Alien Truth
As much as I like PG&#x27;s writing in general, this is him dipping his toes in waters that are already well studied and coming off as ignorant and&#x2F;or presumptuous.<p>His very first premise &quot;The truths of mathematics would be the same, because they&#x27;re true by definition&quot; shows an ignorance of an entire field of discourse called the philosophy of mathematics. Whether aliens would have the same math as us is one of the fundamental questions, and to presume the answer shows a disdain of the existing body of thought on this topic.<p>In particular, we humans still hotly debate which math is the &quot;right&quot; math. Is the axiom of choice &quot;true&quot;? Does it make sense to say that it has a truth value? Is such a truth value amenable to human discovery? Does PG know the answers to all of these questions?<p>PG is either unaware of the human-choice nature of the fundaments of math or he thinks he has special knowledge of it. Either way makes this essay one of my least favorites.