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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

Why are people so quick to assume that every single other alien species would be completely unfathomable to us? We all share the same physics, chemistry, and mathematics of our common universe. For example, there's only three dimensions, and there's only three regular polygons that can tessellate a grid. Unless you're going to posit that there's no alien species whatsoever that will even come up with the concept of a game (which I find highly doubtful), they're going to be using the same abstract mathematical concepts as we are in building said games, because only so many abstract mathematical concepts even exist.

Our simplest board games aren't that far removed from the realm of the purely mathematical. And yet aliens won't all have their own completely different mathematical systems; such a thing isn't possible.

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So, the smartest animals on earth apart from primates are dolphins, crows and octopuses. But most aliens are portrayed as humanoids. I can't remember a single alien movie with sea creatures or intelligent birds. But if anyone knows some, please let me know :)

I think the body shape part is relevant here because it determines what kinds of games are possible or practical. A species of intelligent octopuses might play games involving changing their pigment (in wavelengths we can't even see!) or manipulating eight things at once. Bird games might involve flying competitions etc.

Edit: I guess the important part here in a species inventing Go, is having a body that can make a board game (or similar representation). Hands are pretty good for crafting tables and moving small pieces around. Beaks and snouts less so. (I'd put my money with the octopus.)

There are some birds that are better at tool use than you might think, too.

It's worth pointing out that Go is a purely mathematical game. You don't need a board at all to play it, especially not if your memory is good enough. Chess Grandmasters don't need boards to play Chess, for example; they can simply say the moves to each other and both will have the same image of the board in their mind.

So you could have intelligent aliens playing Go entirely verbally. Considering how many alien species there are likely to be, perhaps this is almost a certainty?

Some humans can play Chess in their minds, yes. But would they have learned to play Chess if it was purely mind stuff? I don't think so.

We might one day have octopuses play Chess with us. But there may be other alien games we'd learn from them as well. Or not.

Why not? We have games that exist entirely verbally that have always been so. It doesn't seem an impossible stretch to have verbal games that involve mentally imagining a physical layout, especially because these are aliens we're talking about here who could easily have much better visualization abilities than us. Maybe it would even be an adaptation brought on by an inability to change their environment as well as we can.

> It's worth pointing out that Go is a purely mathematical game. You don't need a board at all to play it, especially not if your memory is good enough. Chess Grandmasters don't need boards to play Chess, for example; they can simply say the moves to each other and both will have the same image of the board in their mind.

Is it common to be able to play Go without a board? That seems to require storing 361 bits in your head. I guess it’s much sparser than that for most of the game and has more structure than just 361 random bits, but that still sounds hard.

Here’s a (strong?) amateur who claims to be the only person who can play this way [1].

[1] https://senseis.xmp.net/?BaoYun

We're talking about hypothetical alien species here. But yes, Go is a purely mathematical game. If you don't have amazing memory you can represent those bits in a computer and it's still the same exact game. The physical board is just a physical representation of Go; it's not an actual relevant part of it (compared with, say, billiards).

But yes, there are even some people that can play Go in their head. You're wrong about the amount of information though; each piece on the board has 3 potential states, not just two. Though you can chunk the board pretty effectively and it becomes more about memorizing larger patterns than the state of every single spot on the board. Plus, the board never fills up, so you only need to remember the spaces with pieces in them, not every space.

Well, I'm able to semi reliably play chess without a board and I don't even play a lot, go is a bit over twice the information so it's not that much.

Also, 400 bits of information is about two sentences.

Movies make humanoid aliens because it is much cheaper. Books are much more various and imagine all sort of body shapes or amorphous possibilities.

I think the assumption there is that the alien race is smart enough and dexterous enough to create machines. Wether they use tentacles, fingers, snouts or talons, it makes sense that such a species develops board games at a moment

> I can't remember a single alien movie with sea creatures or intelligent birds. But if anyone knows some, please let me know

The little-known Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home centers its plot around the idea that Earth whales are themselves aliens. A crisis occurs when a whale probe comes to check on the Earth whales.

> I can't remember a single alien movie with sea creatures or intelligent birds. But if anyone knows some, please let me know :)

While not exactly movie and not specifically sea creatures/birds, there are plenty of anime series and visual novels with intelligent non-humanoid alien species. Parasite from Parasyte, some forms of BETA from Muv-luv, aliens from Stellvia, (NSFW to Google) Saya from Saya no Uta (real form). Dragons are also often portrayed as intelligent race originating from space (e.g. Final Fantasy XIV & Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?). Many of these usually have a way to appear as humanoid to make conversing with mankind easier though (and likely to make it easier for readers/watchers to relate).

Even assuming that the concept of "game" would exist elsewhere seems like a ridiculous assumption. All of the things you are saying, even "purely mathematical" are just reflections of the way humans sense the world. Any alien species you are imagining here is just a reflection of mankind.

Anyway, since probably won't know anytime soon, and perhaps never, this kind of speculation is a bit useless. But if we ever found an alien species, it seems unlikely we would be able communicate with them any more than we can communicate with a piece of rock.

I'm not saying that every alien species would have the same concept of a game, but you really think it's "ridiculous" that any other alien species might have a similar concept of a game? Adversarial games are not even that far removed from the normal competition that is part of natural selection that yields intelligence in the first place.

You're making a lot of assumptions about things that you claim are impossible or would never happen, without explaining how you're coming to those assumptions. And the "communicate with a piece of rock" bit is just flat-out bad argumentation, as rocks aren't intelligent and thus cannot communicate by definition.

Well so far we do not know, so again this is just speculation. Your guess might be as good as mine. There does not seem to be any serious scientific results in this direction, other than nonsense like the Drake equation.

I think the variety among the possibilities for other intelligent species (if any) would far outweigh the number of them. Hence it might be probable that there would exist two similar ones, but it would be very improbable that any of them would be similar to humans.

The point about "communicating" with a piece of rock was exactly that we cannot communicate them. Even if we would run into an alien species (which seems unlikely), it seems very improbable that any meaningful communication could happen.

"Playfulness" is fairly widespread among the intelligent animals of Earth. Mammals, birds, and cetaceans all seem to "play". From there it isn't that hard a guess that they might also "game", and for similar evolutionary reasons.

Unless we're going to argue that Earth has some sort of unique concept of "playfulness" built into the original single cell, it's not that hard a guess that a good chunk of aliens out there might recognizably "game".

Is everyone who thinks we stand no chance of communication really comfortable claiming that we're just soooo unique that we won't be able to communicate with anything? Because it's the exact same claim, just from a different viewpoint. Personally I think it's just fashionable misanthropy that will dissolve the instant you spin it in a direction where it might perhaps look like one is claiming it in a way that makes humanity look special.

Your guess is as good as mine. My guess is that all intelligent life in the universe would be "soooo unique", not just the one on Earth. So it would be very improbable any life form would be similar to that on Earth.

However, it could be probable that there are two life forms in the universe which are similar. But then they would probably be too far apart from each other to ever be able to communicate.

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