nostr:npub1pt6l3a97fvywrxdlr7j0q8j2klwntng35c40cuhj2xmsxmz696uqfr6mf6 nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw nostr:npub1u5tpktgc8gv8jw22cyjyh5gy5nr07v88hmrvtut7zkr06q0py6fs30xmf3 >These “greats” were romanticized but the discoveries would have happened without them, give or take a few years. Ideas seem to arise from their own mechanics and then animate the people who later claim credit for them.

I'm not fully convinced of this for all discoveries. (I agree with it for nuclear weapons, but not for *all* discoveries).

I see no reason to believe that an alien civilization would have developed the same mathematics we have. The axioms we have - including "the natural numbers exist" - are very much consequences of human beliefs. One can imagine very easily an alien civilization which firmly believes there are no infinite sets.

nostr:npub1ecj3mfr9lzvx7wh6fmh59vz6eet324mdtdlp9qxzqvwuvpglwnxqv6fchy nostr:npub1g0uss0sjsgxwmhqxgnvlj0zv9ru89xwfyktkcjc0kgy8syxj79ss383vfw nostr:npub1u5tpktgc8gv8jw22cyjyh5gy5nr07v88hmrvtut7zkr06q0py6fs30xmf3 Depending on your definition of “alien species” I can perhaps give one example already: Doron Zeilberger believes (apprently sincerely) that even large integers do not exist. What exists, in his view, is the ring Z/nZ for some n (larger than what is physically possible to compute).

Less flippantly, I take your point. Mathematics as a whole is quite arbitrary, which also makes it feel more freeing in a way, but also more depressing because the “dialectical forces” which drive its development tend to come from people and fashions rather than fundamental reality. The rules of logic seem universal to me (inb4 constructivism).

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