Re:Questions I would ask God about the game of Go
by Cpoll on Sunday January 19, 2020 @09:27PM
(#22095770)
> For the same reason the laws of nature are the same around the universe.
I wonder how much is cultural though? Go depends on a 2d grid, but is it possible that some alien Grade 9 math tends to use, say, distance and angle from origin instead of x, y? In that case the intuition for Go might not be there because they don't use grids, even though the math is ultimately the same.
Or a culture that likes to use hexagons for their board games (hexagonal Go tends to be more shallow than grid-based Go).
For the same reason the laws of nature are the same around the universe.
Logic is not really that negotiatable, so thinking creatures will end up with the same kind of logic as us, even if they look differently. All forms of life are also not equally good at developing thinking and tools, so that's another pressure to converge to something similar-ish and e.g. not an underwater fish-like creature or some thing without a means to grab stuff and manipulate it (even if it's not opposable thumbs).
>Humans have problems anthropomorphizing animals as it is
I don't think anthropomorphizing is really a problem, or unscientific. In fact "anthropomorphizing" as a bad thing is probably based on religious inspired dichotomy between the man and the animals, where man is basically just another animal for 99% of intents and purposes.
There's a bad form of anthropomorphizing animals (the Disney or pet owners way, which puts into animals exactly the human characteristics they lack more or don't have at all), but that aside, we share all kinds of insticts, physiology, deep brain structures, etc with animals.