Math is just a particularly consistent subset of natural language

>>8212583
the natural numbers - the basis of our mathematics - have very good properties of "unicity" through logical systems

if their logic is anything like ours, their math is, too.

>>8212583
I sympathize, but if this is the case, how do you account for the mathematics employed (unknowingly) by other species on this planet?
Just one example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodical_cicadas#Evolution
If math is just a very consistent language, what it describes are patterns, and while aliems might see other patterns and describe them differently, there is a universality to certain patterns we see, and we should expect aliems to notice and express at least some of the ones we do.

>>8212587
If you believe god made the naturals sure, but what about the integers?
the rationals?
the reals?
I can believe some space faring intelligences don't have the same concept of real numbers or connected topological spaces or what have you as we do.

>>8212591
How do you distinguish the description of the pattern from the pattern without langauge. Do you think it is possible to understand an alien's math without its langauge?

Also I'm a little drunk and don't go here much do to rampant baiting but just realized this is a shitty topic for /sci/ since it is pretty much entirely philosophy

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Wittgenstein knew this.

>>8212603
Yeah it's philosophical but related to the foundations of mathematics.
I can imagine an aliems understanding prime numbers and beaming them out into space, we intercept the message and say "oh they know primes that's neat". But if they have a proof of goldbach's conjecture we're not going to understand it without first knowing their language. However I do think that mathematics would be the easiest place to start when it comes to translation - if they have anything in common with us, it's going to bear out in their mathematics.

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>>8212607

>>8212609
I feel like this is a reasonable response but also that we can't expect to have a "meaningful" dialectic with aliens any more than we can with computers since they are likely both groups of things that we only share math with; and we are yet to have actual conversations with machines

>>8212603
>How do you distinguish the description of the pattern from the pattern without langauge
Horses can figure this out. Tap once. Tap twice. Tap three times.

One of the signals that we send out is a series of constant-energy beams of radiation. Two beams, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, and so on. There's no known process in nature that produces a sequence of prime numbers. What they would receive would be light, which is independent of language and constructs, a staple of electromagnetism, one of the four fundamental forces of the universe's nature. It'd be a fool move to try to send equations and programs; what we can send is a pattern that can only be produced and interpreted mathematically.

>>8212635
your entire post missed the question

horses can distinguish small naturals, sure. aliens can have a concept equivalent to ours of primes in some sense, sure.

then what?

Because ultimately maths provide the simplest path to explain any pattern

>>8212653
Kolmogorov says it is impossible to have a process that always finds the simplest path.

How do we know our path isn't one out of a trillion?

Math is very subjective. The math of humans started developing steadily with the ancient Greeks. Now, it all began through geometry. They used unit lengths to define triangle, square, rectangle, cube etc and from then on all the properties they managed to come up. The thing is that there's smth about our species that pushed us in this direction - we can see clearly outlined edges. If we didn't see in the 400-700nm spectrum, but let's say in the IR, we'd have no edges to our geometry. Our whole basis of math would be different, the axioms which govern basic Euclidean geometry would not exist and everything in total would be different. Math is just a branch of natural philosophy. It is a type of research that arrives at conclusions with the use of logic. Sure, aliens might have math but it will be totally different from ours if they're not even in our visible spectrum.

>>8212670
>sight is the only sense
>having fuzzy eyes means objects are actually fuzzy