> What should we call the search for alien truth? The obvious choice is "philosophy."
Minor nitpick, but the subfield of Epistemology (or Alien Epistemology) might be a better term. Literally the study of knowledge, or how we know what we know and what is true.
But trying to look at it from an alien (or AI) point of view is a really interesting thought experiment. What are universal truths in the literal sense of the word "universal"? And what are merely helio-centric cultural trends masquerading as universal truths.
I wonder if that's ever been done before. There's a little bit of discussion of it online, but not much it seems:
It also occurs to me to wonder if AGI will ever invent its own version of epistemology, wondering how it knows what it knows. Or will minds based fundamentally on binary logic, rather than the human mind's fuzzy logic, even need such a field?
I think alien truth about alien truth would be epistemology. The number of protons in helium might be an alien truth but it isn't really epistemology, it's just a fact. Whereas the scientific method itself would be a system of epistemology.
Minor nitpick, but the subfield of Epistemology (or Alien Epistemology) might be a better term. Literally the study of knowledge, or how we know what we know and what is true.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/
But trying to look at it from an alien (or AI) point of view is a really interesting thought experiment. What are universal truths in the literal sense of the word "universal"? And what are merely helio-centric cultural trends masquerading as universal truths.
I wonder if that's ever been done before. There's a little bit of discussion of it online, but not much it seems:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22alien%20epistemology