> I particularly liked Max's answer who neatly makes the distinction between the structure (we discover) and the language (we invent). We're free to invent the names, but not the structures.
i came here to give my opinion, but this is pretty much it. i need to read max tegmark's books.
the idea that how we got to the structures and concepts we find is undoubtedly invented, because we've already seen that we've re-invented our methods multiple times. but the structures and concepts don't really change. we extend them, but there seems to be some set of structures and concepts that get settled to. if we found some alien species that has mathematics, we'd probably find that there's some mapping between our structures modulo small choices that were made.
i came here to give my opinion, but this is pretty much it. i need to read max tegmark's books.
the idea that how we got to the structures and concepts we find is undoubtedly invented, because we've already seen that we've re-invented our methods multiple times. but the structures and concepts don't really change. we extend them, but there seems to be some set of structures and concepts that get settled to. if we found some alien species that has mathematics, we'd probably find that there's some mapping between our structures modulo small choices that were made.