Wittgenstein’s Theatre

Abstract

We have indicated in the previous chapters that verification of facts is effectuated essentially in a mechanical way—all of the processes, the easy ones but also the intricacies of the more difficult ones, can be carried out by some sort of (computing—data processing) machinery. This observation is important. Receivers of messages coded in LINCOS will be faced with a rather serious decoding and interpretation problem. Because machinery is involved in the construction of messages, there are interesting, promising perspectives for the decoding problem. We have remarked before that one can imagine that the receivers might be in the position to let the hard work be done by some sort of (intelligent) computing machinery or artefacts of for us unknown types. In that case the receivers might be able to program their machines in such a way that the LINCOS annotations of our messages can be treated (perhaps even interpreted) by them. In order to get some perspective on this aspect of the interstellar communication problem, we provide in this chapter a somewhat simplified outline of how machinery can do the job of verification.