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Talk like an ๐Ÿ‘ฝ (mander.xyz)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[โ€“] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

If a spacefaring race is so utterly alien they don't even have a concept of counting how did they manage space travel?

And, like I said, math only works for the (presumably large) subset of aliens we could eventually talk to.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    we did it without what loosely translates as blarglsnargling and they are equally confused as to how we did it. The downside to our approach being pollution of our air, the downside to their approach being pollution of their planet's crust. Both of which would be catastrophic if occurred in each other's ecosystem but is a mild irritant heading towards and eventual catastrophe for each respective society.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    Space launches via catapult are entirely possible on earth. We don't do it mostly because the engineering scale is dramatically larger, not because of how we math.

    The laws of physics seem to be consistent throughout our universe, so any claim that an alien race could travel through space without math is what skeptics call "an extraordinary claim".

    I dont really see how a contrarian "what if they're just too weird" stance is even helpful in a discussion about why math is the closest thing we have to a universal language. If an alien civilization is too weird to grok math, I dont see how we'd ever be able to communicate with them at all.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 7 months ago

    it's not that it's not "math" it's that the process by which we derive and conceptualize math may be alien to other consciousnesses.

    we already have similar things like 0.999... = 1, or algebra, or base 10 v base 16 v base 2... is it so hard to conceive a race with different perception organs, a different "brain" that doesn't look or function like ours, maybe non-carbon-based would operate in a way that is entirely alien?

    Consider how from 400 BC to 1800 AD disease was spread by "miasma" and 20,000 years ago it wasn't spread by "anything" because we didn't have a framework or concept of the idea of disease transmission. Consider how before we went to space we thought there was "aether" outside the atmosphere, and before that it was "quinessetence" and before that it was a God or a celestial beetle or whatever...

    Are we so bold as to claim that our grasp on what numbers are and their relation to the universe won't change as much in another 2,000 years, or 20,000?

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