I had actually started on a flash version after I read his original offer, but got caught up with other work over the weekend. I think most people realized that he was trying to present the offer as satire, but even still, if you say you are going to give money to charity and then rescind that offer, well, that's just cruel. If he had truly wanted to make his point, he could have done it without dangling the money in the face of charity.
Re:Why wouldn't math be known across the universe?
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The Golden Ratio
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I'm just not 100% on that theory. Whales can't count the number of krill that they eat, and I'm guessing they don't require numbers to judge distance, and yet they are very intelligent, and capable of communication as far as we can tell. Who's to say that another even more advanced form of intelligence couldn't evolve without the need to quantify things in the same manner we do. Plus they are capable of navigating great distances without having to count the number of feet. Somehow I think the very concept of feet is a little foreign to them...
Re:Why wouldn't math be known across the universe?
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The Golden Ratio
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· Score: 1
Not to sound all new-agey, but an alien race might not have ever needed a way to quantify things the way we do. For example, if we count a basket full of apples and then assign a value to them, like 23.
However, if an alien race had a more conditional physiology they might have to learn a more intuitive and less logical system for keeping track of the value of things. Take insects for example, with some insects as they progress through the different stages of their lives they can greatly alter the type of food required to sustain them. Apples might be poisonous to them at one stage of their life, and at another stage they might be the only thing they can possibly eat. This could cause a race to evolve into a state where objects are not defined by quantity, but by their effect upon the race in question. They would simply convey to each other the state they wished to achieve, and then negotiate based on that.
Anoher potential situation is a race that developed intelligence without the need for trade. An extremely socially structured species might have a much more complex system of resource delegation. With apes, for example, you are fed based on your status within the group, with the silverback getting first choice, and then all the others getting their pick from the leftovers based on their status with the silverback. If everything was delegated in such a way trade would simple come down to contests of social dominance, with the losers simply being left with the scraps. Very little need to quantify.
Obviously there are a lot of holes in both these theories, but the point is that math evolved from some form of need, if that need didn't exist for an evolving race then who knows what sort of alien thought processes would take its place?
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I had actually started on a flash version after I read his original offer, but got caught up with other work over the weekend. I think most people realized that he was trying to present the offer as satire, but even still, if you say you are going to give money to charity and then rescind that offer, well, that's just cruel. If he had truly wanted to make his point, he could have done it without dangling the money in the face of charity.
Ah, well. Here's the extremely simplistic engine that I started with:
Jack Thompson flash game
I'm just not 100% on that theory. Whales can't count the number of krill that they eat, and I'm guessing they don't require numbers to judge distance, and yet they are very intelligent, and capable of communication as far as we can tell. Who's to say that another even more advanced form of intelligence couldn't evolve without the need to quantify things in the same manner we do. Plus they are capable of navigating great distances without having to count the number of feet. Somehow I think the very concept of feet is a little foreign to them...
Not to sound all new-agey, but an alien race might not have ever needed a way to quantify things the way we do. For example, if we count a basket full of apples and then assign a value to them, like 23.
However, if an alien race had a more conditional physiology they might have to learn a more intuitive and less logical system for keeping track of the value of things. Take insects for example, with some insects as they progress through the different stages of their lives they can greatly alter the type of food required to sustain them. Apples might be poisonous to them at one stage of their life, and at another stage they might be the only thing they can possibly eat. This could cause a race to evolve into a state where objects are not defined by quantity, but by their effect upon the race in question. They would simply convey to each other the state they wished to achieve, and then negotiate based on that.
Anoher potential situation is a race that developed intelligence without the need for trade. An extremely socially structured species might have a much more complex system of resource delegation. With apes, for example, you are fed based on your status within the group, with the silverback getting first choice, and then all the others getting their pick from the leftovers based on their status with the silverback. If everything was delegated in such a way trade would simple come down to contests of social dominance, with the losers simply being left with the scraps. Very little need to quantify.
Obviously there are a lot of holes in both these theories, but the point is that math evolved from some form of need, if that need didn't exist for an evolving race then who knows what sort of alien thought processes would take its place?