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i have gotten into real debates with my friends for this one. but math exists in the same space in my brain as like… zeus. i’m not denying the existence of the concepts of math, but i think math and numbers are just a way humans describe the patterns we see. like how ancients used mythology to describe the patterns of weather and time. if the aliens come, there’s no way they are using y = mx + b and the quadratic formula to label that concept. they’re calling it something else.
like obviously addition and subtraction is real, but we are just applying human explanations to something that already exists and calling it math. i guess it makes more sense to say math is just a mythology.
Nov 26, 2024

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learned something interesting the other day similar to this: if aliens come to earth, they WILL have knowledge of pi. it is the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter. any civilization that studies any form of geometry, trigonometry, calculus or physics will inevitably encounter the constant pi and give it a name. if aliens can make it across the stars to visit us, they’ve mastered math and physics, and pi is baked into these fields. this all means that the way we will eventually learn to talk to aliens will probably start at pi, and i think thats Neat
May 28, 2025
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- "if the aliens come, there’s no way they are using y = mx + b and the quadratic formula to label that concept. they’re calling it something else. " > i think definitely they aren't going to use the same symbols and notation to express the concept, you're right. but i raise you: what if there's a direct mapping from our representation of it to theirs? the details of how it's written may not be the same, but it's very hard to consider how they could be thinking about the same concept without defining it in some *equivalent*, though maybe non-identical, terms. though, the 'reality' of mathematics isn't really settled by this at all anyway, i don't think. mostly this would depend on what conditions you think need to be met for something to be 'real' or 'exist' initially. the freaky thing about maths is that even though it's 'reality' is a decidedly unsettled question, it seems pretty difficult (maybe impossible) to deny that it is *true*, and the truths of mathematics don't seem to change over time or place. the same ideas have been reached and formalised in places totally isolated from each other; ideas which have not been doubted over millennia, and that are not altered by differences in culture. -- is there any other discipline where this also occurs? maybe logic - but i'd say we're barking up the same tree here. even if they'd write it differently, is 1 + 1 = 2 also true for the aliens? is it always true that any two right angles are congruent for them, even if they call the 'right angle' something else, or think about it differently? i lean towards yes. but it gets murky - trying to 'prove the proofs' like this. that being said, it does feel mythological to a degree. you can't touch a number, or a proof, or an algorithm. but that this mythology is fundamentally linked to the strongest 'certainties' we have.... something strange about it all, for sure.
Mar 4, 2025
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Greeat take
Nov 26, 2024
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i think this is what they mean when they say math is like language: it is literally just a combination of bs that only exists in the context of something else; only to represent/explain/simplify a particular thing or process. just another method of communication but explicitly for guiding predictable/algorithmic processes and wateva. either way, completely fake.
Nov 26, 2024
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