...basically i dont know if i could get air right enough no tto die straight out

and if i could i would know because i would describe the things i want there and no tall the bullshit...i would cheat...if im going somewhere it mine as well be MY world

 

[HAPPYMONKEY]

i think that i would not be able to describe such a place due to my lack of understanding of physics and subatomics...basically i dont know if i could get air right enough no tto die straight out

and if i could i would know because i would describe the things i want there and no tall the bullshit...i would cheat...if im going somewhere it mine as well be MY world

 

[gleam]

It's so hard having an intelligent debate when your avatar looks so damn cute.

So much for the intellectual debate i was hoping for.....

 

[Ask For More]

Well, no one really came up with what I had been wondering out when I saw this i.e. how far could they take realism? Let's not forget there are millions of little things happening for every step you take or every word that you type. A leaves fall from trees, rain falls on a certain area in the world.....would they be able to replicate chaotic events like these?

 

[Ask For More]

It's so hard having an intelligent debate when your avatar looks so damn cute.

Thanks

 

[Darowyn]

If the aliens created a fractal, chaotic system, then as long as the probablilties were close to those here, it's randomness would seem very familiar.
I don't have any problems telling, just by the feeling, the difference between the way a boat moves on the river from the way it moves on the open sea, yet the waves are random in both places.
Where they might fail is with the people, however magical they may be.
People's personalities are different from random. Characteristics are flexible, but networked. Certain things go together- like conservative politics and established religion, but can exist separately.
In a phrase, I can't see how they could reproduce the cognitive aspects of our world, because we all live in a world of our own anyway.
"Si exemplum requiris, circumspice", as it says in St Pauls Cathedral.
(If you want an example look around you)

 

[BlondGirl]

I thought this was pretty neat--I e-mailed it to one of my fave kid friends--she is a 12 year old homeschooler and I think this is an excellent critical thinking exercise for her. (Her poor mother thinks I am nuts at times!)