How come math is universal when language and alphabets are not?
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Math is a system of abstract logic. You can begin with pretty straight forward basic assumptions – something like one *thing* and another *thing* are two *things* – and build up from there. The resulting rules you will come up with when you do that will always be the same throughout the universe. Any civilization will probably find constants like Pi or prime numbers and would be able to understand it’s improbable that these would crop up naturally in radio-signal, thus being able to see intelligence in the source.
Alphabets on the other hand are made up wholly on the basis of our biology. Humans can make some sounds, but not others. Written alphabets are just random lines everyone agrees is some sound (or sounds) which intern have one or more meanings. Baby brains are great at learning what some specific sounds mean in context – but if you hear something like Chinese for the first time without having any idea it’s even a language, it’s just sounds to you. It’s very hard to connect meanings to sounds if you have nothing to point at to give some indication what the sounds refers to.
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